Let’s take a look at Kevin Richardson’s Facebook page and see what the Backstreet Boy and native Kentuckian is up to.

At the top of the page is a photo about BSB’s huge new honor: a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which the group learned last week it will receive in 2013, along with musicians such as Janis Joplin and Luther Vandross.

“I grew up in Kentucky seeing stars’ ceremonies on TV, so it’s surreal, it’s a huge honor,” Richardson says from his home in Los Angeles. “We’re in good company there. Pretty much anybody in terms of great actors, great rock bands is there. Paul McCartney, right after he got his star, went into Capitol Records and did a live performance.”

That will be part of a big year for the Backstreet Boys. Richardson has rejoined the group, which includes his cousin and fellow Kentuckian Brian Littrell, after splitting with them amicably in 2006 after the tour for the album Never Gone. This month, Richardson will meet the group, one of the best-selling music acts in history, in London to record an album, due out early next year.

But before that, we’re going to see a very different side of Richardson. Another item we spy on his Facebook page is an E! Online story about his two new movies, one of which puts him in the oh-so-hip vampire genre.

On Tuesday, his drama The Casserole Club comes out on home video, telling the story of five couples in the 1960s who get together under the pretense of a casserole-cooking competition but end up swapping spouses and dealing with the aftermath.

“It starts out as fun and kind of campy, and then gets real serious real quick,” Richardson says. “It’s kind of like watching a car accident. You know you shouldn’t watch, but you can’t help yourself.”

The movie has done well on the independent-film circuit and earned Richardson some good reviews. The Village Voice’s Michael Musto writes that Richardson plays a jerk “who feels ‘a man’s job is to be horny’ — and he’s pretty convincing about it.”

One of Richardson’s co-stars is Jane Wiedlin, who enjoyed chart-topping success with The Go-Go’s in the 1980s.

“We would have dinners as a cast every night,” Richardson says. “We’d sit around and share stories and talk, and everybody was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, the success of your groups together is pretty amazing.’ She’s a sweet, sweet, lovely human being.”

Richardson, 40, realized years ago that being a chart-topping musician didn’t make him a first-rate actor. A big part of the reason he left the Backstreet Boys in 2006 was to pursue acting classes and nurture the talent he had rediscovered during a 2003 run playing sleazebag lawyer Billy Flynn in the Broadway production of Chicago.

“I joined a studio group and went to class three days a week,” Richardson says. “It felt good to be a student.”

His next movie, Bloody Indulgent, is a darkly comic vampire musical in which Richardson plays a blood sucker with a substance-abuse problem.

“I’ve always loved vampire films,” says Richardson, who remembers the mini-series Salem’s Lot scaring him to death when he was growing up in Harrodsburg. “I had to sleep with one of my brothers every night for the next week, I was so scared.”

On the lighter side of vampires, he recalls the 1979 George Hamilton comedy Love at First Bite that had him running around the house playing a vampire. Later in life, he became a fan of Anne Rice’s vampire books and got an autographed copy of Interview With the Vampire from her.

The movie is in post-production, and Richardson says he expects it will hit the festival circuit late this year or early next year.

But music is making its way back into his life.

A few frames down his Facebook page, we see Richardson at the keyboard in Noise Block Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala., where he recorded an album of songs that have influenced him over the years. Richardson says the project started when he was sitting in with a friend’s band in California. He would suggest songs and then comment on what they meant to him during performances.

“Eventually, he said, ‘You know, you have the makings for a show here,’” Richardson recalls.

The album will include songs he heard on the radio growing up in Central Kentucky like Hall and Oates’ Sarah Smile and Ambrosia’s You’re the Only Woman.

More than a trip down memory lane, Richardson says, the experience showed him the roots of his own musicianship and helped refocus him.

“It changed my approach completely and helped me find who I am as an artist,” he says.

After recording the album, which will be out later this year, Richardson wrote a handful of songs he says he’ll take to London when he reunites with the Backstreet Boys to record.

“I really wasn’t happy artistically,” Richardson says, explaining why he left the chart-topping group. “I didn’t feel like I got to express myself artistically like I should, like I wanted to.”

Now, he says, he thinks he can balance his artistic ambitions between acting and his own music and work with the band.

“I had to go on my on journey because I feel like I might have lost a little bit of myself in all the success and all the madness,” Richardson says. “I needed to step away and get some perspective.”

Rejoining the group now “feels right,” Richardson says. “I want to now, and it just feels right.”

It also brings him back to the band in time to celebrate its 20th anniversary, as well as that star on the Walk of Fame.

And now, if fans want to follow on the journey, they just need to look to Richardson’s Facebook page.

By Rich Copley
July 01, 2012
Kentucky.com

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Send Audrey your card for Leighanne before July 9th and, ALL the cards she’ll received will be send to Leighanne!
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3) Bouquet for Leighanne.
Let’s buy altogether a HUGE bouquet of flowers for Leighanne!
Payment by paypal. E-mail Audrey for more info!
Deadline July 16th!

Of course, you can take part as many project you want!

But when nine images flashed on-screen and nine shadows emerged at 9 p.m., the audience erupted with deafening cheer.

The 80′s and 90′s collided at SM MOA’s The Arena earlier this week as iconic boy bands from those two generations brought nostalgia onstage with old but familiar beats.

Publicly born on November 2010 at the American Music Awards, the team-up of 25-year-old New Kids on the Block (NKOTB) and 19-year-old Backstreet Boys (BSB) dubbed NKOTBSB ended their year-and-a-half long international tour in the Philippines, the latest of international acts to enter the country.

NKOTBSB started the night with a medley of “Single” and “The One” mixed with iconic strings from Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” before splitting back to their respective groups to sing “Summertime Remix” and “The Call.” Throughout the performance, the older Kids were more daring in showing some skin as compared to the younger Boys, but whoever got the louder screams from the crowd was pretty hard to tell.

Both groups took turns in performing a total of 29 songs (plus three more hits at encore). The five-member NKOTB pumped the crowd with “Step by Step” and “You Got It” as they thrust their “right stuff” for the cameras, making the already-swooning older audience scream some more. BSB, who’s missing a member for the tour, looked like they’ve been working out less compared to the Kids. But they still caught the crowd with “Get Down,” the song that propelled them to fame, and followed up with slow songs like “Shape of my Heart” and “As Long As You Love Me.”

After singing “Quit Playing Games (With My Heart),” BSB’s Brian Litrell did a brief rendition of NKOTB’s “Please Don’t Go Girl” before calling them back on stage.

“For us, it feels like 1989 all over again. For some of you, it feels like 1999,” NKOTB member Joey McIntyre told the Philippine crowd, as he did in their previous destinations.

NKOTB added that “(with this) marriage of two boy bands, in 15 years our boy band babies will come to Manila,” and that BSB were “great partners but better friends.”

Online, Filipino fans took their NKOTBSB fandom with videos and photos to Twitter. Members of the bands also thanked their fans online.

By Roehl Niño Bautista
June 7, 2012
GMA News

Two of the biggest pop groups of the 1990s – the Backstreet Boys and New Kids On The Block – may have been older and greyer (albeit in some cases, a lot more buff) but then so were most of us in the audience.

It meant the moves were a little slower. But it was made up for with enthusiasm, as the foursome and quintet known for their slick dance moves gave it their all to slide, jump, thrust and strut along the stage.

The evening started off a little quiet as the two bands swapped songs on stage but NKOTB got the crowd into the mood with the first major hit of the evening, You Got It (The Right Stuff).

It was followed by hits only the diehard fans knew well but surprisingly came flooding back for those who had thought they’d long left their youth behind.

And when the shirts came off, the screams from the mainly 20 and 30-something crowd could’ve been mistaken for school girls at a Justin Bieber concert.

The Backstreet Boys were the obvious crowd favourite with Larger than Life, As Long As You Love Me, I Want It That Way and, of course, Everybody (Backstreet’s Back) getting the loudest cheers.

But the New Kids still hold a soft spot in many Adelaide girls’ hearts, also singing Cover Girl, Step By Step and Hanging Tough.

The two groups held a strong rapport, joining each other on stage for the first and final songs and a few in between.

And their appreciation of their fans showed their years of experience, as they happily ran into the audience to shake hands, hug and sing to fans, with the Backstreet Boys even serenading a lucky four women on stage during the 2 1/2 hour show.

By Cara Jenkin
May 22, 2012
Adelaide Now

It’s been tentatively announced that millennium-era boy band the Backstreet Boys, who visited Shanghai not long ago, are getting the call to come back to perform in June.

This time with their current touring mates, New Kids on the Block.

And touring mates isn’t exactly accurate either, as more than just sharing the same stage, they’ll be doing so concurrently, singing their respective greatest hits together. It’s the kind of spectacle that barely can be contained by its very own acronym, “N.K.O.T.B.S.B.”

That show, and their whole tour, represents some sort of nexus of pop music, a meeting of two separate stars that combines to form its own universe of ridiculousness.

Like my recent visit to see “The Avengers” at the cinema, there is a youthful part of me that cannot conceive it’s possible to bring together different franchises into one spectacle.

Even a few years ago, this wasn’t even on the radar anywhere except for in the dreams of the softhearted everywhere.

Other than perhaps the few noted duets between American R&B vocal groups The Temptations and The Supremes in the 1960s, it’s very uncommon for pop groups to combine forces.

And why should they?

For one, there has been few historical examples for pop groups to build from. Whether it would have been a good idea or not, ’50s pop groups The Penguins didn’t sing with The Clovers, and ’60s pop groups The Monkees didn’t sing with The Beach Boys.

The few examples have been roped together for mostly novel reasons, such as sibling boy/girl duets by Michael and Janet Jackson.

So that certainly makes NKOTBSBa novelty, but what makes it so spectacular?

There’s an obvious sense of desperation in the whole endeavor. These “Kids” and “Boys” are all past 30 years old, with the Kids soon to be hanging tough on 50. And unlike the Beach Boys or Kid Rock, two groups that took youthful names but subsequently made more mature music, NKOTBSB will be performing songs that are immediately nostalgic and tied to adolescence.

It’s not just the songs, either. Both groups represented the heights of overblown productions of their respective eras. Carefully manicured appearances, choreographed dances and polished stage-shows were the norm for each.

That leaves to a question: when New Kids on the Block and Backstreet Boys come together, does one add them together, or multiply them?

Perhaps since the Backstreet Boys were clearly influenced by New Kids on the Block, the 5 Kids goes to the 4th power of the Boys, bringing their show to a score of 625.

Can nine mature guys singing what is kids music put on a show with a silly, made up score of 625?

I sincerely hope so.

By Brian Offenther
May 20, 2012
Shanghai Daily

“When we started, a boy band was just a group of boys singing together,” he explains.

“And we still get called that, but you know what? We’ve learned to accept it. It’s great to be called anything these days and to still be going strong.”

Performing tonight in Adelaide, Howie says the band, including Brian Littrell, Nick Carter, AJ McLean and Dorough pictured below, couldn’t wait to return Down Under.

This time they’ve brought some special guests in fellow 90s hitmakers New Kids on the Block. “To be back with New Kids on the Block and seeing the love from the fans is awesome,” he says.

Together almost 20 years, the group has proved the critics wrong.

“We’ve almost been going 20 years strong which is crazy,” he says.

“A lot of people didn’t expect that, being a boy band and all but it’s great. It just goes to show how strong the fanbase out here is and hopefully it’s testament to the music being good as well.”

Back in 2000, Backstreet Boys were on top of the world, and Howie still can’t believe the success the group found.

“It was just amazing to be in a category like we were and be one of the biggest bands,” he says.

“Being with these guys for so long and seeing the success we have, I’ve just been so blessed and it’s great to be going 20 years strong but also knowing that we have the fanbase to hopefully keep going another 20 years – hopefully,” he laughs.

Tickets are still available from $99 through Ticketek for Backstreet Boys and New Kids on the Block tonight at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre.

By Sam Kelton
May 20, 2012
Adelaide Now

In an unashamed feast for every teen of the Nineties, the boy bands unleashed a cavalcade of ballads, hip thrusts and fist pumps at Rod Laver Arena.

You could have been forgiven for walking in on a Chippendales show to begin with.

Tacky runway lights lit the stage as huge half naked pictures of both bands members were flashed up on a big screen for a good five minutes.

But once some cringeworthy medleys and mashups were done, it was time for the fun to begin.

Proving they had the Right Stuff, the bands pulled out every 90s cliche from yelling ‘Melbourne’ ad nauseum, rocking white suits and dancing around microphones while flipping trilby hats.

And the hits kept rolling with Step by Step and As Long as You Love Me, finishing on Backstreet’s Back and Hangin’ Tough

By Kate McMahon
May 19, 2012
Herald Sun