I’m so excited to share some news with you! Angela, who runs Wentworth Miller 101, one of my oldest affiliates, has awarded GrobanWire.com her Site of the Month award. I’m really honoured to have my site recognised by a site as great as Angela’s. So, thank you to Angela and you, loyal reader, for supporting my site over the past few years. Even when I sometimes lose motivation, your enthusiasm for Josh Groban and his music keeps me going!

People magazine reports:

Feeding into his good guy image, Josh Groban surprised the crowd at Beverly Hills eatery Crustacean with a song. Groban dueted with Angelique Kidjo - and the two belted out Kidjo’s “Pearls,” all while raising money for charity.

On his official website, Josh announces that he is about to start a blog/v-log.

He writes:

Hey everyone! So much has happened and so much is coming up that I want a new way to keep in touch with you and let you know whats going on. I’m going to start a blog. Please be kind, I’m new at this but I hope we have fun with it. I’ll make my first video post soon!

So far, there’s nothing on the blog yet, but the simple black-and-white design of the blog looks promising. I do think that maybe Josh should have waited until he’s actually made a video post on the blog before launching it.

I’m not sure how often fans can hope to expect updates. A while back, Il Divo’s David Miller also started a similar project, calling it the Divo Diary. Unfortunately, it quickly fell apart as other commitments took over and he could not update it quite often enough.

What we can expect though, is that Josh’s new online presence will strengthen his already very personalised relationship with fans. (You’ll know what I mean if you’ve been to see him live.) When Josh was still an up-and-coming artist, the launching of his official forum was hailed as a strategic move that would draw him and the fan community closer. In recent years, however, Josh’s updates on the forum have dwindled. I certainly look to his new blog as a way to reinforce his relationship with fans.

I am a little puzzled as to why Josh sees a need to host the blog on a separate site, at Tumblr.com, instead of on his own site, JoshGroban.com. The Groban forum is also on a separate site. This, of course, is a minor concern, as long as Josh posts to his blog often.

Josh recently visited Washington, DC as part his radio tour. If you missed his performance and interview on 97.1 WASH-FM, well, you can catch up now with an online version of the recording.

Josh Groban and Idinan Menzel in Chess in Concert

Here’s a sweet treat from Josh’s performance in Chess in Concert. In the musical, he plays Anatoly Sergievsky, along with Tony Award winner Idina Menzel as Florence. If you missed out on the performance, held in May in London’s Royal Albert Hall, PBS and BBC-TV are expected to air it in 2009.

(To allay your fears, no, Josh is not romantically involved with Idina. She’s married to Taye Diggs in real life.)