One musician is taking “A Minute and a Glass of Wine,” the other is bringing a distillery to a historic former church. Plus, EMP and NPH team up for a cause
Photo by: NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
TBT: “Since U Been Gone” and “Sideways” were released one month apart in 2004.
Singer Kelly Clarkson has been busy—topping Billboard’s pop, country and dance charts; hosting The Voice; writing kids’ books; and valiantly defending Pinot Noir in the face of wine haters on Twitter—for some two decades straight now. So she could use a minute, and a glass of wine.
But rather than take her R&R offstage, the Grammy Award–winning artist, beloved for her fan interactions, has decided to kick back in a series of post-concert Facebook Live segments she calls, appropriately, “Minute and a Glass of Wine,” which also happens to be the title of the song that introduces each one. “The point is to relax and have a minute,” explains the singer of “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)” in one of the episodes, glass of red wine in hand. “Move over Blake Shelton, others can work and have alcohol too,” she whooped in a February segment during a Glendale, Ariz., concert.
Clarkson began broadcasting occasional segments last year; in the first episode, she drinks an old bottle grabbed from home she deems “spoiled.” But during her 2019 Meaning of Life tour, Clarkson has been taking more wine breaks—and inviting friends. At another recent concert, she brought fellow Cabernet-voiced crooner and on-camera ham John Legend up to duet a few classic ditties.
And her wine picks have been hitting a higher register lately, too. She offered a few liner notes recently to her crowd: “I don’t know about y’alls, but mine [wine] is good! It’s my favorite. I think it’s Belle Glos. It makes me want to write a letter at a desk with a quill pen.” Though we have a feeling she won’t put her mic down for too long.
Bob Dylan Takes Heaven’s Door Whiskey to Church with New Nashville Distillery and Arts Center
Slow Train, Solid Rock, Shot of Love, Mixed-Up Confusion, Blowin’ in the Wind: All fine names for a hypothetical brand of whiskey that happen to also be singles from Bob Dylan‘s discography. But when Dylan decided to launch a real Tennessee brown-spirits label last year, he decided on “Heaven’s Door”. And now comes news that the singer-songwriter-distiller is making it literal and playing it loud: Come fall of 2020, Heaven’s Door will be located in the historic Elm Street Church in Nashville.
Courtesy of Heaven’s Door
“How many years can an old church exist / Before it’s a distilleryyy.” The Elm Street Church (left) and a rendering of the new distillery and arts center.
The soon-to-be Heaven’s Door Distillery and Center for the Arts will occupy the 160-year-old church property and expand into outbuildings in South Nashville with a full whiskey production operation, a restaurant and bar, a 360-seat live performance space and an exhibition space to feature visual art from Dylan and others. (It’s not the first historic church resurrected this year as a place to serve spirits of the more liquid variety.)
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Nashville Skyline, Dylan’s first cask-strength expression of country, and the city seemed like a natural home for a line of Tennessee Bourbon whiskeys and ryes. “We searched for nearly two years before we found a property that we felt captured the essence of our brand and in a market that made sense,” CEO of Heaven’s Door and the company that makes it, Spirits Investment Partners, Marc Bushala told Unfiltered via email. “Additionally, Bob Dylan’s connection to Nashville, having recorded four albums there, and the city’s vibrant music and entertainment culture, made it an obvious choice.”
Eleven Madison Park, Neil Patrick Harris, Raise Nearly Half a Million in One Night for NYC Hunger Charity
Grand Award–winning American dining destination EMP teamed up with Emmy Award–winning American treasure NPH to raise money for Brooklyn nonprofit Rethink Food NYC at a gala extravaganza last night. The How I Met Your Mother Star hosted, chef Daniel Humm cooked, Jon Batiste performed, and between tickets and a silent auction, the night brought in $446,275.
Rethink Food NYC
NPH works the crowd. “We are in a unique position to make substantive change,” he said of Rethink Food.
“This gala marks an enormous fundraising milestone for our budding organization—one that will help advance our everyday efforts of bridging the gap between food excess and food insecurity,” said Matt Jozwiak, founder of Rethink Food NYC and a former Eleven Madison Park chef himself, in a press release. The organization (RethinkFood.NYC) collects food excess from restaurants, farms and vendors around the city and distributes it to New Yorkers in need.
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