Billy Bob Thornton to headline WH Correspondent’s Jam
WASHINGTON >> Many celebrities aren’t exactly jazzed about this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association dinner or the parties surrounding it, but here’s a notable exception: Billy Bob Thornton.
The actor-musician is slated to headline the third annual White House Correspondent’s Jam, a concert the evening before the dinner that features bands made up of journalists, with a few professional ringers thrown in the mix — that’s where Thornton and his “Southern-Gothic” band, the Boxmasters, come in, as well as Rolling Stones keyboardist Chuck Leavell, who founded the annual event and sponsors it with his environmental-news organization, Mother Nature Network.
Thornton, it seems, views his upcoming engagement the way some might eagerly anticipate a visit to an exotic zoo.
“Coming to Washington and being so close to the White House, I have no idea what it’s going to be like — are we going to be sequestered in some kind of capsule? Am I going to see Dana Bash?” he asked, name-dropping the CNN correspondent with ease. So is that his dream Washington-journo sighting?
Nope. “That would be Brooke Baldwin.”
Thornton is obviously up on his cable news. But it wasn’t just the opportunity to fanboy with his favorite newsfolk that led him to sign on. Thornton says his longtime pal Leavell tried to book him in previous years, and this year the timing just worked out for him and his band.
This year’s lineup includes CNBC reporter Steve Liesman and folk/ rock band the Mooncussers; New York Times chief Washington correspondent Carl Hulse and the Native Makers; Wall Street Journal senior editor Michael Siconolfi with Six Stars; and Tom Toles, The Washington Post’s editorial cartoonist, and Suspicious Package, practically the house band of Official Washington.