Music: The Roots of late-night TV

It's not the TV cameras and millions of viewers that have been hard to get used to, nor the 90-minute drive back and forth from Philadelphia to New York every day.

No, members of the Roots say the hardest adjustment in their transformation to house band on NBC's "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" has been the one thing that a constantly touring rock or hip-hop band doesn't need to do very often.

"We had to get used to actual rehearsing," Roots drummer/bandleader Ahmir (?uestlove) Thompson said. "Seriously, we have never prepped so much for any project."

Widely recognized as the best live band in hip-hop, and a favorite at major rock fests, the Roots came into Monday's debut of the Fallon show with a decent amount of TV experience. They've performed on many late-night shows as guests, including "Saturday Night Live" with Fallon. They also were the "Chapelle's Show" house band on Comedy Central for two seasons.

Talking in a teleconference interview from New York, Thompson and the Roots' rapper Tariq (Black Thought) Trotter sounded eager to have a full-time TV gig. But it won't be their only gig. Thompson said the Roots will continue to tour frequently: "At the end of the day, [the show] will probably make us an even better machine."

Other highlights from the interview:

Why they took the job: "After being on the road for 17 years touring, it's time for another challenge," Thompson said. "They just happened to catch us at a moment in which we were kind of pondering what our next move was going to be. ... Sometimes you just need a fresh take on things."

Said Thompson: "We pretty much have to master everything from what we're known for, to rock songs, to even some of the comedy bits being more Broadway-influenced or, you know, cheesy '80s stuff. The advantage that we have is that, you know, we're a walking Rolodex of musical styles."

On Fallon: "It's a good chemistry thus far," Thompson said. "We had quite a few opportunities to hang out with Jimmy and just kind of bond before we started doing test shows. ... We interact with Jimmy in the way we interact with one another. It's very loose and funny. [It'll] seem like there's an inside joke that only we know about that you as an audience is going to want to get in on."

Who'll sit in with them: "Robert Glasper, who's an artist on Blue Note, Esperanza Spalding, the jazz bassist, and Tal Wilkenfeld, who plays bass with Jeff Beck -- those are the main three that I've been sort of talking about doing this with," said Thompson. "There are a lot of musicians that we'd like to give the exposure to that wouldn't necessarily get it on a late-night television show."

Advice from Max Weinberg: "On the last day of the Conan show, we talked for about a half-hour to 45 minutes" to the longtime "Late Night" drummer, who is moving with Conan O'Brien to "The Tonight Show," Thompson said. "He was really helpful on how to make this job as smooth as possible. You know, it's a well-run, well-oiled machine. And coming from the loose, unstructured environment that we are used to -- where we're the only people that we have to answer to -- it might be a little different trying to readjust to a situation in which the focus point isn't necessarily on you."

On tour plans: "There's probably 10 weeks of touring that we will do, spread out throughout the year," Thompson said. "And I'm certain that as time goes on and more reruns are shown, we will have even more time on our hands to tour. But we're definitely still doing shows on the weekends. People in the States shouldn't have anything to worry about, you know. I don't know if people in South Africa will see the Roots in any timely manner, or when we're going back to Macedonia."