Keith McPhee is sometimes the first person to arrive at The Tonight Show‘s 30 Rock offices. McPhee, who works as production manager and musical supervisor for the show’s house band, The Roots, attributes his timely nature to the fact that he grew up in a military family where “if you were on time, you were late.” But he’s also quick to add that his promptness has saved The Roots more than a few times since he came on board as a promoter for the Philadelphia hip-hop act in the early ‘90s.

In 2009, McPhee started working on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon after The Roots decided to ease up on their touring regimen of 200-250 shows a year to become the show’s house band. McPhee and The Roots moved over to The Tonight Show with Fallon in 2014, and he continues to assist the group as they navigate between their television commitments and road work.

How did you first get into the music business?

My parents are both musicians, and it was just a natural progression. My mother was a choir director and did musical productions in the military. She was an officer’s wife and put on musical productions at different base locations. That was her outlet. As a child, I was involved in that whole process and helped her out. When I went to college, I started putting on shows in Philadelphia. One of the bands I was instrumental in promoting was The Square Roots. That was before they became The Roots. That was probably 1990, and it’s been progressing from there.

At what point did you shift your responsibilities from a local promoter to a full-time employee of The Roots?

The band started in the late ‘80s, when they were in college, and they would play on street corners in Philadelphia. I had a clothing store in Philadelphia at the same time called The Lay-up. Me and three other guys had opened the store, and we each picked a band from the local market that we wanted to work with and promote. We started doing shows at the Trocadero, and I put The Square Roots on there. That was the beginning of our relationship, which went through changes depending on the year. In 1993, I started working for a record label on the distribution end. Then, about 1998, I started working for The Roots full time.

Describe an early influence in your career.

It’s weird. I don’t really have any influences because it was a progression from childhood. That was what my parents did, and it just progressed. I was a music major in college, and I would have liked to have been a professional musician, but I didn’t have the discipline to practice enough. I guess that’s probably the issue, so I decided to get into doing production. That started in college and went on from there.

It was just a matter of living and learning on our own. The Roots have existed in a different vibe than the rest of their contemporaries. We were an anomaly to the record labels and to the public in general. We shot our own course, and that’s what I’ve done. Being a production manager for a live hip-hop band was unheard of 15 years ago, so it was a matter of learning what to do and how to do it. That was a self-educating process.

Talk about a lesson that you’ve learned during your career.

The biggest lesson that I’ve learned is being on time and being prepared. We realized that a lot of the things we went to weren’t prepared for a live hip-hop band. So we had to be prepared for all different types of scenarios. Nowadays, The Roots will do Lollapalooza, or one of those shows, and then we’ll do a hip-hop show the next weekend. It had been the goal of Rich Nichols, who was the band’s manager, that we would be diverse—there would be no lines drawn as far as “We’re not going to that,” or “We’ve never done that.” [Nichols passed away in 2014 following a long battle with leukemia.]

When did The Roots’ conversation with Late Night first start?

Sometime in 2008, or maybe a little prior to that, Dave Chappelle’s partner, who is a friend of Jimmy’s, recommended The Roots to him. He said, “They probably won’t do it, but it’d be a good idea.” Jimmy asked, and we said, “Yeah, we’ll think about it.” Then, a little while later, he came to a show in California at UCLA and said, “I got this show…” because this was all theory until that point. Finally, the show was approved and he said, “It’s gonna happen in six to eight months. Do you guys wanna do it?” They didn’t reply right away but, eventually, they said they’d do it. And the rest is history.

What’s a typical day like at The Tonight Show?

My day at The Tonight Show starts at 8:30 a.m., making sure the band’s gear gets in the door, either from the backline company that we rent from, or their band. Because the loading dock is in the basement of NBC, there is no truck access. So anytime we have big bands that come with 18-wheelers, we have to crossload this stuff to New Jersey and bring it back into the city and then down into our basement. That’s how my day starts off. I get the band’s gear, then we have rehearsals and soundchecks for the guest band in the morning. Then The Roots usually arrive between 12 and 1 p.m., which is when we deal with things we need to do for the show—whatever bits we’re performing, whatever sit-in guests we might have that day. We tape the show from 5-6 and then we’re done.

On top of that, we still have shows this time of year pretty much every weekend. Sometimes, we have shows in the middle of the week—we have to go load in as early as 5 a.m. to do our soundcheck. Then we’re out by 9 or 9:30 a.m., and we get over to Fallon. Then we go back to the venue as soon as we’re done with the show. Those are always interesting. But that’s the nature of the beast.