“I feel like I’m kind of a boring interview,” Heidi Lynne Gluck tells me with a short laugh. She’s sitting across from me, in a comfortable-looking armchair in the living room of her Lawrence home. The fading sunlight illuminates her face as she reaches for her beer. She’s not really the self-deprecating type. Her comment seems driven more by a…
The Avett Brothers Before you hem and haw about the Avett Brothers jumping on that Americana-revival bandwagon, take a moment to appreciate that banjoist Scott Avett and guitarist Seth Avett have been working with this sound since their 2000 debut. That’s a decade and a half of commitment to the genre, and the brothers know what they’re doing. They have…
Nick Offerman made red-blooded, mustachioed government employee Ron Swanson an American TV icon on NBC’s Parks and Recreation. With his second book, Gumption, Offerman aims to do the same with 21 real Americans, lionizing the likes of George Washington, Yoko Ono and Carol Burnett. It’s not a history book but it’s educational, insightful and funny, told in Offerman’s uniquely American…
May 17 was a rare clear day during an unusually rainy month in Kansas City. At Kauffman Stadium that afternoon, legions of Royals fans filed out of the stadium buzzed on having just watched the home team dismantle the New York Yankees, 6–0. Just across Interstate 70, a different celebration was taking place in a dimly lighted ballroom at the…
The Convivial Production studio is quiet today, save for the classical NPR feed spilling from her iPhone in the corner. Chentell Stiritz, the founder, designer and chief maker behind the ceramics company, has invited me to tour the space in Rosedale. It’s a sunny weekday morning, and Stiritz’s helpers — one part-time employee, several interns — aren’t here yet. The…
A strong cast can’t quite outstrip Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre’s production missteps in the company’s staging of The Full Monty, that theatrical ode to the dad bod. The stripteasing musical, a smart yet softhearted exploration of beer-gut masculinity, doesn’t lack the raw materials to make a crowd-pleaser. Based on the popular 1997 British film of the same name, Terrence McNally’s stage…
%{}% Wouldn’t it be something if your family accepted you for who you were rather than how they’d like you to be? Especially your siblings and your in-laws. That ideal tolerance was the first thing I noticed about the characters — the family members — who inhabit the Living Room’s Love Song. Everyone seemed able to look beyond one another’s foibles,…
If you weren’t completely intimidated today by the construction taking place all over Hawthorne Plaza, at 119th Street and Roe, you might have stumbled into the debut of restaurateur Jo Marie Scaglia’s third Mixx location, at 11942 Roe in Overland Park. It’s the first Kansas venue — and the biggest yet — for Scaglia, who opened her first fast-casual restaurant on…
Reggie Collier’s one-month-old bakery — Fat Guy Bakery & Cafe — may have the smallest glass pastry case in Kansas City, but he tries to keep it filled. This morning, that pastry case inside the green-and-yellow storefront at 5536 Troost contained fat chocolate brownies, three kinds of pound-cake slices (cherry, lemon and cinnamon swirl), and sugary yeast doughnuts. Collier, who…
Opened in 2011 in a rehabbed building at 21st Street and Campbell, City Ice Arts was an art-and-commerce mishmash that housed a gallery, artist spaces, and various small businesses — Howard’s Organic Market, La Cucaracha Press, a wedding chapel called the Vow Exchange and, of course, Burge Ice — during its four-year run. That came to an end last fall,…
We finally have a release date to circle on our calendars for Radkey’s long-awaited debut full-length album: Friday, August 21. The album, titled Dark Black Makeup, was produced by Ross Orton (Arctic Monkeys, the Fall), and will be released on CD, LP and digitally. The official audio for the title track has also been released, and it sounds fierce. This…
Screenland Armour’s festival of beer, music, movies, art and more beer is coming back August 21 and 22. This year, the two-day festival will focus more on the beer than ever before. What’s on tap for the 2015 edition of Arts and Crafts? More limited-release beers. Aged beers with an emphasis on side-by-side comparison. Two days of beer festivities. And…
It’s been a few years since we’ve heard from local psych-rock weirdos Suneaters. The band – formed by Lotuspool Records co-founder Chris Garibaldi and Scott Hartley – stepped out of the spotlight after the release of 2012’s Suneaters XIII, an off-shoot record that they didn’t really over-hype. Now, we finally know what the four-piece has been up to: The group’s…
A new month means new brews from Boulevard. The latest take on Imperial Stout — Imperial Stout X Aztec Chocolate — hits Kansas City store shelves Tuesday. This second Imperial Stout release of 2015 follows Imperial Stout X Coffee and is a prelude to Imperial Stout X Tart Cherry (due out in September) and Imperial Stout X Coconut (slated for…
As the turmoil in Ferguson last summer revealed, Missouri is not the greatest place in the world to be a black person. A new report from the office of Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster backs that up with some hard data. One of the statistics measured in the AG’s racial disparity vehicle-stop report for 2014, compiled by 622 Missouri law…
Update: Ted Liberda, co-owner of the Thai Place in Westport, tells The Pitch that he is planning to relocate the restaurant at 4130 Pennsylvania to a different location. The sign taped to the front door of the Thai Place restaurant at 4130 Pennsylvania says, “Closed for Remodeling.” Increasingly, however, those three words have become restaurant code for “gone for good.” …
Tame Impala with Kuroma The Uptown Theater, Kansas City Sunday, May 31 For the full slideshow from last night, go here. Tame Impala’s albums – psychedelic, dynamic and richly textured – are meant to be listened to with the volume all the way up. Fortunately, this is also the way the band performs: with searing volume and enough swirling, pulsing,…
Who doesn’t like a Negroni? Only people who have never had one, that’s who. If you’re already a fan of the classic cocktail — traditionally equal parts gin, vermouth rosso and Campari — then Imbibe Magazine’s third annual Negroni Week needs no introduction. For the rest of you, here’s the breakdown: June 1–7, participating restaurants in Kansas City and Lawrence…
