If you pay any attention to the local jazz scene, you’re bound to recognize the name of trumpeter Clint Ashlock. You might even have had the pleasure of watching him in action as he directs the prestigious Kansas City Jazz Orchestra or leads the New Jazz Order Big Band at the collective’s longstanding Tuesday-night residency at Harling’s. In whichever environment,…
%{}% %{}% The Black Keys, St. Vincent It’s odd to think of the Black Keys playing the Sprint Center, where, in the last year, Miley Cyrus wagged her tongue, Eric Church channeled a fire-breathing demon and Paul McCartney reminded us of his greatness. But the musicians making up the Grammy Award–winning duo — guitarist-singer Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney…
I can probably count on two fingers and a thumb the number of times I’ve eaten in a bowling alley — a pretty good cheeseburger here, a damn fine chili dog there. I recall a surprisingly satisfying plate of sweet-and-sour chicken at the Chop Stix restaurant about 20 years ago, when that place was connected to the Ward Parkway Lanes….
On June 1, Dustin Brown opened his third business in Lawrence. Already an established wedding photographer and software consultant who operated out of a studio just north of the Kansas River, he started Prime Edits with a simple concept. Subscribers would upload raw photos, and Brown would edit the images and beam them back. The business plan was complicated by…
The World Wide Web can be a loathsome place full of nasty things — it would take no small amount of hard work to earn consideration as the “most hated man on the Internet.” But Charles Johnson may have achieved this distinction, at least as far as Beltway media like Politico is concerned (Gawker called Johnson “the web’s worst journalist”). Johnson…
Here’s a little midday ear candy for you: Stik Figa and Leonard Dstroy continue their partnership with a new track from their forthcoming project, Stik Figa is Not Quite Himself. The new track, “Amen,” features guest verses from local rapper Gee Watts. Over trip-hop beats and some film noir sonic effects, Stik and Gee discuss – with a completely in-sync flow…
More bad news out of the Sprint camp: Bloomberg reports this afternoon that the embattled Overland Park-based wireless carrier may face fines of $105 million from the Federal Communications Commission. The allegations stem from what’s known in the industry as “cramming.” Re/Code explains cramming as what happens when “a third-party company places a charge on a subscriber’s mobile phone bill without…
The lineup for Knuckleheads’ annual Christmas show — benefiting local nonprofit the Midwest Music Foundation — is nothing if not loud. Wednesday night, Outlaw Jim and the Whiskey Benders are as likely to break bottles as they are strings, while Katy Guillen & the Girls bring a fierce, electric fury to blues music. The Old No. 5s seem to take…
Earlier this year, Olathe residents Tracy Picanso and Roy Ehrett were indicted for running a business that federal authorities allege produced and sold a variety of synthetic drugs (bath salts, K2 and the like) to the tune of $16 million in sales over two years. Retailing Specialists, as the company called itself, “sold products under exotic names including Pump It,…
Sean Rowe looks like a fearsome mountain man with his thick, serious beard and chiseled features. Similarly imposing is his voice — a deep, wild rumble seemingly more beast than human — that rips through his latest album, Madman. If Nick Cave were to forsake his rock-and-roll inclinations, he might sound like Rowe, whose Spartan folk songs have the same…
A lot of new restaurants opened in the Kansas City metro in 2014, including the eight-month-old Luigi’s Italian Restaurant & Wine Bar at 8 East Franklin in downtown Liberty. I’m sorry that it took me so long to stumble into owner Ari Dreshaj’s Italian bistro. It’s truly one of the restaurant discoveries of the year. Why? The Italian cuisine is…
Because a relative found Charles Cammisano dead in a pool of blood from several gunshot wounds on September 1, 2007, authorities suspected that his former wife, Letti Strait, and her current husband, Terry Strait, may have had something to do with the crime. Now, a Platte County grand jury believes that there’s enough evidence to charge both Straits with first-degree…
It’s official: Chef Ken Baker’s popular Pachamamas restaurant in Lawrence — which The Pitch first reviewed in its original location, back in 2000, and which recently went up for sale — closes for good on Valentine’s Day weekend (Friday, February 13, and Saturday, February 14, 2015), says general manager Kyle Gardener. “We will be open through then and will be…
It was little wonder that waiting until the 11th hour to pass a $1.1 trillion spending bill to keep the federal government running — as Congress did on Thursday — would be larded with lousy ideas. The lousiest of those ideas came from language buried into the 1,600-page bill that stripped out regulations meant to keep taxpayer support out of…
Dolls on Fire is the kind of macabre band name that makes you think the members have a few deep-seated issues to work out. On the group’s 2012 record, Ladies and Gentlemen …, Dolls on Fire seemed to be exorcising youthful angst. That continues on Synesthesia, the group’s latest album. Lead singer Zach Hodson’s voice is exuberant and theatrical and,…
Crossroads T-shirt shop Raygun has created a shirt in honor of Roadrunner, the dog whose eyes were surgically removed after allegedly suffering abuse by his owner. Raygun is releasing the shirt online and in the store (1803 Baltimore) today, with the profits going to KC Pet Project to help pay for Roadrunners’ medical care. On Monday, Raygun is dedicating the…
Chef Celina Tio is busy. Her phone won’t stop buzzing on this Wednesday evening. She breezes through her downtown bar, the Belfry, stopping to chat with drinkers sipping the blend she put together with Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales. Then she has to run out of the building to tell a tow-truck driver to stop hauling cars out of her lot…
Leave it to Neutral Milk Hotel to give us life and break our hearts all in the same breath. The legendary Athens, Georgia, band reunited a year and a half ago, after a decade-long dormant period, and performed its first-ever Kansas City show at the Uptown Theater. In 2015, the band comes back through the area, stopping this time in…
Writer Pete Dulin spent a year embedded in the local craft-beer scene. His book, KC Ale Trail, looks at the last 25 years of brewing in Kansas and Missouri, coinciding with the 25th anniversaries of Boulevard Brewing Co. and Free State Brewing Co. “I covered 23 breweries in this book, from the heavyweights like Boulevard and Free State and Tallgrass to…
