Regardless of one’s position on capital punishment, a reasonable person can understand the legal paradox facing attorneys representing Herbert Smulls. They know a key piece of information that could help their death-row client avoid the executioner, but they’re under a court order not to do anything with it. Smulls is scheduled to die by lethal injection one minute after midnight…
A friend of mine was almost desperate to make a pilgrimage to the new fast-food mecca in the Northland: Burgers & Chicks at 5018 N.E. Parvin Road, a locally owned restaurant that offers the greatest hits of the American fast-food repertoire, including fried chicken, fried fish, burgers, shakes and onion rings, matchstick fries and fried okra. “It has everything I…
Everyone should taste a Chick-A-Roni sandwich at least once. And if you do, trust me, you won’t need to eat again for 24 hours. The one-month-old Chicken Macaroni & Cheese restaurant at 7025 Prospect has a lot of interesting dishes on the menu (including a “regular-sized” plate of chicken fried rice that could easily feed a family of five), but…
Maher returns to the Midwest. A year to the month after Bill Maher last traveled to these parts – he did a show in Topeka; interview here – the comedian/talk-show host returns in April for a show at the Midland. The date is Sunday, April 13. Tickets, which will run between $54-$79, are on sale this Friday at 10 a.m….
As part of our International Folk Alliance Conference preview series, we’re rounding up a bunch of notable acts that are coming to town and chatting about what’s happening in their world. The International Folk Alliance Conference takes place from February 19-23. Details here. For those with a taste for 1980s action films, Ronny Cox stands tall as a man in…
The International Folk Alliance Conference & Winter Music Camp comes to KC February 19-23. To get you geared up for the folk blowout, every day we’re posting a song we like by one of the event’s showcase artists. Chuck Mead is a Lawrence native, but he’s been living the country life in Nashville since 1994. There, he co-founded the alt-country…
The majority of the music world is a little bit in love with Cate Le Bon at the moment. The Welsh singer-songwriter has a low and lulling voice that sulks across records like dark velvet; comparisons to Nico are as inevitable as they are accurate. Le Bon’s latest full-length Mug Museum was inspired largely by the death of her maternal…
%{}% Less than 24 hours after the Missouri Attorney General’s Office told a federal judge that it’s ready to execute a prisoner next week with a clean and pure drug, lawyers for a condemned prisoner may have proved otherwise. Lawyers for Herbert Smulls, who has an appointment with Missouri’s death chamber in Bonne Terre on January 29, point to a…
Akkilles, Fight the Quiet, Avenue 17 Czar, Kansas City Thursday, January 23, 2014 It was an early set on a cold night for a modest crowd at Czar, but none of that could detract from Akkilles’ performance as the opening slot for Fight the Quiet. Local hero David Bennett and his merry band filled the empty spaces with their own…
Anaïs Mitchell is an American folk treasure. Since signing to Ani Difranco’s Righteous Babe Records in 2004, the 32-year-old Vermont artist has released a string of critically acclaimed albums that have shaken the folk world by its very earthbound roots. Mitchell’s most recent efforts, 2012’s delicate and heartbreaking Young Man in America and 2013’s Child Ballads, a collection of old…
The International Folk Alliance Conference & Winter Music Camp comes to KC February 19-23. To get you geared up for the folk blowout, every day we’re posting a song we like by one of the event’s showcase artists. Bluegrass and hip-hop together in the same song sounds about as promising as a visit to the dentist, but New York City’s…
This afternoon’s Kansas City Star homepage fails to reach yesterday’s high watermark of clickbait looniness (when Katy Perry’s GQ-cover cleavage got an awkward serenade from the daily’s saddest layoff survivor celebrity watcher, Lisa Gutierrez), but it’s still a fine exhibit for anyone tracking the paper’s slide from charmingly inept to willfully useless. Behold: Ralph Lauren Olympic sweaters! Royals manager Ned Yost…
The Blue Grotto, the sleek pizzeria at 6324 Brookside Plaza, has been in flux since the unexpected death of the venue’s founder and owner John Grier last month. But former Blue Grotto general manager Fenton Malloy today confirms to The Pitch that he is in negotiations with the Grier family to purchase the restaurant. Meanwhile, Malloy has hired talented but…
The Downtown Neon Gallery is merging music and art this weekend with the next installment of its quarterly Music + Poetry + Art series. On deck Friday night: River Cow Orchestra, Evan Smalley, poets from the Writers Place, and art by the Visual Arts Group and Thomas Cobian. “We started doing this in 2008. It’s a collaboration between the Neon Gallery…
Federal appeals court judge Kermit Bye threw sand in the gears of Missouri’s death-penalty machine last month when he aired his frustration over Allen Nicklasson’s execution. Bye, a federal judge for 14 years, issued a biting court opinion upbraiding Missouri for killing Nicklasson before he was done reviewing the condemned man’s request to delay his punishment. Bye’s opinion caught the…
