When you think of Smithville, Missouri, you’re likely to picture its grand lake, the quaint downtown in the historic Heritage District, and exquisite restaurants such as Justus Drugstore. On Sunday, September 28, the inaugural Bridge Street Jazz and Food Fair will also be part of that vision. The fair takes over Smithville’s downtown square, and the lineup is the stuff of…
The three women who make up the Carper Family are not related by blood. But bassist Melissa “Daddy” Carper, fiddler Beth “Mama” Chrisman and guitarist Jenn “Little Sister” Miori do share something visceral: a deep love of old-fashioned acoustic tunes. Together, the musicians produce vocal harmonies so pure and natural, you’d think they were triplets who started singing together in…
Last month, several progressive Missouri organizations — the ACLU of Missouri, Progress Missouri, Freedom to Marry and PROMO — announced that they had joined forces to form Show Me Marriage, a “grassroots public education campaign to show all Missourians that Missouri is ready for marriage equality.” This is a big week for marriage-equality advocates in Missouri. On Thursday morning, lawyers from…
%{}% When a remedy won’t cure an ailing bar and grill, it’s time to try a different cure. That’s the story with Remedy Food + Drink, the sunny, glass-walled venue at 500 West 75th Street, in Waldo. The former Kennedy’s Bar & Grill got a significant makeover in 2012, transforming into Remedy. It developed a sophisticated new menu and hired…
Four years ago, the jazz group Diverse booked some space in a little coffee shop in Leawood for a concert to raise funds for a trip to Paris. The jazz-loving owners, Lori and Doug Chandler, cleared tables and chairs away from the front windows to create a “stage.” They discovered that the acoustics were magnificent. Other jazz bands started calling,…
The Carper Family The three women who make up the Carper Family are not related by blood. But bassist Melissa “Daddy” Carper, fiddler Beth “Mama” Chrisman and guitarist Jenn “Little Sister” Miori do share something visceral: a deep love of old-fashioned acoustic tunes. Together, the musicians produce vocal harmonies so pure and natural, you’d think they were triplets who started…
On his first two albums, Perfume Genius — the stage name of Seattle artist Mike Hadreas — focused on creating songs that were delicate, almost elegiac. The music on 2010’s Learning and 2012’s Put Your Back N 2 It were sad and solemn, like mournful diary entries. In fact, Hadreas didn’t expect anyone beyond friends to hear Learning, and he…
When people attempt to sum up the music of the Jorge Arana Trio, they wind up making a whole record store’s worth of comparisons. Reviewers have found the trio analogous to the Mars Volta, Bauhaus and John Zorn. There’s probably a little bit of Deerhoof in there, too. And the band’s latest EP, July’s Oso, floats without allegiance from surf…
Strong dialect work, from stringent German to blue-collar New York, is among the pleasures of the Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre’s Lost in Yonkers, a tenderhearted production that loses little in translation. This Yonkers charms despite a flat first act, in which playwright Neil Simon’s notorious one-liners are at times sacrificed to a general wash of pinched panic. Family man Eddie, on…
In her new solo exhibition at Haw Contemporary, Shifting Territory, textile artist Debra Smith steps into terra incognita. Employing bold, gestural lines and the large-scale sensibilities of a painter, she engages with the visual tropes of drawing and painting, and the fabrics she uses — vintage kimonos and men’s suit lining (striped in a faint gray that suggests pencil graphite)…
The Katz Drugstore building, where Westport Road meets Main Street, is beloved in some quarters simply for having survived so much of the last century. But it hasn’t made it this far into this one by being impressive. The paint remains faded, the tiling cracked, the clock tower in disrepair. For the 20 or so artists who rent studio space…
On Wednesday, September 10, U.S. Marshals, local law enforcement and a temporary receiver appointed by a federal judge arrived at the headquarters of CWB Services LLC, at 6700 Squibb, in Mission. Larry Cook, the temporary receiver, ordered all employees present to step away from their desks. Photos and video were taken of the premises. Employees submitted to in-depth interviews…
%{}% Carol Beier is a Kansas Supreme Court justice often accused by the state’s Republican activists of advancing stridently liberal ideology on the state’s highest court. Often, those accusations ring hollow, sounding like sour grapes from partisans who complain about rulings from the judicial branch only when they don’t match their own political views. A Tuesday-evening backyard barbecue at Beier’s…
Dreamy sitar music generally suggests scenes from Arabian Nights or Game of Thrones, but that doesn’t make it anonymous exotica. For proof, look no further than FOKL on Sunday, when Atlanta’s Naan Violence — the stage name of sitar player Arjun Kulharya — lends a human touch to the mystical desert right here in the Midwest. Kulharya, who cites inspiration…
Kansas is the darling of an otherwise snoozy midterm election year. Name-brand Republican Gov. Sam Brownback is in a close fight for a second term against Lawrence upstart Paul Davis. Established Sen. Pat Roberts could conceivably lose to an independent in Greg Orman. And now Kris Kobach, the architect of a widely panned effort to force an unwilling Democratic candidate…
With Democrat Chad Taylor’s name now off the ballot, independent candidate Greg Orman, a Johnson County businessman nobody had heard of a month ago, has a reasonable shot at defeating incumbent Pat Roberts in the race in Kansas for U.S. Senate. A tight race means more media scrutiny on Orman. The Topeka Capital-Journal recently reported on Orman’s ties to jailed…
%{}% After three months of evaluation, the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority’s board of directors approved on Monday a proposal to manage the Johnson County bus service. Under the proposal adopted by the KCATA, Johnson County would pay the regional transit authority about $475,000 to manage Johnson County’s network of bus lines. Johnson County currently has an 11-member staff overseeing…
%{}% Ah, Lou Barlow, champion of lo-fi music and the brooding lovelorn. Until last year’s release of his band Sebadoh’s latest, Defend Yourself, we were afraid that we would never again hear Barlow’s pithy self-loathing shrouded in the fuzz of 1990s guitars — it had been some 14 years since Sebadoh last delivered a full-length (1999’s The Sebadoh). Thankfully, Defend…
Shabazz Palaces with Hearts of Darkness Riot Room, Kansas City, Missouri Saturday, September 20, 2014 Ishmael Butler – the frontman for Seattle’s Shabazz Palaces, where he goes by Palaceer Lazaro – made his entrance into the Riot Room last night amidst the frenzied grooves of local reggae-soul masters Hearts of Darkness. Decked out in oversized sunglasses and a loud, patterned…
