Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. change their name to JR JR
Kevin Bronson on
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Joshua Epstein and Daniel Zott, who have circled the indie-rock track under the jokey name Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. since 2009, are changing their name to JR JR.
The Michigan-bred duo announced the switch via social media today, starting by recapping the letter they received from NASCAR great Dale Earnhardt Jr. back in 2011 in which the race car driver says he’s OK with the band name. “To this day, Dale Earnhardt Jr. has been nothing but gracious and cool about things,” they write. “And y’know … he didn’t have to be. It was perfectly within his right to look at these two weird kids from Detroit and say ‘no way.’ Or to just have an intermediary shut things down on his behalf.”
But, they go on to write:
“The flip side is that as things have grown, so has the amount of confusion caused by the name Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. Some of it is no big deal and easily cleared up. But sometimes we get sad and bizarre requests sent to our social media sites or emailed to people we work with. We’ve had people drive long distances to shows only to be disappointed when they realize it’s a neurotic Jew and wild haired gentile from Detroit they’ve paid to see.”
Ultimately, then, they’ve decided to continue as JR JR, explaining, “In our mind, changing our name to JR JR allows us to take back our voice in a way. To us it is all about empowerment, and being who we feel we need to be moving forward to record, release and perform music.”
The band, which released the single “James Dean” last fall, has new music on the way via Warner Bros.
Read the duo’s entire announcement here.
Photo by Catie Laffoon
[…] As they promised last week when they announced they had changed their name from Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. to JR JR, Joshua Epstein and Daniel Zott have unveiled the new song “Gone,” a playful dance-pop stomp that Epstein calls “karaoke worthy” and that will appear on their new album. That album, titled “JR JR,” will be out Sept. 25, marking the duo’s third release for Warner Bros. and following up 2013’s “The Speed of Things.” Recorded between their home base of Detroit and Los Angeles during breaks in their tour schedule, the new album figures to see JR JR branching out a bit — last year they collaborated on a hip-hop mixtape, and their 2014 single “James Dean” saw them dipping their toes into nu-R&B. “Gone” is as easy to digest as their new name is to type. Cheers. […]
[…] Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., which made them easy to confuse with a race-car driver. After a few laps, the famous band then changed their name to JR JR. Thus faced with an identity (if not existential) crisis, Jr. changed their name to (wink) Sure […]