If there’s one thing Jon Pardi loves as much as country music, it’s his Wrangler jeans.
Jon’s wife, Summer, was answering fans’ questions via Instagram Stories when one of them asked about Jon’s style habits, particularly involving his jeans.
“Does Jon really wear Wranglers most of the time or is it like some singers just for the stage?” the fan inquired. “On and off stage. Wrangler all day,” Summer confirmed. “However – he does have tailored ‘show jeans’ and ‘at home/work jeans’ that are baggier.”
The “Dirt on My Boots” singer can often be seen wearing his Wranglers onstage and when he shares social media videos of him working at home on his farm in Nashville. Summer reveals that the couple now has 18 animals on the property: four dogs, four cats, five cows and five goats.
Migos has announced an upcoming performance – without Offset.
The trio will be performing as a duo, with just Quavo and Takeoff taking the stage at next month’s National Battle of the Bands, an annual competition showcasing HBCU marching bands.
“The addition of world-famous hip hop act, Migos, to the 2022 National Battle of the Bands lineup is a gigantic milestone, merging popular hip hop with the spirit and soul of music produced by our nation’s finest HBCU marching bands,” Derek Webber, Executive Producer, National Battle of the Bands, says in a statement. “We’re thrilled that spectators will get to see the iconic band showcase and a premier hip hop performance with the same ticket.”
This marks the first time the Battle of the Bands has ever featured a major performing artist. The event takes place August 27 at NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas.
There have previously been rumors that Migos was breaking up. In May, fans noticed Offset unfollowed Quavo and Takeoff on Instagram, and in June, the group pulled out of a scheduled Governors Ball performance in New York City.
Paramount+ announced the series will live on, and the cast’s junior year will get underway later this year, following season 2’s cliffhanger between Miranda Cosgrove‘s Carly and Nathan Kress‘ Freddie that fans dubbed #Creddie.
Tanya Giles, chief programming officer of streaming for Paramount+, noted in the announcement, “We’re thrilled to have Miranda, Jerry [Trainor], Nathan, Laci [Mosley] and Jaidyn [Triplett] return for a third season and we know Paramount+’s growing YA audience is as well. And I, for one, must find out what happens with #Creddie!”
The original series ran from 2007 to 2012 and starred Cosgrove, Kress and Jennette McCurdy, the latter playing Carly’s bestie Sam. The actress didn’t return for the reboot and recently said on her podcast that she’s stepping away from acting to focus on writing and directing.
Indie-pop act Bleachers welcomed a surprise guest to the stage during their show at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall on Tuesday: the one and only Bruce Springsteen.
The Boss joined frontman Jack Antonoff and company to perform their collaborative tune “Chinatown,” which appears on the latest Bleachers album, 2021’s Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night. Fan-shot footage of the rendition is streaming now on YouTube.
The onstage team up with Bleachers follows a recent run of live guest appearances by Springsteen, who also showed up at concerts by Coldplay and Paul McCartney over the past month or so. Bruce will head out on his own tour with his E Street Band in 2023.
“Chinatown” was first released as a single in November 2020, and Springsteen also appeared in the official music video for the song.
Late Clash frontman Joe Strummer would have celebrated his 70th birthday this August 21, and to mark the milestone, a box set collecting all of his work with post-Clash band The Mescaleroswill be released on September 16.
Joe Strummer 002: The Mescaleros Years features remastered versions of the group’s three studio albums — 1999’s Rock Art and the X-Ray Style, 2001’s Global a Go-Go and 2003’s posthumous Streetcore — as well as a disc titled Vibes Compass that boasts 15 rare and previously unreleased tracks.
Vibes Compass includes some of Strummer’s first demos for The Mescaleros, outtakes of Joe’s last recordings with the group and a song called “Ocean of Dreams” that features Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones.
The collection, which can be preordered now, will be available as a four-CD set, a seven-LP vinyl package and digitally.
The physical versions of the box set come with a book featuring new interviews with Strummer’s friends, collaborators and Mescaleros bandmates plus unseen handwritten notes, lyrics and drawings from Joe’s archives.
A demo version of the 1999 Mescaleros song “The Road to Rock ‘n’ Roll,” which appears on Vibes Compass, has been released as an advanced digital track. Its video, which features animated versions of Joe’s drawings, has premiered on YouTube.
Joe Strummer 002: The Mescaleros Years was curated by Strummer’s widow, Lucinda Tait.
“There’s so much great music that Joe left us in his archive,” says Tait. “[The] songs he made with [The Mescaleros] just seemed to resonate so strongly and reinvigorated his connection with his audience at a level he hadn’t experienced since his days with The Clash.”
Strummer died of a heart attack in December 2002. He was 50.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw stars as Sophie, a woman who wakes up after a terrible accident with memory loss in Apple TV+’s new thriller series Surface.
However, as the show progresses, Sophie learns she has a whole lot of secrets and the “perfect life” she thought she had was anything but.
“Well, for me, I mean, there’s nothing juicy about having a secret, you know, as in life,” the Loki veteran explained to ABC Audio.
“But also as an actor, you know, it gives you attention. It gives you something to hide and conceal and wrestle with. It gives every scene a charge!”
As the series progresses, however, Sophie learns she wasn’t who those closest to her are telling her she was, either.
“I think initially, Sophie doesn’t know … because she’s lost her memory because of this accident. She’s looking to James, her husband, to create her reality for her. And she initially, obviously, of course, trusts him because why wouldn’t you? You know, he’s her husband. He cares about her. But obviously, as we get into it, you know, we see that there’s so much more to it than that.”
Oliver Jackson-Cohen plays her husband, James, and to say he’s got his own secrets is an understatement.
“I think that that’s always, for me, the interesting stuff to play and the fascinating stuff to watch because it keeps you guessing,” Mbatha-Raw says.
Surface, which also stars Stephan James and Marianne Jean-Baptiste, debuts Friday on Apple TV+.
(NEW YORK) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” into neighboring Ukraine began on Feb. 24, with Russian forces invading from Belarus, to the north, and Russia, to the east. Ukrainian troops have offered “stiff resistance,” according to U.S. officials.
The Russian military has since launched a full-scale ground offensive in eastern Ukraine’s disputed Donbas region, capturing the strategic port city of Mariupol and securing a coastal corridor to the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jul 27, 2:51 PM EDT
Blinken and Lavrov to discuss US proposal to free Griner and Whelan
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he plans to speak with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the coming days, marking the first time the two leaders will speak since the war began.
Blinken said a critical topic of discussion would be securing the freedom of detained Americans Paul Whelan and Brittney Griner, revealing that the U.S. has already put forward a plan to accomplish that.
“We put a substantial proposal on the table weeks ago to facilitate their release. Our governments have communicated repeatedly and directly on that proposal, and I’ll use the conversation to follow up personally and I hope move us toward a resolution,” Blinken said.
“I can’t and won’t get into any of the details of what we’ve proposed to the Russians over the course of some many weeks now,” Blinken said.
Blinken said President Joe Biden played an active role in crafting the proposal for Griner and Whelan.
Blinken also stressed, “My call with Foreign Minister Lavrov will not be a negotiation about Ukraine,” adding, “Any negotiation regarding Ukraine is for its government and people to determine.”
-ABC News’ Shannon Crawford
Jul 27, 9:32 AM EDT
Ukraine strikes key bridge in Russia-held Kherson
Ukrainian forces struck a strategic bridge in the Russian-occupied city of Kherson early Wednesday, according to local officials.
High-precision missile strikes by the Ukrainian military damaged the Antonivskiy bridge, forcing the occupied authorities to close the structure to civilian traffic. The mile-long bridge across the Dnieper River is an essential artery used by Moscow to supply its troops occupying southern Ukraine.
“Strikes were delivered on the bridge, on its road. The bridge is currently closed to the civilian population,” Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the Moscow-appointed administration for the Kherson region, told local media on Wednesday.
The bridge’s pillars and spans were still intact as of Wednesday morning, according to Stremousov.
“It is simply that the number of holes on the road has increased. The strike on the bridge has affected only the civilian population,” he added.
According to Stremousov, Ukrainian forces hit the bridge with High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) supplied by the United States. He said ferry crossings across the Dnieper River will be organized during the bridge’s restoration, and that traffic will resume in the near future.
“We have prepared a pontoon bridge. We have a ferry link,” he told local media.
Earlier on Wednesday, Ukrainian military officials said the number of Russian soldiers killed in the war has surpassed 40,000, just more than five months after Russia launched its invasion of neighboring Ukraine in late February.
(WASHINGTON) — Republican leaders who worry that Donald Trump could hurt their midterm chances by announcing a presidential run too soon are hoping he’ll be dissuaded from doing so by the prospect of losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal payments, according to an RNC official.
Since October 2021, the Republican National Committee has paid nearly $2 million to law firms representing Trump as part of his defense against personal litigation and government investigations.
But an RNC official told ABC News that as soon as Trump would announce he is running for president, the payments would stop because the party has a “neutrality policy” that prohibits it from taking sides in the presidential primary.
In January, RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel said, “The party has to stay neutral.”
“I’m not telling anybody to run or not to run in 2024,” she added. However she has since reaffirmed that Trump “still leads the party.”
RNC officials would not comment on the record for this story. Representatives for Trump also declined to comment.
This isn’t the first time that legal bills have been seen as possible leverage over Trump.
According to the book “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show,” by ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl, in the final days of Trump’s presidency, Trump told McDaniel he was leaving the GOP and creating his own political party — only to back down after McDaniel made it clear to Trump that the party would stop paying his legal bills for his post-election challenges and take other steps that would cost him financially.
Both Trump and McDaniel have denied the story.
According to the RNC’s most recent financial disclosure to the Federal Elections Commission, from October 2021 through June of this year, the RNC paid at least $1.73 million to three law firms representing Trump, including firms that are defending him in investigations into his personal family business in New York. Last month alone, the RNC paid $50,000 to a law firm representing Trump in June.
The latest tally tops the $1.6 million maximum figure that the Republican Party’s executive committee reportedly voted to cover for Trump’s personal legal bills during an RNC meeting last year, a figure that The Washington Post, which first reported on the agreement in December, wrote could increase further with the party executive committee’s approval.
The RNC reported payments to law firms representing Trump as recently as mid-June, indicating the party leadership’s unfettered support for the former president and heightening critics’ concerns about the party’s neutrality ahead of the 2024 presidential primary season.
“I don’t think there’s been any effort” by the RNC to remain neutral, longtime Republican donor and Canary LLC CEO Dan Eberhart told ABC News. “This is a symbiotic relationship.”
“The RNC needs Trump or Trump surrogates or Trump’s likeness to raise money, and Trump wants them to continue paying his bills and be as pro-Trump as possible,” Eberhart said. “So neither is in a hurry to cut the umbilical cord.”
The RNC has continued to fundraise off of Trump’s name in its emails to supporters, touting a so-called “Trump Life Membership,” boosting his social media platform, and, most recently, promoting Trump’s first visit to Washington, D.C., since January of last year. Other potential 2024 presidential candidates and key party figures like former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have not received the same spotlight as Trump, experts say.
Eberhart said the current relationship between Trump and the RNC is putting other potential 2024 presidential candidates at an “absolute disadvantage.”
“Other Republican candidates seeking the Republican nomination for president have good reason to worry that the party apparatus is rigged against them in its unwavering support for Trump,” echoed Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist at the progressive government-watchdog group Public Citizen.
“By paying Trump’s extensive legal bills, the RNC is indirectly helping finance the Trump campaign,” Holman said. “And given the history of the RNC zealously defending Trump, other Republican candidates should expect that they are not just running against Trump, they are also running against the Republican Party.”
Eberhart said “it’s an open secret” within the Republican Party that “nobody wants Trump to announce his candidacy until after the midterms.”
“Everyone thinks it’ll scramble the midterms and we could potentially destroy the advantage we have” if Trump would announce too early, Eberhart said. “It makes Trump more relevant and gives the Dems potentially a way to reset the race.”
RNC spokesperson Emma Vaughn, who declined to comment on the RNC’s recent legal payments to firms representing Trump, had previously told ABC News that “as a leader of our party, defending President Trump and his record of achievement is critical to the GOP.”
“It is entirely appropriate for the RNC to continue assisting in fighting back against the Democrats’ never-ending witch hunt and attacks on him,” Vaughn told ABC News in January, in response to questions about the party’s earlier legal payments for Trump.
The Republican Party committee has described the legal payments for Trump as support for the former president against political attacks against him. But at least two of the three firms that have been paid on behalf of Trump are involved in legal work on behalf of the former president regarding investigations against his personal businesses by the New York attorney general and Manhattan district attorney.
Although both officials are Democrats, they have both said their probes are not politically motivated.
In all, the $1.7 million paid in total to the three firms includes more than $862,000 paid to NechelesLaw LLP, $516,000 paid to Fischetti & Malgieri LLP, and $350,000 paid to van der Veen, Hartshorn and Levin, the RNC’s disclosure filings show. The most recent payments are $50,440 to Fischetti & Malgieri LLP in mid-June and $186,182 to NechelesLaw LLP in May.
Neither NechelesLaw LLP, Fischetti & Malgieri LLP, or van der Veen, Hartshorn and Levin responded to ABC News’ requests for comment.
The RNC is reportedly not covering Trump’s legal bills related to the House special committee’s investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. But as previously reported by ABC News, Trump’s leadership PAC, Save America, and his presidential committee-turned-PAC Make America Great Again PAC have been footing legal bills for witnesses involved in legal battles related to the events of Jan. 6, which has raised concerns about witness coercion from Jan. 6 committee members and legal experts.
Holman, the watchdog group lobbyist, said regulations that would govern legal expense funds for executive branch officials and candidates have been proposed to the Office of Government Ethics. Among the proposals are regulations that would enforce contribution limits, prohibit certain funding sources, and require the full disclosure of where money comes from and how it is spent.
“Until OGE finalizes these rules, however, Trump and the RNC legally can do almost whatever they want to pay for Trump’s legal woes and largely evade meaningful disclosure of the sources and expenditures of these funds,” Holman said.
Lainey Wilson is bowing out of two scheduled shows in Iowa this weekend due to a family emergency.
The singer shared the news on social media, offering her apologies to fans who were excited to see her play. “I’m so sorry to cancel last minute,” she explained, “but please trust I would not be backing out if it weren’t critical. Please keep my family in your prayers.”
The affected shows are in Maquoketa and Arnold Park. There’s no word yet on whether they’ll be rescheduled, but there will be plenty of chances for fans to see Lainey on the road this summer. She’s on tour with Jon Pardi through the fall, and she’s scheduled to join Luke Combs’ Middle of Somewhere Tour starting in October.
Meanwhile, Lainey’s newest single, “Heart Like a Truck,” is climbing up the country radio charts.
Bruno Mars wants you to soak up the sun, splash in the pool and sip on a piña colada during his Labor Day weekend pool party in the Bahamas.
Us Weekly reports that the “Grenade” hitmaker has teamed with SLS Baha Mar for a four-day Pina Colada Pool Party. The celebration runs from September 1 through September 4.
Bruno will likely have his rum brand SelvaRey flowing since it does go by the tagline, “Vacation in a glass.”
Aside from some poolside fun and plenty of rum, an array of DJs will keep the music going. So far, DJ Stevie J, DJ Ignite and Osocity have signed on to keep the music thumping.
Bruno will close out the four-day bash by assuming hosting duties that Sunday; He will also kick off a seven-hour music performance with his Silk Sonic co-star Anderson .Paak.
Tickets are now on sale via the venue’s website, as are special VIP experience packages.
