Jared Leto’s really quick ‘hitchhike’ across America to promote new album
A GUY with wavy hair and a thick beard, wearing a Gucci puffer jacket, US$1,000 track pants and checkered Vans shoes was spotted across America this week, riding everything from a Greyhound bus to the New York subway and occasionally sticking out his thumb to seemingly make good on his promise to “hitchhike across America.”
He stopped along the Ohio Turnpike, at the Texas Motor Speedway and at Canyon de Chelly National Monument in Arizona, where he could be seen riding through the park shirtless in the bed of a pickup truck.
He was Jared Leto, on what was apparently supposed to look like a Kerouac-style crosscountry trek. But Leto, the 46year-old actor and musician, was promoting the latest album from his band, Thirty Seconds to Mars. The album, which debuted Friday, is aptly titled, “America.”
It’s a concept album, Leto’s attempt to encapsulate America through songs such as “Walk On Water,” where the common refrain is “times are changing,” and “Great Wide Open,” which he describes as a “land of blood and dreams.”
Trading arena-friendly guitar anthems for synth pop and bass drops, “America” was five years in the making and is the band’s fifth studio album.
Since the time Leto started writing it in 2013, he won an Oscar for his role as a transgender woman in “Dallas Buyers Club,” starred as the Joker in “Suicide Squad” and played the villain Niander Wallace in “Blade Runner 2049.” For now, however, he told USA Today he is solely focusing on the music.
“To celebrate (the album), I’m gonna hitchhike across the country, among other things,” Leto told Jimmy Fallon on Monday when his five-day trip kicked off live on “The Tonight Show.” “What better way to celebrate America than to travel around and ask people about their lives?
“Let me tell you something,” Leto quickly added. “I’m actually doing this.” Well, not really. No real person could hitch across America, coast to coast, in five days. Leto acknowledged that it was more of a “planes, trains and automobiles” trip, with the occasional thumbout pose along the side of the road.
He did draw crowds everywhere he brought his acoustic guitarist and a small gospel choir — a new one in each city — to join him in singing “Walk On Water.”
Leto started with spontaneous performances of “Walk On Water” from the lobby of Madison Square Garden and in crowded New York subway stations before interrupting Fallon’s show.
His first ride was waiting for him outside: a minivan driven by none other than A$AP Rocky, who collaborated with Thirty Seconds to Mars on the song “One Track Mind.”
Leto caught a Greyhound bus in Dallas, though he was not treated like just any old Greyhound passenger. In an apparent joint promo between Greyhound and Leto’s album, Leto led the bus passengers in singing “Walk on Water” again.
He had stopped to take a ride in a bright-pink racecar (emblazoned with a promo for the album) around the Texas Motor Speedway.
He sang “Walk On Water” with gospel choirs from the top of Chicago’s Willis Tower and at coffee shops in Austin.
He gave his best Matthew McConaughey “All right, all right, all right” impression while wearing a cowboy hat at a Love’s truck stop in New Mexico. And he caught a ride with a trucker from Milwaukee somewhere along the Ohio Turnpike, on his way from Cleveland, which appears to be the one time he actually did hitch a ride.
“He took me on a ride in the 18wheeler. He was great. He shared his thoughts about America and the current climate, and his hopes and dreams,” Leto told the Chicago Tribune later that night, while at Willis Tower’s Skydeck. “It’s really beautiful to get out and see what people are really thinking and not what we see on the news every day and not what’s making headlines necessarily.” On Friday Leto and Thirty Seconds to Mars were to have an album launch party called “Museum of America” in Los Angeles, which is anything but a conventional party. Partygoers will take “a hard look at some of the issues America faces,” the band said. “It’s a call to action for Americans to look up from their phones, take notice, and get involved.”
“America” is also the companion to a documentary that Leto has produced. Leto has advocated for causes ranging from gay rights to wildlife protection and the great outdoors, most evident in the documentary he produced called “The Great Wide Open,” an ode to America’s national parks. His latest, about America, was filmed over the course of a single day on the Fourth of July last summer. Ninety-two cameras were present in all 50 states, and Leto solicited footage from fans, asking them to capture “your America in all its imperfect glory.”
“Our new album is called ‘America’ for a reason,” Leto told “Good Morning America” from the back of a car while “hitchhiking” in Dallas. “One of the things we did is we made a documentary on July 4 . ... We filmed a single day in the life of America and created this documentary that’s a portrait of our country at a really important time, a time of change, a time of some instability and uncertainty, but also a time of hope. And the album is the soundtrack to the film.” — WP-Bloomberg