Denise Truscello/Getty for Nellie’s Southern Kitchen
The Jonas Brothers will now be able to taste their family’s home cooking when they’re in Las Vegas: Their parents, Kevin Jonas Sr. and Denise, have opened Nellie’s Southern Kitchen in Sin City.
This marks the second location of the growing chain. The family patriarch says all the recipes are inspired by his grandmother Nellie, adding in a statement that his grandmother’s “greatest desire was for people to enjoy themselves around her table and on her front porch.”
Kevin Sr. opened the first location in Belmont, North Carolina, the city his grandmother called home. The restaurant features the experience of “live music, generous hospitality and timeless Southern comfort food,” per a release.
Kevin, Joe and Nick Jonas also weighed in on their great-grandmother’s legacy, with the eldest brother declaring, “Nellie’s Southern Kitchen is a perfect reflection of our family’s passion for food and music. And the fact that we introduced Nellie’s the same weekend our Las Vegas residency kicked off couldn’t be better.”
Added Nick, “In many ways, Nellie’s is a celebration of what people love about Las Vegas – amazing food, great vibes and entertainment. We’re excited to officially open the doors to share all of this with our fans while commemorating our Great-Grandmother’s legacy.”
“Our family’s connection to Las Vegas has always been strong as we’ve performed here many times over the years, and it feels very special to now have a permanent piece of our family history in the city for everyone to enjoy,” Joe added.
Nellie’s Southern Kitchen is now open at MGM Grand Garden Arena, just in time for the JoBros’ Las Vegas residency. The trio is performing at the Dolby Live at Park MGM through June 11.
To commemorate its one-year anniversary, Gibson Garage is hosting a weeklong celebration, called Gibson Garage Fest Week, at its location in downtown Nashville. The fest features performances by Darius Rucker, Elvie Shane, Callista Clark and more June 6 through June 12.
Darius will help celebrate the official one-year anniversary with his set on June 9 at 9 a.m. CT, as well as assist with a donation presentation to the National Museum of African American Music on behalf of Gibson’s charitable foundation, Gibson Gives, to help fund music education.
“Flower Shops” singer Ernest and Elvie will also perform on June 9, followed by “It’s ‘Cause I Am” hitmaker Callista on June 10, with Parmalee taking the stage on the final day of the festival June 12.
Artist Q&As, guitar lessons and prizes will also be part of the experience. The event is open to the public.
Today marks the 40th anniversary of the release of the Stray Cats‘ debut U.S. album, Built for Speed.
The 12-track collection, which remains the rockabilly trio’s most successful album to date, actually is a compilation featuring highlights from the Long Island, New York, group’s first two U.K. studio efforts — 1981’s Stray Cats and Gonna Ball — along with one previously unreleased tune, “Built for Speed.”
The Built for Speed album peaked at #2 on the Billboard 200 and was kept out of the top spot by Michael Jackon‘s Thriller. The record yielded two of the Stray Cats’ signature tunes, “Stray Cat Strut” and “Rock This Town,” which reached #3 and #9, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100.
The Stray Cats — singer/guitarist Brian Setzer, double bassist Lee Rocker and drummer Slim Jim Phantom — formed in Massapequa, New York, in 1979. After the band relocated to the U.K. in 1980, their authentic retro-rockabilly sound and style quickly gained them a following there.
Rocker tells ABC Audio that The Rolling Stones were “really integral” to getting his band media attention “before we even had a record deal.”
As Lee recalls, “They were showing up at these little gigs we were doing in London, and, as you can imagine …right behind them was a cadre of photographers and press people. So they helped shine a light.”
The Stones even invited The Stray Cats to open for them during their 1981 tour. The trio soon headed back to the U.S. and, after Built for Speed‘s release, the band’s popularity soared, thanks in part to MTV putting videos for “Stray Cat Strut” and “Rock This Town” into heavy rotation.
Built for Speed went on to sell over 1 million copies in the U.S. Here’s the album’s full track list:
“Rock This Town”
“Built for Speed”
“Rev It Up & Go”
“Stray Cat Strut”
“Little Miss Prissy”
“Rumble in Brighton”
“Runaway Boys”
“Lonely Summer Nights”
“Double Talkin’ Baby”
“You Don’t Believe Me”
“Jeanie, Jeanie, Jeanie”
“Baby Blue Eyes”
Chris Lane and Lauren Bushnell are about to become a family of four!
On Monday, the Bachelor alumna, 32, and her country star husband, 37, revealed they are expecting their second child together. Sharing an adorable snapshot of the growing family to social media, Lauren, who already shares 11-month-old son Dutton Walker with Chris, announced, “Party of 4, coming October 2022. I cannot wait to see you as a big brother, Dutty!”
In an interview with People, the couple dished on how they found out their family would be expanding, with Lauren admitting, “To be quite honest, I’ve never been more shocked in my entire life, because this was very much an unexpected surprise.”
Lauren shared that she took a pregnancy test and was so surprised that she interrupted Chris as he was putting their son down for a nap.
“We had planned on having at least two kids, so we’re very thankful that it was able to happen for us, even if it wasn’t necessarily on our exact timing,” she added. “We’re both just incredibly excited.”
The pair, who wed in October 2019, also shared their thoughts on whether baby number two will be a boy or girl. While the “Big, Big Plans” singer said “all the guys in our family, we make a lot of boys,” Lauren thinks “because of that, the Lane family could use some female energy in there.”
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Marshals Service is looking for three men after they climbed through holes they made in the ceiling of their cells and escaped out the back door of the Barry County Jail in southwest Missouri early Friday morning.
The Barry County Sheriff’s Office said in Facebook posts that the men, two of whom were booked on drug charges and the other on a stealing charge, broke out of jail overnight. They should be considered armed and dangerous, the sheriff’s office said.
Sheriff Danny Boyd told ABC News that his staff learned when they arrived for work Friday that the inmates had climbed through holes they’d made in the ceiling and left the building through a maintenance door.
The jail building is old with ceilings made of plaster, which Boyd said allowed the escape to take place. He said the inmates — Lance Stephens, Matthew Crawford and Christopher Blevins — were acquaintances. Two shared a cell while the other was in a cell several feet away.
The sheriff said there is no indication that an employee aided the escape but noted that he is interviewing everyone who was working that morning to be sure. His staff has pulled all surveillance video from the time of the escape.
Boyd said tips he’s received suggest at least two of the inmates have left the state.
The U.S. Marshals did not respond to requests for comment about their search.
The sheriff’s office asked the public for tips and information on the escapees Monday, saying it would pass the information along to the Marshals.
The Barry County Jail incident is the latest of a string of jail escapes that have occurred in the past several months.
Last week, a Houston area family of five was allegedly murdered by escaped prisoner Gonzalo Lopez, who broke into their home.
According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Lopez died in a shootout with police hours after authorities found the family’s bodies.
On April 29, Vicky White, the Lauderdale County assistant director of corrections in Florence, Alabama, helped murder suspect Casey White escape from his cell, and the two fled the jail.
After an 11-day search, Vicky White and Casey White, who aren’t related, were caught by law enforcement in Evansville, Indiana, after a car crash.
Vicky White died on May 9 from injuries stemming from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said.
(UVALDE, Texas) — An elementary school teacher wounded in the second-most deadly school shooting in U.S. history in Uvalde, Texas, described the chilling moments he first encountered a gunman who would take the lives of 19 students and two teachers.
Arnulfo Reyes was watching a movie with 11 of his students when he heard the deadly shots ringing out, he told ABC News anchor Amy Robach for an interview airing Tuesday on “Good Morning America,” as he recovered from two gunshot wounds at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.
The 17-year veteran teacher described multiple harrowing encounters with the gunman, offering the most vivid account yet of what transpired inside his classroom on May 24, when 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos attacked Robb Elementary School.
Reyes and his students were in Room 111, one of the adjoining classrooms where Ramos allegedly carried out the attack, he said. When the children began asking, “What is going on?” Reyes said he attempted to remain calm and gave instructions to his students to keep them safe.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but let’s go ahead and get under the table,” Reyes said he told the students. “Get under the table and act like you’re asleep.”
After Reyes told the children to get under the table, he turned around and saw the gunman standing there.
Ramos then almost immediately opened fire on the classroom, Reyes said.
Reyes said he was shot twice. One bullet went through an arm and lung, and another bullet hit him in the back.
As Reyes lay incapacitated, Ramos turned his AR-15 style rifle, bought days after his 18th birthday, onto the young children– mostly third and fourth graders.
Reyes then heard police officers outside the classroom as a child in the next room called for help, he said, adding that he believes the officers had walked away at that point, having not heard the pleas.
“One of the students from the next-door classroom was saying, ‘Officer, we’re in here. We’re in here,'” Reyes said. “But they had already left.”
The gunman then got up from behind Reyes’ desk in Room 111 and began shooting again in Room 112, Reyes said.
The next time Reyes heard officers, they were telling Ramos to come out — that they just wanted to talk and were not going to hurt him, Reyes said.
Then, silence. Before eventually officers breached the door and fatally shot him, Reyes said.
One student survivor, 10-year-old Samuel Salinas, told ABC News after the shooting that the gunman came into his classroom and said, “You’re all gonna die,” and just started shooting.
“He shot the teacher and then he shot the kids,” Salinas said, adding that he played dead to avoid being shot.
The funerals for the victims are continuing until June 25.
(WASHINGTON) — As a bipartisan group of senators — a smaller subset of the original group of 10 — prepared to meet in person on Monday night to go over options for possible gun legislation, members from both sides of the aisle were expressing optimism that some kind of deal may come together by week’s end, with Democrats cautioning against allowing talks to drag out.
“My goal is to reach an agreement by the end of the week. We have more Republicans and Democrats sitting together than ever before — since Sandy Hook. What we’re talking about is substantial. It will save lives,” lead Democratic negotiator Chris Murphy, of Connecticut, told ABC News’ Rachel Scott. “While I’m certainly prepared to fail, I’m more hopeful for success than ever before.”
“We’re trying to get a bipartisan outcome here that makes a difference, and hopefully sometime this week we’ll come together,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters, echoing Murphy, though he mentioned no specifics.
And while there was a palpable sense of cautious optimism in the air — as the latest round of negotiations continued in the wake of the latest mass shootings — there was also a sense of fragility in what has been happening behind the scenes. GOP aides, in particular, remained incredibly sensitive about the talks, taking time to correct reporters on various ideas that were potentially on the table.
One suggestion, for example, was an expansion of current federal background checks. But an aide to lead Republican negotiator John Cornyn, of Texas, cautioned the press that any changes to the law would not expand but rather strengthen the system for those already subject to a background check.
Cornyn, in a floor speech on Monday, indicated that the focus was on mental health and school safety, two subjects that appear to be safer political territory for Republicans, many of whom argue restrictions on firearms, including on once-banned assault weapons, violate the Second Amendment.
“Over the last week and a half, I’ve been talking particularly with Sen. Murphy, Sen. [Thom] Tillis, Sen. [Kyrsten] Sinema, but literally with everybody I can reach on the phone or get through text message to see if there’s some package of mental health and safety legislation that addresses some of the factors that might have prevented the recent shootings in Uvalde and elsewhere,” Cornyn said.
He added, “I want to be clear, though: We are not talking about restricting the rights of current law-abiding gun owners or citizens.”
“What I’m interested in is keeping guns out of the hands of those who, by current law, are not supposed to have them,” Cornyn said. “People with mental health problems, people who have criminal records. Again, this is about the art of the possible. In order to deliver results, we have to build consensus, and the best way to do that is through targeted reforms.”
While no vote is expected this week, lawmakers, specifically Democrats, are eyeing a fast-approaching deadline of the end of the week for a compromise to be in hand. The majority party is conscious of the painful lessons learned by the failure of the sweeping social, economic and climate legislation — known as Build Back Better — that they attempted to fast-track after retaking Congress in 2021, only to see members of their own party tank the bill’s chances following months of grinding talks.
“Look at reconciliation. The failure to have a real, finite deadline led us on and on and on, month after month, and we ended up empty-handed. So I think Chuck [Schumer] was right in saying to the negotiators, ‘I’m glad you’re meeting but do something and do it in a timely fashion.’ Otherwise it would drag out and otherwise American people would lose their faith in our ability to respond in any way,” the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Illinois’ Dick Durbin, told reporters Monday, referring to the majority leader’s position on the latest round of talks.
Durbin said he wouldn’t call Friday a “final deadline,” but he signaled there would be little patience with anything too far beyond that.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., also a negotiator, told Rachel Scott that it was time for Republicans to “put up or shut up.”
But Cornyn warned on Monday against pressuring for a deal.
“I will not settle on inadequate or downright harmful legislation for the sake of doing something. That’s not productive for anyone,” he said. “That’s one of the things I hear the most: People say, ‘Do something.’ Well, we can agree something needs to be done. But what that something is is much harder to achieve — and so targeted reforms, I think, are the way to get to where we need to go.”
One unusual, A-list lobbyist in Congress this week: Actor Matthew McConaughey — a native of Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman massacred 21 at an elementary school last month — who was on the Hill on Monday evening to talk gun safety. An aide familiar with the matter told ABC News that the actor planned to discuss the issue with the bipartisan Senate group as well as some House lawmakers.
Negotiators have met at least four times during the weeklong recess that just ended, but aides told ABC News that a deal was far from ready. Paper has been exchanged behind the scenes with negotiators working to build consensus in the hope of unveiling a bill that can garner at least a filibuster-proof 60 to 70 votes in the Senate.
Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a negotiator working on background checks for commercial sales, told ABC News on Monday that he would support increasing the age from 18 to 21 for adults to be able to purchase a semi-automatic weapon like the AR-15s that are repeatedly used in mass shootings.
“We know two things that would have stopped this: One, if the age was at 21; and also if there were ‘red flag’ laws,” said Manchin, referencing legislation that allows law enforcement, with a court order, to temporarily seize guns from those deemed a danger to themselves or others.
“There are no red lines. We’ve got to do something. We have to bring gun sense into America,” Manchin said.
But an age restriction is not something Republicans are interested in doing.
“Not likely. Not likely. We ask 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds to go to war, to defend our freedom, and the homeland as well … So, I think it would seem a little bit hypocritical to ask an 18- or 19-year-old who’s a responsible gun owner to have one,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., told Rachel Scott.
Democrats seem resigned to accepting a compromise that will not contain anything near what they want — despite President Joe Biden’s push otherwise — but doing something is the goal in the face of so much carnage, they have said.
“I can guarantee you despite their best efforts, they will for sure fall short of what I want to see done,” Durbin told reporters of the possible deal. “But as [is] the nature of a 50-50 Senate and political compromise, we ought to see anything that is a sensible way to reduce gun violence.”
(WASHINGTON) — The military has identified a U.S. service member as a “possible suspect” in an April 7 attack in Syria that injured other American troops, an official said Monday.
The Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) and Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) are conducing a joint investigation into the incident. (The probe was first reported by CNN.)
Four U.S. service members were evaluated for minor wounds and possible traumatic brain injuries after what the military originally reported to be two indirect-fire rounds hitting the Green Village base in Syria.
An Army CID official confirmed in a statement that the service member was being investigated, adding that the person was currently back in the U.S.
The official emphasized that “at this point these are just allegations” and that any suspects were presumed innocent.
“The investigation is ongoing, which may or may not, develop sufficient evidence to identify a perpetrator(s) and have enough evidence to ensure a conviction in a court of law,” the official said.
Rise Against has released a new song called “Last Man Standing.”
The track follows the Chicago punk outfit’s 2021 album Nowhere Generation and looks to be a preview of a follow-up.
In the link to download or stream “Last Man Standing,” Rise Against teases something called Nowhere Generation II. While no other info was given, it seems likely that Nowhere Generation II will be a companion album or an EP to the first Nowhere Generation.
Meanwhile, Rise Against is gearing up to launch a U.S. tour in July. The bill also includes The Used and Senses Fail.
