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  • ‘All About That Bass’: Meghan Trainor joins WTOP with Md. native Chris Olsen before Jiffy Lube Live – WTOP News

    ‘All About That Bass’: Meghan Trainor joins WTOP with Md. native Chris Olsen before Jiffy Lube Live – WTOP News

    Meghan Trainor brings her “Timeless” tour to Jiffy Lube Live in Virginia on Tuesday, Sept. 17 alongside Chevy Chase, Maryland, native Chris Olsen.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Meghan Trainor & Chris Olsen at Jiffy Lube Live (Part 1)

    She’s all about that bass, no treble — and he’s all about returning to his home base, no trouble.

    Meghan Trainor brings her “Timeless” tour to Jiffy Lube Live in Virginia on Tuesday alongside singer, actor and TikTok guru Chris Olsen, who grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

    “I feel like I’ve listened to this [radio station] so many times in my life,” Olsen told WTOP. “This would be the radio that I’m pretty sure would be on every morning driving to school. This is D.C. This is it. We’ve made it.”

    “Chris’ hometown!’ Trainor told WTOP. “He came on my podcast called ‘Workin’ On It’ and we realized our birthdays were the same exact date, Dec. 22, so we fell in love like, ‘Whoa, we’re soul mates, we are the same person.’ We’ve been inseparable ever since and I hired him to help me with my TikToks and be my best friend.”

    While Olsen was born in D.C., Trainor was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts, and grew up listening to 2000s pop.

    “I was listening to T-Pain, I loved T-Pain,” Trainor said. “I was listening to whatever my brothers put on, then sometimes I would get to have a say and put Britney Spears on, but luckily my brothers loved the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC with me so we would all listen to that together. Then my dad would play us old-school music, so we would listen to Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder. Then my mom would play a lot of Madonna and Billy Joel.”

    In 2014, she signed with Epic Records for her first album “Title” (2015) with hits like “Dear Future Husband” and “Lips Are Movin.’” Trainor co-wrote the songs with Baltimore native Kevin Kadish, who attended Owings Mills High School and created his own music management major at the University of Maryland in College Park.

    “I was 18 I think and I was living in Nashville and I drove to Franklin to write with a guy named Kevin Kadish,” Trainor said. “We were working together on the whole album and just kept getting confused by what we were hearing from the label and managers. We were hearing different things, so we were like, ‘Let’s write a song to them saying, ‘Your lips are movin’, I know you’re lying because your lips are movin’, you just talk in circles.’”

    Of course, the album’s biggest pop hit was the catchy No. 1 smash “All About That Bass.”

    “[Kevin] had a title in his notes that said ‘all bass, no treble,’ and I was like, ‘Well, all the kids say, ‘I’m all about that’ when they’re saying I like something, and literally I’m all about my booty, my thickness and I got no treble,” Trainor said. “Like in music, bass is thick and treble is the thin, high parts … so I was like, ‘I’m all about that thick,’ you know? Then we wrote it that day in 45 minutes and I was like, ‘No one is ever gonna hear this.’”

    “All About That Bass” was not only nominated for song of the year at the Grammys, it was also nominated for the top prize of Record of the Year alongside Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off,” Sia’s “Chandelier,” Iggy Azalea and Charlie XCX’s “Fancy” and Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me,” which ultimately won.

    “He got me,” Trainor said. “I’ve never felt cooler. I was like fan-girling the whole night. I was living at like Park La Brea [in Los Angeles] and I was like, ‘What am I doing here?’ It was the best night of my life.”

    The following year, Trainor returned to the Grammys to win best new artist just a few months before the release of her second album “Thank You” (2016), featuring the hit single “No.”

    Her third album “Treat Myself” (2020) delivered even more hits with “No Excuses” and “Nice to Meet Ya” featuring Nicki Minaj, followed by her Seth MacFarlane duet “White Christmas” on her holiday album “A Very Trainor Christmas” (2020). Her fifth album “Takin’ it Back” (2022) delivered the hit song “Made You Look” with funny turns of phrases like, “Call up your chiropractor just in case your neck breaks.”

    Now, her latest album “Timeless” just dropped in June with the single “Been Like This” featuring T-Pain.

    “‘Been Like This,’ thank you for playing it on the radio,” Trainor said. “‘Whoops’ is one of my favorites, that’s been playing on the radio recently so thank you, then we just released the deluxe, which has my favorite songs: ‘Make a Move,’ ‘Booty’ and ‘Criminals,’ which is also in the new TV show ‘The Perfect Couple,’ which is my dream come true. It’s crazy seeing all these famous talented actors [like Nicole Kidman] dancing to my pop song.”

    At this point, they had to run to get ready for their next show, doing makeup in the green room.

    “I’m starting my makeup, so I have beautiful, blue, glittery eyes right now,” Trainor said. “You should do that for your hometown. For the hometown, if you show up, Chris is going to have gorgeous makeup that I’m gonna do.”

    “Meghan is the makeup artist for this tour, so she is doing it for me as well,” Olsen said. “I’m ready. If people show up for the show, I will show up with the glittery makeup. … My parents still live in Maryland, so I’m still a DMV girl.”

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Meghan Trainor & Chris Olsen at Jiffy Lube Live (Part 2)

    Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:

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    © 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

    Jason Fraley

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  • Rare Essence headlines Summer Soul Music Festival in La Plata on Labor Day weekend – WTOP News

    Rare Essence headlines Summer Soul Music Festival in La Plata on Labor Day weekend – WTOP News

    The beloved D.C. go-go band Rare Essence headlines the third annual Summer Soul Music Festival at the Charles County Fairgrounds in La Plata, Maryland.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Rare Essence at the Summer Soul Music Fest (Part 1)

    Dancing on the eve of Labor Day means you can party without having to worry about work the next day!

    Rare Essence performs live at U Street Music Hall. (Courtesy U Street Music Hall)

    The beloved D.C. go-go band Rare Essence headlines the third annual Summer Soul Music Festival at the Charles County Fairgrounds in La Plata, Maryland, on Sunday from noon to 8 p.m.

    WTOP caught up with founding member Andre “Whiteboy” Johnson as Rare Essence leads a lineup that includes Northeast Groovers, DCVybe, The Kim Michelle Experience and All-Star Experience, as well as DJ Frisco and DJ Biggs.

    “For decades now, we’ve always done a big show on Labor Day Sunday,” Johnson told WTOP. “This is the very first time that we’ve done this festival and this venue, so this is going to be a really big deal here. We used to play in that area a lot back in the ’80s and ’90s, some of the venues aren’t there anymore, but the people that live in that area, they travel up to D.C. and Prince George’s County sometimes, but we’re glad to be going to them this time.”

    Johnson met his future bandmates as kids at St. Thomas More Academy in Southeast D.C., including Quentin “Footz” Davidson, Michael “Funky Ned” Neal and John “Big Horn” Jones. How did he get his nickname?

    “I used to listen to a lot of pop music, which was rock music at the time, so a lot of Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Kansas, The Eagles, all of those groups, and all the music was guitar-driven. I’m a guitar player, so I would learn those songs and play those songs at band practice,” Johnson said. “They started teasing me saying, ‘You’re playing all that white music, we’re gonna call you ‘Whiteboy.’”

    Rare Essence officially formed as a band in 1976, playing all the clubs in the D.C. area and moving to bigger venues, such as the Washington Coliseum, the Capitals Center and the D.C. Armory.

    “They were just gigs to us. We had no idea because we were young. We just knew we were playing in a big place today, we didn’t realize the magnitude of what we were doing at that time,” Johnson said.

    While E.U.’s hit song “Da Butt” went nationwide thanks to Spike Lee’s classic film “School Daze” (1988), Rare Essence’s song “Lock It” similarly went nationwide thanks to the soundtrack of Kevin Hooks’ comedy flick “Strictly Business” (1991) starring D.C. native Tommy Davidson and future Oscar winner Halle Berry.

    “That was great,” Johnson said. “The record already had really good buzz on the East Coast and we were signed to Uptown Records, who Andre Harrell was one of the producers of that movie. He said, ‘I want to put one of the songs in that movie,’ so we were like, ‘Yeah, great, that’s fine.’ After he put it in, that’s what made it really national.”

    After many live albums, the band’s first studio album was “Work the Walls” (1992), including a hit title track that came to be with help from a cement bench along the side wall of The Celebrity Hall, later known as The Black Hole.

    “When we were playing a lot of the women would jump up on there and start dancing facing the wall, so that’s actually where the idea came from. We’re watching them and screaming, ‘Work the walls! Work the walls!’ — and it turned into a song,” Johnson said.

    Their second album, “So What You Want?” (1995), was partially recorded at The Eastside Club in D.C., where they used to play every Wednesday night.

    “The Eastside just had a vibe to it. Every time we walked in there on a Wednesday night until 3 in the morning, they jam packed in there and everybody was just all the way amped up. Plus it had a really good sound to it, the ceilings weren’t real high, there was a lot of wood, so that’s why we figured it would be a good spot for a live set,” Johnson said.

    That same year, they joined the holiday go-go compilation album “Let’s Go-Go Christmas” (1995), doing for D.C. what Kurtis Blow’s “Christmas Rappin’” did for Harlem and Run-D.M.C.’s “Christmas in Hollis” did for Queens.

    “The great thing about that is every Christmas since the release of that song and that album, they play those songs on the radio, so it’s great to even be part of the Christmas holiday,” Johnson said.

    Evolving from “Body Snatchers” (1996) to “We Go On and On” (1998), their music continued to reflect the times as the song “Overnight Scenario” delivered lyrics that influenced Jay-Z’s “Do It Again” released the next year.

    Meanwhile, their album “RE-2000” (1999) featured Redman on “We Push” and their album “Turn It Up” (2016) featured collaborations with DJ Kool and Raheem DeVaughn.

    “We are going along with what’s current, we’ve always been able to do that,” Johnson said. “We’re from the ’70s, but you can’t sound like you’re from the ’70s in the ’90s, so we were able to morph into a ’90s sound, a 2000s sound. Even today, we make sure that we keep the band sounding current while still being able to do the classics.”

    Today, Rare Essence has carved a spot on the proverbial Mount Rushmore of D.C. go-go bands, including the Chuck Brown Band, Trouble Funk and Experience Unlimited (WTOP has gratefully interviewed them all).

    “It’s absolutely an honor to be a part of the first generation of go-go,” Johnson said. “We’re all following Chuck Brown’s lead. Again, at the time, we had no idea that it was gonna turn into what it turned into. We were just out there having a good time playing from clubs to school gyms to rec centers and out at the parks. We were just having a good time performing and this all morphed into a genre and it just kept us going decade after decade.”

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Rare Essence at the Summer Soul Music Fest (Part 2)

    Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:

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    © 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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  • Grammy-nominated ‘American Idol’ alum Jordin Sparks joins WTOP en route to DC’s Atlantis – WTOP News

    Grammy-nominated ‘American Idol’ alum Jordin Sparks joins WTOP en route to DC’s Atlantis – WTOP News

    “There’s something for everybody on this album.” Jordin Sparks speaks to WTOP before her “No Restrictions: Live & Intimate” concert on Thursday.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Jordin Sparks at The Atlantis (Part 1)

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    ‘American Idol’ alum Jordin Sparks on her win

    She’s sold over 10 million digital tracks in the U.S. since winning “American Idol” back in 2007.

    On Thursday, Jordin Sparks brings her “No Restrictions: Live & Intimate” Tour to The Atlantis in D.C. The tour is named after her new “No Restrictions” album that drops next month.

    “There’s something for everybody on this album,” Sparks told WTOP.

    “We’ve got my southern gospel roots, my choir roots. We’ve got country, acoustic, piano ballads, a power ballad, we have pop, we have R&B. So ‘No Restrictions’ makes sense because I was like, ‘I’m gonna give everybody everything because I love all types of music’ and people met me that way on ‘Idol.’”

    Born in Phoenix in 1989, Sparks grew up watching the previous seasons of “American Idol.”

    “I definitely watched ‘Idol,’” Sparks said.

    “I watched every single season. I watched Kelly (Clarkson), Ruben (Studdard), Fantasia (Barrino), Carrie (Underwood), Taylor (Hicks) and then I got to audition. I was a really big fan so when I got to audition I was really excited to be there, but at the same time I believed in what I could do, so I was like, ‘If all the things line up, there are so many variables, I think I can actually do this,’ then it happened!”

    Indeed, Sparks won Season 6 to become the youngest “American Idol” champ ever at age 17. She said she’ll never forget Ryan Seacrest announcing her name with confetti falling after 74 million votes were cast in the finale.

    “It was literally the moment that changed my life,” Sparks said.

    “When Ryan called my name, I put my hands over my face like, ‘Oh my gosh, this really just happened!’ Everyone was clapping, confetti pyrotechnics were going off, but I couldn’t hear anything. It was like a movie, all I could hear was my heartbeat. I was looking at my family then Ryan hands me the microphone, ‘Here to sing her single.’ … I sang the song, but I don’t remember singing it.”

    Her coronation song “This Is My Now” immediately ranked No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

    “It was a great song,” Sparks said.

    “It was just so beautiful. That was the first time on ‘Idol’ that we put stuff up for iTunes, so we had to prerecord the songs before we actually had to perform them and that made it a little more challenging because you could only perform two minutes on the show but the songs were three, four, five minutes, so that would make us more nervous. … I definitely love that song. It really holds a special place in my heart.”

    Her self-titled album “Jordin Sparks” (2007) earned a Grammy nomination for her Chris Brown collaboration “No Air,” which reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, while “One Step at a Time” hit No. 17 and “Tattoo” hit No 8.

    “It’s funny because, now all these years later, I listen to that song (‘Tattoo’) and I don’t think I even really understand the weight of what I was saying at the time,” Sparks said.

    “I interpreted it as best I could being 17 years old. … I remember hearing it and I was like, ‘This song is so much fun, I love singing it.’ It was so catchy, I was like, ‘This is a fun song, I really, really like this,’ then we decided that it would be my first official single and it blew up.”

    Her second album “Battlefield” (2009) proved that there was no sophomore slump thanks to a smash title track that reached No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100, as well as the catchy “S.O.S. (Let the Music Play).”

    “Look, I thought there was pressure on the first album, but when we started the second one I was like, ‘How do I follow that up?’ I had my own shoes to fill,” Sparks said.

    “I missed the days when pop-rock power ballads were the thing, so I was like, ‘I can definitely do that.’ … As soon as I heard (‘Battlefield’), I was like, ‘This is where I am in my lifetime, I relate to this.’ … I wanted to lean more into my rock influences and let my voice just soar and fly.”

    After her third album “Right Here Right Now” (2015), Sparks expanded into acting, playing Whitney Houston’s daughter in the film “Sparkle” (2012), plus the Hallmark movie “A Christmas Treasure” (2021).

    On Broadway, she starred in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights” (2010) and Sara Bareilles’ “Waitress” (2019).

    “I’ve always loved live performance,” Sparks said.

    “Broadway was where I really saw live stage performance and everything came together: acting, singing, dancing in a live performance every night. I loved that. Being able to showcase those things and get to experience them in real life, it’s just been incredible. Broadway is a huge commitment, it’s a lot … After doing ‘Idol’ and Broadway, everything else is a cake walk. I can handle anything.’

    Along the way, she cowrote the Ariana Grande hit “The Way” (2014), released the Christmas album “Cider & Hennessy” (2020) and earned a Grammy nomination for collaborating with the Christian duo For King & Country on the song “Love Me Like I Am” (2023).

    Next, her fifth studio album “No Restrictions” will be released on Sept. 13.

    “At this point in my life as a mom, wife, friend, artist, songwriter, human, I feel like I’m letting go of things that, not held me back, but just didn’t serve me anymore,” Sparks said.

    “We grow, elevate and evolve, so there are different pieces of me that I’m like, ‘I appreciate you, but I can’t bring you with me in this next chapter,’ as well as I don’t want to be restricted in a box for my music or by other people’s opinions. I feel like I’m in a really good place.”

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Jordin Sparks at The Atlantis (Part 2)

    Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:

    Get breaking news and daily headlines delivered to your email inbox by signing up here.

    © 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

    Jason Fraley

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  • Montgomery County native competes in finals of NBC’s ‘American Ninja Warrior’ – WTOP News

    Montgomery County native competes in finals of NBC’s ‘American Ninja Warrior’ – WTOP News

    Growing up in North Potomac, Karen Potts loved watching NBC’s “American Ninja Warrior” on TV. On Monday night, she’ll compete in Stage 1 of the finals.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews ‘American Ninja Warrior’ (Part 1)

    Growing up in North Potomac, Maryland, Karen Potts loved watching NBC’s “American Ninja Warrior” on TV. On Monday night, she’ll compete in Stage 1 of the finals.

    “I’m definitely excited to watch,” Potts, 19, told WTOP. “I know what happens, but I love to see the way they put it all together and then a bunch of my friends are competing too, the way you meet people through there. I’ll be back at school by then, so I think my softball team and some other friends are all going to watch it together.”

    She currently attends Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, where she’s majoring in nutrition and psychology with a minor in sports medicine — all things that come in handy on “American Ninja Warrior.”

    “Nutrition is big when you’re competing in sports, especially when you’re competing in something like ‘Ninja’ where it’s very active, a lot of strength is involved,” Potts said. “Then psychology, being on the course and especially with this being a TV show, there’s a big mental aspect, so that definitely goes hand in hand.”

    Her athletic prowess began at Wootton High School where she was a goalkeeper on the soccer team in the fall, a post player on the basketball team in the winter, and a shortstop on the softball team in the spring.

    “Hand-eye coordination, agility and overall athleticism helps a lot with ‘Ninja,’” Potts said.

    This isn’t her first ninja rodeo. The teenager previously competed in Season 2 of “American Ninja Warrior Junior,” followed by Season 14 of the adult “American Ninja Warrior” where she fell during the finals in 2020.

    “In Season 14 on Stage 1, I fell on something called the Giant Rollercoaster,” Potts said. “There’s three different tracks, so you’re hanging on a bar on the first one, then you slide down it and lache, which is what they call jumping from bar to bar. You have to lache to another track, slide down that one, then for the third one you have to carry the bar with you and place it in smaller handles and dismount from there. I fell on the transfer with the bar.”

    Now, she’s making her comeback on Season 16 trying to finally get over the finish line.

    “I definitely wanted to come back because I love the sport itself,” Potts said. “Ninja has such a great community, so the experience of being on the show is just super cool and super fun. You get to meet people from all over, so I wanted that aspect again. I also wanted to do better than I had done. … I wanted to try that one again and hopefully beat it. I was super excited when I was called to be on Season 16 because I wanted another chance.”

    This season started with her placing first in the qualifying round, becoming the only woman to reach the fifth obstacle in a six-obstacle course. In the semifinals, she won a side-by-side race in another obstacle course.

    “The beep sounded, which started our race, I was running across steps, you have to go back and forth, and went through these laches,” Potts said. “I was a step and a half ahead of my opponent into the wing nuts … made the dismount then onto the next obstacle, hop scotch, which is small cliffhanger ledges to little laches. I was about one move in and saw my opponent fall next to me, so I knew the only thing I had to do was complete that obstacle.”

    Now, she faces her biggest challenge yet in Stage 1 of the finals in Las Vegas.

    “Tonight, there’s a bunch of big obstacles,” Potts said. “It starts with big agility strides into a double barrel, which is two big swings on rotating barrels to dismount, followed by the Giant Rollercoaster, which is actually the obstacle that took me out last year. After that, there’s a spider wall, which is a trampoline jump, you have to prop yourself up between two walls. There’s another upper-body obstacle, then the Warped Wall, a staple of ‘Ninja Warrior.’”

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews ‘American Ninja Warrior’ (Part 2)

    Listen to our full conversation here.

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    © 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

    Jason Fraley

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  • National Landing hosts ‘Fridays at the Fountain’ for final time of the summer in Crystal City – WTOP News

    National Landing hosts ‘Fridays at the Fountain’ for final time of the summer in Crystal City – WTOP News

    National Landing hosts this summer’s final “Fridays at the Fountain” from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday at the Water Park in Crystal City, Virginia.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Fridays at the Fountain in Crystal City (Part 1)

    Are you looking for a fun and relaxing way to unwind in the evening after a hard week at work?

    National Landing hosts this summer’s final “Fridays at the Fountain” from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Friday at the Water Park at 1601 Crystal Drive in Crystal City, Virginia.

    “‘Fridays at the Fountain’ is a long-standing tradition in National Landing, but we’re coming up on our one-year anniversary this fall of a re-imagined Water Park,” National Landing BID president and executive director Tracy Sayegh Gabriel told WTOP.

    “The re-imagined Water Park opened in October of 2023. It had always been a wonderful community park space, but the new Water Park has a dozen eateries, a great landscape, it’s really an oasis in a city setting.”

    The event has featured a variety of genres so far this summer, including jazz and funk with Clarence Ward III & Dat Feel Good, salsa with Max Rosado and the 7th Street Band, blues with Carly Harvey, R&B with Deidra Love, Latin funk with Bongo District, bluegrass with Moose Jaw Bluegrass, and the soul and R&B stylings of Bryan Lee.

    This Friday’s final summer event features D.C. go-go band Mambo Sauce, aptly named after the city’s own beloved condiment, performing two live sets with a brief intermission as a DJ keeps the music going in between.

    “Bring a blanket or a chair,” Gabriel said. “This is an event for all ages to enjoy great live music and fabulous food.”

    Indeed, if you work up an appetite dancing, you can also grab a bite from the unique outdoor food hall.

    “We have nearly a dozen eateries, most of which are outdoor concessions,” Gabriel said. “Water Park features Brij Coffee, Bubbie’s Plant Burgers, Cracked Eggery, Crush Pizza, Dolci Gelati, Falafel Inc., PhoWheels, Queen Mother’s Kitchen, Tiki Thai and Water Bar, [which is] perched on top of Water Park’s fountain.”

    After the event, feel free to visit the other cool restaurants and entertainment options nearby.

    “Water Park is in the heart of National Landing along Crystal Drive in a stretch that is fast-transforming with some of the most exciting businesses in the DMV,” Gabriel said. “We’ve got an Alamo Cinema Drafthouse, as well as Mah-Ze-Dahr, great tacos at Tacombi, we also have a very new concept by Peter Chang that’s NiHao. … Of course, if you need ice cream we’ve got Van Leeuwen that just opened up around the corner from Water Park.”

    The Water Park is located just a block from the Crystal City Metro station.

    Find more information here.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Fridays at the Fountain in Crystal City (Part 2)

    Listen to our full conversation here.

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    © 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

    Jason Fraley

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  • They met in Laurel, now Grammy-nominated husband-and-wife duo The War & Treaty return home to DC – WTOP News

    They met in Laurel, now Grammy-nominated husband-and-wife duo The War & Treaty return home to DC – WTOP News

    WTOP caught up with Michael and Tanya Trotter, also known as The War & Treaty, ahead of their big homecoming concert in Downtown D.C. this Thursday.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews The War & Treaty at The Hamilton (Part 1)

    They began singing in D.C., met in Maryland and got married before becoming Grammy nominees for Best New Artist.

    The War and Treaty perform at the Americana Honors & Awards show Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2022, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)(AP/Mark Humphrey)

    Now, the acclaimed husband-and-wife duo The War & Treaty come home to perform live at The Hamilton on Thursday night.

    WTOP caught up with Michael and Tanya Trotter ahead of their big homecoming concert in Downtown D.C.

    “We’ve done the Grammys on the Hill there and we really love that event, so we’re really excited to come back with our show,” Tanya Trotter told WTOP.

    “It’s always a homecoming. It’s always wonderful to come back home and see family but to see fans too. This is our first time coming home to such a big crowd. We’ve played a lot of places but haven’t even had an opportunity to play Maryland, so we’re very excited to be able to come home.”

    Born Tanya Blount in D.C., she attended Morgan State University in Baltimore before starring in the movie “Sister Act 2″ (1993) and recording the solo album “Natural Thing” (1994) with R&B hits like “Through the Rain.” Meanwhile, Michael was born in Cleveland, Ohio, but moved to D.C. as a teenager in the mid-1990s.

    “I don’t want to impose or impede on Tanya’s thunder, but I moved to D.C. in 1996. And I went to Shaw Junior High School — one of the greatest marching bands of all time at that moment under the direction of Dr. [Wesley] Hoover,” Michael said. “In fact, I was the 1996 D.C. Futurefest Singing Competition winner that the mayor put on.”

    The two met in Prince George’s County, fell in love and got married in 2011, together raising a son named Legend Michael Trotter, named after their famous touring mate John Legend.

    “I was doing a back-to-school event for kids in Laurel, Maryland, so we met right there on Laurel Lake,” Tanya said.

    “The first song we ever wrote together was making a baby,” Michael said. “That’s our biggest No. 1 hit: Legend.”

    After moving to Michigan, they released their first album “Love Affair” (2016) under the name of Trotter & Blount before eventually changing their name to The War & Treaty to brilliantly capture war and peace all in one name.

    “We were arguing about changing the name,” Michael said. “The treaty was that we won’t do that again.”

    Their first album under The War & Treaty banner was “Healing Tide” (2018), which catapulted them to win Emerging Artist of the Year at 2019 Americana Music Awards at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.

    “It’s crazy because not even a year before that, we went to the award show, we didn’t have anything, we didn’t have any money, we were broke just sitting in the audience, someone had given us tickets, and we looked at each other to hold each other’s hands and we were like, ‘Man, do you think one day we could actually be on this stage?’ And it happened for us, so when we ended up winning the award, I was crying like a baby.”

    The following year, they won Artist of the Year by Folk Alliance International thanks to their second album “Hearts Town” (2020), including the powerful song “Five More Minutes” based on Michael’s PTSD as an Iraq War veteran.

    “We ended up getting services at the V.A. in Maryland and when we went to Michigan he started therapy again,” Tanya said.

    “One day at home he was having a hard time, I noticed he wasn’t himself, and I looked at him [and said], ‘Give me five more minutes to change your mind.’ I didn’t know he was contemplating suicide. … He gave himself five more minutes and that story has changed a lot of lives. As he’d say, he’s still living in that five more minutes.”

    In 2021, they performed U2’s “Pride (In the Name of Love)” with Dierks Bentley at Academy of Country Music Awards, paving the way for their third album “Lover’s Game” (2023) with the song “That’s How Love Is Made.”

    The album earned the duo two Grammys nominations, including Best American Roots Song for “Blank Page” and Best New Artist, nominated alongside such rising stars as Ice Spice, Jelly Roll and Victoria Monét.

    “That album afforded us into rooms and conversations that we only dreamed of,” Michael said.

    “It also put us in a room where we could be discovered by Zach Bryan for this collaboration ‘Hey Driver.’ That’s been awesome. … We’ve been in writing rooms with Miranda Lambert, it’s just been a wonderful time for us and it’s been a wonderful time in country music to be able to be accepted and embraced as country music artists and stars.”

    Indeed, The War & Treaty recently became the first Black act to ever be nominated for Duo of the Year by both the Country Music Association and Academy of Country Music Association as the genre continues to evolve.

    “Everything is changing all around us,” Tanya said. “The internet is changing, country music is changing, Americana is changing. We’re just happy to be a part of the journey and the people setting trends and changing genres.”

    Next, Hollywood is knocking on their door with an upcoming biopic in the works.

    “I’ll tell you this much, within four weeks now we should be going into casting,” Michael said.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews The War & Treaty at The Hamilton (Part 2)

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  • GWU hosts African Diaspora Film Festival, shattering Olympic glass ceilings and diversifying jury duty – WTOP News

    GWU hosts African Diaspora Film Festival, shattering Olympic glass ceilings and diversifying jury duty – WTOP News

    The African Diaspora International Film Festival is celebrating nearly two decades in D.C. as this year’s festival runs this weekend at George Washington University.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews the African Diaspora International Film Fest in D.C. (Part 1)

    The African Diaspora International Film Festival has been going strong for over three decades in New York City.

    It’s also celebrating nearly two decades in D.C. with this year’s festival running Friday, Saturday and Sunday at George Washington University as part of its Africana Studies program.

    “The African Diaspora International Film Festival is a festival that appeals to film lovers of all colors, age and sexual orientation and those who are interested in the richness and diversity of the human experience of people of color all over the world,” co-founder Diarah N’Daw-Spech told WTOP. “It was born in New York in 1993 and we now have editions in Chicago, Washington D.C. and Paris, France, so in Washington, D.C. it’s the 17th edition.”

    The festival kicks off Friday with “Breaking Boundaries,” perfectly timed with the Paris Olympics.

    “It’s the story of Nastasya Generalova, the daughter of a Russian mother and an African-American father who is part of Team U.S.A. for rhythmic gymnastics,” N’Daw-Spech said. “The filmmaker takes us by the hand for us to discover her life as she prepares to compete for the 2020 Olympics. We see the difficulties, the challenges and what it means for her to be the first Black athlete in her sport to compete for the Olympics — and she’ll be there.”

    Saturday brings the documentary “Judging Juries” by acclaimed filmmaker Abby Ginzberg, who previously directed the Oscar-nominated short documentary “The Barber of Birmingham” (2011) and later won a Peabody for her film “Soft Vengeance: Albie Sachs and the New South Africa” (2014).

    “There has been a noticeable lack of African American and Latino jurors,” Ginzberg said. “The film reveals the problem with juror pay. In California, a potential juror gets paid $15 a day, so right there you see the financial hardship. … It costs more than $15 to park, it costs more than $15 to commute, it’s insane, so that led me to look at the questions of what are the issues keeping people from serving on juries and what can we do about it?”

    Sunday wraps with the timely closing-night film “One Person, One Vote?”

    “It talks about the Electoral College,” N’Daw-Spech said. “We have the director there to explore what the Electoral College is and its roots in the history of slavery in this country. … Some people want it gone, others don’t.”

    See the full festival lineup here.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews the African Diaspora International Film Fest in D.C. (Part 2)

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  • Megan Thee Stallion headlines Broccoli City music fest this weekend as event moves to DC’s Audi Field – WTOP News

    Megan Thee Stallion headlines Broccoli City music fest this weekend as event moves to DC’s Audi Field – WTOP News

    Broccoli City Fest returns to the nation’s capital this weekend for two huge days of music.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Broccoli City Fest at Audi Field (Part 1)

    Broccoli City Fest returns to the nation’s capital this weekend for two huge days of music.

    Megan Thee Stallion performs at the Reading Music Festival, England, Aug. 26 2022. Hip hop takes center stage at this summer’s Essence Festival of Culture as the event commemorates the 50th anniversary of the genre with performances by Lauryn Hill, Megan Thee Stallion and Jermaine Dupri. The four-day festival is scheduled June 30-July 3, 2023, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Scott Garfitt, File)(Scott Garfitt/Invision/AP)

    This year marks the very first time the festival will be held at Audi Field in Southwest D.C.

    “It’s really exciting to be at this new venue,” festival co-founder Jermon Williams told WTOP. “You think of the growth over the years from when we started at The Bullpen then over to St. Elizabeth then over to RFK (Stadium) and FedEx (Field), then back to RFK the last two years. So moving over to Audi Field has really been about enhancing the fan experience. We wanted to revolutionize and redefine what it meant to experience a festival.”

    While he remains grateful to Events DC for the recent years spent on the RFK Stadium’s grounds in Northeast, Audi Field offers the festival plenty of new opportunities from both a production and amenities standpoint.

    “Audi Field is state of the art and we’re actually able to utilize the stadium and the perimeter around the stadium,” Williams said. “The Jumbotron, those big screens, being able to set up the festival so the experience is comparable to an award show where you’re seeing the interaction of the talent backstage. … Also just the facilities, providing our patrons with air-conditioned bathrooms and seating — I don’t think we’ve had a seating option in 11 years.”

    It kicks off with a pre-party on Friday at Echostage hosted by nine-time Emmy nominee Issa Rae.

    “She’s hosting and we’re super excited about that,” Williams said. “Anybody can go.”

    The official two-day music festival arrives on Saturday with three-time Grammy winner Megan Thee Stallion headlining a star-studded lineup of PartyNextDoor, Lil Yachty & The Concrete Family, Fridayy and Teezo Touchdown, all hosted by Desi Banks, Funny Marco, Bryson Tiller, Trapsoul Karaoke and introductions by Rae.

    As if that wasn’t enough, Sunday brings a second day of music headlined by four-time Grammy nominated rapper Gunna and this year’s Best New Artist Grammy winner Victoria Monét on a stacked bill with rising stars like Sexyy Red, Key Glock and many more, all hosted by Joe Kay of Soulection Radio.

    How does Broccoli City always have a knack for finding “the next big thing” of artists?

    “It starts with us just being fans of music culture in general,” Williams said of his fellow co-founders Marcus Allen and Brandon McEachern. “When you’re a fan there’s that natural desire to discover new music for me. I think also having a great team that shares in that passion, a younger great team, because now we’re able to get real-time advice and insight on new artists. Beyond your headlining acts it’s always about how you’re filling out your lineup.”

    As a result, attendance has grown along with the festival’s reputation over the past decade.

    “I would go back to the precursor to Broccoli City Fest, which was an Earth Day block party we did in L.A. called Global Cooling which had Kendrick Lamar as an opening act, we did 500 or 600 people there,” Williams said. “Fast forward to B.C. Fest, the first iteration in 2013 we ended up doing 5,000, then 2016 jumped to about 13,000, then in 2018 to about 30,000. … This year we’re looking at 25,000 each day, so 50,000 total, so we’re super excited.”

    Find more information here.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Broccoli City Fest at Audi Field (Part 2)

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  • Patton Oswalt’s journey from Va. military brat to Pixar animated rat – WTOP News

    Patton Oswalt’s journey from Va. military brat to Pixar animated rat – WTOP News

    Virginia-native comedian Patton Oswalt returns home to perform live at The Lyric in Baltimore on Friday.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Patton Oswalt at The Lyric in Baltimore (Part 1)

    Virginia-native comedian Patton Oswalt returns home to perform live at The Lyric in Baltimore, Maryland, on Friday.

    Patton Oswalt seen at KAABOO 2017 at the Del Mar Racetrack and Fairgrounds on Friday, Sept. 15, 2017, in San Diego, Calif. (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP)(Amy Harris/Invision/AP/Amy Harris)

    He admits that it’s a tricky time to craft standup material after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.

    “I’m sure I’ll be talking about it,” Oswalt told WTOP. “I don’t how I’ll talk about it yet, but you can’t not. I feel like at this point if you don’t talk about it you look like you’re insane. … I don’t have anything in my head yet, but I have until Friday to get my head together on it, so I’m sure I’ll have an angle on it by then. We’ll see.”

    Aside from the chaotic political elephant in the room, what else will Oswalt be talking about in his routine?

    “I hate to sound too general, but just life as I’m living it in a very crazed, accelerationist world, how I’m trying to stay funny and sane, which I think most people are trying to do, I just happen to be funnier because I’ve been doing this for so long,” Oswalt said.

    It’s OK if he sounds too “general” because he was named after one of the most famous American generals ever. Born the son of a U.S. Marine Corps officer in Portsmouth, Virginia, in 1969, Oswalt was named after World War II General George Patton, a year before Francis Ford Coppola’s Oscar-winning movie script for “Patton” (1970).

    “I think he was writing when I was being born, oh my goodness, I think he was writing that script — it’s all coming together!” Oswalt said. “My birth manifested the Oscar that (actor George C. Scott) turned down — think about that! ‘You beautiful bastard, I read your book!’ — and a baby is born.”

    As a military brat, Oswalt moved with his family from Ohio to California before finally settling back in Sterling, Virginia. He graduated from Broad Run High School in Ashburn in 1987 before earning a B.A. in English from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, which gave him an honorary doctorate last year.

    His early standup acts roasted legendary NBC Washington and WJLA movie critic (and my great friend) Arch Campbell.

    “I have since met him and love him,” Oswalt said. “There is a very grudging affection for him.”

    Oswalt said he remembers Campbell trashing Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” and “The Road Warrior.”

    “He gave me something to rebel against,” Oswalt said. “He was so himself that he gave me something to be like, ‘No, this guy is wrong!’ Tell him that I am happy that he was a worthy foe when you go on his podcast. I love Arch.”

    Soon, Oswalt made his way west to San Francisco, California, to take his standup career to the next level.

    “The comedy scene in the late ’80s and early ’90s on the East Coast was starting to collapse a little bit,” Oswalt said. “The boom was over and I needed to go to a city where I could live cheap and get a lot of sets to get good.”

    In the early 90s, Oswalt said he lived cheap in San Francisco, eating 75-cent burritos: “A couple of those would keep you alive, and then you would just go do sets every night, it was great.”

    Upon moving to L.A., he made his acting debut in “The Couch” episode of “Seinfeld” (1994), playing a video store clerk as George Costanza (Jason Alexander) tried to rent “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” instead of reading the book.

    “It was my first ever television acting gig and I was so nervous. [Alexander] could see how nervous I was and right before they said, ‘Action!,’ he leaned into me and said, ‘It’s not too late to be fired, Patton,’ and it made me laugh so hard that it got rid of all of my tension,” Oswalt said. “I kind of owe a big leap in my career to that guy. He was very nice and very instinctive as a fellow actor.”

    After that, Oswalt began writing for the hit sketch-comedy series “MADtv” before joining the sitcom cast of “The King of Queens” (1998-2007), playing Kevin James’ nerdy friend Spence Olchin.

    “He was really fun,” Oswalt said. “I got to do a lot of stuff with Jerry Stiller. I got to do a lot of plots where I fall in love with a mascot at an amusement park, or I date a gay guy to try to boost my confidence — I just want him to hit on me so I can turn him down, but he never hits on me, then I start pursuing him.”

    The show allowed an outlet for him to act in “edgier stories,” he said.

    “It was a very good nine years where I basically got paid to learn how to act better,” Oswalt said.

    He next narrated “The Goldbergs” (2013-2023) similar to Daniel Stern’s voiceover on “The Wonder Years.”

    “I had been doing so much narration and voiceover at that point that I just decided to make it my own voice,” Oswalt said. “They started the show focused on the kids, then they realized the parents were crazier. … Wendi McLendon-Covey and her whole overprotective Philly helicopter mom in the ’80s was truly amazing. Getting to watch that show while I narrated it was like, ‘Oh, wow, this is a nice gig. I’m not complaining about this.’”

    Still, his voice is best known as the hero of Pixar’s Oscar-winning animated film “Ratatouille” (2007), voicing the aspiring rat chef Remy, who has to please a snobby food critic voiced by Peter O’Toole (“Lawrence of Arabia”).

    “I remember I was at Pixar one day and they had just recorded Peter O’Toole,” Oswalt said. “They got his audio in and the animators were listening to it, they hadn’t animated it yet, and they were rubbing their hands together like, ‘These are the Glengarry leads of animation.’ … It’s a fantastic film right up there with ‘Up,’ saying something about life, creativity and how to live with both. It’s very entertaining but way deeper than you think it is.”

    Along the way, Oswalt has of course cranked out tons of standup comedy, from his 1996 HBO special to his third comedy album recorded at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium to air on Comedy Central.

    So far, seven of his comedy albums have been nominated for Grammys: “My Weakness is Strong” (2010), “Finest Hour” (2012), “Tragedy Plus Comedy Equals Time” (2015), “Talking for Clapping” (2017), “Annihilation” (2019), “I Love Everything” (2021) and “We All Scream” (2023). He won for “Talking for Clapping” on Netflix.

    “The one that I think is my strongest is ‘Annihilation,’” Oswalt said. “‘Talking But Clapping’ was a weird time doing that. My wife had just passed away, the whole year was very, very strange, it was a surreal time, but if you’re talking about where did I dig the deepest but still got laughs, I would say ‘Annihilation’ is the one I’m most proud of.”

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Patton Oswalt at The Lyric in Baltimore (Part 2)

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  • PBS Short Film Fest showcases best work of member stations nationwide – WTOP News

    PBS Short Film Fest showcases best work of member stations nationwide – WTOP News

    The PBS Short Film Festival kicks off on Monday and runs through July 26 on all digital platforms.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews PBS Short Film Fest (Part 1)

    Get ready for a collection of the best short films from PBS member stations all across the country.

    The PBS Short Film Fest returns July 15-26. (Courtesy PBS)

    The PBS Short Film Festival kicks off on Monday and runs through July 26 on all digital platforms.

    “We started back in 2012 as an effort to celebrate and highlight independent filmmakers and independent filmmaking,” PBS Director of Editorial and Brand Engagement Taryn Jackson told WTOP. “We at PBS have always done a great job of amplifying the voices of filmmakers, especially independent filmmakers, but we didn’t do it in a festival. … I think we were onto something because now we are in year 13.”

    This year’s overarching theme is “Story Time” with 15 films divided into four categories.

    “We wanted to take it back and just celebrate the art of short-form storytelling,” Jackson said. “It is very different than other types of storytelling to tell a complete and impactful story between eight and 12 minutes. There’s an art form to that, so we wanted to celebrate that this year.”

    The “Environment” category features the standout film “Boca Chica” by Reel South.

    “It’s talking about unrestricted access to beaches and how that’s a public right in Texas, but for the little-known, magical and untamed stretch of beach called Boca Chica that is curtailed when SpaceX takes flight,” Jackson said. “This film uncovers the mesmerizing beauty of this fragile coastline.”

    The “Family” category includes “The Ballad of Mae Rose” by Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

    “This is our first ever musical that is going to be presented in the PBS Short Film Festival,” Jackson said. “I’m so excited to see what viewers think about this film, because it’s a creative musical but it portrays a serious story in a new way. After Edwin Gray loses his first wife, he finds himself at the funeral of his child, Rose Mae, who despite suspicion, falls prey to a plague, so it’s a really interesting kind of whodunnit type of musical.”

    The “Heroes” category includes “Saving Super Man” by Illinois Public Media.

    “This is our first time presenting a ‘Heroes’ category, so I’m really excited,” Jackson said. “This is about a man living in Chicago, he’s 57 years old, he is on the Autism spectrum and his actual living quarters and his living situation is being threatened, so this story talks about how the town comes together as a community to help save where he lives. This story just really tugs at the heart strings and I think people are really going to enjoy it.”

    Finally, the “Society” category includes “Underground” by the Independent Television Service.

    “This film covers what happens a lot of times in the New York City subways,” Jackson said. “This is about a heavy topic of harassment and assault. There’s not a lot of space and everyone’s public space is invaded when you are on a subway system, so this is about how so many crimes can take place in broad daylight right in the eyes of so many people, but they don’t even notice it because everyone is so crammed into a subway train.”

    Find more information here.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews PBS Short Film Fest (Part 2)

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  • Alfonso Ribeiro joins WTOP to share excitement about hosting ‘A Capitol Fourth’ again on PBS – WTOP News

    Alfonso Ribeiro joins WTOP to share excitement about hosting ‘A Capitol Fourth’ again on PBS – WTOP News

    Alfonso Ribeiro returns for a second year hosting “A Capitol Fourth” from the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol airing nationwide on PBS at 8 p.m. Thursday.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews ‘A Capitol Fourth’ with Alfonso Ribeiro (Part 1)

    He’s known for “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and “Dancing with the Stars.”

    This Fourth of July, Alfonso Ribeiro returns for a second year to host the annual music and fireworks show “A Capitol Fourth” from the West Lawn of the U.S. Capitol that’s airing nationwide on PBS starting at 8 p.m.

    “I had to come back,” Ribeiro told WTOP. “It went fantastic (last year), I just enjoyed every minute of it and had such a blast. It was a wonderful show, the show was put together incredibly and I just enjoyed every moment. It was funny, when the show ended, there was a little after-event that we went to and the producers were like, ‘Hey, we’d love to offer you to do it again next year,’ and I said, ‘Absolutely, we’ll see you again,’ so it was a win-win.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEE-QVqIh-s

    This year’s event features hit talent like Smokey Robinson, Fantasia, Darren Criss, Sheila E., Fitz & Noelle from Fitz & The Tantrums, Chloe Flower, Sister Sledge featuring Sledgendary, Loren Allred, Shawn Johnson East and Britt Stewart.

    You’ll also see the National Symphony Orchestra, Choral Arts Society of Washington, Ministers of Music, U.S. Army Band, U.S. Army Herald Trumpets, U.S. Army Presidential Salute Battery and Military District of Washington.

    “We’ve got a full show,” Ribeiro said. “We’ve got the greatest fireworks in all of the land, so it’s going to be an incredible evening. … We’re going to kick the show off with me singing and doing a little dancing with Britt Stewart from ‘Dancing with the Stars,’ so we’re gonna kick it off, we’re gonna have some fun (and) have such a great night.”

    You’ll notice that neither Tom Jones nor The Sugarhill Gang are on the lineup, so don’t expect Ribeiro to bust out “The Carlton Dance” or the “Jump On It” dance from his iconic TV sitcom “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” (1990-1996).

    “There is a likelihood that you will not see either; I try to not do those whenever possible,” Ribeiro said.

    “I was fans and friends (of DJ Jazzy Jeff and Will Smith), we had hung out before ever doing the show. … We actually went to Disneyland together, a group of us, and I met them when they were performing at an Endless Summer Jam here in Los Angeles and became friends with them. I was a big fan of their music, so it was cool getting to work with them.”

    Since 2015, he has hosted the good, clean, family fun of ABC’s “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”

    “I love the fact that I get to do that show,” Robeiro said.

    “I truly, truly enjoy it. I’m honored that I got to follow in the footsteps of Tom Bergeron and Bob Saget. … It’s making people from all ages have a great time and laugh and enjoy themselves on a Sunday night before getting ready to start a busy week, being able to sit down and enjoy something together. Family entertainment doesn’t really exist much anymore — we’re one of the last.”

    Ribeiro also currently hosts ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” after winning Season 19 as a contestant.

    “I’m creating my own new path from being a contestant on the show to being a co-host to now being one of the hosts with Julianne Hough,” Robeiro said.

    “It’s a great show, I love the show, I wanted to be on the show from the very beginning. It took them 19 seasons to let me on, I don’t know what that was, it took forever, but I finally got on and was lucky enough to win. … I can’t wait to find out who we’ve got this year, I’m sure it’ll be a great group.”

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews ‘A Capitol Fourth’ with Alfonso Ribeiro (Part 2)

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  • Smithsonian Folklife Festival returns to DC with lacrosse, skateboarding and dancing – WTOP News

    Smithsonian Folklife Festival returns to DC with lacrosse, skateboarding and dancing – WTOP News

    The Smithsonian Folklife Festival has been an annual tradition in the nation’s capital since the late 1960s. This year, it will be held at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the museum, from June 26 to July 1.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (Part 1)

    The Smithsonian Folklife Festival has been an annual tradition in the nation’s capital since the late 1960s.

    A demonstration from a past year of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. (Courtesy Pruitt Allen)

    This year, it will be held at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian from June 26 to July 1.

    “The Folklife Festival started in 1967, it was meant to be a two-day event, one and done, and we’ve been here ever since,” Festival Director Sabrina Lynn Motley told WTOP. “It’s gone through changes, it’s been bigger and smaller, but each festival has really been grounded in that person-to-person exchange, that celebration of creativity and culture. … This year we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the National Museum of the American Indian.”

    The name “folklife” is not easily defined because it spans a wide range of traditions.

    “‘Folklife’ means a lot of things to a lot of different people,” Motley said. “For us, ‘folklife’ is really about the ways in which people live, eat, dance, make stories and share stories. It really is about the everyday, the ceremonial, the symbolic, the things that fuel life both in terms of being an individual and in terms of community. Folklore and folklife looks at our past, it’s grounded very much in our present, and it really signals hope for future generations.”

    Folks who attend can enjoy free live music and dance performances.

    “We have all kinds of music, everything from hip-hop to more traditional sounds,” Motley said. “We have bird singers of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians from my home state of California, we have the Git Hoan Dancers coming to us from Alaska, we have Sons of Membertou coming to us from Canada, we have a beautiful singer-songwriter Nadia Larcher from Argentina and she’s representing indigenous communities there.”

    You can also attend mouth-watering cooking demonstrations from native chefs.

    “We have great chefs,” Motley said. “Many people know Sean Sherman, an award-winning chef and author of ‘The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen.’ … We have Elena Terry (who) focuses on the healing power of seed to table (and) was recently featured on ‘Top Chef.’ … We’ve got Cherokee chef Nico Albert Williams, and I’ve got to mention Bricia (Lopez), her family owns a restaurant called Guelaguetza, a James Beard Award-winning restaurant.”

    After you grab a bite to eat, you can exercise with hands-on workshops.

    “We have activities for families and for children,” Motley said. “We’re celebrating lacrosse and the origin stories of lacrosse. It is one of the oldest sports in North America and it’s growing like mad today as a lot of young people are interested. … You can come and play and learn how lacrosse is played in the Americas. … We’re welcoming Imilla Skate from Bolivia, a group of Quechua-speaking women who use skateboarding as a form of empowerment.”

    Finally, you can engage your brain with insightful discussion sessions.

    “The festival every year has what we call our ‘Narrative Stages’ for knowledge keepers and the next generation of artists to come together and have exchanges about issues that are of importance to communities,” Motley said. “Those sessions will be going on throughout the festival, touching on everything from … indigenous women who have been missing and murdered, then things that are much more celebratory. It really is a wide range of topics.”

    Find more information here.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (Part 2)

     

    Listen to our full conversation here.

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  • Home Rule Music Festival returns, celebrating double cause of DC statehood and local music – WTOP News

    Home Rule Music Festival returns, celebrating double cause of DC statehood and local music – WTOP News

    The third annual Home Rule Music Festival returns to D.C. this weekend, its title a double meaning for homegrown music and the lack of D.C. statehood.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews the Home Rule Music Festival (Part 1)

    Get ready to dance with some jazz and go-go tunes for the perfect kickoff to summer.

    A band performs at the Home Rule Music Festival in D.C. (Courtesy Home Rule Music Festival)

    The third annual Home Rule Music Festival returns to D.C. this weekend, its title a double meaning for homegrown music and the lack of D.C. statehood (“taxation without representation”).

    “It’s really us celebrating D.C.’s rich musical legacy and culture,” Executive Director Charvis Campbell told WTOP. “It’s also about us letting folks know: don’t forget that we don’t have the support that we need and deserve. It’s a little bit of both, that kind of militant side, but also truly an expression of our love of jazz and D.C. music.”

    The three-day festival kicks off Friday at The Black Cat on 14th Street, Northwest.

    “Opening night we have the amazing JoGo Project led by Elijah Jamal Balbed, a funky jazz go-go band,” Campbell said. “Then we have our headliner, the spiritual jazz artist Doug Carn, featuring Vanessa Rubin. Doug Carn is bringing his sextet and the amazing Vanessa Rubin is going to lend her voice for a beautiful, spiritual evening.”

    The second day of the festival moves outdoors to The Parks at Walter Reed on Saturday.

    “On Saturday, at our festival outdoors, we have Gary Bartz, we have Idris Ackamoor and The Pyramids, we have Rare Essence, Black Alley, Malcom X Drummers and Dancers, Dupont Brass and then Vanessa Rubin is going to come on back and perform with her own band. We also have a record fair, a live mural painting and a kid zone, which is going to be anchored by the Washington Nationals and Washington Commanders, they’re gonna be out there.”

    After that, you can recharge your batteries with a monthlong break before the festival gloriously returns for day three on Saturday, July 20, in Alethia Tanner Park in the Eckington neighborhood of Northeast, D.C.

    “We’re really excited about this partnership with NoMa BID,” Campbell said. “We’re going to start with the Loop Sessions, our music producer workshop, we’re gonna have young men and women who love to make beats, they’re gonna do a display. Then we have a high school go-go band, The Soul of SEED from The SEED School in Southeast. … We then have Be’la Dona, the all-female band, then The Experience Band & Show, so it’s really a true celebration.”

    Tickets for opening night at The Black Cat are $40 in advance or $50 at the door.

    The two outdoor dates are free.

    Find more information here.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews the Home Rule Music Festival (Part 2)

    Listen to our full conversation here.

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    © 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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  • Godfather of Go-Go’s son leads Chuck Brown Band at Maryland concert to ring in Father’s Day, Juneteenth – WTOP News

    Godfather of Go-Go’s son leads Chuck Brown Band at Maryland concert to ring in Father’s Day, Juneteenth – WTOP News

    This Saturday, the Chuck Brown Band headlines a special concert at Watkins Regional Park in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, from 12 to 5 p.m. on lineup that includes Trouble Funk, the Luther Relives Tribute and the Brencore All Stars, along with an array of art exhibits, food trucks and activities.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Chuck Brown Band at Watkins Regional Park (Part 1)

    It’s time to “bust loose” and ring in both Father’s Day and Juneteenth with some go-go music!

    Wiley Brown performs with the Chuck Brown Band. (VSDavis)

    This Saturday, the Chuck Brown Band headlines a special concert at Watkins Regional Park in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. on a lineup that includes Trouble Funk, the Luther Relives Tribute and the Brencore All Stars, along with an array of art exhibits, food trucks and activities.

    WTOP caught up with Wiley Brown, who took over as lead singer for his late father, “The Godfather of Go-Go.”

    “We’re definitely looking forward to having a good old time outside in the sun and getting our party on for sure,” Brown told WTOP. “This will be my first time performing at Watkins Park with the band. I know my father probably did it years ago plenty of times, but this will be my first time. … We’re definitely looking forward to bringing the people some good summertime vibes. … There’s no better way than with the Chuck Brown Band!”

    Born in North Carolina in 1936, Chuck Brown moved to D.C. at age six. By age 15, he was living in the streets before spending time in prison for a deadly beating incident that he always claimed to be self-defense. After paying his debt to society, Brown would go on to pioneer go-go music to create the city’s signature sound.

    “He was always singing with my grandmother in the church since he was 7,” Brown said. “The pivotal moment for him was when he was 24, during the time he was incarcerated, he learned how to play the guitar. Once he got out, there was no looking back. He began performing in people’s backyards, then he was able to perform in clubs. … After being with the Earls of Rhythm and Los Latinos, he had the insight and the drive to create his own band.”

    That band was, of course, The Soul Searchers, whose first album “We the People” (1972) had a hit title track. They followed up with the successful second album “Salt of the Earth” (1974) with hits like “Blow Your Whistle” and “Ashley’s Roachclip,” which has been sampled by Eric B. & Rakim, Slick Rick, Run-DMC, Milli Vanilli and EMF.

    Still, it was their third album “Bustin’ Loose” (1979) that became iconic with its catchy title track that topped the R&B charts for over a dozen weeks and has since been sampled by the likes of Nelly in “Hot in Herre.”

    “When he put it out, he knew that he had something, but he didn’t know that it would take off the way it did; it took off all over the world,” Brown said. “To this day, we have people in Japan still contacting my manager and family letting us know how much they love the music. When ‘Bustin’ Loose’ hit, that really set the tone for go-go music and plenty of bands ended up popping up all over the city following my father’s foundation that he laid.”

    In 1984, they dropped another hit “We Need Some Money,” sampled by Kid ‘n Play and Wreckx-n-Effect.

    “He wrote it in less than 10 minutes because he needed some money; it’s the fastest song he ever wrote,” Brown said. “A lot of music artists have these moments when you’re feeling something, you’ve gotta hurry up and get it out because there’s nothing like capturing something in the moment. … There’s a chant when we perform it where he said, ‘Masterclass, Visa, American Express, I ain’t got nothin’ against no credit cards, but the cash is the best.’”

    Shortly after, Wiley was born in 1989, admitting it was unique growing up watching strangers praise his dad.

    “It took me until about 6 years old to understand what type of impact my father had,” Brown said. “We’d get stopped at a red light, people yelling out the car: ‘Hey, Chuck!’ … He’d get out of the car and the next thing you know, there’s a whole mob of people, honking horns. … He remembered a point in time that the only people wanting to take a picture of him were the police and he said, ‘Now the police want to take a picture with me!’”

    While he began rapping at his father’s concerts at a young age, Wiley’s dream was to become a professional football player, proving to be a standout at Thomas Stone High School in Waldorf, Maryland, before playing at Duquesne and Virginia Tech.

    While Wiley was balling out on the gridiron, his father was delivering late-in-life hits like “Block Party” (featuring DJ Kool) in 2007 and “LOVE” (featuring Jill Scott and Marcus Miller) in 2010.

    After Chuck Brown sadly died in 2012, Wiley joined the Chuck Brown Band full-time in 2016.

    “Being in the band started with Chuck Brown Mondays when I might come in and do a song or two, but then my dad came to me one day in a dream saying, ‘What you gonna do, son? If you gonna do something, don’t play around with it, go full force,’” Brown said. “It’s funny for some (bandmates) who have seen me grow up over the years like, ‘Man, I remember when you were a little shorty, a little guy coming to band rehearsals and look at you now!’”

    Today, his father’s name still graces signs reading “Chuck Brown Way” along 7th Street between T Street and Florida Avenue in Northwest D.C. If you live in that general area, head just over the D.C.-Maryland border to Prince George’s County to enjoy this weekend’s concert at Watkins Regional Park.

    Just as his father’s fans chanted, “Wind me up, Chuck,” today’s fans have a similar request:

    Wind us up, Wiley!

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Chuck Brown Band at Watkins Regional Park (Part 2)

    Listen to our full conversation on the podcast below:

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    © 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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  • X Ambassadors ready to rock 9:30 Club like ‘Renegades,’ leaving DC a little ‘Unsteady’ – WTOP News

    X Ambassadors ready to rock 9:30 Club like ‘Renegades,’ leaving DC a little ‘Unsteady’ – WTOP News

    The alt-rock band X Ambassadors rocks the 9:30 Club in D.C. on Tuesday, June 4. WTOP caught up with lead singer and co-founder Sam Harris to get hyped.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews X Ambassadors at 9:30 Club (Part 1)

    The alt-rock band X Ambassadors rocks the 9:30 Club in D.C. on Tuesday, June 4. WTOP caught up with lead singer and co-founder Sam Harris to get hyped.

    FILE – Adam Levin, from left, Sam Harris, and Casey Harris, of X Ambassadors, appear at the American Music Awards in Los Angeles on Nov. 24, 2019. The band’s latest album “The Beautiful Liar,” released Friday. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

    “We’ve played the 9:30 Club so many times, I’ve eaten so many of those delicious cupcakes, I can’t wait to come back and have some more,” Harris told WTOP. “We’re definitely sprinkling the songs in, but we’re playing a healthy amount of new stuff in the show. I’d say we’re probably doing about seven new songs every night, but the set is like almost two hours every night, so it’s got a healthy amount of the old favorites in there.”

    Born in Seattle, Washington, in 1988, he mostly grew up in Ithaca, New York, where he fell in love with music alongside his brother, Casey Harris, who learned to play the keyboard despite being born blind.

    “Casey started playing piano when he was 7,” Sam Harris said. “Around the same time, I started playing saxophone, but I was mostly just playing it in school. I wasn’t taking it as seriously as Casey’s piano lessons. I started singing as a kid, our mom was a singer, she was a jazz cabaret lounge singer for many years, so when we were little we used to sing a lot in the house. Every once in a while, she’d bring us on stage for one of her shows as a cute little gimmick.”

    The brothers formed their first band in high school before moving to Brooklyn. Casey worked as a piano tuner on the Upper West Side, while Sam met drummer Adam Levin at The New School to form X Ambassadors.

    “We had a gig coming up and we didn’t have a name,” Sam Harris said. “We were in our rehearsal space … looking at objects: Can we name our band Carpet? Can we name our band Light Bulb? Adam uses Coated Ambassador drum heads on his drum kit and said, ‘What about Ambassadors?’”

    He said he then started using Photoshop and adding letters and words to “Ambassadors,” and randomly typed X Ambassadors and it stuck.

    After signing with Interscope Records in 2013, the band’s first full-length album, “VHS,” (2015) went platinum with the hit song “Unsteady,” which was featured on the soundtrack of the romantic movie “Me Before You” that came out the next year.

    “‘Unsteady’ at first was a hook,” Sam Harris said. “I had heard that Zedd was looking for new songs for his record and I was like, ‘Maybe I can write an EDM song,’ so I sat down and wrote this hook and it felt really, really special and I was like, ‘I think maybe I’ll keep this in my back pocket for now.’”

    The album also had “Renegades,” which has since combined with “Unsteady” for 1.3 billion streams on Spotify.

    “I kind of got tricked into writing ‘Renegades’,” Sam Harris said, referring to the fact his producer asked him to write a song called Renegades and that he mentioned an opportunity for a commercial with Jeep.

    “I was like, ‘I wonder what car they’re trying to promote,’ so I go online and it’s a Jeep Renegade! It was the funniest thing: I wrote this very heartfelt song and it was a jingle for a car company,” Sam Harris said.

    The band’s second album, “ORION,” (2019) included music videos for “Hold You Down,” which showed footage of the brothers as kids, and “Boom,” which flashed the song title in Braille.

    “The way that we operate, with my brother being visually impaired, I always felt like that set us apart. We just operate differently as a band, we’re much closer and more tight-knit,” Sam Harris said. “My brother’s been blind his whole life and it’s something we both grew up with — obviously in different ways. I grew up with such an acute emotional baggage of: there is something that I have that is so fundamental for most of us that my brother doesn’t and it forces him to navigate the world in a completely different way and I should never take this thing I have for granted.”

    Their third album, “The Beautiful Liar,” (2021) was a concept album inspired by the radio dramas that the brothers listened to growing up as kids to create “theater of the mind” for Casey.

    “My brother has had such a huge impact on my life, and I can safely say, mine on his too. We really are so inseparable at this point, for better or worse,” Sam Harris said. “I think that’s the case with a lot of siblings, one of whom has a disability. That’s part of the beauty and the source of tension in our relationship and in our life, but I think it’s really made this musical journey and this band what it is. It’s our dynamic.”

    Their newest album is called “Townie,” which just dropped in April, hence this “Townie” Tour.

    “We’re playing songs like ‘No Strings,’ ‘Smoke on the Highway,’ ‘Sunoco,’ ‘Half-Life’ and ‘Follow the Sound of My Voice,’ songs that really paint a picture of what the album feels like,” Sam Harris said. “It’s been really awesome to get the reaction from the fans and see how these songs are resonating with people in a really tangible way, not just numbers on a screen or comments.”

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews X Ambassadors at 9:30 Club (Part 2)

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  • Kennedy Center hosts free outdoor films at REACH – WTOP News

    Kennedy Center hosts free outdoor films at REACH – WTOP News

    Starting this Friday, the Kennedy Center hosts free outdoor film screenings on the REACH Video Wall with movies starting at sundown or around 8:30 p.m.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews outdoor films at Kennedy Center’s REACH (Part 1)

    The D.C. area hosts plenty of outdoor movie series, but very few take place on such hallowed grounds.

    Patrons watch “Show Boat” on the giant video wall at the REACH outside the Kennedy Center. (Jati Lindsay)

    Starting this Friday, the Kennedy Center hosts free outdoor film screenings on the REACH Video Wall with movies starting at sundown or around 8:30 p.m.

    The series kicks off this Friday, May 31, with “Jurassic Park” (1993), a summer blockbuster 65 million years in the making. Directed by Steven Spielberg, the stunning dinosaur flick marked the transition between stop-motion puppetry into a new era of computer graphics, joining “King Kong” (1933) as arguably the two most important creature features ever made.

    It continues next Friday, June 7, with “Dreamgirls” (2006), which famously transformed Jennifer Hudson from “American Idol” contestant to an Academy Award-winning actress belting powerful musical numbers alongside Beyoncé, Jamie Foxx, Anika Noni Rose, Danny Glover and Eddie Murphy. The film joined “Moulin Rouge!” (2001) and “Chicago” (2002) in revitalizing the Hollywood musical for the 21st century.

    Friday, June 14, brings “10,000 Dreams: A Festival of Asian Choreography,” featuring a series of short films, narrative features and dance documentaries that were directed, choreographed or starring Asian creatives.

    Parents should circle their calendars for a pair of family-friendly animated gems as Friday, June 21, brings Pixar’s “Elemental” (2023), which is, in my opinion, one of the most underrated movies from last year, while Friday, June 28, brings “Ratatouille” (2007), which deservedly won the Oscar for Best Animated Film.

    Friday, July 5, brings the big-screen adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway musical breakthrough “In the Heights” (2021), which was one of the biggest summer blockbusters of the year but sadly got overshadowed by Steven Spielberg’s remake of “West Side Story” (2021) during that award season.

    I was very pleasantly surprised to see the indie darling “The Peanut Butter Falcon” (2019) on the lineup for Friday, July 12, as it’s one of the most adorable, inspiring independent films of the last five years starring Zach Gottsagen as a man with Down syndrome dreaming of becoming a professional wrestler.

    Friday, July 19, brings “A River Runs Through It” (1992), a wonderful adaptation of Norman Laclean’s 1976 coming-of-age novella about two brothers (Brad Pitt and Craig Sheffer) growing up fly fishing in rural Montana. The film cemented Robert Redford’s directorial prowess in between his Best Picture debut “Ordinary People” (1980) and his ultimate masterpiece “Quiz Show” (1994).

    Friday, July 26, brings Richard Linklater’s “School of Rock” (2003), which remains Jack Black’s greatest performance as a bum who becomes a private-school music teacher, turning his pupils into a classic-rock band. I promise you’ll head home singing AC/DC’s “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n Roll).”

    Friday, Aug. 2, brings “Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax” (2012) with a voice cast featuring Zac Efron, Taylor Swift, Betty White and Danny DeVito, who voices the title role. Say it with me, folks: “I speak for the trees!”

    Friday, Aug. 9, brings one of my all-time favorite films in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” (1954), arguably the greatest mystery-suspense film ever made. The prolific Jimmy Stewart plays a wheelchair-bound photographer who thinks he witnesses a neighbor’s murder out the rear window of his Greenwich Village apartment, only to realize that he already has everything he ever wanted next to him in Grace Kelly.

    Friday, Aug. 16, brings National Geographic’s Oscar-winning rock climbing documentary “Free Solo” (2018), chronicling Alex Honnald’s death-defying climb up El Capitan in Yosemite National Park without a rope.

    The penultimate screening is Friday, Aug. 23, with Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” (2012), which earned Daniel Day-Lewis his third Academy Award for Best Actor for his uncanny portrayal of Abraham Lincoln urging Congress to pass the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery during the Civil War. The quiet film remains one of Spielberg’s most underrated, so lean in and listen close as the film has plenty of Euclid lessons left to teach.

    Finally, the free summer series wraps on Friday, Aug. 30, with the sweet romance of “Chocolat” (2000), starring Juliette Binoche as a single mother who opens a small chocolaterie in a fictional French village while falling in love with Johnny Depp’s self-proclaimed “river rat.” The film earned five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actress for Binoche and Best Supporting Actress for Judi Dench.

    Find more info on the REACH film series here.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews outdoor films at Kennedy Center’s REACH (Part 2)

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    © 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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  • From ‘Barbie’ to ‘Little Mermaid,’ Capitol Riverfront hosts third annual ‘Movies on the Pitch’ at Audi Field – WTOP News

    From ‘Barbie’ to ‘Little Mermaid,’ Capitol Riverfront hosts third annual ‘Movies on the Pitch’ at Audi Field – WTOP News

    Audi Field will transform into an outdoor cinema with five showings of current blockbuster films on the stadium’s jumbotron screen — with the lineup chosen via a fan poll.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews ‘Movies on the Pitch’ at Audi Field (Part 1)

    When you hear cheers erupting at Audi Field, it’s usually soccer fans cheering for D.C. United.

    Fans enjoy “Movies on the Pitch” at Audi Field in D.C. in 2023. (Hannah Wagner/DC United)

    This summer, the sound will be coming from movie fans cheering during their favorite blockbusters.

    The Capitol Riverfront Business Improvement District presents the third annual “Movies on the Pitch” on Thursday evenings at the stadium in Southwest D.C.

    “Our vision for Audi Field has always been for it to become a gathering place for the community, whether that’s supporting D.C. United, or attending other sporting and entertainment events,” D.C. United President of Business Operations Danita Johnson said.

    “We’re excited to continue our partnership with the Capitol Riverfront BID to bring outdoor movies to Audi Field, showcasing yet another amazing reason for people to consider living in or visiting our vibrant neighborhood.”

    The movie series will once again transform Audi Field into an outdoor cinema with five showings of current blockbuster films on the stadium’s jumbotron screen — with the lineup chosen by a recent fan poll.

    “The Capitol Riverfront BID is thrilled to host a third year of free outdoor movies for residents and visitors throughout the local region to experience,” Capitol Riverfront BID President Emeka Moneme said. “The community has voted on a chart-topping lineup that will offer summer evenings for all ages to gather at a dynamic venue in Buzzard Point.”

    Here are the family-friendly selections as voted on by the public:

    • May 30 — “The Little Mermaid” (2023)
    • June 6 — “Barbie” (2023)
    • June 20 — “Mean Girls” (2024)
    • June 27 — “The Marvels” (2023)
    • July 18 — “Wonka” (2023)

    Gates open at 6:30 p.m. with the screenings starting at 7:30 p.m.

    Audi Field will have concessions available for purchase.

    No outside food or alcohol is permitted.

    Find more information here.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews ‘Movies on the Pitch’ at Audi Field (Part 2)

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    © 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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  • Uncle Kracker joins WTOP ahead of Kenny Chesney’s ‘Sun Goes Down’ Tour at Commanders Field in Md. – WTOP News

    Uncle Kracker joins WTOP ahead of Kenny Chesney’s ‘Sun Goes Down’ Tour at Commanders Field in Md. – WTOP News

    Uncle Kracker brings the ‘Sun Goes Down’ Tour to Landover, Maryland, alongside the Zac Brown Band and Megan Maroney for a day of tailgating fun and music.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Uncle Kracker at Commanders Field (Part 1)

    In 2004, Uncle Kracker collaborated with Kenny Chesney on the tropical country hit “When the Sun Goes Down.”

    Country star Kenny Chesney, left, is joined by rocker Uncle Kracker as they perform “When the Sun Goes Down” at the 39th annual Academy of Country Music Awards at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Wednesday, May 26, 2004. (AP Photo/Joe Cavaretta)(ASSOCIATED PRESS/JOE CAVARETTA)

    This Saturday, they celebrate the song’s 20th anniversary with the “Sun Goes Down” Tour at Commanders Field in Landover, Maryland, alongside the Zac Brown Band and Megan Maroney for a day of tailgating fun and music.

    “Absolutely nothing like it,” Kracker told WTOP. “Aside from him being one of the greatest entertainers I’ve ever seen, I can’t put my thumb on it. Aside from him being awesome, he’s just a ball of energy. I don’t know anybody who can run around for two straight hours like he can, but it’s just nonstop from probably 9 a.m. These people are out in the parking lot drinking until the show is done. It’s insane. … Everybody’s working for the weekend.”

    Born in Michigan in 1974, Kracker grew up listening to B.J. Thomas and James Taylor. He broke into the music business when his older brother squared off against Kid Rock in a DJ battle in the Detroit area.

    “There was a bar outside of Detroit that turned into a teen club on Sunday nights,” Kracker said.

    “The Electrifying Mojo used to be a disc jockey on WJLB in Detroit, he used to hold these DJ battles on Sundays and they were a big thing. My brother went up against Kid Rock in one of these battle competitions. Kid Rock showed up, he didn’t even bring his turntables, he paid my brother $100 to use his turntables then smoked him on his own tables.”

    From there, he joined Kid Rock’s backing band Twisted Brown Trucker alongside the late Joe C. and others. Kracker was featured on Kid Rock’s debut album “Early Mornin’ Stoned Pimp” (1996) and his smash sophomore album “Devil without a Cause” (1998), featuring the hits “Bawitdaba,” “Cowboy” and “Only God Knows Why.”

    “Man, we had a lot of fun, that’s for sure,” Kracker said. “I wrote a lot of them with him and a lot of the backup vocals are me on there. I DJ’d live, but Kid Rock did all of the scratching and stuff on the albums himself because he’s better than I am, but definitely fun, it was definitely a time to be alive, that’s for sure.”

    Their next album, “The History of Rock” (2000), featured “American Badass,” which was not only used by the WWF’s Undertaker but also declared the group’s genre-defying intentions: “I like AC-DC and ZZ Top, Bocephus, Beasties and the Kings of Rock, Skynyrd, Seger, Limp, Korn, the Stones, David Allen Coe and No Show Jones.”

    “I remember the record label hating us for [crossing genres],” Kracker said. “We turned in ‘Only God Knows Why,’ and I talked to the A&R guy like, ‘Did you listen to ‘Only God Knows Why?’ and he’s like, ‘That country song? What the f**k are we gonna do with that?’ Back then, it was so different, too. We were all so young and we loved music so much. It was the camaraderie that was special. You’d write something like, ‘Listen to this!’ It was a competition.”

    While Kid Rock was busy recording “Cocky” (2001) with the Sheryl Crow duet “Picture,” Kracker finally got a chance to release his first solo album “Double Wide” (2000), smashing the pop charts with the single “Follow Me.”

    “I wrote that thing in my bedroom one night,” Kracker said. “[Kid Rock] just started straying from the rap stuff at one point and I was like, ‘Man, I can do that, let’s try that,’ so I hummed this ‘Follow Me’ thing and he was like, ‘Man, that sounds like some really dark James Taylor sh*t.’ The melody and lyrics were much cooler than the version that got put out [on the radio]. It was all finger snaps and melody, mainly to pay homage to the old Motown stuff.”

    Kracker again went retro on his second solo album “No Stranger to Shame” (2002), featuring a hit cover of the golden oldie “Drift Away,” even inviting original singer Dobie Gray to appear on the song and music video.

    “When ‘Follow Me’ started taking off, I would have to go to these radio stations in the morning and do like an acoustic thing,” Kracker said.

    “They’d want like three songs acoustic in the middle of the morning show interview, but I didn’t have anything else on the record that sounded like ‘Follow Me,’ so Kid Rock suggested I do ‘Drift Away’ acoustically for all these promo things — and that’s how I ended up cutting ‘Drift Away’ for the second album.”

    His third solo album “Happy Hour” (2009) delivered another hit single with “Smile,” but by then Kracker was already touring with Chesney after their successful country music duet “When the Sun Goes Down” (2004).

    “Kenny had reached out to me,” Kracker said. “He calls Kid Rock and says, ‘Do you think Uncle Kracker would come out and do a couple with me for an encore scenario?’ Of course, Kid Rock’s like, ‘I dunno, call him yourself,’ so I get this call like, ‘Hey this is Kenny Chesney,’ and I’m like, ‘Who?’ I had no clue who he was! … It’s been 20 years since ‘Sun Goes Down’ for us. It’s crazy to think that much time has passed and I’m still doing this.”

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Uncle Kracker at Commanders Field (Part 2)

    Hear our full conversation on the podcast below:

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    © 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

    Jason Fraley

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  • Lewis Black comes home to DC’s Kennedy Center for ‘Goodbye Yeller Brick Road, The Final Tour’ – WTOP News

    Lewis Black comes home to DC’s Kennedy Center for ‘Goodbye Yeller Brick Road, The Final Tour’ – WTOP News

    “I’m not going to retire from shooting my mouth off.” This Friday, D.C. native Lewis Black comes home for his “Goodbye Yeller Brick Road, The Final Tour,” which he insists isn’t his retirement but rather his last national tour.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Lewis Black at the Kennedy Center (Part 1)

    He grew up in the D.C. area before finding fame on “The Daily Show” and Pixar’s “Inside Out.”

    Lewis Black returns to the Kennedy Center on Friday, May 3. (Courtesy Kennedy Center)

    This Friday, Lewis Black comes home to the Kennedy Center for his “Goodbye Yeller Brick Road, The Final Tour,” which he insists isn’t his retirement but rather his last national tour.

    “I’m not ‘retiring retiring’ … I’m just not going to do 120 to 150 shows a year, I’m not going to be wandering around the country the way I did before,” Black told WTOP. “I will occasionally do a show, I might do a ‘Rant Cast’ that I do live, I might open for someone. … I want to write a little, I want to write either a book or a play and just have a life. … I’ll still be on ‘The Daily Show,’ that’s rolling along. I’m not going to retire from shooting my mouth off.”

    Like “The Daily Show,” there’s no shortage of pressing political topics to rant about on stage.

    “How do you satirize what’s already satiric?” Black said. “My work is done, the newspaper is reading like [fiction]. … Banning books is beyond belief. They want to take these kids’ books out of the library — where’s the best place to hide a book from a kid? You put it in a library! Then you’ve got the people who are banning the books, a group called Moms For Liberty. How am I supposed to make that funnier? That’s like out of [Kurt] Vonnegut!”

    Born in D.C. in 1948, Black graduated from Springbrook High School in Silver Spring, Maryland. After a year at the University of Maryland in College Park, he transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to study playwriting, followed by his Master of Fine Arts at the School of Drama at Yale University in 1977.

    “I worked for what essentially became the Round House Theatre, I was their playwright in residence for a year, they’re out in Bethesda now,” Black said. “I really spent time in New York, I ran a space out with some friends and we did one-act plays below a restaurant, we had a bar and a stage downstairs with essentially 100 seats and we’d do shows, we’d do two one-acts a week. It was as much fun and as fulfilling as it is being a standup.”

    After dabbling in standup at the West Bank Cafe in New York City, he shifted to comedy full time around age 40.

    “I was always kind of doing standup for fun because it interested me,” Black said. “It was a way I could write something and get it out there, because otherwise you send it to a theater and you could wait two years to get an answer. I was fascinated by it. … I got more relaxed on stage, I finally found the persona that I wanted on stage and people seemed to enjoy it and there was more of a response to my comedy than there was to my playwriting.”

    He’s best known for his “Back in Black” segments on “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central.

    “Being on ‘The Daily Show’ was like having an advertisement for yourself each week,” Black said. “I’d do the ‘Daily Show’ then get on a plane, fly across the country to a comedy club and they’d just seen me the night before on television. … It was huge. Comedy Central ended up putting me and Dave Attell as the face of Comedy Central and it really established both Dave and I, got us out there, got us names and we ended up touring together.”

    Now, another generation knows him solely as the voice of Anger in Pixar’s Oscar-winning animated gem “Inside Out” (2015). He’ll soon return for the sequel “Inside Out 2” alongside Amy Poehler on June 14.

    “The visuals are extraordinary because it’s Pixar; they just get better and better,” Black said. “The script itself, they’ve added characters that are phenomenal, the new Envy and Anxiety are exceptional as the new emotions, then you’ve got the oldies and goodies. … It’s another step forward in terms of helping kids understand what emotions are. When I was a kid I had no clue! Nobody cared about your emotions; ‘just sit on them and shut up!’”

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Lewis Black at the Kennedy Center (Part 2)

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  • Stage and screen legend Nathan Lane to receive Signature Theatre’s Sondheim Award at The Anthem – WTOP News

    Stage and screen legend Nathan Lane to receive Signature Theatre’s Sondheim Award at The Anthem – WTOP News

    The prolific Nathan Lane will receive Signature Theatre’s Sondheim Award at The Anthem on Monday, April 29.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Nathan Lane’s Sondheim Award at The Anthem (Part 1)

    He’s dazzled us on stage and screen from “The Lion King” to “The Birdcage” to “The Producers.”

    Nathan Lane will receive Signature Theatre’s Sondheim Award at The Anthem on May 29. (Courtesy Signature Theatre)

    The prolific Nathan Lane will receive Signature Theatre’s Sondheim Award at The Anthem on Monday, April 29.

    “You start to feel really old, you start to think this was the kind of thing they gave Angela Lansbury,” Lane told WTOP. “[Stephen Sondheim] was a hero to me and I was very lucky over the years to work with him many, many times, so it has a real significance on a personal level too, just to be getting this. Somewhere Steve is laughing, but yeah, it’s a lovely honor and I’m happy to be coming to Washington.”

    Lane won his first Tony Award for the 1996 revival of Sondheim’s “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” They teamed up again on Sondheim’s 2004 adaptation of “The Frogs,” in which Lane starred and revised the book.

    “He was drawn to really interesting and surprising subjects,” Lane said. “He’s sort of known for being brainy, an intellectual and sophisticated, but I think he writes about what people are going through: the longing and the loneliness. He writes about the human condition. … His musicianship, his lyric writing was extraordinary and has made him the person who has truly changed the face of musical theater.”

    Lane will enjoy tributes from past co-stars, including Faith Prince, who won a Tony across Lane in the Broadway revival of “Guys & Dolls” (1992); Krysta Rodriguez, who starred with Lane in Broadway’s “The Addams Family” (2010); James Caverly, who played his son in Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building,” which won Lane an Emmy; and Susan Stroman, who directed Lane to his second Tony win for Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” (2001) on Broadway.

    “‘The Producers’ was just that once in a lifetime phenomenon,” Lane said. “It was a zeitgeist hit. For some reason that’s what the audience really wanted. It was a throwback to old-fashioned musical comedy with an emphasis on comedy. … Whenever we did it, people just went crazy.”

    This year also marks the 30th anniversary of “The Lion King” (1994), in which Lane sang “Hakuna Matata” as the meerkat Timon to Ernie Sabella’s warthog Pumbaa.

    “In May, we’re doing this Elton John and Hans Zimmer ‘Lion King’ 30th anniversary concert at the Hollywood Bowl, so Ernie and I will be singing ‘Hakuna Matata,’” he said.

    WTOP’s Jason Fraley previews Nathan Lane’s Sondheim Award at The Anthem (Part 2)

    Hear our full conversation on the podcast below:

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    © 2024 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

    Jason Fraley

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