Priscilla Block is sharing some new music with fans. The singer just dropped the new song “Me Pt. 2.”
“This is hands down one of the most honest songs I’ve ever written. It was 2 o’clock in the morning – just me, my guitar and a piece of paper,” she shares. “Sometimes it’s the simplest songs that hit the most and for me ‘Me Pt. 2’ is that.”
“Me Pt. 2” is set to appear on the deluxe edition of Priscilla’s debut album, Welcome to the Block Party, which is dropping February 10. It includes four previously unreleased tracks, including her recent hit “Off The Deep End.”
“When we were selecting songs for ‘Welcome To The Block Party’ we had so many songs to choose from, which is why I’m super excited for the deluxe album,” she says. “Four more songs that complete the Block Party era.”
Courtesy of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival
The lineup for the 2023 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival has been announced, and it looks like it will be jam-packed with plenty of great music.
The 52nd annual Jazz Fest is set to take place at the New Orleans Fair Grounds over two weekends from April 28 to May 7. Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, Steve Miller Band, Tedeschi Trucks Band and more are confirmed for the first weekend, with Dead & Company, Santana, Melissa Etheridge, John Hiatt and the Goners, Buddy Guy and others playing weekend two.
Other artists on this year’s bill include Ed Sheeran, Lizzo, Mumford and Sons, The Lumineers and H.E.R.
Weekend passes are currently on sale, with single-day tickets going on sale in the coming weeks. More information on tickets and the complete lineup can be found here.
Paramount+ has announced that another Oscar winner has joined Nicole Kidman andZoe Saldaña in Taylor Sheridan‘s spy series The Lioness: Morgan Freeman.
According to the streaming service, the show from the Yellowstone and Tulsa King creator is based on a real-life CIA program and, “follows Cruz Manuelos (Laysla De Oliveira), a rough-around-the-edges but passionate young Marine recruited to join the CIA’s Lioness Engagement Team to help bring down a terrorist organization from within.”
Freeman will play Edwin Mullins, the United States Secretary of State, according to the streamer.
As reported, Kidman will play CIA senior supervisor Kaitlyn Meade, who, “must juggle the trappings of being a woman in the high-ranking intelligence community, a wife who longs for the attention she herself can’t even give, and a mentor to someone veering suspiciously close to the same rocky road she’s found herself on.”
Avatar series star Saldaña will play Joe, “the station chief of the Lioness program tasked with training, managing and leading her female undercover operatives.”
Kidman will also serve as an executive producer on the series.
The Strokes have dug up an early version of their song “The Modern Age,” which will be included in the band’s upcoming The Singles — Volume 01 box set.
The recording was first released on an EP in January 2001 by the London label Rough Trade, which built significant buzz for the then-new band. “The Modern Age” was later rerecorded for The Strokes’ 2001 debut album, Is This It.
You can listen to “The Modern Age (Rough Trade Version)” now via digital outlets.
The Singles — Volume 01 collects 10 singles from the first three Strokes albums — Is This It, 2003’s Room on Fire and 2006’s First Impressions of Earth — along with their respective B-sides. The package is due out February 24.
The Strokes’ most recent album is 2020’s The New Abnormal.
(WASHINGTON) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told congressional leaders Friday the U.S. would hit its debt limit next week — setting up a showdown between Democrats, the White House and House Republicans, who have vowed to tie any increase in the debt ceiling to spending cuts.
The nation will reach its $31.4 trillion borrowing limit on Jan. 19, Yellen said in a letter, adding that the Treasury Department will begin implementing so-called “extraordinary measures” to manage the government’s cash flow if lawmakers don’t act to raise it.
“While Treasury is not currently able to provide an estimate of how long extraordinary measures will enable us to continue to pay the government’s obligations, it is unlikely that cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted before early June,” Yellen wrote in the letter.
Measures could include curtailing investment in some retirement funds.
According to some independent analysts, the U.S. will likely not hit the debt limit until late summer or early fall.
Back in 2011, the debt limit impasse cost the U.S. its AAA rating. The term “extraordinary measures” became familiar at that time.
(WASHINGTON) — Noncitizen workers who witness labor violations can now report them without fear of their immigration status being held against them, the Department of Homeland Security announced Friday.
“Individuals should feel free to come forward to complain about labor conditions, because they have certain rights, and their vulnerabilities will not be exploited,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told ABC News in an interview. “Exploitative employers better beware because we are using our investigative and prosecuting authorities to hold them accountable.”
DHS will use the authority they have from deferred action, which gives non-citizens the ability to work in the United States, according to the agency. Deferred action protects noncitizen workers from threats of immigration-related retaliation from the exploitative employers, according to DHS.
“When they come forward and complain about unsafe or unfair labor conditions, they are cooperating in a labor investigation,” Mayorkas explained. “They should know that they are free from retaliation.”
DHS said that often times noncitizen workers don’t report labor violations or cooperate in employment and labor standards investigations “because they fear removal or other immigration-related retaliation by an abusive employer.”
“We have to address the exploitative employers, the unscrupulous individuals who take advantage of individuals by reason of their vulnerability whether that be because they are unlawfully present in the United States or otherwise,” Mayorkas said.
“Refraining from reporting violations due to a fear of immigration-based retaliation creates unfair labor market conditions and perpetuates the commission of unlawful and inhumane acts by employers, including nonpayment of wages, the imposition of unsafe working conditions, and chilling workers’ ability to organize and collectively bargain to improve such conditions,” DHS said.
“My hope is that we create a fair and equitable work environment for individuals regardless of their stature,” Mayorkas said.
Courtesy of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival
The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival will entertain fans with two weekends of jam-packed performances. Organizers for the event dropped the lineup on Friday, and among the names on the bill are H.E.R., Jill Scott, Ludacris, Jazmine Sullivan and Wu-Tang Clan + Soul Rebels.
The festival will take place April 28-30 at the New Orleans Fair Grounds with performances from artists including, but not limited to, Lizzo, Wu-Tang Clan + The Soul Rebels, Jazmine Sullivan and Big Freedia.
Weekend two, which continues May 4-7, will see the likes of Jon Batiste, H.E.R., Kane Brown, NE-YOand Maze featuring Frankie Beverly take the stage.
Information about tickets, hotel packages and more can be found on nojazzfest.com.
Pink‘s husband, Carey Hart, is battling an infection and is admittedly nervous about the treatment plan.
Sharing photos of himself pumping antibiotics into a catheter that’s attached to his chest, the motocross athlete remarked, “Well this sucks.”
“Found out a couple days before Christmas that I have an infection in some old hardware in my body. After stressing my brains out through the holidays, I got this tunneled catheter installed in my chest,” he explained. “Now for the next 41 days I have to inject antibiotics to knock this sucker out.”
Hart said he draws the line at this type of treatment. “I can handle a bone sticking out of my skin, but this catheter is definitely nerve racking [sic],” he confessed, but joked that he’s flirting with the idea of injecting caffeine through his new tool.
The athlete continued, “It’s not how I wanted to start 2023, but thankful it was found and modern medicine has the tools to treat it. Gonna be a long 6 weeks, but I got this.”
The news comes a little over a month after announcing his neck surgery, in which doctors “went in to do my fusion in my neck,” went smoothly. Hart did not say if the new infection is related to the surgery.
Hart and Pink wed in 2006 and share two children: an 11-year-old daughter, Willow, and a 6-year-old son, Jameson.
Stevie Wonder has paid tribute to guitar legend Jeff Beck, who passed away Tuesday at the age of 78.
“He was a great soul who did great music,” Wonder told the Detroit Free Press. “I’m glad that I was able to meet him and have him in my life, giving some of his gift to my music.”
Wonder and Beck met in 1972 as Wonder was recording Talking Book, the follow-up to his classic Music of the Mind. They wound up working together on some tracks.
“I really didn’t know too much about him,” Wonder said. “But then I heard him play in New York. We were working on ‘Lookin’ for Another Pure Love’ (in the studio) and I said to him, ‘Why don’t you play on this?’ He thought that would be great. He laid one part down, then another part and another part. It was just amazing.”
Wonder added, “It was just a wonderful thing, the whole deal. … It was great. He put his touch on it. It was just really cool.”
This relationship led to both Wonder and Beck recording the classic “Superstition.” In fact, it was Wonder who encouraged Beck to record the tune, which appeared on the 1973 self-titled debut of Beck’s band Beck, Bogert & Appice.
Wonder’s version wasn’t supposed to be Talking Book‘s lead single, but the label insisted, and it wound up being released before Beck’s and went on to be a huge hit. While some have suggested it caused tension in their relationship, Wonder says that’s not true. In fact, the pair came together to perform it at a 2009 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame concert.
Dierks Bentley is sharing some more news about his new album, Gravel & Gold, which is due out February 24.
Dierks just revealed the track list for the record, which features 14 songs. Ashley McBryde will guest on the tune “Cowboy Boots,” while Billy Strings joins Dierks on “High Note.” He also gave fans another taste of the record with the new single “Same Ol’ Me.”
Gravel & Gold, Dierks’ first album since 2018, is his 10th record and his first as a producer.
“It’s been four years since I put out an album, and part of the reason for that is that I wrote and recorded two records that I didn’t feel were good enough and had to start over … twice,” Dierks shares. “I’m going to be able look back on it for the rest of my life and be like, yeah, that was harder than I thought it would be, but zero regrets. I had to get it right. That’s the Gravel & Gold of it all.”
Check out the track list below:
1. “Same Ol’ Me”
2. “Sun Sets In Colorado”
3. “Heartbreak Drinking Tour”
4. “Something Real”
5. “Still”
6. “Beer At My Funeral”
7. “Cowboy Boots” (Featuring Ashley McBryde)
8. “Gold”
9. “Walking Each Other Home”
10. “Roll On”
11. “All The Right Places”
12. “Ain’t All Bad”
13. “Old Pickup”
14. “High Note” (Featuring Billy Strings)
