Martina McBride has enjoyed an extensive 22-year career as a country music star – though the Sharon, Kansas native’s April album, Everlasting, threw longtime fans a curveball. It was a gamble of an album, full of R&B and soul covers – and it won McBride new legions of fans on top of her dedicated masses. Soon, she’ll be bringing the celebratory…
Crossroads Music Fest Crossroads Art District, Kansas City Saturday, September 6 Kansas City music lovers could not have asked for a more perfect Saturday – prime pickings for a music festival. With blue skies, a cool breeze, mild temperature and light jacket, yesterday’s 10th Annual Crossroads Music Festival was off to a suberb start. Spread out over multiple venues in…
Buzz Beach Ball 2014 Sporting Park, Kansas City Friday, September 5 There are very few bands for whom I would stand in the rain, and none of them were playing at Sporting Park last night. To get past the rain and general discomfort that came with it, a band was going to have to be absolutely dazzling. Thankfully, after a…
Katy Guillen and the Girls have stolen our hearts countless times since 2013, when they became the latest hometown talent to rise to national recognition, taking fourth place at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis. This past August, they received a Pitch Music Award for Best Emerging Artist. At last, the band has a full-length album to its name: a…
Nicolette Foster has given her notice at Baked in Kansas City, the nine-month-old bakery and restaurant at 706 Westport Road (reviewed here). The talented young pastry chef starts a new job — executive pastry chef for Parisi Artisan Coffee — on September 15. “I learned a lot at Baked in Kansas City,” Foster says. “It was an amazing opportunity to be…
Kansas is in the national news again this week. Everybody’s talking about the Kansas Jayhawks football squad’s season opener against the Southeast Missouri State Redhawks. Is sophomore QB Montell Cozart ready for prime time? Following the injuries of Brandon Bourbon and Taylor Cox, can freshman running back Corey Avery carry the load? It’s been an absolute media firestorm in the Sunflower…
The Kansas City Chiefs became the surprise breakout team in the NFL last season going from a league worst 2-14 in 2012 to 11-5 and a playoff spot. The Chiefs will hope not to regress the other way as they open the season against the Tennessee Titans at Arrowhead Stadium. While many fans across the country are excited for the…
Sean Starowitz is an artist, but his work is difficult to track on paper or view on a wall. His projects tend to have a distinctly community-based feel. He is the mind behind micro-financing organization Bread KC, which supports the arts in Kansas City; Byproduct: The Laundromat, an investigation into public art that acted as a catalyst for creative discussion and…
Houston’s D.R.I. (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles, in case you’re wondering) is a curious band. Founded in 1982, the thrash-punk group never really took off the way contemporaries D.O.A. and Dead Kennedys did. Where those bands get paragraphs in music-history texts, D.R.I. gets a footnote. Still, that doesn’t diminish what the band has accomplished. It was one of the first to marry…
The Kansas Supreme Court finally ditched an indictment against Wyandotte County lawyer Rodney Turner from 2008 because a state investigator tried to link him to an unsolved murder during grand jury proceedings on an unrelated matter. The court’s decision may close the book on the protracted legal proceedings going back more than half a decade into one of the darker…
It’s never too early to start planning your Christmas festivities. Luckily, the Kansas City area has a special opportunity to get extra joyous: Two concerts with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra on Tuesday, December 23, at 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. The TSO will be performing its grandiose rock opera The Christmas Attic. Tickets go on sale Friday, September 12 at 10…
If the only thing you really know about Cake is its 2001 hit song “Short Skirt/Long Jacket,” you have plenty to brush up on before Friday’s Crossroads KC show. Aside from that track and the 2011 hit “Sick of You” (off Showroom of Compassion), Cake’s recent concerts have featured deeper cuts. Then again, lead singer John McCrea’s singing is lackadaisical…
The Milwaukee Brewers begin a four game series Thursday night with the division rival St. Louis Cardinals at Miller Park. St. Louis just recently gained an edge in the NL Central and will have a chance to expand their division lead with four games this weekend. The Brewers are reeling right now heading into this series, losing eight of their…
Shifting from its usual third-Friday events, Columbus Park’s Trap Gallery (525 Gillis) opens from 6 to 10 p.m. September 5 with work from Archive Collective, eight photographers and supporters who organized in March to promote local fine-art photography with publications, critiques and talks. This exhibition, titled Trade, Look, Ship, comes from a regional postal and cultural exchange undertaken by artist…
