Archives: August 2014
Sturgill Simpson is coming to Knuckleheads in December
If you have ears and good taste, get out your calendar now and mark off this date: Tuesday, December 2. On that fateful day, friends, Sturgill Simpson – whose latest album, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, is like the holy grail of psychedelic and western music, smashed brilliantly together – will perform at Knuckleheads. If you subscribe to the Waylon and Willie…
Superhuman pedestrian hit by bus in downtown KC, walks off like nothing happened
Automobiles — which, as I understand it, are built from materials such as iron and steel — tend to hurt when you collide with them. The other day, I was walking down the street, got distracted by my phone, bumped into a parked Camry at a rate of speed no higher than 0.5 miles per hour, and almost started crying. …
City Council has to start over again on November ballot issue after Chastain threatens lawsuit
The Kansas City, Missouri, City Council is bending to a threatened lawsuit by Clay Chastain, who claimed that council members violated open meetings laws last Thursday. The council seemed ready and prepared to discuss on August 14 what it would do about putting two court-mandated sales-tax proposals before voters on November 4. The two measures call for sales-tax increases for…
Bartender’s Notebook: The Rieger’s Jenn Tosatto makes a drink fit for a queen
Early on a weekday afternoon, Jenn Tosatto is a blur of impressive mohawk and bar-themed tattoos as she preps for happy hour behind the handsome bar at the Rieger Hotel Grill & Exchange. She commands this space Monday through Friday, a queen pre siding over her loyal court during those most holy (and most necessary) of hours. There’s no crown,…
On Tap: Empyrean tastings, a beer-ice-cream social and meet KC Bier Co.’s Steve Holle
This week, get a taste of Empyrean, eat ice cream made with beer at the Foundry, and meet KC Bier Co. owner Steve Holle. Here’s your rundown of craft-beer events for the week. Thursday, August 21 Empyrean tasting at Lukas Liquors (KCMO), 5-7 p.m. Friday, August 22 Meet-the-brewer night with KC Bier Co. owner Steve Holle, 4-7 p.m. at Barley’s…
Katy Perry charmed an arena with cat videos and pop pleasure last night at the Sprint Center
Katy Perry with Kacey Musgraves The Sprint Center August 19, 2014 For more photos from the show, click here. Female pop stars walk the finest of lines sometimes between sexiness and raunch, camp and excruciating silliness, and musicality and pop pleasure. Those who do it best and have stood the test of time (Madonna, Cher) have found the sweet spots…
Nickel Creek reunited its melodic powers at the Uptown last night
Generally speaking, there are two ways a reunion show can go: Really, really well – where the audience is treated to all the glorious talent it had been dearly missing for a number of years – or flat-out terrible, where the band is clearly in it to make a quick buck and then retreat to separate corners. Thankfully, for the…
Searching for answers in former Mission Police Chief John Simmons’ departure
Last December, the city of Mission and its police chief, John Simmons, “mutually agreed” that he would quit his $102,444-a-year job. City officials also decided to give Simmons a little something extra: $34,000 to help “ease his financial difficulties while he obtains replacement employment,” according to an employment separation agreement obtained by The Pitch through an open-records request. That agreement…
What’s really nutty about the Clay Chastain ballot is what the city is doing to it
If there was ever a time to vote down a Clay Chastain transit proposal, it’s this November. For one thing, it’s barely his proposal now. An initiative that started as a long-sought redress to Chastain’s scotched 2006 light-rail plan — still the only rail plan to have earned a citywide mandate at the ballot box — has been run through…
Strand of Oaks’ Timothy Showalter talks about the healing powers of music ahead of his Riot Room show on Friday
Strand of Oaks’ Timothy Showalter has never been a confessional songwriter. His 2010 album, Pope Killdragon, was a sort of sci-fi creation, featuring his story of Dan Aykroyd avenging the death of the late John Belushi. But the process for his newest record, Heal, has been different. Influenced by a personal realization that he (in the lyrics of “Goshen ’97”) had become “fat,…
Chad Albus explains his ELF bike in this week’s Pitch questionnaire
Name: Chad Albus Occupation: Owner-operator of Bike to You: EcoHome Services Handyman Hometown: St. Joseph Current neighborhood: River Market What I do (in 140 characters): Apart from fixing things as a professional handyman, I also make art, compost, spend lots of time with my 2-year-old, and stay up-to-speed with politics. Tell us about your ELF bike: I am using this…
Katy Perry at the Sprint Center, 8/19/14
Katy Perry sparkled and roared at the Sprint Center on August 19th, 2014.
Coherence, Happy Christmas and Frank streak through Arts & Crafts
I can’t remember if was Tolstoy or Cavett who said every unhappy dinner party is unhappy in its own way, but it’s true. And it’s true times 10 or 20 — or infinity — in Coherence, a claustrophobic little puzzle that invites Schrödinger’s cat to a cozy bread-breaking among friend-type people. With a bright comet overhead sparking conversation (and perhaps…
Kinfolks Soul Food Festival has swindled several cities this year. Is Kansas City next?
Saturday, August 23, at Parade Park — that 20-acre square of public space at the corner of Truman Road and the Paseo, a block north of the Jazz District at 18th Street and Vine — the Kinfolks Soul Food Festival is supposed to put down stakes. The festival’s organizers have promised — in addition to chicken, chitlins, okra and oxtails…
Screenland’s second Arts & Crafts fest brews a killer syllabus
Screenland Armour operators Adam Roberts and Brent Miller wanted to meet at Rock & Run Brewery, in downtown Liberty, to talk with me about their second Arts & Crafts festival. A year ago, when the two were planning their first such event — uniting craft beer, music, art and film — Rock & Run hadn’t yet opened its garage doors…
Music Forecast 8.21-8.27: Reverend Horton Heat, the Cactus Blossoms, Atmosphere, and more
Atmosphere In May, Atmosphere — the 17-year Minneapolis rap duo made up of producer Ant and MC Slug — released its latest full-length, Southsiders. Unlike most recent issues from Atmosphere, a run that has placed a heavy emphasis on live instrumentation, Southsiders offers a return to basics, centering on Ant’s steady, smart production and Slug’s emotive, honest lyrics. It comes…
Jazz Beat: Count Basie Orchestra, at the Gem Theater
Seventy-nine years ago, in KC’s 18th Street and Vine Jazz District, a young Bill Basie assembled the band that would introduce the world to Kansas City swing. Brash and brassy, with a tap-your-foot-to-it beat that was born from the 12-bar blues, the sound remains integral to jazz. Saturday night at the Gem Theater, the Count Basie Orchestra returns to the…
Christopher Denny finds the light at the end of the tunnel
Coming seven years after his debut solo record, Age Old Hunger, Christopher Denny’s If the Roses Don’t Kill Us (out this month on Partisan Records) marks not only a return to music but also a brilliant triumph. The Arkansas native channels Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Roy Orbison (among others), with a sound that lives up to those comparisons. But Denny’s…
Spencer Mackenzie Brown goes solo with Part One
Spencer Mackenzie Brown looks vaguely uncomfortable as he sits at the bar inside Lawrence’s Bourgeois Pig. He takes long sips of the bourbon cocktail in front of him, smiling with some trepidation when I sit down at the stool next to his. The 24-year-old singer-songwriter seems more at ease when the topic of conversation turns away from his singing and…
The effects of Kansas City Actors Theatre on Paul Zindel’s Marigolds
Kansas City Actors Theatre opens its 10th season with a flash of atomic power. Its production of Paul Zindel’s The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, now playing at the Living Room, offers a heartfelt reminder that enormous energy can come from the smallest things — the atom, say, or the optimism of an odd-duck girl. Despite its wide…
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