Jon Batiste, Stephen Colbert’s bandleader, on making music in New Orleans, on the subway, and on late night TV

Jon Batiste makes some of TV’s best music, night in and night out. As bandleader of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, the multi-instrumentalist comes up with perfect tunes to introduce guests, to complement Colbert’s jokes, and to keep the audience hyped up. (Many of the tunes fitting that last category are Batiste originals, performed by him and his band, Stay Human.) But Batiste’s career stretches beyond late-night TV. He started out making music at a very young age in his hometown of Kenner, Louisiana, and since then, he’s recorded a whole album in and around the New York subway system, performed all over the world, and appeared semi-regularly on HBO’s series Treme. His newest album, Hollywood Africans, is a combination of Batiste originals and terrific covers of iconic songs that he’s put his own spin on. (Wait until you hear what he does with “What a Wonderful World”!) Batiste joins Todd this week to talk about choosing which classic songs he wanted to put his spin on, his day-to-day life at the Late Show, and why he loves McDonald’s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You can listen to Jon Batiste, Stephen Colbert’s bandleader, on making music in New Orleans, on the subway, and on late night TV online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Jon Batiste, Stephen Colbert’s bandleader, on making music in New Orleans, on the subway, and on late night TV is an episode from I Think You're Interesting by Vox Media Podcast Network.

This episode is 51:56 long.

This episode was published on Sep 20, 2018.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from I Think You're Interesting when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.