At this point in his career, Radiolab host Jad Abumrad could rest on his laurels. In 2011, Abumrad received a MacArthur Fellowship and Radiolab — the public-radio program he co-hosts with Robert Krulwich — won Peabody Awards in 2010 and 2014. However, Abumrad’s inquisitive mind, which is one of the defining features of his work, has led to a new…
In the Phoenix, the bar wraps tightly around the piano, sparing barely enough space for the instrument’s player to climb in, and for a couple of other musicians to wedge between it and the front windows. The drummer huddles in a corner against the entrance. And sitting at that bar feels like sitting in the musicians’ laps as they play…
Zach Marten and Bret Springs, of Back Napkin Restaurant Group, have announced the name of their new restaurant at 20th Street and Grand, and it rhymes: the Rockhill Grille, named for notable Kansas Citian William Rockhill Nelson. And the venue, set to open in July, won’t much resemble its last tenant, the Cashew.The Rockhill Grille still has two levels, as…
Summer seems suited to a show about cutting loose. Whether Musical Theater Heritage had this in mind, its Big River is a fitting seasonal kickoff.Based on Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the show opened on Broadway in 1985 and won seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Original Score and Best Book of a Musical. It adapts the story…
It was just last spring that we were treated to an intimate evening with Elvis Costello, and if you either missed that set or are already jonesing for another Elvis fix, you’re in luck. Costello is slated to return to the area, this time to Yardley Hall at Johnson County Community College, on Friday, October 7. The show is described…
Welcome to summer. Yesterday was so hot that while standing in the sun waiting for Paul Simon and his band to come to the stage, even my knees were sweating. Many attendees were flushed, and long lines for drinks moved painfully slow. Yet, as the band made its way onstage as the sun was setting, a breeze in the upper…
Gene DeClue didn’t realize his world was about to fall down.As DeClue brewed Beach Blonde pale ale inside Rock & Run Brewery’s brewhouse, the 130-year-old Bedinger Building, which shares a wall with the brewery, collapsed into a pile of rubble on Tuesday, May 3. “I heard this low brrrrrrrrrrr,” DeClue says. “It sounded like they were core drilling something or…
Until recently, I had no idea that I was “food insecure” as a child. I thought I was simply insecure about everything. “Food insecure” is the term that the Washington, D.C.-based charity No Kid Hungry uses to describe a problem faced by one in five U.S. children. The agency says 48.8 million American youths do not have access to nourishing…
Director and producer Jill “Sixx” Gevargizian recently finished The Stylist, her most recent short horror film. Gevargizian is known for her strong support of women in the genre, and it appears her dedication is paying off; The Stylist is receiving a lot of love from women in the horror community. Saturday night, Gevargizian’s film premieres at Etheria Film Night, an…
For this year’s Summer Guide, we highlighted several road trip-worthy music festivals, including Champaign-Urbana’s Pygmalion Festival, just a six-hour drive from Kansas City. This morning, the festival announced its headliners, and it’s about as hip as a summer fest as you will find. Top of the marquee is Future Islands, Vince Staples and Wolf Parade, along with Louis the Child, Frightened…
The ubiquity of smartphones has made the experience of going to shows – concerts and comedy, in particular – an experience that is no longer just about that moment. At every show, attendees record dozens of photos and hours of video they are unlikely to ever watch, simply to upload to social media, ignorant of the fact that they are…
It’s hard to imagine Heathers, Daniel Waters’ 1988 black comedy, being released post-Columbine. The film lampoons — with little gravity or reverence — high school shootings and high-grade explosives as it follows Veronica Sawyer, a quick-witted 17-year-old, and her boyfriend, J.D., a wild-eyed “trenchcoat mafia” type who manipulates her into murdering cliquish classmates. Over the years, Heathers has morphed into…
One of Boulevard’s best beers is making its seasonal return. Kegs and bottles hit earlier this week, so go visit your favorite bartender or liquor store.Boulevard Tank 7 aged in tequila barrels?MyBeerBuzz.com picked up a keg label for Boulevard Tequila Barrel–Aged Tank 7 farmhouse ale (8.5 percent ABV). This is way, way early news. Boulevard’s Jeremy Danner says the hometown…
Thursday 6.9Since director Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight won Best Picture at the 2016 Oscars and Game of Thrones is all anyone wants to talk about these days, today is a good day to see McCarthy’s debut feature, which gave Peter Dinklage his first lead role. The Station Agent is an incisive 2003 comedy-drama about a lonely man with a chip on…
Joel Tucker had to be in two places at once on April 28. Specifically, he was due to appear in front of two different judges in two different courthouses, more than 700 miles apart.In Olathe, the Kansas City native had been summoned to Johnson County District Court in a case involving an Arizona businessman trying to collect on a $16…
Trumpeter Hermon Mehari landed here a decade ago, when he joined the jazz-studies program at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. He captured the city’s attention with Diverse, an award-winning ensemble that released its first CD to an SRO crowd at the Blue Room in 2009. Since then, Mehari has been a staple of KC’s jazz scene, both with other UMKC…
You can call Sugar Britches sassy. The rambunctious Lawrence roots act embraces the term.“We like to say that we like to curse, but we do it real pretty and in harmony,” says Ashley “Ziggy” Zeigenbein, Sugar Britches’ keyboardist and accordionist.I’m hanging out in the basement of a split-level home near Lawrence High School, talking about the first year of the…
Two Door Cinema ClubThe last time we heard from Two Door Cinema Club was 2013. Barack Obama was beginning his second term in the White House, North Korea was making threats (as usual), and we were still two years away from legalizing gay marriage. And while the Northern Irish band’s EP Changing of the Seasons addressed none of those things,…
The new restaurant in the former Cashew space, at 20th Street and Grand, is closer to opening. Back Napkin Restaurant Group, the entity behind Coal Vines and Westport Ale House as well as RND Corner Grille in Lawrence, took over the building in February, and, after a period of remodeling, the restaurant is hiring. Back Napkin co-founder Zach Marten says…
The good news about gardening in Kansas City: If you plant something during the summer, it’s probably going to grow.I can attest to that. Over the last three years, my boyfriend and I have cultivated an expansive array of fruit-bearing plants in the front yard of our east Kansas City home. What started as a small patch by the porch…
Missy Fitzwater asks Instagram: “Is it weird I like my black eye?”In the selfie, she’s 17 years old, apple-cheeked, smiling. Her brown hair is pulled back, messy, slightly out of focus. Her green eyes are a bit puffy, and beneath the left is a small, dark smudge that seems to match the eyeliner she’s wearing.It’s not makeup, though. It’s where…
Late September is already looking sunny, with the announcement this morning that Los Angeles-based critical darlings Local Natives are making a stop Saturday, September 24, at Crossroads KC, following the release of their third album, Sunlit Youth. The band’s only other appearance in the area was at the Granada two years ago. Local Natives tear it up live – particularly…
Kansas City very much jockeyed to get this year’s Republican National Convention. With the more-than-likely occurrence of protests and even violence — and the unflattering footage that will follow — at the Donald Trump-helmed event, we are lucky to have dodged that bullet. Yet, one enviable performance at the RNC is going to be from Prophets of Rage, the supergroup…
Nick Vaughn grabs the first can of Martin City Brewing Co. beer to come off the line — the brewery’s Belgian-style Abbey Ale. It’s the first Thursday of June, and it’s also Day 1 of operation for the 5-year-old brewery’s new canning line. Vaughn, MCBC’s brewmaster, watches the line — a Wild Goose 250 — as cans rattle along, beer…
