The American Royal is leaving the West Bottoms for Kansas, and Kansas City leaders are handling the breakup just fine.On Tuesday, the American Royal Association announced that it had struck a deal with the state of Kansas to build a new $160 million complex near the Kansas Speedway. The state will provide up to half of the cash via STAR…
Margo Price with Darrin BradburyKnuckleheads SaloonFriday, October 28, 2016Something was clearly going on. Margo Price, whose emergence on the Americana scene has been lauded as a return to “true country,” “what country used to be,” “the country heyday of artists like Merle Haggard and Loretta Lynn,” etc., had just exited, with the announcement that her band, the PriceTags, would be…
Frampton (Ted) Rowland III, who was accused of participating in an illegal payday lending scheme, has died. He was 52.Rowland died Monday, according to an obituary published Friday. The funeral mass will take place at St. Ann Catholic Church in Prairie Village. A 2013 story in the The Pitch described how the sudden wealth of families who made money in payday…
Singer Margo Price could well be the female Sturgill Simpson. While she sings like Tammy and Dolly, you’re not likely to find her on CMA or in heavy rotation on country stations. She’s the kind of artist who’s experienced the death of a child and buried her sorrows in bottles of booze, gone to jail as a result of it,…
For more than a quarter-century, Michael J. Nelson, the head writer and later host of the cult cable classic Mystery Science Theater 3000 and riffmaster at the like-minded Rifftrax.com, has been amusing audiences at the expense of the late Lawrence filmmaker Herk Harvey.Nelson doesn’t seem terribly repentant about this. Speaking by phone from Minnesota, he says, “I’ll be 100, and…
Reporter Katy Bergen, who joined The Kansas City Star earlier this year, today published the most balanced possible recapitulation of permanently aggrieved gentleman petitioner Clay Chastain’s mythos (he’s forever telling us he’s the activist we need, if not the activist we want) and legacy (he’s wrong, but about a few things he’s not necessarily incorrect). In so doing, she has ensured that…
Boyz II MenWith the Kansas City SymphonyBoyz II Men’s anniversary tour includes three nights in the fine company of the Kansas City Symphony. If you want to relive the magic that earned the R&B act four Grammy Awards over the past two decades, this is your weekend. The harmonies of Shawn Stockman, Nathan Morris and Wanya Morris are as smooth…
Approaching the disused Missouri State Penitentiary evokes an unwelcome sense of finality. Thick metal bars cover the windows. The crumbling outer walls are still flanked by guard towers with rusty door handles and broken windows. As I near the entrance, a full moon rises, glowing red behind shivering tree branches and thin wisps of passing clouds. I step inside.And a…
Thursday 10.27Beastly Bash8:30 p.m.–1 a.m. Historic Rumely Event Space, 1222 W. 12th St.Nosferatu with live score by Invincible Czars7 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, 1400 MainScreenland at the Symphony: Phantom of the Opera7 p.m. Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, 1601 BroadwayExiled: Trail of Terrors Haunted Forest Tour7-11 p.m. 12829 Loring Rd., Bonner SpringsFriday 10.28Shocktober: I Drink Your Blood9 p.m. Screenland at Tapcade,…
%{}%Thursday, October 27Halloween’s almost here, and there’s an embarrassment of awesomeness to choose from tonight. The final free outdoor screening at Cinder Block Brewery is tonight at 7, and it’s a good one: a squirm-inducing double feature of 1981’s Evil Dead and the better-than-it-had-any-right-to-be 2013 remake. Also at 7, at the Alamo Drafthouse, Austin, Texas, quartet Invisible Czars performs live…
No KC club today books more jazz than Green Lady Lounge does. Sixteen shows fill its schedule over the next week as owner John Scott expands into daylight hours — though, given the room’s velvet-dark ambience, it’s easy to forget the sun here. Starting at noon on Mondays, you can now enjoy singer Molly Hammer and pianist Mark Lowrey. Mixing…
A good restaurant needs a clear vision. This is not the same as a buzzy catchphrase.Consider “American Cuisine Redefined,” the aspirational tagline of the Oliver. Bread & Butter Concepts’ promising but inconsistent restaurant opened on the Country Club Plaza this past summer — well past the time when U.S. restaurateurs ran out of things to redefine. The Oliver’s menu takes…
Turkeys meander beside a burbling creek, and blackberry bushes flourish outside a former woodshop. Life is a little different at the metro’s latest brewery — in Drexel, Missouri.“We’re like a farm winery, just with beer,” says Will Reece, who co-owns the Miami Creek Brewing Company with his wife, Chrissy. “The idea is that we can plant stuff, be able to…
For the first time in two years, Kauffman Stadium is not going to host a World Series game. Weird, right?The Royals were left out of the 2016 postseason, and their absence will be felt in more than fans’ hearts. At a recent presentation at the Kansas City, Missouri, Tax-Increment Finance Commission, the city’s finance director showed graphs indicating a link…
When she’a not at Bard College in upstate New York, where she’s an artist in residence, writer-director Kelly Reichardt makes movies. Specifically, she has spent the past two decades making movies about lonely outsiders in rural America. Movies about people simply trying to survive. So her rugged Western, Meek’s Cutoff, and the contemporary drama Night Moves, about young radicals, aren’t…
“We end up spending three to four days in a parking lot. It’s the only time we get to see some of our friends throughout the whole year.”In only one context is that a description of ecstasy rather than a half-remembered bad dream: the American Royal World Series of Barbecue. Todd Johns of Plowboys Barbeque is the describer in this…
Thank libertarians for keeping “the invisible hand” of the free market alive 240 years after its genesis.Thank playwright Ayad Akhtar for extending an invisible middle finger to that ideal. Akhtar’s latest script, The Invisible Hand, follows Citibank trader Nick Bright after his kidnapping by a Pakistani religious sect. The sect’s leader, the soft-spoken Imam Saleem, swears he and his men…
For a time, I couldn’t get enough of Ira Levin — his novels Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives, to name a couple. Creepy. But his play Deathtrap, often revived and now onstage at Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre, is a departure from the frightening scenarios of his best fiction. It’s a comedic, cleverly composed, self-referential thriller that keeps us guessing.The play…
Art history comes alive in a retrospective show at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center (2012 Baltimore) that closes Saturday.Whether you’re familiar with the name Dale Eldred probably depends on your age and your proximity to the Kansas City Art Institute sculpture department and its faculty, but your conversance with his art has long relied on geography and a good memory. That’s…
Mary Pilcher-Cook has served 14 of the past 16 years in the Kansas Legislature, and she has been uniquely consistent: In all that time, her fascination with the sex lives and reproductive choices of Kansans has never waned.In 2014, the cultural warrior from Shawnee invited two pregnant women and a sonographer to a Senate committee hearing so that other senators…
More than two years ago, the city of Kansas City, Missouri, allocated $725,000 in federal funds for the construction of four new homes in the Blue Hills neighborhood.Today, the homes are unfinished, some subcontractors have not been paid, and a nonprofit agency charged with building the houses has been sued by the original general contractor.The city says the homes are…
A Raymore wedding photographer is accused of duping dozens of women into having sex with him by faking a career as a talent scout and pornography producer.Mario Antoine, 33, of Raymore, was charged in a 21-count federal indictment on Monday. The U.S. attorney’s office alleges that Antoine created fictitious businesses and “auditioned” women, under the guise that they were rehearsing…
It’s a lucky day for music fans in Kansas City, where the concert announcements keep rolling. KRBZ 96.5’s annual “The Night the Buzz Stole Xmas,” beginning December 7 and then continuing December 15-17, has stacked up a few:Night 1 (December 7): AWOLNATION, Capital Cities, 888, the Moth and the FlameNight 2 (December 15): Milky Chance, Marian Hill, Banks & Steelz,…
In what is one of the most exciting concert announcements thus far for 2017, today comes news that Chattanooga native Isaiah Rashad is coming to Lawrence in January. Rashad has won lavish praise by outlets from Pitchfork to NPR for his lyricism and honesty in discussing addiction, depression and fatherhood. His most recent album, The Sun’s Tirade, was released in…
