Jenny Lewis is a singer-songwriter traveling all over the country and world this year, promoting her hit album “On the Line.” Most of the time, a former Sitkan is behind the scenes helping her music come to life. But When Lewis performed on the Tonight Show Wednesday (10/23/19) night, that Sitkan stepped into the limelight — albeit in a rabbit suit — and swept Lewis and viewers away.
Jenny Lewis stands on the Tonight Show stage, clad in a retro sequined gown and a slightly shaggy bombshell hairdo. The musician is on tour right now- her album“On the Line” was released last spring.
She’s singing her song ”Rabbit Hole”- in the song, the singer is basically insisting she’s not getting back together with an ex- or “going to go down the rabbit hole” again.
Then, right after the bridge, a man in a pink rabbit onesie comes out, and begins to offer her gifts, like a banana, and an old dried flower. Some Sitkans may have recognized that fluffy bunny.
Vince Agne is Lewis’s sound engineer, a job that’s taken him, most recently, to 30 Rockefeller Plaza, but he got his start in the sound world right here in Sitka’s schools.
“It really kind of started in the 7th grade when I wanted to go to junior high dances down at Blatchley, but I didn’t really know how to dance, so I became a DJ,” says Agne. “When it came time to figure out what I wanted to do as an adult, I figured, hey, I’m pretty good with this music and audio thing- I’ll try to be a sound engineer. Ta da!”
Agne studied audio production in Seattle, and he’s been working in the industry for 16 years- he’s worked with Macklemore and numerous other artists in the city. He’s been with Lewis for the last year and a half. And a few months ago, he let his bunny out of the bag.
“Originally, Jenny wanted someone to play tambourine, and I thought it would be funny if it was done in a rabbit suit. One day I bought a pink rabbit suit, and I would randomly pop up on stage or do it when I was mixing monitors, just to make her and the band laugh,” he says. “And all of a sudden it became a gag. And whenever we’d sing the song rabbit hole, I’d come out with different tricks and try to make her laugh while she was singing in front of a live audience.”
Not everyone is laughing though. Remember Fatal Attraction? Maybe that’s why Jimmy Fallon’s special guest on the Tonight Show, Michael Douglas wasn’t too keen on Agne’s bunny get-up.
“I passed him by in the hallway with it on, and he just kind of looked at me weird,” he says. “But, it’s all good.”
For Agne, his work really is all good.
“It’s pretty cool to have a job that takes you all over. It’s a pretty amazing life sometimes,” he says. “I’m always in awe.”
And as for that rabbit hole- in the end Lewis falls right back down it. At the end of the song, Agne points to his furry pink wrist…
“I tell her it’s time to go, and then she jumps into my arms and I run off stage, and run down the hallway of 30 Rock,” he laughs.
As the audience applause dies down, Jimmy Fallon comes on stage.
“Is she okay?” Fallon yells. “Can we get a check up on her, is she all right with that bunny? Oh my goodness! Jenny Lewis!”
And Vince Agne, ladies and gentlemen.
