On Dec. 18, Joe Walsh will head into his basement and jam with with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench, guitarist Waddy Wachtel, bassist Leland Sklar, and drummer Russ Kunkel along with his brother-in-law Ringo Starr for the streaming concert “VetsAid 2021: The Basement Show,” the latest installment of the guitarist’s annual benefit for veterans’ causes. Tickets for the live event are available at vetsaid.veeps.com, and the show will be available to watch through Dec. 26.
“With variable COVID rates throughout the summer and fall, I wasn’t comfortable putting together the kind of live festival that our fans and performers have come to expect and deserve,” Walsh said in a statement. “I was so pleased with last year’s streaming festival that I thought we could try something even cooler this time around. Join me and my buddies for an old-fashioned basement jam live from my house to yours where I will debut some brand new songs, play some favorites, share some never-before-seen footage and performances from past VetsAid shows and … who knows who will show up and what might happen?!”
VetsAid started in 2017 when Walsh held a special show in Fairfax, Virginia, at the EagleBank Arena featuring the Zac Brown Band, Keith Urban, and Gary Clark Jr. In the following years, everyone from James Taylor and the Doobie Brothers to ZZ Top, Sheryl Crow, Chris Stapleton, and Don Henley joined the effort, though last year Walsh was forced to stage VetsAid virtually due to the pandemic.
Walsh’s father was a U.S. Army flight instructor who died in plane crash in 1949 while serving in Okinawa, Japan. Walsh was just 20 months old at the time. “I grew up with a part of me missing, which was my father,” the guitarist told Rolling Stone in 2019. “I never really knew him. I always wondered, ‘What if?’ I wondered if he would approve of what I was doing. I’m sure he would’ve told me to get a haircut a couple of times.”
He started VetsAid to help other families in similar situations. “I see a forgotten war that’s ongoing, and more suicides than combat deaths,” he told Rolling Stone. “Guys are coming home shattered, and the transition back to civilian life is too high of a mountain to climb for a lot of them.”
His efforts have raised $1.8 million, and this year’s event is going to add to that number. In addition to the basement jam, Walsh will take viewers on a tour of his private guitar collection and answer questions that fans submitted online.
Fans can catch Walsh live again when the Eagles resume their Hotel California tour Feb. 19 at the Enmarket Arena in Savannah, Georgia.
NEWS
Live from London, it is Saturday Night Live.
The legendary sketch comedy institution officially launched its UK edition on March 21 with Saturday Night Live UK, featuring former SNL cast member Tina Fey as host and British indie rock group Wet Leg as the episode’s musical guest.
This global expansion of Lorne Michaels’ famous NBC program began with Fey’s opening monologue, which included unexpected cameos from Michael Cera and UK television personality Graham Norton.
“It’s an absolute honour and kind of historic,” Fey told the crowd. “Guys, I am the youngest person to ever host SNL UK!”
During the broadcast, Wet Leg delivered performances of two songs taken from their second album Moisturizer, which opened at Number 6 on Billboard’s Top Rock and Alternative Albums chart and also climbed to Number 1 on the Official Albums Chart in the United Kingdom.
The band first appeared performing the record’s fourth single “Mangetout,” a Grammy nominated song that also earned a place on Billboard’s list of the 20 best UK and Ireland songs of 2025. Later in the show they returned to play the album’s lead single “Catch These Fists.”
After their appearance on SNL UK, Wet Leg will travel back to the United States for a series of major festival dates including Coachella, Governors Ball, Bonnaroo and Outside Lands. Their US tour is scheduled to begin April 15 at the Fox Theater in Pomona, California.
Upcoming episodes of SNL UK have also been confirmed. Wolf Alice will serve as musical guest on the March 28 episode hosted by Jamie Dornan, while Kasabian will perform on the April 2 show with Riz Ahmed as host.
The show is broadcast on Sky in the United Kingdom and is available to stream on Peacock in the United States. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the first episode attracted more than 220,000 viewers on Sky. It was released in the US on March 22 via Peacock.
You can watch Wet Leg’s SNL UK performances below.
