Jeff Babko

A church organ in the San Fernando Valley

Babko is a Southern California native who spent his teenage years as the organist at a San Fernando Valley church, a job that pays in repertoire rather than money: hymns, modulations on demand, filling silence while people move around. The records he grew up on were a mix of jazz piano and gospel-soul session work — Keith Jarrett, Ramsey Lewis, Billy Preston and Richard Tee. That pairing still explains most of his playing. He can take a long, unhurried solo in a jazz trio, and he can also lay down the kind of plain, weight-bearing keyboard part that a vocalist needs under them in four bars' notice.

He left California for Florida and the University of Miami's Frost School of Music, a school that has fed the American session world for decades, and came home with the technique and the reading skills that the Los Angeles studio economy demands.

Iglesias, Toto and the trade of being hired

The first job out of Miami was a three-year world tour as keyboardist for Julio Iglesias — a long apprenticeship in large rooms, strict arrangements and nightly consistency. From there Babko fell in with drummer Simon Phillips, and the two co-led an album, Vantage Point, released in 2000. That record did the thing a good calling-card album is meant to do: it put him in front of the right people. Touring with Toto followed, and a long association with guitarist Steve Lukather that produced several albums, among them the Christmas record Santamental, which featured Eddie Van Halen.

The credit list that followed is the ordinary shape of a working Los Angeles keyboard career, which is to say it is very long and mostly invisible. He toured and recorded with James Taylor, appearing on Taylor's Covers record, and worked with Sheryl Crow and the Doobie Brothers, among many others. In 2024 he played with Steely Dan. He has also written and played for film and television scores, including work on Encanto, and on series including Arrested Development and Fargo.

The late-night chair

Babko's television life began in 1999 with the Martin Short Show. He joined Jimmy Kimmel Live at its 2003 debut and stayed, first as keyboardist and musical arranger. In practice the arranger's job on a nightly network show is the hidden one: it means writing the band in and out of adverts, re-voicing a guest artist's song for a six-piece in an afternoon, and building the short musical gags that a monologue hangs on.

The band was Cleto and the Cletones, led by saxophonist Cleto Escobedo III, Kimmel's childhood friend from Las Vegas. Babko worked alongside Escobedo for more than 30 years, which is longer than the show has existed, and the familiarity is audible in how little the band seems to need telling.

The other long-running television relationship became the one that now dominates his calendar. Babko is music director and touring pianist for the Steve Martin and Martin Short partnership, and played on their Netflix special — the piano chair in that act is less accompaniment than scaffolding, because the comedy keeps collapsing into song.

Clam City

The record under his own name that matters most is Clam City, the trio he leads with bassist Tim Lefebvre and drummer Mark Guiliana. It came out on Sam First Records on 10 November 2023, as two 180-gram LPs in a foil-stamped edition of 500 and in hi-res digital, cut live at Sam First, the small jazz room by Los Angeles International Airport, and pressed by Gotta Groove.

The pieces have titles that read like private jokes — The Church of Bill Hilton, New Wave Theatre, New Jersey Ballad, Boo Boo's Birthday, Fugue Robotique — and the method is deliberately thin on paper. Babko has described the compositions as distilled to the most basic of notated data, and the recordings as reflecting what happens in a real-time moment with very little prejudice, expectation or direction. His liner notes put the emphasis on the players rather than the charts: friendship is vital, he wrote, and the spirit of camaraderie is crucial to a greater collective of shared ideas. DownBeat called the album immensely thoughtful in its performances and tracklisting.

A further live set from the same project, Clam City @ Sam First, recorded over two nights on 29 and 30 April 2022, was released on 12 April 2024 as a Qobuz exclusive, produced by Paul Solomon and David Robaire and recorded and mastered by Nick Calapine. Between them the two releases are the clearest available evidence of what Babko does when nobody is cueing him.

November 2025, and what changed

Escobedo died on 11 November 2025 at the age of 59, after an illness. Kimmel announced it on Instagram the same day and broke down on air paying tribute. The band's name was shortened to the Cletones, keeping the reference to the man who led it from 1995, and Babko moved into the music director and bandleader role after 22 years at the keyboards.

In a note on his own site dated 20 December 2025 he wrote about Escobedo and listed the players carrying on: Jonathan Dresel, Rhonda Smith, Toshi Yanagi and Takeshi Akimoto. He also flagged what was next — a Japan tour in mid-January 2026 with Steve Lukather, Michael Landau, Keith Carlock and Tim Lefebvre, and the Martin and Short work resuming in late January.

His next update, dated 13 February 2026, confirms that the Japan run happened, at Billboard Live clubs with Lukather and Landau. It also sketches the current state of the day job: singers joining the Cletones on Jimmy Kimmel Live including Sean and Sara Watkins, Sy Smith and Rachael Price of Lake Street Dive, with Judith Hill and Laura Mace among recent guests. Alongside that he co-hosts a weekly jazz radio programme, The Magic Hour, on JAZZFM91 with Brad Barker, broadcast Sundays and Thursdays at 9pm EST, and returned to Largo in February 2026 with Mark Guiliana's Beat Music LA project.

Two live lives

Babko's touring diary now runs on two completely different scales. One is the small-room improvising work — Sam First, Largo, the Beat Music nights — where the trio format and the lack of fixed arrangements are the whole point, and where an evening is two sets of material that may not survive contact with the stage.

The other is a theatre and casino-hall comedy tour where he is billed as part of the support act. Steve Martin and Martin Short announced the extension of The Best of Steve Martin and Martin Short on 5 November 2025, launching in late January 2026 with 13 dates and running through late April, with Jeff Babko and the Steep Canyon Rangers on every show. The dates currently on sale carry it to the end of 2026 and beyond: Wind Creek Event Center in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on 6 November 2026, Ovation Hall at Ocean Casino Resort in Atlantic City the following night, two performances at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis on 14 November, North Charleston Performing Arts Center on 4 December, the Township Auditorium in Columbia, South Carolina on 5 December, and Hard Rock Live in Hollywood, Florida on 15 January 2027.