Big MachineFor the 2020 Christmas season, Lady A‘s holiday album, On This Winter’s Night, grows to a mammoth sixteen cuts, as the band adds four new tracks for the record’s Deluxe Edition.
It was important to the “Champagne Night” hitmakers that the new additions be unique.
“Anybody that has our Christmas record, you know, there’s a lot of very familiar Christmas songs,” Charles Kelley explains. “And we wanted to find a couple that were familiar, but there hasn’t been a ton of covers of, you know.”
“And there really hasn’t been that many covers of “Little Saint Nick” [by the Beach Boys] or Paul McCartney‘s [“Wonderful Christmastime”] much at all,” he continues. “And so we thought that’d be kind of different and unique.”
Since the album came out in 2012, Charles, Hillary Scott, and Dave Haywood have all had kids.
“We wrote an original,” Dave points out. “The three of us sat down and wrote a song called ‘Christmas Through Your Eyes’ about kind of regaining the magic of seeing Christmas through the eyes of our children, which was a really fun write.”
Lady A also covers an obscure song used in Christmas Vacation.
“You remember the scene where Chevy Chase gets locked up in the attic and he’s playing the little reels?” Charles asks. “Well, there’s this Ray Charles song called “Spirit of Christmas,” and you can’t even find it anywhere.”
“But if you go on the internet, you can find like a YouTube clip of it,” he says. “But it’s such an amazing song, and Ray Charles, like, is just one of my idols. And so I said, ‘Man, I’ve always wanted to try this.'”
Longtime Lady A fans may remember On This Winter’s Night grew out of the A Merry Little Christmas EP from 2010.
Jon Kopaloff/FilmMagic(LOS ANGELES) — Denise Richards reflected on her “public divorce” from actor Charlie Sheen and revealed how it threatened her career.
Richards, 49, spoke with People on Thursday and said that, when she separated from the Two and a Half Men star, her career temporarily went up in smoke.
“It was a hard thing to navigate and I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I obviously went through a very public divorce. It was hard for me to comprehend that my public divorce affected my work,” the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum admitted.
Richards said she struggled with having her private life overshadow her career, who recalled that it was expected for actors to “keep our private life private” at the time.
“When I started out, they wanted to imagine the actor in that role. And we would do our best to keep it [that way,]” explained Richards. “I thought, ‘How come? That’s my private life. It shouldn’t affect my work.’ But it did.”
“That was a hard thing for me to go through and deal with,” the Drop Dead Gorgeous star added. “It’s not something you can really prepare someone for.”
Now, Richards says she is busier than ever, which she says is due to her “plugging away” because “I just wanted to keep doing what I loved to do.”
She currently has five projects set for a 2021 release in various stages of production, such as the television series Glow & Darkness.
Richards was married to Sheen, 55, from 2002 to 2006. They share two children together, 16-year-old Sam Sheen and 15-year-old Lola Rose.
Richards says she was six-months pregnant with Lola when she filed for divorce in 2005, around the time Sheen was struggling with a drug and alcohol relapse.
(Chapel Hill, N.C.) — Twenty-one people were arrested in a “brazen” drug ring that allegedly involved members of fraternities at several North Carolina universities, authorities announced Thursday.
The suspects, who allegedly moved thousands of pounds of marijuana, hundreds of kilograms of cocaine and other narcotics, include current and former students at the University of North Carolina, Duke University and Appalachian State University, according to Matthew Martin, U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of North Carolina.
“This is a large drug network and supply chain fueling a drug culture at fraternities and within these universities and around these universities and towns,” Martin said during a press briefing. “These are 21 hardened drug dealers.”
The federal investigation started two years ago, when the Drug Enforcement Agency uncovered alleged illegal drug distribution occurring at or near some UNC fraternity properties, authorities said.
“Court filings to date specifically allege illegal drug activity involving the UNC chapters of Phi Gamma Delta, Kappa Sigma and Beta Theta Pi occurring between 2017 and the spring of 2020,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Greensboro.
The drug ring employed “very sophisticated methods,” Martin said, including encrypted apps and electronic payment methods. The proceeds were in excess of $1.5 million.
Orange County Sheriff Charles Blackwood called the operation “brazen.”
“The amount of illegal narcotics being sold and used in this case was not only astonishing, it is also reflective of a very serious public health crisis,” he said.
Twenty defendants were charged between July and December, authorities said, with many charges carrying a mandatory minimum of five years. Seven defendants pleaded guilty to one or more charges against them and are scheduled to be sentenced next year, authorities said. The first person charged in the investigation — identified by the Department of Justice as a primary supplier — also pleaded guilty and was sentenced last month to 73 months, authorities said.
Authorities said they hope the ongoing investigation sends a message to universities and national fraternities.
“University administrators at Chapel Hill, Duke and App State can’t turn a blind eye any longer,” Martin said. “We cannot let this culture continue.”
UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Kevin M. Guskiewicz said he was “extremely disappointed” to learn of the allegations on its campus.
“The University is committed to working with law enforcement to fully understand the involvement of any university individuals or organizations so that disciplinary action can be taken,” he said in a statement. “Although none of the individuals named today are currently enrolled students, we will remain vigilant and continue to work with our law enforcement partners to identify and address any illegal drug use on our campus. Our community can be certain that the University will enforce the student conduct code to the fullest extent possible.”
Appalachian State University and Duke University also said they’re fully cooperating with the investigation.
“We are committed to providing a safe campus, and will continue our work with education and prevention, as well as utilizing student conduct and law enforcement processes, to do so,” Appalachian State University said in a statement.
Duke University spokesperson Michael Schoenfeld said the institution takes the allegations “very seriously.”
“The use and distribution of narcotics is against the law, it is against our code of conduct, and it endangers the health and safety of our students and community,” he said in a statement. “Duke will respond accordingly through our disciplinary process.”
The announcement comes on the heels of a drug ring bust at the University of Texas at Austin earlier this month, in which 13 people, including current and former students, were arrested for allegedly selling and distributing drugs.
During the federal investigation, two suspects died from drug overdoses, authorities said.
ABCEricChurch is giving fans a glimpse into life in the recording studio with his new, behind-the-scenes video for “Doing Life With Me.”
Not only can viewers get a feel for what creating “Doing Life With Me” was like, but the video also spotlights the family and friends that have been “Doing Life” with Eric for years. To top it off, the singer tips his hat to his biggest fans by making the new studio video exclusively available to members of his fan club, the Church Choir, for its first 24 hours.
Eric dropped his tender, gratitude-filled new ballad last week. It’s the latest in a lengthy string of new songs to come from The Chief this year; over the course of 2020, he’s shared new tunes such as “Stick That in Your Country Song,” “Bad Mother Trucker,” “Jenny” and “Crazyland.”
Meanwhile, his current single, “Hell of a View,” just cracked country radio’s Top 30 this week.
John Phillips/Getty Images(LONDON) — Just weeks after mourning the loss of friend David Prowse, the man who gave Darth Vader his imposing physical presence in the original Star Wars Trilogy, Jeremy Bulloch, the man who played Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, has died.
He was 75.
According to a post on his official website, “Jeremy died peacefully on 17th December 2020 following health complications, including several years living with Parkinson’s disease.”
“He spent his final weeks in the wonderful care of staff at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, close to the house where he and his wife Maureen had lived together for more than fifty years,” the memoriam continued, adding, “Maureen and two of his sons, Jamie and Robbie, were with him during his final days.”
Bulloch didn’t provide the voice of the mysterious Mandalorian bounty hunter who was first glimpsed in animated form in the widely-panned Star Wars Holiday Special, but he filled the fan favorite character’s battle-scarred armor in the second and third Star Wars films, likening the character’s cool to Eastwood’s iconic “Man With No Name” under the helmet.
“There’s such a fascinating thing about the character that people will want to talk to you for, I don’t know, half an hour, ” Bulloch told ABC Audio, “[saying] ‘Mr. Bulloch, I love that part. I just think it’s so fantastic. Thank you so much for bringing that to us.” (AUDIO IS ABC 1-ON-1)
For all his popularity, Fett only had four lines of dialog in the original films; Archie Bunker’s Place actor Jason Wingreen provided the voice for the character initially; actor Temuera Morrison’s voice was later dubbed over Wingreen’s, to provide continuity with the prequel series’ origin story of Fett being a clone of his father Jango.
The character’s legacy continues to this day; The Mandalorian thrilled fans when it was recently revealed that Fett survived his apparent death in Return of the Jedi — with Morrison, the new voice under the helmet, taking over the role.
Bulloch also appeared out of armor as an Imperial officer in The Empire Strikes Back, sharing the screen, through the magic of editing, with himself as Fett in one sequence. He also played a pilot in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, and appeared in shows like Dr. Who, and many others.
He was a mainstay in the comic convention circuit, and loved interacting with fans — he even appeared at a fan’s wedding in his iconic armor.
Bulloch retired from the convention life in 2018, saying at the time, the decision came, “with a heavy heart,” adding, “It has been a privilege to have had the opportunity to inspire so many generations of Star Wars fans.”
Big MachineFor the 2020 Christmas season, Lady A‘s holiday album, On This Winter’s Night, grows to a mammoth sixteen cuts, as the band adds four new tracks for the record’s Deluxe Edition. 
