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.)

OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder to
collaborate with Josh?

I posted earlier about a possible upcoming collaboration between Josh and OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder. After some YouTubing, I found this fanmade mashup of OneRepublic’s Apologize and Josh’s You Raise Me Up, both signature tunes of the artists.

The mashup isn’t official, of course, and the lyrics from both songs don’t seem to sit well too comfortably with each other. But, I must say, the tunes seem to click quite nicely together. On the whole, I quite like it, and would certainly be curious to see what Tedder and Josh can come up with.

Josh will be visiting the studios of 97.1 WASH-FM in Washington, DC next Thursday, 19 June. He will be performing and chatting on their morning show, which you can listen to live on WASH-FM.

For all you lucky Grobanites who live within the DC area, you stand a chance to be in-studio with Josh. Enter now for free tickets to the performance.

Josh is also starting a radio tour. Dates follow.

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