Inaugural concert to feature Toby Keith, Jennifer Holliday
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s inaugural welcome concert next week will feature country star Toby Keith, singer Jennifer Holliday and actor Jon Voight, organizers announced Friday.
The names add some celebrity flavor to an inaugural lineup that so far has been noticeably short on star power, with organizers insisting that Trump himself is the celebrity in chief for this inaugural.
Also performing at Thursday’s “Make America Great Again! Welcome Celebration:” southern rockers 3 Doors Down, The Piano Guys, Lee Greenwood, DJ RaviDrums and The Frontmen of Country, featuring Tim Rushlow, Larry Stewart and Richie McDonald.
“We’re going to do something incredible,” Trump said in a tweeted video promoting the concert. “That’s going to be really fantastic.”
Trump himself also will speak at the concert at the Lincoln Memorial, which organizers said “will serve as a tribute to one of our greatest attributes, the peaceful transition of partisan power.”
Several prominent entertainers have declined to perform at the Trump inaugural, citing disagreement with the president-elect’s agenda and style.
Holliday, who supported Hillary Clinton in the election, cast her decision to participate not as a political statement but as a way to welcome the American people to an event that should be about unifying the country. She said she has sung for both Republican and Democratic presidents, and that may be why Trump’s team reached out to her, joking that they couldn’t get an “A-lister, so they went to the bottom of the list.”
“I didn’t see it as singing for Trump; I saw it as singing for the people on the mall,” she said in an interview.
Holliday, best known for her Tony-winning role in “Dreamgirls” on Broadway, faced an immediate and angry backlash to…
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