Get Out The Vote with our new PSA's Featuring The Cab

Hey everyone, now it's YOUR turn to be a Kids Rock The Vote correspondent. Over the next week, send out our new Public Service Announcements (PSA's) featuring one of our favorite bands, The Cab, to your family and friends who are old enough to vote and help us ROCK THE VOTE!

If your local high school has a TV station and would like a higher resolution version of the PSA's to broadcast, let us know and we will get it out to them ASAP. Help us make sure that all of the registered voters remember to go to the polls on November 4th!

Kids Rock The Vote in Colorado

 Over our fall break from school, my friend Jonah and I went to the important swing state of Colorado to help sign up residents to register to vote by mail. The first night we met up with dozens of kids like us who were working to get people to register to vote.

The youngest worker we found was three. She was helping to get mailers ready to send to residents. There were more than a dozen kids who were ages 12 and under who were working on mailers, answering calls and dispensing the snacks to other volunteers. The kids who were over 12 were calling voters in Colorado and reminding them to register to vote. It was awesome to see so many kids involved in the political process.

The next day, Jonah and I got up early and went to a restaurant in Denver to meet other volunteers and get our lists of homes to visit. Then we went to different neighborhoods and registered people to vote by mail. I speak Mandarin, and Jonah speaks Spanish and French. Our foreign language skills came in handy when we spoke with several families who were voting citizens but spoke very little English. On Saturday, we got to have sushi for lunch (yum!). We walked neighborhoods for 8 hours on Saturday and two hours on Sunday. We visited almost 200 homes and registered dozens of new voters and voters who had moved to new precincts. We felt really good knowing that we had helped to get so many people registered to vote in an important swing state.

KIDS ROCK THE VOTE AT THE ROCK BAND LIVE TOUR CONCERT

Hey! Wes here. I don't even know where to start except to say that the Rock Band Live Tour concert was AWESOME! The guys from The Cab, The Plain White T's, Dashboard Confessional and Panic at the Disco were so nice to us, not to mention that they put on an amazing show. It was so much fun. So here's what happened:

First, we met the guys from The Cab in their dressing room backstage at the E Center. Cash Colligan was really nice and offered to film a Rock The Vote public service announcement (or PSA) with us for high schools to upload and play on their school TV stations to remind first-time voters to go to the polls. Then, the other guys joined in and we ended up taping TWO PSA's, which was good because of what happened later with the Plain White T's. But, anyway, the guys from The Cab were awesomely cool and we had a great time hanging out with them.

Here's a picture of all of us in The Cab's dressing room before the show. Cash is the cool dude in the back flashing the peace sign. Alex Marshall is almost totally hidden by Jonah (wha?) and Alex Deleon and Alex Johnson are hanging on the right. Ian was very busy and important on the computer and somehow managed to escape the pic. And, yeah, three of the five guys in The Cab are named Alex. Hmmm...

So that was amazing, but then it got even better. We all got to go inside the E Center again for a special meet and greet with ALL of the bands. Yep, you heard me. ALL OF THE BANDS! It was so tight we couldn't even believe it. Only twenty-five people were invited to the meet and greet so we felt special. Here are some pics of the Kids Rock The Vote gang from the meet and greet:

The pic to the left is Hannah, Sarah Z, Jonah, Will and Me (behind Will) with the guys from Panic at the Disco.

Above right is Sarah K with all of the members of Dashboard Confessional.

To the left are Hannah and Sarah Z hanging out with the Plain White T's.

Below is Sarah Z with Chris Carabba, the lead singer for Dashboard Confessional.

To the left is Hannah with Chris Carrabba (he totally liked the girls more than us guys).

Below is Sean with our buds from The Cab.

During the meet and greet, we gave all of the guys Rock the Vote buttons and talked to them about Kids Rock The Vote. We were excited when several of the guys wore their Rock the Vote buttons on stage.

So after the meet and greet, I don't know what everybody else did but Sean and I played flip the penny for a long time while we waited for the doors to open for the concert.

Finally, they opened the door for the concert and we went to the Plain White T's merchandise table where we were planning to meet the PWT's again to film a Kids Rock The Vote PSA. One problem: They stopped my mom at the door and wouldn't let her take her video camera inside the center. Yeah. So, no Get Out The Vote PSA with the Plain White T's. That was a huge bummer.

But, anyway, the guys with the Plain White T's were really cool about the whole thing. They talked to us and let us take pics with them again.

So after we hung out with the PWT's, we went to go play ROCK BAND 2! Woot! It was so much fun. They had a competition where people could compete to play RB2 onstage during the concert, so we decided to do it. Jonah is awesome on the guitar, but he didn't want to miss the concert waiting in line to compete, so I stood in for him in the second practice round and it was so sweet! We scored 260,000 in the practice round and we were pretty sure that Will (who got 98% on vocals), Sean (88% on drums), Jonah (who didn't finish his practice round because the electricity went out) and Sarah (96% on HARD on bass) would get over 300,000 in the competition round and get up on stage.

But they finally got up to compete and THEN they told us that Sean was too young to play (you had to be 13). You'd think they'd tell you that BEFORE you miss 30 minutes of the concert. Anyway, yeah, so we didn't get to compete. But our practice round score even without Jonah was higher than all but one of the four groups who got to play onstage during the concert. Annoying....

The good news is that when we finally got in for the concert, it totally rocked! Our seats were right off the stage, beside where the bands walked up and down the steps to the stage.
So, in the pic above Shawn and I are rockin out to Dashboard Confessional. We were stoked when Brandon Urie from Panic at the Disco opened their set with a shout out to remind everyone in the audience (who's old enough, of course) to vote. So that was cool. In the pic below on the right, I'm lovin Panic At The Disco. In the pic on the left and lower right, Sarah, Hannah, Sarah, Will and Jonah are rockin and candling with the PWT's. The concert was AWESOME!

In this pic we're singing along with Dashboard Confessional.

Rockin' Weekend Ahead!

The election is only three weeks away, and we are busier than ever working with kids and first-time voters to ROCK THE VOTE! Tomorrow, we will be heading over to the E Center for the ROCK BAND LIVE TOUR, starring Panic At The Disco, the Plain White T's, Dashboard Confessional and The Cab.

We will be getting together with the bands to film PSA's for high schools to download and remind first time voter students to go to the polls. That would be awesome enough. But wait...there's more!

Friday morning, my friend Jonah and I will be heading out to do Get Out The Vote work in Denver for the weekend. This is the most important election of my life (so far), and we are going to go door to door and encourage people to go out and vote in one of the most important swing states in the country.

Of course, we'll be shooting video from the road, and we'll be sure to post the best stuff here.

Until later, ROCK ON!

Rock The Vote Updates

WOW! It's been busy. Voter registration in Utah ended on October 6th. We were excited to sign up new voters and re-register people who needed to update their registrations.

Our last voter registration drive was on Thursday, October 2nd at West High School. It was the last of four voter registration drives held at the school, so we didn't expect to find any people left to sign up. However, we registered a bunch of new voters and re-registered one person who had moved to a different address. It was awesome.

The top pic is of me with TJ Ellerbeck (who helped me with the registration drive) and a senior at my school who registered to vote in her first election. (I go to middle school at a high school--long story.) The second pic is of me with the Salt Lake County Clerk, Ms. Sherrie Swensen, when I went to the county offices to turn in the voter registrations I collected.

Now, we're really busy doing Get Out The Vote (GOTV) stuff. Next week, we'll have new GOTV videos featuring members of some of your favorite bands posted for high school TV stations to download and remind their school's first-time voters to go out to the polls and VOTE. Stay tuned...

The

Kids Rock The Vote Now Official Partners with Rock the Vote

It's official! We just received confirmation from Rock The Vote that we are now official Rock The Vote partners. Woo Hoo! This means that we can use the Rock The Vote logos, promos, etc. to help us get more kids involved in the political process and register more young voters to go to the polls in November.

We will be hosting several voter registration and Get Out The Vote events here in our area, so check back in the next few days for details. If you'd like more information on how to host events and sign up new voters in your area, shoot us an email and we'll get back to you ASAP.

Let's work together to get as many voters to the polls as we can so that they can vote for people who will support issues that are important to US!

Interviews with Congressman Chet Edwards and LeeAnn Edwards

Hey. Wes here. This interview with US Rep. Chet Edwards (Texas) was at the Pepsi Center in Denver during the DNC. We have known the Edward's all of our lives. They have two sons who are our ages. We hung out together all of the time until we moved away from DC. So we were pretty excited when we heard that Mr. Chet was on the short list to be Senator Obama's Vice President running mate. I was thinking it would be pretty cool to stay in the Vice President's mansion up on the hill at the Naval Observatory. But then, Sen. Obama chose someone else! Uh!
Anyway, here's our interview with Mr. Chet about what it was like to be SO CLOSE to being the Vice President of the United States.


Then, we talked to Miss Lee Ann about where their sons were and what they were up to.

Anne Hathaway Interview

So, the good news is that the Anne Hathaway Interview is up now, and it's a REALLY good one. The bad news is that she was really fun during the introduction, but my mom's memory card ran out right after the intro so we had to start over. Hopefully, we'll get the intro joined to the interview soon so that you can see how great Anne's personality is.

Anne was really excited to talk about arts education and healthcare. But what I thought was the coolest part of the whole interview was at the very end when she talks about how easy it SHOULD be for people who are interested in different issues to come together, have some give and take, and everyone work toward a win-win for everybody. That's how it SHOULD be. But it's not. I think I'm going to send this interview to some of our Republican and Democratic friends in Congress and ask them why it CAN'T work this way. Listen to the interview, and you'll see what I mean.

I vote Anne Hathaway for US Congress. Do I hear a second?

Will's Interview with Hayden Panetierre

It was really fun that my seats at Invesco field were right in front of Anne Hathaway, Susan Sarandon, Josh Lucas, Tim Daly and other celebrities I met in Denver. But I was so excited when I turned around and saw Hayden Panetierre sitting there, too! She is really pretty. But when I interviewed her, I found out that she is smart and very involved in political issues that are important to me, too.

First, she is involved with The Whaleman Foundation, a group that tries to save whales and dolphins from slaughter and loss of habitat. I want to be a marine biologist, so this issue is REALLY important to me.

Second, she's involved with a group called Declare Yourself that encourages people over the age of 18 to vote. Well, yeah, I'm sort of involved in THAT issue, too. So Hayden and I are soul mates, for sure. How about you?

Here's my interview with Hayden:

Interview with Zooey Deschanel

Yes! My interview with Zooey Deschanel is here! I'm a big fan of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". I love the opening song "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish". So, anyway, when I saw Zooey Deschanel at the Denver Art Museum, I was SO going to interview her. She was really nice and had some good answers to my questions.

She talked about how important arts education is to school kids and how that issue is very important to her because she's an artist. She also had a great idea for a way that kids can get involved in the election. She said that you could do something like make jewelry and sell it (like her neice does) or have a bake sale or something, then donate the money to the campaign of someone who you think will support the issues that are important to you.

So, basically, she's nice, creative and talented. Oh, and she sings in a band, too. Anyway, here's my interview with her:

Thursday at the DNC, Part 1

Hey,

It's Friday morning and we're packing to go back to SLC so we're going to do our big post when we get home. But yesterday was AMAZING! Not only was the convention really great, but we met and interviewed Hayden Panettiere from Heroes and Alan Cumming from Spy Kids. More when we get home!

KUER News Story about Kids Rock the Vote

Hi. This is Wes. Yesterday, Elaine Clark from KUER put a story on the air and told all about our experiences of interviewing stars, congressmen and many other people. What I want to say is "Elaine Clark knows how to put a good story together"! I like it. She even took a part of our real interview with Congressman Barney Frank from our website.

Here is the link to our interview with her.

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/kuer/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1351803

Wes

KUER Interview

Hi! Will here. Since we had computer "issues", we're just now putting up some of our podcasts from earlier in the week. The day before we left, KUER interviewed us at the Obama Campaign Headquarters in SLC to find out what we were going to be doing in Denver. Here is the video from that interview:

WWE Smackdown Your Vote Interview

At the MTV Rock The Vote Ballot Bash, WWE’s Smackdown the Vote asked if they could interview us about how we were trying to help kids get interested in the election and what kids can do to make a difference in politics. There were so many people recording the interview that Mom sort of got squeezed out. But here is what she got:





Then, when the WWE correspondent asked to re-do the ending of the segment, we taped a new ending to the interview and a public service announcement.

Wednesday at the DNC, Part 2

Wednesday night, the convention was so much fun! It was so crowded that they stopped letting anyone but delegates into the convention hall. Since Wes, my mom and I weren't delegates, we walked around until our dad could find seats for us and ran into a few people, like Anne Hathaway again. Then, we made friends with a security person and she let us go backstage to watch the show. We couldn't believe it! It was cool.




We finally made it down to the convention floor just in time to watch Sen. Biden give his speech. Then, Sen. Obama surprised everyone and came onto the stage. It was so loud that we had to plug our ears. Everyone was really excited and we got some "party trash" (that's what my mom calls all of the campaign stuff) to take home.








A lot of the Hollywood celebrities and some famous politicians like Sen. George McGovern sat with the Utah delegation all week. After the convention ended, we met Josh Lucas who we have seen in "Sweet Home Alabama".






When I was little, news reporter Joe Johns did a story about me and my dad on The Today Show for Father's Day. Mr. Johns is with CNN now and we met him at the CNN Grill.

Wednesday at the DNC, Part 1

Will here. Last night while our dad was at the convention, we went to the Media Pavillions. It was SO much fun! I don't think it was actually supposed to be fun, but it was. We met two boys whose mom works for Reuters, and they were the only two kids we had seen here for the convention. While they were at the convention, we interviewed a reporter from The Washington Times, visited some reporters from Roll Call newspaper (they used to put our pictures in Roll Call a lot when we lived in DC) and went from tent to tent to see what the reporters were up to. They were very busy, but all of them were nice to us.

Then, we met Jeff who works for HDNet and Dan Rather Reports. He was so great. He fixed our computer problem so that we could upload some of our videos and let us sit in his office to watch Hillary Clinton's speech. I found out that reporters work really long hours, which I had sort of already figured out doing this blog, and that they are very nice, smart, multitalented people.

After the convention was over, we went to Coors field for a big party sponsored by the Airline Pilots Association. The party was in a huge skybox area, so we ate and then went out into the box seats to take these pictures.

This morning, we had breakfast with the Utah people, then got dressed in nice clothes and went over to the Denver Museum where Mom thought we might find Anne Hathaway for an interview. First, we found Matthew Modine and Richard Schiff. They talked to us about education, global warming, arts education and more. We found out that Matthew Modine is from Utah! That's pretty cool.

Next we talked to Susan Sarandon, who has won an academy award. Then, I met Zooey Deschanel from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy! That is one of my favorite movies. I was really glad that Zoey was so nice, it could have totally ruined the movie for me if she wasn't. She was sweet, though.
Just about the time we were going to give up on meeting Anne Hathaway, she walked out of the museum! Wes and I couldn't believe it! We liked her in her other movies, but we REALLY love the funniest movie this summer, Get Smart. She was in a big hurry but she took about five minutes answering our questions about arts education and healthcare. Then she posed for this picture. It is SO going to be hanging all over our house now.

I could have died when Anne was about to leave and Wesley handed her his business card and said, "Be sure to give us a call!" I was embarrassed, but everybody else thought it was funny. Whatever. Anyway, tonight at the convention, we ran into her again and she talked to us for a minute there, too.
Which brings me to the convention. I won't go into all of the convention stuff right now. I'll wait til we get to the pictures from the convention floor. But while we were walking to our seats, we ran into our friend Congressman John Lewis. Congressman Lewis was almost killed by mad racists in Alabama when he was walking with Martin Luther King. He's a real live hero. We have known him our entire lives and whenever we go back to DC, I love to just walk around in his office and look at all of his pictures and newspaper stories. It's like a really cool museum. He talked to us about what should excite kids about this election, which he said was the fact that there was so much history that will be made and we are old enough now to remember it and appreciate it.

As soon as we have time (it takes FOREVER to download all of the videos) we will post all of our interviews from the convention. Our interviews for today included:

Matthew Modine
Richard Schiff
Susan Sarandon
Congressman John Tanner--Tennessee
Congressman Patrick Kennedy--Rhode Island
Zoey Deschanel
Ashley Judd
Congressman John Lewis
Congressman Chet Edwards--Texas, who we have known forever and who was ALMOST VICE PRESIDENT (that would have been SO awesome!!!!!)

Will

Guess Who We Met?

OMG! OMG! OMG! Guess who we met at the Creative Coalition luncheon today? We met Zooey Deschanel from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Anne Hathaway from Get Smart! It was really cool. We got to interview them each for several minutes and they were really nice. We also interviewed Susan Sarandon, Matthew Modine, Ashley Judd and Richard Schiff.

We're headed out to a Blue Dog Coalition reception right now (our dad was a founder of the Blue Dogs) and then we're going on the floor of the convention. WOOT! Back tonight...

Will and Wes

Interview with Congressman Barney Frank

We interviewed Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the chairman of the US House Financial Services Committee, and asked him how kids can get involved in this year’s election. He said that there are a lot of ways kids can help a candidate, and they are usually happy to have the kids involved. However, he gave this advice: If you say you’re going to do it, DO IT!

See the complete interview below:

Part of the Fall Out Boy Interview

This is part of the Fall Out Boy interview. Mom missed the last part because the memory card on her camera ran out and she had to switch to hard drive. It ends right as the band comes back to pose for another picture and Patrick Stump joins the interview. Sad... you've gotta "love" technology. But the wrap of the WHOLE interview is below.

Fall Out Boy, Part 2, Daughtry and More

OK, Wes here. So, anyway, Pete and the guys hung out for a while. Patrick Stump was SO fun. He talked to me for a really long time until the staff member said that he had to go and get ready for his performance. In this picture, Patrick is thanking me for my business card. Patrick said that the political issue that was most important to him was foreign policy--like the war, our bad relationships with other countries and that sort of stuff. I also found out that his voice is a lot different when he talks than when he sings, he cares about his fans, he's a really nice guy and he pays attention to political issues.

Will asked Andy Hurley (below) what political issues were most important to him, and he said that global warming was most important--global warming and the environment.





After Fall Out Boy went backstage, Chris Daughtry and his band "Daughtry" came over to meet us. We don't have still photos of that because mom couldn't run the video camera and the still camera at the same time. Daughtry only stopped for a minute because the staff was trying to get them backstage, but Chris seemed like a nice guy.

Next came this guy. Someone told us that his name was "Pharrell". We didn't know who he was, but he seemed to think that everyone should. He just passed right by us. He acted sort of cocky. He did an interview with MTV, but that was it. He wouldn't meet with us even though several people tried to introduce us. We weren't sad or anything. But it was weird that the people that EVERYBODY knows (except my dad) who are super big stars were so nice. And this guy who we had never heard of wasn't so nice. We looked him up on the internet today and found out that he is with a band called N.E.R.D. Maybe one day when he gets to be a big star he'll be nicer.


So here is my crazy brother holding "The Carpet Fiber that Pete Wentz Walked On". Will is always finding things on the ground, usually money. This time it was something pretty random.