Kevin Eubanks May Leave Tonight Show, Life Goes On

By Daniel Dominguez on February 17th, 2010

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Kevin Eubanks has decided to take a temporary, and potentially permanent hiatus from The Tonight Show because, according to NBC, “Kevin has expressed interest in pursuing personal touring and recording opportunities.” Kevin Eubanks is the popular guitar wielding band leader on The Tonight Show, best known for his ability to smile politely, laugh, and shake his head when they cut to him. Kevin Eubank’s ability to be agreeable is unsurpassed, and Kevin Eubanks is actually in the Guinness Book of World Records for “Most considerate nodding in a one hour period.”

But Kevin Eubanks wasn’t born that agreeable. It took a lot of hard work. When Kevin was a child he was sent to Our Lady of Pleasing Others by his father, who had himself been quite agreeable and was hoping to have his son follow in his footsteps. Kevin Eubanks comes from a long line of agreeable people. His great great great great Grandfather, Eucephus Eubanks trained in the art of placation, smiling, and nodding with a Tibetan Monk who had spent his whole life in the lotus position, practicing the art of being affable by smiling at a rabid hyena who was chained across from him.

“I wanted my boy to be able to seem like he thought you were on the right track no matter how he actually felt,” said Eubank’s father.

Eubanks then went on to high school where he joined the school smiling-and-giving-the-thumbs-up team, quickly rising through the ranks to lead the team to several state championships.

In college Kevin joined the collegiate smiling-and-giving-the-thumbs-up team where he was expected to excel, but an injury early in his first season (he sprained the left side of his mouth smiling too hard at a party where he was bored but was trying not to show it) kept him off the team and he temporarily gave up on his dream to focus on an MBA.

Fortunately, Jay Leno, while doing a show at Kevin Eubank’s college on a college comedy tour, saw something special in the young man and encouraged him to go through rehabilitative therapy.

“I had never met anyone more willing to please. I knew this kid had something special,” Jay Leno told one of his cars late one night when he was alone in his giant hangar full of cars, because he talks to his cars because there is no one else to love him.

Eubanks went through the therapy, and before he knew it he was smiling politely at weddings, in uninteresting classes, and with friends he didn’t really like.

He was back in business. And he road out to Los Angeles to thank the man that had encouraged him, only to be told that there was an open position on The Tonight Show band staff. He was a natural fit, both because of his incredible ability to seem like he was enjoying himself, and because he, unlike most people, didn’t get nosebleeds whenever Jay Leno laughs his high pitched laugh.

NBC has already hinted at what they plan to do if Eubanks does decide to leave, suggesting that they will replace him either with Waylon Smithers (from The Simpsons), or a bucket in a chair with a smile drawn on it.