%{}% The current City Council has never said no to Burns & McDonnell. The prodigious $2 billion engineering firm with headquarters in south Kansas City has been before the Kansas City, Missouri, City Council 21 times since 2011, mostly to have public works contracts approved. Each one passed. All told, those contracts since the current council assumed power have committed…
Johnny Solomon has had a long and heavy road to Communist Daughter, the Minneapolis folk-rock band he started in 2008. Years earlier, as the frontman for lauded rock band Friends Like These, Solomon seemed to be at the high point of his musical career – until addiction and troubles with the law derailed the band. Out of the wreckage, Solomon salvaged…
The inaugural Westport Roots Fest, centered around the Westport Saloon and taking place on Saturday, May 24, is approaching fast. To prepare for the pending roots romp presented by the good folks at Little Class Records, The Pitch will be highlighting a “song of the day” from one of the featured artists in the weeks leading up to fest. Kris Bruders has been working…
Echoes of Wendy Davis in Jeff City. It’s been a real bummer, this legislative session, watching Missouri’s increasingly deranged Republican legislators attempt to out-wingnut the kooks across the State Line in Kansas. Last week, the Republicans (and one Democrat – this guy) succeeded in overriding Governor Nixon’s veto of a huge, disastrous, Kansas-inspired tax cut that disproportionately benefits the rich…
Thanksgiving is one of the biggest holidays of the year that is built on tradition with family, turkey, parades and most of all football. From high school to college to the pro s you can guarantee that there will be some great Thanksgiving Day games between traditional rivals. One of the classic Thanksgiving games was always the Texas – Texas…
The Oklahoma Sooners have become the model of consistency for modern day college football under Bob Stoops. Since taking over as the head ball coach in 1999 for Oklahoma the Sooners have gone an outstanding 160-39 (.804) with 14 bowl appearances, nine of which being BCS bowl, nine Big XII Championships as well as a National Championship. By all accounts…
The Baylor Bears are widely regarded as one of the best offensive teams in the country under head coach Art Briles. A season ago first time starter Bryce Petty took over the reins as quarterback of the most potent offense in the country at Baylor and took it to the next level leading the nation in scoring averaging an absurd…
To the great surprise of almost no one following the United States men’s soccer team, Sporting Kansas City defender Matt Besler and midfielder Graham Zusi were named to the 30-man World Cup roster on Monday. That list of players will be trimmed to 23 by June 2. Besler and Zusi are expected to make that cut, too, and travel to…
Not everyone gets to collaborate with their favorite brewery to make a beer. Maria Scarpello and Brian Devine, the traveling beer bloggers of the Roaming Pint, are the lucky ones. They had wanted to make a beer at their favorite brewery – their hometown brewery – Free State Brewing Company. But their traveling schedule never seemed to match up with Free…
%{}% Jim Wirken’s fall from grace is complete with Monday’s announcement that the formerly prominent Kansas City attorney admitted to federal charges of money laundering. Wirken, 69, waived his right to a grand jury on Monday. The criminal charges stem from the same allegations that caused the Missouri Supreme Court to disbar Wirken, effectively stripping him of his law license….
Here’s a fairly amazing fact to start out the week: Boulevard Brewing Company and Odell Brewing Company out of Fort Collins, Colorado, tapped their very first kegs one day apart from each other in November 1989. Since that autumn week in the late ’80s, both breweries survived their yeoman upstart roots to become respected craft breweries. Boulevard founder John McDonald…
Water Liars began in 2011 as a songwriting partnership between guitarist Justin Peter Kinkel-Schuster and drummer Andrew Bryant. The Mississippi – via – St. Louis band’s debut record, Phantom Limb, was a shaky promise of tender-footed talent; the nine folky tracks sounded more like bedroom demos than fully realized songs. Then 2013’s Wyoming hammered out a few of Kinkel-Schuster and…
The inaugural Westport Roots Fest, centered around the Westport Saloon and taking place on Saturday, May 24, is approaching fast. To prepare for the pending roots romp presented by the good folks at Little Class Records, The Pitch will be highlighting a “song of the day” from one of the featured artists in the weeks leading up to fest. Mikee Pruitt’s one-man band, the…
motherearthnews.com Violent crime is up in Larryville. Here in Kansas City, where roughly two people are murdered every week, we’re rather inured to lethal violence. Forty miles west, though, in sleepy Lawrence, Kansas, homicides are relatively rare. In fact, there were exactly zero slayings in Lawrence in 2009. Same with 2010. And 2011. Also 2012. Something started to change in…
Lyle Lovett and his Acoustic Group The Uptown Theater, Kansas City Friday, May 9, 2014 Grammy Award winner Lyle Lovett and his Acoustic Group sauntered onstage in fluid timeliness. The group of fine, dark suited maestros found their positions, with a blue-suited Lovett, front and center. The sextet kicked it off with “Up with Indiana,” from Lovett’s 2007 album, Its…
Jamaal Charles is on Team Uber. No great shock given the company’s recent social-media advertising campaign, but today Uber – the ride-share competitor of Lyft, which has been the subject of much controversy these past few weeks – officially launched in Kansas City. The timing is interesting. Yesterday, the City Council closed the loophole by which ride-sharing companies hoped to…
Russell Bucklew, a Missouri man convicted for his involvement in a 1996 murder and rape, wants federal courts to halt his forthcoming execution on grounds that a lethal injection would aggravate his rare medical condition to the point that it’s cruel and unusual punishment. Bucklew suffers from cavernous hemangioma, a condition that leads to clusters of weak veins in his…
Concerns about leadership at KCAI. We’ve been hearing little rumblings lately about discontent among the faculty over at the Kansas City Art Institute. In the Graphic Design department, for example, at least two of the four faculty members – assistant professor Marty Maxwell Lane and Tyler Galloway, chair of the department – are leaving after this semester. That’s hardly a…
