(NEW YORK) — Friday’s New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox game is on after Thursday’s clash in the Bronx was postponed following six positive COVID-19 tests on the Yankees roster.
“After conducting testing and contact tracing involving members of the New York Yankees’ organization, the Club’s home game tonight vs. the Boston Red Sox at Yankee Stadium will proceed as scheduled,” said Major League Baseball in a statement.
The game gets underway at 7:05 ET.
During his pre-game press conference, New York Manager Aaron Boone announced there were no additional positive tests on Friday.
Aaron Judge, Gio Urshela, Kyle Higashioka, Jonathan Loaisiga, Nestor Cortes Jr., and Wandy Peralta are all on the COVID-19 injured list after their tests were confirmed, according to ESPN.
Thursday’s game will be played as part of a double-header on Tuesday, August 17.
The Yankees are in fourth place in the American League East, eight games behind the first-place Red Sox.
Fans often refer to Lil Durk and his girlfriend India Cox as relationship goals on social media. The unproblematic couple have been together for years, share two daughters and like to keep their relationship issues private.
Now, after reports the couple was involved in a shootout with intruders at their home, fans are calling Durk and Cox the new Mr. & Mrs. Smith — a nod to the film starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as married assassins.
“Durk and India [are] the new Mr. & Mrs. Smith. That’s goals [for real],” tweeted one fan, while another said “I’m weak. Lil Durk and India [are] the new Bonnie and Clyde out [here].”
Yet another said, “People really saying Durk and India are Bonnie and Clyde but don’t actually know how Bonnie and Clyde died.”
As previously reported, Lil Durk and Cox were victims of an attempted home invasion that took place last Sunday. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation told TMZ that the couple were awakened around 5 a.m. by armed intruders who were trying to break into their Braselton, Georgia, home. According to investigators, both Durk and Cox had access to firearms at the time and fired at the intruders, which escalated into a shootout. Neither the two-time Grammy nominee nor his girlfriend were injured.
Police are currently investigating the incident as an alleged home invasion and aggravated assault. Anyone with information pertaining to the incident is encouraged to contact the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
(WASHINGTON) — Washington Nationals infielder Starlin Castro has been placed on administrative leave, Major League Baseball announced on Friday.
The Athletic reported earlier on Friday that the league was investigating an alleged domestic violence incident that took place earlier this summer. Castro would be on leave for seven days, during which he is still paid his normal salary.
The leave could also be extended by additional seven-day increments if the league and the MLB Players Association agree to do so.
Castro was placed on the restricted list on June 16 due to what Nationals manager Dave Martinez then referred to as “a family matter.” The Athletic says that matter is not believed to be related to the alleged domestic violence incident.
Castro was previously accused of sexual assault in 2011, but charges were not filed.
(PORT-AU-PRINCE) — Mamyrah Prosper moved to the U.S. in 1998 with some of her family members. But while she came looking for opportunities, it’s Haiti that she calls home.
The Africana studies professor and mother of one often visits her family and friends on the island. But she says that these days, even before the assassination of the country’s President Jovenal Moïse a week ago, the country is scarier than it used to be.
“I arrived in Haiti at the end of May, so well before the assassination, which, I guess, we could have said was not quite surprising. … There were several massacres that took place at the beginning of June,” she told ABC News, referring to an influx of gang violence that has displaced thousands of residents. “So, before the Jovenal assassination, that was really what was weighing on everybody’s mind: ‘What’s happening next?’”
“You have an entire city that is controlled by gangs that are able to circulate very freely… And so, people were generally feeling extremely scared to even do very basic things like go find food, which is something we all must do inevitably,” she added.
Moïse’s death has thrown the country further into turmoil. Having spent years working to dig itself out of economic and political strife, the president’s assassination has created a power vacuum and made residents vulnerable to the widespread fear they’ve long faced.
A week ago, Moïse was home in the capital of Port-au-Prince sleeping with his wife when mercenaries entered the fortified home and killed the president, leaving the first lady critically wounded.
More than two dozen people, mostly foreigners, have been accused of playing a role in the assassination. However, authorities have arrested Haitian-born Florida resident Emmanuel Sanon, 63, accusing him of acting as the middleman between the alleged assassins and the unnamed masterminds.
Haiti’s national Police Chief Léon Charles said Wednesday that Sanon, a longtime critic of the Haitian government, wanted to take it over himself. He said that Sanon arrived on the island via private aircraft in June and accused the Miami doctor of contracting with a security company to enlist the services of the men who are now under arrest, including 18 Colombians and three Americans — one of whom occasionally worked as an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.
Sanon told police he had no knowledge of the attack, CNN reported on Wednesday.
In the wake of the assassination, Haitian officials declared a state of emergency and Martial Law, the latter of which was lifted by the weekend. However, with the country still reeling, many were hesitant to leave home.
“Life has been very hard,” Francois Jean, a shoe seller in Port-au-Prince, told ABC News in French on Sunday. The father of four said he hadn’t eaten in three days. “Since Wednesday up until today, I haven’t made a dime. … It’s just today that I see the activity has restarted, and even though it has restarted, the people don’t have any money.”
Makeson Pierre, a shoe-shiner, says he’s facing the same struggles and that he would improve his situation if he could.
“The country is difficult,” he told ABC News in French. “We have no water to bathe. We have no food to eat; we’re hungry. … See how I’m cleaning these shoes here. Yeah, if I could find something else to do, I would do it. … I’d like to get out of this situation.”
The shortages don’t just apply to food, though. At a gas station on Sunday, a group of people could be seen clambering for their turn at the pump.
“You have to fight to find gas,” a father told ABC News in French. “The opportunity to get gas is spontaneous.”
He noted that many of the people at the pump would have probably been at church instead.
The predominantly Catholic country is also highly religious, and at the same pump, Helene Jean appeared in her Sunday’s best, with her Bible still in her purse.
“I came from church and when I saw that they were giving fuel here, I went home and went back to get the gallon [containers] and came back to get some fuel,” she told ABC News in French.
Prosper said there is a lack of opportunities for everyday Haitians struggling for a better way of life. She’s among a younger generation of Haitians and Haitian Americans asking for the international community to support Haitian-led solutions to the country’s problems.
“If the U.S. people should do anything, right, it’s to support the actual Haitians who are embedded in their communities and have been organizing for decades — Haitians who say we are ready to take on the role that people have already chosen for us to do,” Prosper said.
“It’s actually the international intervention that has prevented Haiti from being able to determine what it wants to do,” she continued.
Many activists like Prosper have long criticized the way foreign humanitarian aid is distributed in Haiti. She says that the aid, though necessary for providing vital support to the country, has instead motivated further violence and corruption in the government and business sectors.
A century-long debt and the current struggle for power
Once a wealthy French colony built off the backs of enslaved laborers producing sugar and coffee, the country fell into economic hardship after a slave revolt that resulted in their independence in 1804.
But it paid a price for becoming the world’s oldest Black republic: France demanded the new nation pay indemnity for overthrowing the French slaveholders. The debt of 90 million gold francs — estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars today — was so high that the country spent over 100 years paying it off. In the years since there have been growing calls for France to pay that money back.
Over the years, Haiti, currently the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, had gone through periods of dictatorship, most notably that of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier in the mid-1900s. The country was dealt a severe blow in 2010 when a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck, killing an estimated 250,000 people. The country again faced another natural disaster with Hurricane Matthew in 2016.
The president’s assassination has further entrenched the turmoil occurring in Haitian cities, even though many Haitians did not view Moïse favorably.
With the line of succession remaining unclear, Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph has stepped up to lead the country’s scattered government with help from its military and national police force even as he faces opposition from its Senate. Joseph has declared a “state of siege” and has indicated he’d only assume control of the nation until a new president is elected — presidential and legislative elections had been slated for later this year.
Moïse’s political opponents had argued that his five-year presidential term had ended in February. The late president had argued that he had another year left after a disputed 2016 election pushed his inauguration to 2017.
He’d been governing by decree since January 2020 after the country failed to hold legislative elections and the legislature’s mandate expired. Opposition leaders accused him of trying to restore Haiti to a dictatorship. Then, earlier this year, the late president ordered three supreme court justices to retire and arrested nearly two dozen people, including government officials, for allegedly plotting a coup.
Moïse told a Spanish-language newspaper in January that he feared people wanted to kill him. The Haitian ambassador to the U.S. Bocchit Edmond told reporters following the president’s death that there was “no warning” ahead of his assassination.
The escalating constitutional crisis had sparked protests and intensified gang violence amid the COVID-19 outbreak throughout the country.
As a result of the political chaos, some activists and politicians are living in fear of being targeted by gangs. Ralph Francois is a social entrepreneur and CEO of Cocread, an organization focused on building sustainable communities in Haiti.
In January, he organized a protest demanding the government step up the search for his kidnapped friend. Then, two months ago, Francois told ABC News that he fled Haiti after learning that a gang had allegedly attempted to kidnap him.
“That day, I was supposed to be there but … because I had a Skype meeting where we had to plan — doing a demonstration for one of our friends that had been kidnapped that day,” he said. “So my neighbor was kidnapped. It’s like a whole house, and I live upstairs and she lives downstairs. She had two daughters. … It was shocking.”
Francois described the situation in Haiti as a “monster” the government can’t control and said that it has culminated in the president’s assassination.
“Our president has been killed … in a humiliat[ing] way, in his room,” he said. “So, if the president is not safe in Haiti, who’s safe? How can we trust the government who failed to protect us — who failed to protect the president — to engage us in the political process and bring serenity and security? They don’t have credibility for that.”
Haitian activists and educators are demanding better leadership, hoping it’ll help put an end to the country’s political corruption.
“Even though the situation of employment in Haiti is difficult, for women, it’s especially difficult,” Shawma Aurelier, executive director of Port-au-Prince-based women’s empowerment organization SOFA, told ABC News through a translator.
She said the president’s assassination will cause more people to lose hope in changing the country’s future.
“They come to the conclusion that the best thing to do would be to leave Haiti,” she said.
“It will be very difficult for Haiti to be rebuilt if all the residents and persons living in the country should decide the best solution is to leave,” she added.
Support from afar
Families and friends of Haiti’s residents are currently the largest source of external financial aid sent to the struggling country.
In Miami, much of the staff at the Chef Creole restaurant in the Little Haiti neighborhood send money to loved ones back home. Eslane Charles has been working there and told ABC News through a translator that she’s been supporting her parents and children from across the Caribbean.
“She said it’s tough,” said Wilkinson Sejour, chef and owner of the restaurant, translating for Charles. “Although you send money, it’s never enough.”
Sejour sees his restaurant as an economic engine for his employees and their families and said they need the money now more than ever.
“As soon as they get paid, they are dashing out of the restaurant so they can go to a local supermarket to do a money transfer,” he said.
Sejour said he’s noticed the glimmer of hope in his fellow Haitians and Haitian Americans grow dimmer recently as all the money they send seems to have no impact on the country’s outlook. But he implored people not to get discouraged.
“I know it’s depressing sometimes when people give and give and give … and they feel that their giving is not doing anything,” he said. “And I’m saying, on behalf of Little Haiti, on behalf of mini Haitis, on behalf of big Haiti herself, please don’t lose hope on us. Continue giving us everything that your conscious and your heart will allow you to give. And with the grace of Christ, we’ll be all right.”
Self-determination in Haiti
Francois, the first Haitian to be a Yale World Fellow, says he intends to return to and live in Haiti with his friends and family members. He said the next generation of young Haitian leaders like himself have been ready to take on the responsibility of making a better Haiti.
“We are ready. We are ready to take the lead and make sure that Haiti could become a land of security, a land of prosperity for its children because we have to,” he said. “I spent my whole life in Haiti. I work[ed] hard for that, and I don’t see myself living in other countries and I’m sure that there are other people in my generation who see that also.”
“I want the international community to listen to Haitians’ self-determination, to listen to civil societies,” he added. “To stop looking at Haiti as a land where we have two sides of political opponents fighting for power. It is more than that.”Prosper says she recognizes the privilege she has in being able to travel in and out of the country amid its many conflicts but said she remains optimistic that there will soon be a stronger Haitian-led solution to the country’s problems.
“I have no other choice but to be optimistic … when the people who are experiencing the hardship — and who are really faced with very dangerous situations — continue to have hope and are always fired up for the next fight,” she said. “So, I only have hope.”
Bridgerton’s Adjoa Andoh is stepping behind the camera for her next big project.
According to Deadline, Andoah is set executive-produce a film adaption of Vanessa Riley’s recent novel Island Queen. The book was optioned by acclaimed film and television director Julie Anne Robinson via her U.K.-based production company, Longboat Pictures. Like the book, Island Queen will be based on the true story of Dorothy “Doll” Kirwan Thomas, a woman who was born enslaved but bought her freedom, and became one of the wealthiest and most powerful landowners in the early 1800s Caribbean. Casting details have yet to be announced.
In other news, the premiere dates for ABC’s new series The Wonder Years and Queens have been unveiled. The Wonder Years, featuring Don Cheadle as the narrator, will air Wednesday, September 22 at 8:30 p.m. ET. Unlike the original a reboot of the 1980s-early 1990s ABC family comedy, which followed Fred Savage, the new Wonder Years focuses on a Black middle-class family in Montgomery, Alabama during the 1960s. Meanwhile Queens, which stars Brandy, Eve, Naturi Naughton, and Nadine Velazquez as original members of the popular rap group Nasty [Women], will premiere Tuesday, October 19 at 10:01 p.m. ET.
Finally, OWN will premiere a two-part The Haves and the Have Nots cast reunion special on Tuesday, July 27 and Tuesday, August 3 at 8 p.m. ET. The special comes as the cast says goodbye to the series after eight seasons. Filmed in front of a live audience, the reunion will recap “all of the greatest moments, iconic scenes, and tumultuous relationships of OWN’s beloved number-one drama series.” Hosted by Egypt Sherrod, The Haves and the Have Nots cast reunion includes Tika Sumpter, Angela Robinson, Crystal Fox, Renée Lawless and Tyler Lepley, among others.
(WASHINGTON) — The group of 10 bipartisan infrastructure bill negotiators was already having trouble coming up with ways to pay for nearly $600 billion in planned new spending, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer setting a Wednesday deadline for a key test vote on their bill turned up the heat and pressure significantly.
“That’s pretty aggressive. That means we have a lot of work to do,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, a key GOP negotiator, announcing that she and her colleagues would be working through the weekend to try to finish up the details of their $1.2 trillion plan.
ABC News has learned that one of the key components that negotiators had been relying on to finance the package — a boost in IRS tax enforcement to go after unpaid taxes — is out, leaving negotiators scrambling to come up with a replacement for a proposal that was expected to generate around $100 billion in estimated revenue to help offset the $579 billion in new spending in the legislation.
“I think we’re all trying to think about other ways to get there,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., emerging from a nearly four-hour marathon negotiating session behind closed doors Thursday night. About halfway through that meeting, senior White House officials joined the bipartisan group, including senior counselor Steve Recchetti and Biden’s Legislative Affairs Director Louisa Terrell — a sign of just how important the measure is to the president’s agenda.
According to an aide to a negotiator who requested anonymity to discuss the state of play, wary Republicans wanted to put so many guardrails on the IRS in exchange for getting the money to increase enforcement that “it was untenable.”
Conservative groups have railed against the proposal to empower an agency that they claim once targeted their ranks based on political leanings starting in 2010, as they sought tax-exempt status. The IRS in a 2017 settlement apologized for failing to provide controls and guidance to its employees, though a 2014 House GOP investigation found no connection to or coordination with the Obama administration.
And getting an official amount for that finance option from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which prices out legislation for lawmakers, was also not possible because the government already assumes it will get all of the annual taxes it is owed.
This further exacerbated the problem for negotiators, who admitted that they were only ever going to get an estimate — perhaps in the neighborhood of $70 billion to $100 billion, according to sources close to the matter. That would not be enough for some Republicans, including in leadership, who demanded a hard “score” or price tag to show the spending was fully offset.
Negotiators said they plan to work through weekend, but they are under the gun to publish final legislative text as soon as possible so that they can prevail in the vote on Wednesday.
And some GOP sponsors of the bipartisan plan — including its lead author, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio — made clear Thursday that they will not vote to proceed if it is not yet complete.
Others have tried to argue that the vote on Wednesday, a procedural move to start debate on a shell of the bill which will require the support of 60 senators, is simply the start of a week-long process before final passage. Anyone wanting to support the bill could simply vote “aye” on Wednesday, start debate and substitute in the final text when it is ready.
“My goal this weekend is to make sure that we can all get there, that we’ve got not only the agreement but we’ve got text that people can look at so that we’re not in a situation where we [say], ‘I don’t know what I’m voting on, I just hope that it’s good,'” said Murkowski, referring to Wednesday as “just the beginning.”
The deadine set by Schumer is undoubtedly a high-stakes gamble as he tries to get infrastructure legislation well on its way before the August recess, including a related $3.5 trillion budget resolution that contains the remainder of President Joe Biden’s infrastructure priorities. Schumer also demanded that his caucus reach a final agreement by Wednesday on that product, so that it can move soon after the bipartisan legislation.
Under special, fast-track budget rules, Democrats plan to pass their $3.5 trillion blueprint legislation without a single Republican vote but only if the caucus remains united behind the sweeping outline that includes everything from Medicare coverage expansion to universal child care, climate change and immigration reform.
Still, even though the budget resolution — which Schumer and House Democrats have demanded must be linked to the bipartisan infrastructure deal — is merely a blueprint to be fleshed out later by multiple committees, some Democratic senators are insisting on more details in advance of any vote in the coming weeks.
Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., told Roll Call that he wants to see the details behind his colleagues’ plan to wring revenue out of the pharmaceutical industry to help pay for about $600 billion of their massive plan.
Democrats have for years sought to have Medicare negotiate drug prices to bring them on par with prices paid by other countries. Menendez told Roll Call: “The only industry that gets directly, I’ll call taxed, mostly is the pharmaceutical industry. You have to show me that you’re reducing the cost of prescription drugs to the consumers.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said he would be looking for adequate funding to modernize the dilapidated northeast corridor rail, while Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said she would be “fighting to make sure universal child care and enough money to attack the climate crisis head on” are in the bill.
“And that we make sure that billionaires and giant corporations pay a fair share,” she said, a reference to key sources of revenue Democrats plan to use to finance the $3.5 trillion in new spending over the next 10 years.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a key moderate negotiating the bipartisan plan who has also signaled that he won’t derail this bigger budget measure, told reporters that he is very concerned about inflation and protecting his coal state from Washington climate mandates.
“I’m concerned about inflation. I want to see more of the details of what’s going on,” Manchin said, noting that he had not had one conversation with the broader budget deal’s lead author, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
“I’m concerned also about maintaining the energy independence the United States of America has. And with that, you cannot be moving towards eliminating the fossil. You should be innovating and using more technology. And we should be leading the rest of the world with the technology that you can use all the above energy sources, and I told (Schumer) that I was concerned about some of the language I’d seen that moves us away from fossil,” Manchin said.
It is that kind of concern from Manchin that also raises eyebrows among progressives in the House where Speaker Nancy Pelosi holds a slim majority and has pledged to hold onto any Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill until the $3.5 trillion budget blueprint — also called a “reconciliation” bill after the procedure used to fast-track it — is approved.
“The bipartisan infrastructure bill is much smaller, and it does not meet the same needs that the overall proposal for what frankly the Biden administration has outlined is necessary,” influential progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in a virtual town hall Thursday night, calling the group of 10 plan “way too small.”
“We do not need a bipartisan deal in order to pass this bill,” she claimed, pushing back on the argument from the White House and Democratic moderates about the importance of trying to working with Republicans. “It’s great that Republicans are wanting to join some Democrats, that’s wonderful. But this country and people across this country elected Democratic majorities … Republicans are not in charge of dictating what policies we pass and what policies we don’t pass.”
“We will tank the bipartisan infrastructure bill unless we also pass the reconciliation bill,” she threatened.
Congrats to DaniLeigh! The R&B singer/songwriter has announced she’s expecting her first child.
“As you grow so does my love, discipline and focus,” she writes on Instagram, sharing photos from her maternity shoot, which were taken in the Dominican Republic.
In the photos, DaniLeigh poses against the backdrop of a waterfall while draped in a white sheer outfit. Rapper DDG, video director X and others flooded DaniLeigh’s comments with “congratulations” remarks and well-wishes for the first-time mother.
News of DaniLeigh’s pregnancy comes months after the singer received backlash on social media over a snippet of her unreleased song, “Yellow Bone.” In a since-deleted Instagram video from January, DaniLeigh is seen dancing to the song, while repeating lyrics such as “Yellow bone that’s what he wants.”
Not long after the controversy, DaniLeigh announced her split from rapper DaBaby in February. Even so, fans believe that DaBaby, who has two daughters from separate relationships, is the father of DaniLeigh’s child.
James Blunt is releasing a greatest hits album featuring his biggest songs from the past 17 years.
The singer announced that The Stars Beneath My Feet (2004-2021) will be coming out November 19, featuring well-known tracks like “You’re Beautiful” and “Goodbye My Lover,” as well as some live recordings and four brand new songs.
“Amazingly, I’m releasing my Greatest Hits. I wanted to call it Greatest Hit (& Songs I Wish You’d Heard), but the good people at Atlantic Records suggested I call it something more sensible, so it’s called The Stars Beneath My Feet,” James says in a statement. “If you’d ever wished that James Blunt had only ever released one album — this is that album.”
In celebration of the release, James also announced a new U.K. arena tour set to kick off in February 2022.
(WASHINGTON) — Gun-inflicted injuries result in more than $1 billion in hospital costs each year and programs like Medicaid end up picking up most of the tab, according to a new report.
The report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office was requested by House and Senate Democrats and sheds a light on the financial devastation gun violence wreaks.
The report found there are about 30,000 hospital stays and 50,000 emergency room visits annually to treat firearm injuries, following an analysis of most recent hospital data available from 2016 and 2017.
Public coverage programs such as Medicaid accounted for more than 60% of the costs of care, the report found.
The report comes as President Joe Biden highlighted skyrocketing gun violence and crime rates and this week touted the ability of cities and states to repurpose COVID-19 relief funding to address the crisis.
Overall, the report found that firearm injuries led to “significant” financial hospital costs.
“While firearm injuries constitute a small proportion of overall hospital costs — less than 1% over the 2-year period we studied — per patient, these injuries are relatively expensive to treat compared with other types of injuries or conditions,” the report stated, citing the average cost of initial treatment for firearm injury patients, whether emergency deaprtment-only or inpatient care, as “more than twice the average cost of treating other patients in the hospital.”
Up to 16% of firearm injury survivors were readmitted at least once to the hospital after initial treatment, and those visits cost an additional $8,000 to $11,000 per patient, the report found.
Gun injury survivors also face hurdles to accessing care after hospital discharge such as insurance coverage, socioeconomic status and provider biases — all of which can affect access to health care more generally, the report said. Some firearm injury survivors may need lifelong care after hospital discharge, the report also stated.
A majority of firearm victims landed in lower-income brackets and the burden of those treatments largely fell on public safety-net programs, according to the report. Over the two-year period studied, more than half of firearm injury patients for both initial emergency department-only and inpatient care visits lived in zip codes with an annual median household income below $44,000.
Firearm injuries also disproportionately impacted the Black community. Although information on race and ethnicity was not available for ED-only visits, patients identified as Black accounted for over half of inpatient stays and costs, the report noted.
“Many firearm injury survivors are from communities of color and are low income. Because of this, they may be more likely than the general population to face access barriers due to systemic inequities that disproportionately affect those groups,” the report said.
Because of “racial bias in the health care system,” providers may not prescribe the “same level” of services to patients from communities of color as they do to white patients; moreover, patients’ mistrust in the health care system which can “stem from negative prior experiences” and a “lack of racial and ethnic diversity of providers within the health care system, among other things,” may hinder patients’ access to care,” the report stated.
Midland’s The Last Resort EP arrives on Friday, and with it comes a quirky, detailed roll-out of the world that the band seeks to create with their new project.
That includes a digital magazine that the band created to advertise their self-created Last Resort Hotel & Day Spa, complete with an infomercial starring the group’s backing guitarist, Luke Cutchen.
“This infomercial has become all of our favorite part of this whole roll-out,” the band’s Cameron Duddy tells Billboard. “At the end of the day, it’s really just us having fun.”
The band owes a fair bit of this return to their playful side to The Sonic Ranch, a documentary about their origin story that they dropped back in March. Revisiting those early days pushed the trio toward “getting nostalgic about where we’ve come from, and reconnecting as friends. So it all emanates from within,” Cameron adds.
Plus, Midland simply had more time to come up with creative album rollout ideas. They were off the road due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and with two successful albums already under their belt, they felt a little more relaxed in their approach to music-making.
“I think historically, a lot of third albums tend to be this way. Typically, album one is you at your purest; album two, you’re on your back feet, and, if you have success, with album three you get to really plan your attack,” Cameron continues. “We’re just applying everything we’ve learned over the years.”
Midland says that they’re headed back into the studio soon to expand their project into a full-length album. For now, though, you can listen to the five new tracks on their just-released The Last Resort EP.
