Greg Grunberg plans to have a great time when Band From TV performs in Chicago this weekend.
"The last time I took up residency I was there for my son's brain surgery, so this is a happier time," Grunberg said, adding that his son, Jake, is doing "really well now."
Made up of several TV actors as well as professional musicians, Band From TV got started as a way for its members to give back by donating the proceeds from shows to their favorite charities. The band, which has donated more than $2 million to charities to date, will play four shows in Chicago, beginning Friday. While most are free, a portion of the proceeds from the band's big Saturday benefit at the Vic Theatre goes to the Epilepsy Foundation of Greater Chicago, a group Grunberg became very familiar when he was in Chicago during his son's illness.
"I really feel like Chicago is kind of my second home because I've gone through something so life-changing there. ... I'll never, ever forget all of the support and everything we got there. It was just incredible," he said. "That's why this weekend is so important to me. It really is going to help [the Epilepsy Foundation] greatly, and we're gonna have a blast. We're gonna raise a lot of money."
Grunberg chatted more about what band member gets the most attention, what he says to anyone who thinks the band is a joke and about the band's big Chicago weekend. We also talked about "Heroes," his new series, "Love Bites," and his iPhone app, Yowza!. I'll post the rest of the interview later.
Band From TV is Greg Grunberg, drums ("Heroes"); Hugh Laurie, keyboards ("House"); James Denton, guitar ("Desperate Housewives"); Bob Guiney, vocals ("The Bachelor"); Jesse Spencer, violin, ("House"); Adrian Pasdar, guitar, ("Heroes"), and Scott Grimes, keyboards ("ER").
You guys are going to be everywhere. We're everywhere--and at a discount, too, if you have
Yowza! What we did is we put $10-off tickets to the Vic if you use Yowza. So you just download Yowza for free on your phone, click on it, call, get tickets and you save ten bucks per ticket.
Wow. You've got the synergy going on
I know. I'm putting it all together, man. That's cool.
That is really cool, and it's nice that you are just in and out of the city.
It's going to be great. There's a double-decker bus company (Chicago Trolley and Double Decker Co.) that's giving us our own double-decker bus the whole time that we're there, which is awesome!
You'll go to Starbucks and pull up in a double-decker bus?
Exactly! That would be hilarious. We'd get kind of tan if we did it that way everywhere we went.
That's cool. So tell me Greg, which one of the band's members gets the most underwear thrown at him while performing?
[Laughs.] Well, I get boxers thrown at me, which is really weird. I'm what's known as a bear in the gay community. My wife loves that.
They might be coming from the sci-fi fan boys, too.
Yeah, exactly. You know who gets the most attention, bar none, is Hugh Laurie. Well, the one who gets the most underwear thrown at him, and the women just go nuts [for him], is Jessie Spencer.
People just love Jesse Spencer, and Adrian Pasdar and Bob Guiney, but Hugh gets the most attention by far. That guy is known from his character on TV, and people don't know about his British roots in comedy and sketch comedy. So they think he's this curmudgeon, this grumpy Gus who walks with a limp. He is the kindest, sweetest, smartest, funniest, most talented guy you could imagine, and he shows it on stage.
Our shows are kind of rat-packy, like between songs we'll talk, and we have no idea what we're going to say. It's just fun. It's really fun to come see our shows. And ... most people are pleasantly surprised; they think the music's pretty good. It's going to be great, and we're playing a full set for the Taste, and then our big show is at the Vic, but the Taste is going to be a full set. People are going to hear us for sure.
You guys do covers mostly.
We do covers. We have an album, a DVD/CD on amazon.com. And again, I don't mind pimping all of this stuff because it's all for charity, so if I sound like a machine it's because it's all for good stuff. But, yeah, we do covers and our album is called "Hoggin All the Covers."
We have a really kind of eclectic musical taste, as you can imagine. One guy comes from London, one guy comes from Australia, one guy is like a working man, kind of country--Jamie does that. I love blues and Ray Charles and the Blues Brothers--that kind of music. Then Adrian Pasdar's married to Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, so he's got country in his blood and in his bed.
That's a good way to put it.
Thank you. We're actually doing a new song, which is kind of sounds like The Pogues a little bit. It's from a guy names Charlie Robinson, but no one really knows the song, but Adrian kills it. Some of the covers, you may not know it right away, but after the show you're like, "I love that song!" and you're singing it. They're all really catchy, fun songs ... It's a good show. It's got dynamics to it.
So you basically pick just by, "OK, I like this song let's do it."
Yeah, at the beginning, I was always worried if the song doesn't make you feel like you're walking through a party like Tony from "Saturday Night Fever." ... You gotta have that feeling.
Scott Grimes does "Don't Stop Me Now" and "Walking in Memphis," and we do some stuff that you'd expect like "Mustang Sally" and the kind of covers that everybody does. But then we do a lot that [people will say,] "What is this? Oh, my God! It's Queen!" We do "Baba O'Riley" and "Devil Went Down to Georgia," because Jesse Spencer plays the fiddle, and he just kills it.
Have you ever been called a joke?
First of all, we don't take ourselves too seriously. We're not the Bacon Brothers, we're not Keanu Reeves; we're not these guys with bands who are trying to make it as real musicians. But we have a sax player from the Eagles, the keyboard player from the Eagles; we have the trombone player from Springsteen. The backup singers are pros. We have amazing people on stage.
I'd rather people come to a show having the lowest of low expectations, and then coming away going, "You know what? Those guys rock!" ... We have such a blast on stage; it doesn't feel like work. It doesn't feel like charity, and we're just, hopefully that's infectious and people dig it.
... If it's a joke, it's the best joke in the world raising the most money anybody has for charity doing this. And it's not a joke, and people really come away from it feeling good and having a great time.
I've seen video and it seems like everybody gets involved and has a good time, almost like in a karaoke setting.
We played the Emmys after party ... and I look at the side of the stage and there's like four or five actors waiting to come on stage and sing karaoke, and we we're like "No, guys. No, no, no. We rehearse!" I mean, we put a lot of time into this, to sound good. We don't want to embarrass ourselves, and we're proud of what we're doing ... If it's a joke, it's the best joke in the world raising the most money anybody has for charity doing this. And it's not a joke, and people really come away from it feeling good and having a great time.
How do you guys find time to rehearse? I mean, with your crazy schedules and everything.
It's really tough. We have guests who are session guys who will come in and take our places. I've got a guy named Kim Conrad who sat in last night. They all got together and rehearsed the set, the show for Chicago, and I wasn't there. So we end up doing three or four times more rehearsing than a normal band would do ... I'm usually at every rehearsal, so this is a unique thing. I mean, we might suck. I'm kidding. We're gonna rock!
Band From TV performs in April during the Children Mending Hearst gala in Hollwyood. (Getty Images photo)
Yeah, but those people have rehearsed with us. You know, like Jorge Garcia, Zach Levi, John Mayer--these people have come to rehearsal. Michael Chiklis is amazing! Crazy musician; Chik is incredible ... There are a lot of closet musicians out there.
Would you ever watch a TV show starring musicians?
Good question. Answer: no way! No, I wouldn't, unless there were actors backing him up. Then maybe I would--and if it was for charity, absolutely. That's a great question: "Would you watch a TV show starring musicians?" Oh my God, I love it.
Could we just DVR your Chicago concerts and watch them later?
Yeah, sure. There are no residuals anyway, so what the hell?
When you're playing drums in the shows, do you think people in the crowd are imagining you as your TV characters?
There are a lot of times people are bopping to the music, but they're also turning to their friend going, "Remember when he was on ... Oh, that's the guy from ... Oh, yeah, he did an episode of ..." It's like they're sitting there basically going over our IMDB list. You don't get that when you go to a normal rock show, so it's kind of a little bonus [for fans] to try and figure out where everybody's from.
Do you have any favorite songs that you guys perform?
Well, I do the Ray Charles version of "Shake Your Tail Feather," and then I go right into "Rapper's Delight," believe it or not. I love doing that song, but like, "Mary's Place," I love that Springsteen tune, and Jamie sings it. I love the old "Pink Cadillac" and "The Letter." We just do songs that are just kind of our favorite songs, so I have to say, though, my favorite might be "Baba O'Riley" just because the audience is like, "What?" Like they just can't believe we're covering that song. And then we do it, and Jesse just kills on the fiddle, and at the end it's me and him. It's just like din, din, din, din diggity diggity diggiity. It's like this really just full of energy song. I love playing that tune.
You're performing at the Cubs-Sox game. Do you think you'll throw out the first pitch?
We are! We're throwing out the first pitch. We were going to sing the national anthem, but someone else is doing that. It's gonna be awesome!
What are you going to do at Taste? Do you have any food you want to try?
Everything! The food in Chicago I love, so I don't know what. Basically my buddy Phil's gonna take us around, and we're just gonna eat whatever. I eat anything. I'm not picky, as you can probably tell, so I'm looking forward to trying different types of pizza and checking out some of the chops. I'm a big steak guy, so we'll see.
Last year, either at Taste or Lollapalooza, someone had a lobster corn dog.
Oooh! I'm in. Are you kidding me? A lobster corn dog?
I had like 10 of them.
OK, can you put that down? You asked me the question, and that's my answer, OK? Seriously, I want to try the lobster corn dog. Wow!
proceeds go straight to the charities each of the band members support through the band’s foundation. Hugh Laurie (House, M.D. on piano, mandolin and vocals), Jesse Spencer (House, M.D. on fiddle), Bob Guiney (The Bachelor, vocals), James Denton (Desperate Housewives, Guitar), Adrian Pasdar (Heroes, Guitar) and Scott Grimes (Robin Hood, piano and vocals) joined Grunberg for a 
and’s members came from all around the country, from Maine to Georgia; Colorado to Texas. And this is the real value of the work BFTV does. Using their collective star power, they raise a huge amount of money (more than $2 million so far). Grunberg raises money for the 
e to tune (from “Mary Ann” featuring Laurie on vocals and piano to “Devil Went Down to Georgia” featuring Jesse Spencer on fiddle and “Walking in Memphis” with Grimes’ sweet vocals) BFTV gave each of the band members a moment to shine—and a moment for their fans to see their favorite television actors in an unfamiliar role.
their repertoire by Laurie. Because they are all actors, they really know how to milk a song to good effect, but they were all clearly very into the music, and everyone put their collective heart and soul into all three sets. They clearly all take the music seriously, and even after three shows (one in blistering daytime heat and humidity) they had as much energy after the Vic show (which was more than an hour) as they had at the start of the weekend--something even more impressive when you realize that they’ve made not one nickel from their performances or the CDs and T-shirts they hawk outside the venue. It’s all for charity.
’Reilly”). Spencer, who’s only just come to country fiddling in the last few years after training classically, bowed the heck out of his strings on “Devil Went Down to Georgia,” handling those difficult breakneck fiddle solos with deft ease. The band delighted the Vic audience closing the night with the Who’s “Baba O’Reilly” challenging the audience to guess the song with very first synthesizer note.
throughout the evening (he played a grand at the Taste and a different digital at Harry Caray’s). So when Grunberg said “prove it,” Laurie began to play, except nothing came out. Three times, until they gave up on the hapless Kurzweil and Laurie switched to a second piano (used by Scott Grimes). What could have been frustrating to Laurie and the band (and the audience) became a great inside joke for all.
Plenty of music lovers are hit with the occasional urge to start a band with their buddies. For most people, however, those buddies don't include familiar faces like "House" star Hugh Laurie or "Desperate Housewives" James Denton.
On their list of dream collaborators are Grunberg's "Heroes" co-stars Kristen Bell and Zachary Quinto. "They've both agreed to come on and jam with us," Grunberg says. "They're so excited about it. It's just a matter of working out the schedules. It'll happen; it'll happen very soon."
