With the passing of The Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts on Tuesday, fans across the globe are looking back at the legacy of the legendary rock band. And you can count “Pretty Little Heart” hitmaker Parker McCollum among them.
The Texas native credits the Stones as a pivotal influence, particularly on his latest hit, “To Be Loved by You.”
“Exile on Main Street was my first introduction to the Stones,” Parker explains. “My brother got that record for me when I was, I think, nineteen. The summer I’d just graduated high school, I moved to Austin ten days after I graduated high school.”
“[He] and I were living together and we were in a big-time Rolling Stones phase,” Parker continues. “That whole record’s great.”
A track from the band’s 1994 record even found a regular pace in Parker’s set when he was starting out.
“The one song — it’s kind of off of a forgotten album, I think, or an overlooked album that they have. It’s called Voodoo Lounge. And there’s a song called ‘Blinded by Rainbows’ on there I used to cover all the time in my acoustic set way back in the day.”
Parker even believes you can hear the influence of Mick Jagger and company on his debut album, Gold Chain Cowboy.
“Exile on Main Street was a record we — I think we broke it we played it so much,” he recalls. “And I feel like those songs on that record had a lot to do with kind of how my music’s shaping up today.”
Right now, Parker’s on Dierks Bentley‘s Beers on Me Tour, with Riley Green.
Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for Marc Jacobs, George Pimentel/WireImage
A family in Warwickshire, England got an unexpected visit from Tom Cruise when his helicopter landed in their garden — or as we’d say in the U.S., their yard.
The 59-year-old actor, who’s in the U.K. filming Mission Impossible 7, needed to use the family’s yard to land while the nearby Coventry Airport was temporarily shut down, according to BBC News.
The owner of the property, Alison Webb, says her family had only been told an unnamed VIP needed somewhere to land as the nearby airport was shut.
“It turned out to be an incredible day,” she adds. “It was surreal, I still now can’t believe it happened.”
Cruise posed for pictures and even gave a free helicopter ride to Webb’s children and her partner’s kids.
“He went straight over to the children for a chat, then came over and elbow bumped us and said thank you very much,” she revealed. “Then he said if the kids would like they could go up in the helicopter.”
Mission: Impossible 7 is expected to open in theaters on May 27, 2022.
Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for Marc Jacobs, George Pimentel/WireImage
A family in Warwickshire, England got an unexpected visit from Tom Cruise when his helicopter landed in their garden.
The 59-year-old actor, who is in the U.K. filming Mission Impossible 7, was forced to make the emergency landing while the nearby Coventry Airport was temporarily shut down, according to BBC News.
The owner of the property, Alison Webb, says her family had only been told an unnamed VIP needed somewhere to land as the nearby airport was shut.
“It turned out to be an incredible day,” she adds. “It was surreal, I still now can’t believe it happened.”
Cruise posed for pictures and even gave a free helicopter ride to Webb’s children and her partner’s kids.
“He went straight over to the children for a chat, then came over and elbow bumped us and said thank you very much,” she revealed. “Then he said if the kids would like they could go up in the helicopter.”
Mission: Impossible 7 is expected to open in theaters on May 27, 2022.
Following the death of Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts on Tuesday, the group’s three surviving current members — singer Mick Jagger and guitarists Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood — all posted online tributes to their longtime band mate.
Jagger took to his socialmediapages to post a fairly recent photo of Watts laughing while sitting behind his drums.
Richards posted a heart-wrenching pic on his socialmediasites of Charlie’s empty drum kit with a sign hanging off a nearby mic stand that reads, “Closed — Please Call Again.”
As for Wood, he posted a black-and-white on his official website of Watts and him smiling while sitting in chairs positioned back to back.
Meanwhile, The Rolling Stones’ official website appears to have taken all of its content offline and simply features a pic of Charlie looking into the camera with a slight smile and folded arms.
According to a statement from his spokesperson, Watts died peacefully Tuesday morning “in a London hospital…surrounded by his family.”
Watts’ passing follows an announcement from The Stones earlier this month that he’d undergone an unspecified medical procedure and likely wouldn’t be able to join the band on their 2021 No Filter Tour of North America.
The announcement also revealed that Watts had asked Steve Jordan to “stand in” for him on the trek. Jordan has played drums on all of Richards’ solo albums.
The Stones’ tour is scheduled to kick off on September 26 in St. Louis.
(WASHINGTON) — The House on Tuesday passed the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act legislation that aims to strengthen a key component of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 after it was weakened by two Supreme Court decisions.
The legislation, named after the late civil rights icon, passed the House with a final vote of 219- 212. There was no Republican support.
HR 4 would restore the pre-clearance formula from the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013.
Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, a key provision that mandated federal review of local election laws and states with a history of voter discrimination, was removed after Shelby County, Alabama, filed a lawsuit in Washington, D.C. The Supreme Court ruled that requiring states to seek approval from the Department of Justice prior to changing voting procedures was unconstitutional.
With at least 17 Republican-led state legislatures passing voting restrictions recently, Democrats and voting-rights advocates said the bill will ensure ballot access for minority voters.
“It is unpatriotic to undermine the ability of people, who have the right to vote and to have access to the polls. As John knew, this precious pillar of our democracy is under attack from what is the worst voter suppression campaign in America since Jim Crow. Unleashed by the dangerous Shelby v. Holder as mentioned in 2013, in 2021 state lawmakers have introduced over 400 suppression bills,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said during a debate on the House floor.
House Republicans blasted the bill as a “federal takeover of elections” and a “power grab” by Democrats who would undermine the state election process.
Alabama Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell, who authored the bill, told reporters that federal intervention is necessary to combat what Democrats describe as voter suppression across the country.
“Old battles have become new again,” Sewell said in a joint presser with Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, and Democratic state lawmakers from Texas who have remained in the nation’s capital after “fleeing” their home state to break quorum over six weeks ago to prevent a new state election law.
“When we see states running amuck, we need federal oversight. If it wasn’t for federal oversight, we not only would not have gotten the Voting Rights Act, we wouldn’t have gotten the Civil Rights Act. After the Shelby v. Holder decision, we saw states like North Carolina and Texas reinstate restrictive voting laws and those voting laws are suppressive, oppressive, and depressive. They stop the people who need to vote from voting,” Sewell said Tuesday.
The House passed an older version of the voting rights act last year following the death of Lewis, but it ultimately stalled. The bill now faces a similar uphill battle this year as it moves to the Senate, where there is strong Republican opposition in the evenly divided body.
(Reno, Nev.) — Smoke from the raging wildfires in the West Coast was so severe that it created an air quality alert as far as Reno, Nevada, on Tuesday.
Several Nevada counties reported their worst recorded air quality index numbers in the two decades they’ve been monitoring air quality.
Washoe County, which includes Reno, recorded a high of 291 AQI Tuesday, according to the Washoe County Air Quality Management Division.
To get an idea of what Reno/Sparks looks like right now compared to one of the cleaner days in the last month.
Left is the current view from @NWSReno‘s webcam (AirNow NowCast AQI of 289) w/ #CaldorFire smoke
The agency noted that the levels of fine particle matter, PM, was dangerously high.
“With a new record set, the top 10 worst PM2.5 daily average AQIs have now all occurred within the last 11 months. We also set a record for the worst PM10 day as well with an AQI of 183,” the agency tweeted.
The poor air quality resulted in the closure of schools in several Nevada counties and Lake Tahoe Community College Tuesday. Clark County, Nevada, issued an air health advisory and urged people to stay indoors and close their windows.
The smoke has been an ongoing problem for the West Coast as several wildfires are burning in California. The Caldor Fire, which Washoe County AQMD said is the cause of its poor air quality, has burned 117,704 acres and was only 9% contained as of Tuesday, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
(HONOLULU) — Many local Hawaiians have been asking tourists to stop visiting the islands during the pandemic, and the governor is now echoing their calls.
“It is a risky time to be traveling right now,” Gov. David Ige said at a press conference on Monday. “We know that the visitors who choose to come to the islands will not have the typical kind of holiday that they expect to get when they visit Hawaii.”
The delta variant is ravaging Hawaii, with the state having more confirmed cases than at any point in the pandemic. Averaging more than 700 cases a day, according to Johns Hopkins University & Medicine, roughly 72% of the state’s hospital beds are full.
Despite the growing number of cases across the country, particularly in areas with low vaccination rates, tourism is quickly matching pre-pandemic levels. In June 2019, there were 277,930 daily visitors on average, according to the Hawaii Tourism Authority. In June 2021, that figure was back up to 255,936.
Only about 62% of Hawaiians are fully vaccinated, according to Johns Hopkins, creating a growing risk for those who remain unvaccinated as tourism ramps back up.
Hawaii Tourism Authority President and CEO John De Fries told ABC News that the visitor experience to the state will not be the same. Restrictions are in place that reduce restaurant capacity, and many events or venues are simply closed.
However, De Fries added, although tourism in Hawaii tends to slow toward the end of the summer anyway, residents have said for quite some time that wide-reaching tourism has been a danger to locals.
“During our lockdown in 2020, we were able to see what Hawaii was like without tourists and we realized the adverse impacts that tourism is having on our islands,” said Healani Sonoda-Pale, a spokesperson for the local advocacy group Ka Lahui Hawaii. “When tourism came back, it came back with a vengeance.”
During the lockdown, Sonoda-Pale and other Hawaiians enjoyed empty beaches, emptier streets, short lines at grocery stores and the comfort of knowing that delicate ecosystems were safer. Tourism was taking a toll on the natural environment and the well-being of locals and native Hawaiians, according to the HTA.
But when the islands began to loosen restrictions during the summer, coronavirus cases began to climb, and endangered animals quickly became playthings for tourists.
The island has had to increase the patrolling of Turtle Beach, where sea turtles were being harassed by hundreds of tourists, and one visitor was fined $500 for touching endangered monk seals, as more videos of tourists posing with the Hawaiian animals has gone.
“They don’t come here with any kind of respect or idea of some of the things that they’re doing are actually hurting our environment, or hurting our communities and hurting the residents and the Kanaka Maoli people here,” Sonoda-Pale said.
However, tourism doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon — it’s the largest source of private capital for the Hawaiian economy, according to the HTA. But Sonoda-Pale said the pandemic is a perfect time to reimagine the community’s relationship to tourism.
Before the pandemic, which highlighted the island’s alarming reliance on tourism, De Fries said the HTA has been attempting to make moves toward educating visitors on the culture and the treatment of the land and people.
“Malama means ‘to care for, to protect, to nurture,'” said De Fries. “If you care about Hawaii, when you travel here, you must understand the ways in which we Malama. There’s a heightened level of visitor awareness and appreciation and sensitivity that we are committed to sharing with the visitor.”
(WASHINGTON) — The clock is ticking for thousands of Americans and allies trapped in Afghanistan, with an evacuation deadline in exactly one week.
Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Farrell J. Sullivan, one of the two American generals in charge of the operation to evacuate American citizens and Afghans, said they’d “get as many out as we possibly can with the time we have available.”
Sullivan and U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Christopher Donahue, commander of the 82nd Airborne, spoke with ABC News’ Ian Pannell in an exclusive interview at Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport about the evacuations taking place there.
Both Donahue and Sullivan have served multiple tours in Afghanistan over the last 20 years, but in the wake of the Taliban retaking control of the country, Sullivan acknowledged that his Marines are managing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis.
“I think whether you’re in a combat situation or a humanitarian operation, the human element is always there,” Sullivan said. “But this event is an unprecedented event. I have my years of deploy[ment] into combat and to other crisis areas… I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, approximately 70,000 people have been evacuated from Kabul since Aug. 14, when the Taliban took control of the government, according to President Joe Biden.
More than 33,000 people had been flown out in a 36 hour period, Biden said, showing how much the operation to evacuate American citizens and Afghans has ramped up in recent days.
Although the world has watched disturbing images of crowds beaten back by Taliban fighters and crowds clamoring outside the walls of Hamid Karzai Airport, desperate to evacuate, Donahue says the U.S. has prepared extensively for such a situation.
“That’s the reason why the 82nd Airborne Division exists. … We exist to come in and create the order out of the chaos that you’re seeing happening right now,” he said. “What has been accomplished so far, it’s remarkable. … You’re seeing things stabilize here in the process of getting our citizens and other citizens out — [it all] is going much better.”
Officials have not given an exact number of Americans who still need to be evacuated, only saying that there are “thousands.” ABC News has learned that as of Tuesday 5,100 American citizens had been evacuated.
Donahue says the pace of evacuations from Kabul has improved since the country’s fall 10 days ago and that it continues to optimize as the deadline approaches.
“Each day, we’re coming up with new and innovative ways to bring people in and we are doing better and better each day,” he said.
Taliban leaders have said that Aug. 31 is a “red line” for troops to leave and doubled down Tuesday, saying they will reject any U.S. military presence or evacuations past the end of the month.
Biden announced Tuesday afternoon that the evacuation mission would end on that day as well, although he said he’d ask for contingency plans if it needed to be extended by a short time.
His announcement followed a virtual meeting with G-7 partners who had pressured him to extend the deadline.
Biden had previously said that U.S. troops would stay until every American and Afghan special immigrant visa applicant has been evacuated. But he ultimately decided to stick with the Aug. 31 deadline, U.S. officials told ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz.
Only one week remains before the deadline.
“This is a 24/7 operation,” Sullivan said. “In terms of the numbers we have gotten out thus far, the numbers we’ve gotten out are unprecedented as well, so I’m confident we will get out as many as we possibly can with the time that we’re provided.”
He added that they constantly learning about their security and risk and that they will continue to evacuate people safely as possible. He said he anticipates their risk will only rise, especially with regard to helicopter rescue missions outside of Hamid Karzai Airport.
“Clearly we’re going to go out and we’re going to bring our citizens back in and citizens of other nations,” Donahue said. “I’m not going to get into operational matters, but we have a task here [to] safely and quickly get our citizens and other citizens of other nations out.”
Sullivan and Donahue agreed that they remain laser-focused on getting as many people out of the country as possible.
“You can see it on the faces of those Americans, third-country nationals, those that are American Afghans or interpreters or whatnot, as they’re going through the terminal about to get on to an airplane, the relief, the thankfulness on their faces and that of their families,” Sullivan said. “It makes it all worth it in the end.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court Tuesday night rejected an effort by the Biden administration to formally discontinue the Trump administration’s controversial 2018 policy forcing asylum seekers along the southern U.S. border to remain in Mexico while awaiting a hearing on their claims.
In a single-page order, the court sided with Texas and a group of Republican-led states which claimed President Joe Biden did not lawfully cancel the policy and in so doing encouraged the record surge of migrants seen in recent months.
The vote was 6-3, pitting the court’s conservative majority against three liberal dissenters, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
The court’s majority said the administration “failed to show a likelihood of success” for its argument that a Department of Homeland Security memorandum rescinding the so-called Migrant Protection Protocols was not arbitrary and capricious.
Earlier Tuesday, the administration told the court that forcing them to reinstate the MPP policy “would intrude on the Executive’s immigration-enforcement and foreign-affairs authorities by disrupting border operations, diverting scarce resources from other urgent priorities, and intruding into the nation’s relations with Mexico and other foreign partners.”
Those arguments failed to persuade the court’s conservatives, who similarly blocked several administrative policy changes sought by the Trump White House which were deemed to run afoul of federal law requiring that agencies provide public notice, accept input and consider the ramifications of an executive decision before completing it.
This is a developing news story. Please check back for updates.
The “Down” rockers have announced a trio of concerts taking place in Colorado over Halloween weekend. The shows will be held October 29 in Boulder, October 30 in Denver, and October 31 in Estes Park.
Tickets go on sale this Friday, August 27, at 10 a.m. local time via 311.com. All three shows require proof of full COVID-19 vaccination to attend.
If you can’t make it in person, the Halloween night show will stream live via 311StreamSystem.com.
311’s current headlining tour continues Tuesday in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
