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‘Lonely Hearts and Lovers’ will be Chris Carrabba’s first performance with his bandmates since he suffered ‘severe but not life threatening’ injuries from a motorcycle accident in June 2020.
Feb 6, 2021
AceShowbiz – Rockers Dashboard Confessional are returning to the virtual stage for a special Valentine’s Day (February 14) set, eight months after frontman Chris Carrabba was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident.
The singer suffered “severe but not life threatening” injuries back in June (20) and faced months of recovery, but he recently reunited with his bandmates to perform for the first time post-accident at the Riverside Revival Church in Nashville, Tennessee.
The “Lonely Hearts & Lovers” gig was filmed, and will debut at 7 pm ET on the most romantic day of the year.
“Nearly a year ago, our 20 year celebration came to a halt when everyone’s lives were changed by COVID,” Carrabba shared in a statement.
“Then, I was in an accident that left me worried that I would never be able to play music again. I received so much kindness from people I know and people I don’t know.”See also…
“The kindness that I received from friends, family, and total strangers was incredible. Over the last 20 years, you have given me so much, and I am just so grateful.”
“I can’t explain what it felt like to get back in the room with my bandmates and play music again,” he continued.
“This year has been hard for everyone and we all are missing each other more than ever. I know we can’t be together until it is safe for everyone to do so, but I miss hearing your voices, and seeing your faces. I’d be so pleased to see you…”.Tickets for the show cost $15 (£11) and are available to purchase via the band’s website.
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Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher“Laurel Hell,” the new album by the beloved indie-rock singer-songwriter Mitski, continues her shift toward a focus on pop — a move that feels somewhat at odds with the general reluctance she displays in almost every other aspect of being a performer.Over the past several years, Mitski has been circumspect in regards to discussing her personal life in interviews. She avoids many trappings of emergent celebrity. And yet she has a fervent fan base for her emotionally raw songs, and she has become something of a meme, a vessel used by other people to feel deeply, or talk about feeling deeply. (This week, “Laurel Hell” debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 chart.)On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about Mitski’s turn toward bigger sounds, her tug of war relationship with fame, and her relationship with her fans and the press.Guests:E. Alex Jung, features writer at New York magazine and VultureCat Zhang, assistant editor at PitchforkConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at [email protected]. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

Bob Crawford is part of the folk-rock band the Avett Brothers. He’s also the host of a new podcast about the sixth president.Some professional musicians spend their days on the tour bus staring out the window, sleeping or pursuing various routes to oblivion. For Bob Crawford, the bassist for the folk-rock band the Avett Brothers, history has been his distraction of choice.“On the van, and later the bus,” he said recently in a video interview from his home near Durham, N.C., “I would read history books.”One day, he picked up Sean Wilentz’s mammoth study “The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln.” From there, he moved on to “several books about Martin Van Buren,” as well as studies of Andrew Jackson, the rise of the two-party system and the knockdown congressional debates over slavery in the 1830s.Now, he’s put it all together in “Founding Son: John Quincy’s America,” a six-episode podcast about John Quincy Adams, America’s sixth president and a man, Crawford argues, for our own fractured times.“He knows democracy is on the line, he knows slavery is a moral evil,” Crawford said of Adams, who became a leading antislavery voice in the House of Representatives, where he served after leaving the White House. “He’s one of those transcendent characters. He deserves to be in the pantheon.”“Founding Son,” available through iHeartRadio starting April 13, is the latest entry in the crowded field of history podcasts. But it’s one where Crawford (who composed and played the show’s old-timey mandolin theme) hopes to use his musical celebrity and serious historical chops to illuminate a complex, formative period in the evolution of American democracy.The Early Republic, as scholars call it, may be a rich field of study. But it’s largely a blank for most Americans, who are a bit foggy on what exactly happened between the American Revolution and the Civil War.Adams, the only president to serve in Congress after leaving office, is a vehicle for tracing the arc of the period, which saw the United States transform from a nation dominated by its founding elites (like the Adamses) into an expansionist, populist democracy where every white male had the vote, regardless of property or station.“Founding Son” focuses on John Quincy Adams, the only president to serve in Congress after leaving the White House (and the earliest American president to be photographed).Hulton Archive/Getty ImagesAs a seven-year-old, Adams, the son of John Adams, witnessed the Battle of Bunker Hill, when his mother, Abigail, took him to the top of the hill to watch the gunpowder rise in the distance. And he lived long enough to serve in the House alongside Abraham Lincoln.And in an impossibly dramatic ending, Adams (spoiler alert!) died in the Capitol, after having a cerebral hemorrhage as he stood up to cast a vote relating to the Mexican-American War, which he opposed.“It’s almost poetic,” Crawford said. (Oh, Adams also wrote poetry.)Crawford, 52, grew up in Cardiff, N.J., where he recalled himself as an unimpressive student, although one with a passion for history. He recalled how one of his high school teachers, Mr. Lawless, would ask the class, “Does anyone who isn’t Bob know the answer?”If there was one person he wished he could have interviewed for the podcast, Crawford said, it was William Lee Miller, the author of “Arguing About Slavery,” who died in 2012.Kate Medley for The New York TimesOver an hour-long conversation about the podcast, Crawford, his upright bass visible on a stand behind him, regularly pulled books from the shelf to underline a point. (William Lee Miller’s “Arguing About Slavery,” he said, was a particular inspiration.) He repeatedly apologized for diving into a rabbit hole before diving into another one.With his neatly trimmed hair and soulful eyes, he gives off the vibe of the intense, idealistic high school history teacher who is also “in a band.” Except that Crawford (who earned a master’s degree in history online in 2020) really is in a band.Crawford joined with Scott and Seth Avett in 2001, after a decade of jobs that included selling shoes, working in movie production and slinging grilled cheese sandwiches “in the parking lot of Grateful Dead shows,” as the band’s official bio puts it. (In an email, Crawford clarified it was actually Phish.)Scott Avett, the band’s banjo player and co-writer, said that the podcast reflected Crawford’s steadfast character.“He does hold a lot of facts, and it’s really impressive,” said Avett (who voices dialogue for Charles Francis Adams, one of John Quincy’s sons, and the abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld). “But that’s not the point, which is how he carries those facts and who he is when expressing them.”Crawford, center, onstage with Scott and Seth Avett of the Avett Brothers.CrackerfarmAnd it’s not just Crawford’s friends who are impressed. Wilentz, who appears on the podcast, also praised his historical chops.“He’s really quite versed,” Wilentz said. “He had a lot of really specific questions to ask, some of which I didn’t know the answer to.”Crawford’s side gig as a history podcaster started in 2016 with “The Road to Now,” which he created with the historian Benjamin Sawyer. (Recent episodes have covered Benghazi, Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy and the history of March Madness.)Last year, Crawford hosted “Concerts of Change,” a SiriusXM docuseries about human rights benefit concerts from the 1970s to the 1990s. While working on that, he got an invitation from a friend to pitch a show to iHeart, and suggested Adams.The initial response was lukewarm. “They asked, was he involved in any true crime?” Crawford recalled.But eight months later, they bit. Will Pearson, the president of iHeartPodcasts, said what ultimately sold him on the project was the combination of Crawford’s enthusiasm and knowledge and the unfamiliarity of the John Quincy Adams story.“In my opinion one of the strongest elements of a good history podcast is the element of surprise,” he said.Crawford wrote the show (a coproduction of iHeartPodcasts, Curiosity Inc., and School of Humans) himself, with help from James Morrison, a producer who also works on the Smithsonian podcast “Side Door.” (Adams is voiced by Patrick Warburton, familiar to some as Elaine’s boyfriend on “Seinfeld.” Andrew Jackson is voiced by Nick Offerman, of “Parks & Recreation.”)Crawford with notes for the podcast. “He’s really quite versed,” said the historian Sean Wilentz, who appears on the podcast.Kate Medley for The New York Times“Founding Son,” which takes a largely chronological approach, has a certain whiskery dad-history vibe. There are dramatic set pieces (some with Ken Burns-style voice-overs and sound effects) about events like the battle of the Alamo and the 1838 burning of Pennsylvania Hall, an abolitionist meetinghouse in Philadelphia that was destroyed by a racist mob. (Burns himself pops up as the voice of Roger Baldwin, the lawyer who represented the enslaved people who revolted aboard the Amistad.)But even as Crawford focuses on elite politics and Congressional maneuvering, he makes clear that politics was far from just a white man’s game.He acknowledges the crucial role of Black abolitionists like David Walker, whom he likens to the Black musicians who inspired rock ‘n’ roll — the creative sparks who are rarely given enough credit.And he notes that the antislavery petition drives of the 1830s, which led to the notorious “gag rule” forbidding any mention of slavery in Congress, were largely the work of women, who played a growing role in national politics despite being denied the right to vote.“Founding Son” underlines the story’s resonance to contemporary politics, with terms like “one-term president,” “alternative facts” and “deep-state cabal.” There are even accusations of a “stolen election,” after Adams — despite losing the popular and electoral votes — was elevated to the presidency in 1825, following a back room deal in Congress.)But Crawford, who calls himself an “unaffiliated” voter, also allows plenty of room for those aspects of history that don’t satisfy a contemporary thirst for a simplistic morality play.Crawford said he wanted to avoid turning the past into an oversimplified morality play. In history, he said, “everyone’s a hero, everyone’s a villain.”Kate Medley for The New York TimesConsider the treatment of Adams’s archrival, Andrew Jackson. Today, Jackson — a slaveholder who pursued a brutal policy of Native American removal, in defiance of the Supreme Court — is anathema to Democrats who not so long ago celebrated him as a founder of the party. And Crawford seconds the opinion of Lindsay Chervinsky, a historian featured on the podcast: There’s a word for him, and it’s “not a nice one.”But he also notes that it was Jackson who blocked John C. Calhoun’s doctrine of “nullification,” which held that the Constitution allowed states to reject federal legislation.As for Adams, for all his noble fight against slavery, some of his rhetoric — like his lament that American leaders, unlike Europe’s, were “palsied by the will of our constituents” — does not sound great today.In history, Crawford said, “everyone’s a hero, and everyone’s a villain.”As for today’s politics, he laments the intensity of the polarization, and the loss of any connection with a “shared reality.” But the dysfunction, as he sees it, is not equally shared.“Today the parties are clearly out of balance,” he said. “And yes, it seems to be that the Republican Party of 2023 bears no resemblance to its former self.”What comes next, he said, “is a story for someone else to tell many years from now.” In the meantime, he’s outlining another history podcast he hopes to record.“It’s juicy and reflects this moment,” he said, launching into an enthusiastic elevator pitch. “I’m not dallying in presentism — not doing that! But man.”He paused: “And I’ve already got a whole shelf of books.” More

Fan demand broke Ticketmaster, and that was just the prologue. These are the moments that turned the Eras Tour into a phenomenon: March 17 Glendale, Ariz. Taylor returns to the stage. After five years away, she dives right in. Taylor Swift, wearing a long green gown, takes a swan dive pose and jumps into a […] More

Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie and Quincy Jones were among the public faces of that 1985 fund-raising record. But behind the scenes, Mr. Kragen made it all happen.The entertainer and humanitarian Harry Belafonte was so inspired by “Do They Know It’s Christmas?,” the record released by an all-star lineup of British and Irish musicians in late 1984 to raise money for famine relief in Africa, that he wanted to do something similar with American musicians. But Mr. Belafonte, in his late 50s at the time, knew he had to recruit current stars to pull off the idea.“I needed a younger generation of artists,” he wrote in his memoir, “My Song” (2011), “the ones at the top of the charts right now: Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, Kenny Rogers and Cyndi Lauper. When I looked at the management of most of these artists, I kept seeing the same name: Ken Kragen.”Mr. Kragen, after some persuading, latched onto Mr. Belafonte’s vision and became a pivotal behind-the-scenes force in creating “We Are the World,” the collaborative song recorded by a dizzying array of stars (including Mr. Belafonte) and released in March 1985. The song became a worldwide hit and, along with an album of the same name, raised millions of dollars for hunger relief in Africa and elsewhere.Among the participants in the recording of “We Are the World” were, clockwise from left, Mr. Richie, Daryl Hall, Mr. Jones, Paul Simon and Stevie Wonder.Associated Press“When Belafonte called me, the first call I made was to Kenny Rogers,” who was one of his clients, Mr. Kragen recalled in a 1994 interview with Larry King on CNN. “Then I called Lionel Richie. Then I called Quincy Jones. Lionel called Stevie Wonder. Within 24 hours, we had six or seven of the biggest names in the industry.”Soon “six or seven” had snowballed into dozens, with Paul Simon, Bette Midler, Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder, Ray Charles, Tina Turner, Willie Nelson and Diana Ross among them. Mr. Jackson and Mr. Richie wrote the song; Mr. Jones conducted the recording session in January 1985, a gathering that became the stuff of music legend.Mr. Kragen, who went on to organize or help organize other formidable fund-raising projects, including Hands Across America in 1986, died on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 85. His daughter, Emma Kragen, confirmed the death. No cause was specified.As Mr. Kragen often told the story later, his goal at first on the “We Are the World” project was to recruit two new stars a day. But soon recruiting wasn’t his problem.“Lionel Richie had this line — he says, ‘You are who you hug,’” he told Mr. King, “and the thing is that everybody wanted to hug somebody who was hipper or somebody who was more successful. So the day that I got Bruce Springsteen, the floodgates opened, because he was the hottest artist in America.”At that point, Mr. Kragen went from dialing the phone to answering it — a lot.“I started to get calls from everybody,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1985, just after the recording session. “I tried hard to cut it off at 28 — to this day I don’t know how it got to be 46. Still, we turned down almost 50 artists.”Mr. Kragen was the founding president of USA for Africa, the foundation set up to administer the aid money raised by “We Are the World,” which continues today. According to its website, it has raised more than $100 million to alleviate poverty.Kenneth Allan Kragen was born on Nov. 24, 1936, in Berkeley, Calif. His father, Adrian, was a lawyer who later taught law at the University of California, Berkeley; his mother, Billie, was a violinist.While studying engineering at Berkeley, Mr. Kragen began frequenting local nightclubs and soon became friendly with the Kingston Trio, a fledgling group at the time that often played at the Purple Onion in San Francisco. He began booking the trio at colleges, and when he graduated in 1958, he was asked to manage them; instead he went to Harvard’s graduate school of business. Before starting there, he took a trip to Europe with his parents; when he came home, a new group was getting a lot of buzz nationally: the Kingston Trio.“I just wanted to die,” Mr. Kragen told The New York Times in 1986. “I thought I’d blown the chance of a lifetime.”But once he earned his graduate degree in 1960, he found new opportunities as a talent manager and promoter. He managed the folk group the Limeliters and then picked up the Smothers Brothers in 1964. He and his business partner at the time, Kenneth Fritz, were executive producers of “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” which during its three-season run, from 1967 to 1969, was one of the most talked-about shows on television because of its battles with censors.In 1975, he went to work for Jerry Weintraub, a talent manager with a formidable roster that included John Denver, Led Zeppelin and the Moody Blues. (Mr. Weintraub soon became a noted film and television producer.) Mr. Kragen started his own company in 1979, attracting clients like the Bee Gees, Olivia Newton-John and Trisha Yearwood.Mr. Kragen helped organize the fund-raising event Hands Across America and participated in it at Battery Park in Lower Manhattan in May 1986, along with Jean Sherwood and her daughter, Amy.David Bookstaver/Associated PressMr. Kragen produced television movies featuring Mr. Rogers, as well as TV specials for the singer Linda Eder and others. One of his fund-raising efforts was Hands Across America, whose goal was to create a chain of people holding hands that stretched from coast to coast. The event took place in May 1986. The coast-to-coast chain didn’t quite materialize — there were gaps in various places — and though the event raised millions of dollars for hunger and homelessness, it fell short of its $50 million goal. But some five million people participated, including President Ronald Reagan.Mr. Kragen married the actress Cathy Worthington in 1978. In addition to her and his daughter, he is survived by a sister, Robin Merritt.In 2019, Buzzfeed asked Mr. Kragen if he could envision a reprise of Hands Across America. He couldn’t. People, he said, would be too busy documenting their participation with selfies to actually hold hands. More
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