With the release of Coming Home last year, Texas native Leon Bridges took over as the energetic conductor of the soul revival train. It was a swinging retro record that earned him comparisons to Sam Cooke and Otis Redding — as well as a Grammy nomination — and it appears Bridges has every intention of rolling full steam ahead. Today, Bridges announced…
Sen. Kiki Curls took in $4,120 worth of gifts from lobbyists in 2015, according to records compiled by progressive advocacy organization Progress Missouri. That haul ranks the Kansas City Democrat No. 8 on a listing of amounts Missouri lawmakers accepted from lobbyists. Coming in at No. 10 on that list is Rep. Brandon Ellington (D-Kansas City), who took $3,913 in…
After a four-month vacation spending time with his wife and 4-year-old son, chef Charles d’Ablaing — formerly of Webster House and the Raphael Hotel’s Chaz on the Plaza — returns to the kitchen today. Hotel Sorella, on the west side of the Country Club Plaza, has hired the 40-year-old chef (a 2012 winner of The Pitch Golden Fork Award) as…
Set your clocks for 10 p.m. Friday, March 4. That’s the evening when Cleaver & Cork restaurant, at 1333 Walnut in the Power & Light District, introduces their “Breakfast for Dinner” reverse happy hour, from 10 p.m. to midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. Look for a limited menu of four or five breakfast dishes (which may rotate weekly) served with…
BNIM, put off by the ongoing controversy over its proposed Crossroads headquarters building, will stop pursuing it. The architecture firm announced on Thursday that it was not beneficial to the firm and its employees to continue to be part of the dispute over whether it was appropriate to use public incentives for its headquarters project. It sought to convert an…
Petitioners concerned about public subsidies for a Crossroads office building aren’t yielding: They want an April vote on whether developer Shirley Helzberg can leverage public dollars for a new BNIM headquarters. In a letter sent to Jackson County Executive Frank White’s chief of staff Calvin Williford, a committee of petitioners brushed aside proposals that have been considered by politicians in…
Longtime Pitch readers might recall the colorful tale of Shirley Oyer and her eccentric family in Kansas City. Oyer was the matriarch of a family that included a son who thought he was the second coming of John the Baptist, a religious prophet from antiquity. Another son clashed with city officials over the custody of his pet chimpanzee. Oyer herself was…
Boulevard Brewing Co. is planning to give beer drinkers a new brewery experience by the end of June. That’s when Kansas City’s biggest beer producer will open a new visitor center — with a beer hall (offering the brewery’s beer and a limited food menu), an expanded tasting room and retail shop — at 2534 Madison. Boulevard purchased the…
Thursday 2.4Valentine’s Day is 10 days away, so it’s important to stock up on alternative ammunition in case your partner suggests that the holiday might be a good time to catch up on the latest straight-to-Redbox Katherine Heigl romcom. I Love You Phillip Morris is a loony, little-seen 2009 black comedy starring Jim Carrey as a criminal so clever and…
Tallgrass’ Velvet Rooster is going the way of the dodo, but there’s a new tripel ready to take its place at Cinder Block Brewery: CB003 — a Belgian tripel that’s spicy and fruity but not too sweet (and has a kick at 10.5 percent ABV). Get to Cinder Block (110 East 18th Avenue, North Kansas City) and get a snifter…
A few years ago, when Bernice Radle first set out to preserve historic buildings in her hometown of Buffalo, New York, she brought attention to them the best way she knew how — by covering them in dozens of pink paper hearts. The “heart bombs,” as she calls them, bore messages such as “fix me” and “love me, don’t leave…
Twitter Handle: @drawingcorey Hometown: Independence, Missouri Current neighborhood: Kansas City, Kansas What I do: I draw, I read, I write. I market. I publish. I distribute. I do a little bit of everything. How did you come up with the idea for your Royals coloring book, Take the Crayon? It was actually an unplanned thing. When I heard that Alex…
Seven Lions Jeff Montalvo is here to prove that EDM can offer a full concert experience. The Santa Barbara producer and DJ has been the force behind several major remixes. (His breakout was a version of Above & Beyond featuring Zoë Johnston’s “You Got to Go.”) He’s one of EDM’s rising stars, with a must-see live show. Watch his fine-boned,…
Deborah Brown calls Kansas City home, but the vocal great performs around world, having toured and recorded with legends such as Clark Terry, Harry “Sweets” Edison and Johnny Griffin. In March, she and singer Kevin Mahogany (a KC native), headline a festival in Szezcin, Poland, celebrating Kansas City jazz. Ahead of that, a team from Poland is visiting here this…
Someone once told us they would have beautiful nightmares after listening to us,” Johni Lacore says of her band, the Ovaries-Eez, “and we thought that was a wonderful summary for us.” Indeed, on Ovaries-Eez’s first album, I Saw You in My Dream, the Lawrence folk trio seems determined to make an impression. The three lead singers — Lacore, Amber Hansen…
Peter Anthony’s biggest obstacle right now is his full-time job. It’s your average weekday gig, he tells me, not wanting to go into details. The trouble with the job is that every time he makes up his mind to quit, he gets a promotion. “For a guy with no college degree, it’s good,” Anthony says, “but I don’t love it….
Sabrena Jo is early. Of course she is. The health coach has already grabbed us a table at Lulu’s, and now she greets me with a wide, white-toothed smile and a firm handshake as she tells me she’s been up since 5 a.m. Of course she has. I examine her muscular, toned arms and youthful face for signs that her…
Time travel hasn’t been invented yet — as far as we know — but the rules of the time-travel genre are constantly being re-invented. As Bruce Willis grumped to the younger version of himself (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) in 2012’s Looper, explaining the details of how it all works is bound to take “all day, drawing diagrams with straws.” As such, it’s…
Aspiring art thieves, take note: There’s less heist than hijinx in the Unicorn’s How to Steal a Picasso. The farce, a world premiere by playwright William Missouri Downs, is an entertaining (if unchallenging) race to curtain. The play begins with the return of a prodigal son: Johnny Smith (Tommy Gorrebeeck), a talented painter once banished from his family for forging…
Next month, the National Ceramics Education Conference (NCECA) returns to Kansas City after six years and takes over almost every gallery in the metro, and some places are getting a head start — or at least hunkering down in preparation. For example, Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art (2004 Baltimore) opens The Once and Future: New Now with a First Friday reception…
The day playwright Michelle T. Johnson met reporter Mike McGraw, two firefighters died battling a blaze in northeast Kansas City. It seemed both sinister omen and uncanny coincidence. The two were sitting down to discuss Justice in the Embers, a play based on McGraw’s reporting on the 1988 explosion that killed six firefighters and landed five civilians in prison for…
Early in the afternoon on November 17, Scott Tucker raises his right hand. On the 12th floor of a Crown Center office tower, he’s about to give sworn testimony to government attorneys who have pursued him since at least 2012. Tucker, the Federal Trade Commission is convinced, is the architect of a maze of payday lending enterprises, the elaborate corporate…
Following the release of its latest album, Hymns, English rock band Bloc Party has just announced a summer tour through Europe and the U.S. The band stops at the Madrid on Wednesday, May 25. Hymns is the first album from the band without founding members Matt Tong and Gordon Moakes, who both left the band (Tong n 2013, Moakes in 2015)…
