%{}% The public-radio show 12th Street Jump, a mix of outstanding jazz with comedy, moves its live recording this week from the defunct Broadway Jazz Club to the downstairs Orion Room at Green Lady Lounge. And one of KC’s favorite jazz sons, singer Kevin Mahogany, comes back to town to join in. Mahogany, who performs in festivals worldwide and whose…
%{}% %{}% Glen Hansard Glen Hansard has a doctorate in breaking hearts. How else to explain his Leonard Cohen–worthy ability to make you weep just a few verses into Didn’t He Ramble. On the solo album, the former lead singer for the Frames and the Swell Season proves that, 25 years into his career, he still has plenty to offer….
%{}% %{}% I’m always a little nervous when talking to teenagers. It wasn’t that long ago that I was one of them, and it was a rather terrible time. But Julian Davis (who placed second in this year’s Kansas State Fiddling and Picking Championships for flat-pick and finger-style guitar) is far from your typical 16-year-old. Davis has been playing guitar…
%{}% %{}% You expect Gerald Spaits to hear things the rest of us do not. He has been a jazz musician for more than 30 years and has spent 15 years teaching at the University of Missouri–Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance, under Bobby Watson. But sometimes those carefully calibrated ears do him no favors. The music playing overhead…
%{}% %{}% Having dined at Michael Forbes Bar & Grille five times since its recent reopening, I feel confident saying that, three years into its run, the place is at last living up to its potential. It took only a nearly ruinous electrical fire to get there. After that April mishap caused owner Forbes Cross to shut down his venue…
%{}% %{}% Musical Theater Heritage tackles an unlikely marriage of self-conscious parody and Malthusian catastrophe in Greg Kotis and Mark Hollmann’s Urinetown: The Musical. The meta-theatrical digs start early, as narrators Officer Lockstock and Little Sally (a Dickensian guttersnipe) unite to rattle off a list of musical death warrants: too much exposition, bad subject matter, aimless focus. “A bad title,…
%{}% %{}% The mayor approaches with a firm handshake and a smile. “I’d like to apologize for being defensive the other day,” Sly James tells a reporter on the 10th floor of City Hall. He’s talking about an interview with this newspaper that took place in his office October 23. I had come to ask James about the first few…
%{}% %{}% How did the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas, know it had paid reasonable prices when it made $3 million available to a restaurateur to festoon a barbecue outlet at the Legends at Village West with high-priced accoutrements such as custom motorcycles? And how did the UG know whether it was reselling those items for reasonable prices…
%{}% New York Dawg Pound, the four-year-old weiner shop at 7702 Shawnee Mission Parkway, announced that it was “closed permanently” on its Facebook page on October 27. But New York-style frankfurters haven’t vanished from the metro. To celebrate its 25th anniversary, d’Bronx will now be serving “Griddled Crisp” hot dogs using Nathan’s New York all-beef hot dogs. These dogs — available…
%{}% Chef Tom Harley has bounced around a bit in recent times, and now he’s peddling crack in the Northland. Crack sauce, that is — a dressing that he says is helping make diners at the six-month-old Beaches Cantina into regulars. “It’s our smoky chipotle aioli that we serve with our fish tacos and fries,” Harley tells me, after explaining…
%{}% Legendary English rock band the Cure is on tour in 2016, with a stop at the Starlight on Wednesday, June 8. This is the group’s first outing since its 2008 tour, and the press release promises a hit-studded setlist that includes some unreleased tracks. Tickets on sale Saturday, November 14, at 10 a.m. Details here. Categories: News Tags: incoming,…
%{}% A day after The Pitch reported that the two metro locations of the Texas-based Joe’s Crab Shack chain — in Olathe and Independence — were among the few local venues serving Florida stone crab during that crustacean’s official season, the 24-year-old seafood operation announced that it was introducing a no-tipping policy in its restaurants, the first national chain to…
%{}% Members of the Kansas press know that the state is notoriously opaque. Kansas legislators are realizing that consolidated, unaccountable political power isn’t driving good public policy. Those factors are among many that earned Kansas a failing grade in the Center for Public Integrity’s evaluation of all 50 state governments. The Pulitzer Prize-winning news agency ranked Kansas No. 42 among all…
%{}% Bay Area rapper G-Eazy (born Gerald Gillium) first got everyone’s attention in 2014 with his breakthrough album These Things Happen. Now, the rapper — who comes off as a cross between A$AP Rocky and Drake — has just announced a new record, When It’s Dark Out, due out on December 4, and an accompanying tour. He stops at the Midland…
%{}% Jax Fish House & Oyster Bar on the Country Club Plaza have them. McCormick & Schmick’s, also on the Plaza, does not. Neither of the two Bristol Seafood Grill locations in the metro are offering them, but Sullivan’s Steakhouse (4501 West 119th Street, Leawood) and Joe’s Crab Shack (11965 South Strang Line Road, Olathe) currently have them on the…
%{}% Last month, Terrence Wise, a Burger King employee we profiled in our story about the fast-food workers’ movement in Kansas City, flew out to Washington, D.C., and spoke at the first-ever Worker Voice summit, a gathering of union officials, activists and labor movement allies. Wise spoke in front of the crowd, which included President Obama, who said this after…
%{}% The University of Missouri is a mess. On the one hand, Missouri’s flagship university in September stripped clinical privileges from a physician who performed abortions in Columbia amid ongoing pressure from state lawmakers, a move that effectively stopped abortions in Columbia. On the other hand, the university has seen a string of racially motivated incidents in recent months that…
%{}% This week’s New Music Monday highlights a familiar act with the eclectic prog-rock sounds of the Jorge Arana Trio. Last week, the band debuted a new music video for “Crime of Passion Fruit.” Directed by Brodie Rush (aka the mastermind behind Be/Non), this three-minute production finds a slightly animated version of Arana traversing a foreign — perhaps cursed —…
%{}% Garmin announced this week that it planned to add on to its headquarter’s campus in south Olathe, news that will undoubtedly excite that suburb’s leaders. Some Olathe residents who live near the Garmin headquarters at 151st and Ridgeview are less than thrilled. Garmin’s plans for a 712,000-square-foot building will abut a string of single-family houses north of the navigation…
%{}% In support of this year’s Wilder Mind, Mumford & Sons has just announced a 2016 tour. The band stops at the Sprint Center on Monday, April 18. If you couldn’t tell by the band’s press photo — and if you’ve been avoiding the album since its May release — you should know that Mumfy is no longer the outfit of…
