The Union’s Mistake Mondays are error-free nights out

When Sonya Walker tells me that one of the things she loves about managing the Union of Westport is its “family environment,” she’s not talking about its being kid-friendly.

What she’s talking about is her nighclub’s spirit of comfortable inclusion. Each of the six nights a week that the Union is open, the place puts on highly varied entertainment for its patrons and gives unexpected opportunity to a steady stream of performers. The calendar here is full of DJs, pool leagues and comedy nights.

What I have come to discuss with Walker, though, is something called Mistake Mondays: the free concert series that Walker and Kenneth Kupfer have hosted here for about a year and a half. Kupfer draws the fliers himself.

“We try to be diverse and offer something special every night we’re open, and since Kenneth has been booking bands on Mondays, it’s become one of our busiest nights of the week,” Walker says. “The crowd on Monday is a whole different set from what we see any other time, especially the weekend.”

Walker sits at the Union’s basement bar, her iPad propped up in front of her. It’s early afternoon on a Thursday, hours before the bar’s usual 9 p.m. opening. It’s spacious down here, with two pool tables, a long bar, a stage and plenty of dance space, near a patio with its own tented stage and several picnic tables. On Monday nights during the summer, the patio’s thick back door becomes the speakeasy-like point of entry.

The Union’s decor favors utilitarianism. If it’s not a bottle of booze or yellow tape on the floor, it’s not necessary. (Kupfer’s fliers are absent.) It’s a clean place, though it still carries a good bar’s whiff of spilled beer and poor decisions. There’s a trace odor of pre-smoking-ban haze, too — no, wait, that’s Walker’s live cigarette, resting in an ashtray next to her. She takes a drag and goes on.

“A lot of the bands that play on Monday night have no other place to play. It’s great that we can offer them that.”

It was Kupfer who had the Mistake Mondays vision. A couple of years ago, after he’d started bartending at the Union and taken note of his low tip haul on Monday nights, he presented Walker with a way to improve attendance: Address the local punk scene’s ongoing need for performance venues.

“My idea was kind of to try and turn the Union into one of those punk houses that are up and down Troost, or right around there,” Kupfer tells me. “All these bands lived in those houses, and they all played with each other and they would put on shows at these houses. At first, they did it because they couldn’t go to bars. And then everyone started turning 21 in that crowd. I wanted to grab those people and bring them in.”

Kupfer knows this firsthand. He plays guitar and drums in just such a punk outfit: Wet Ones.

“Me, our [Monday night] sound guy Dan Ohm and Zach Campbell [co-guitarist and drummer for Wet Ones, who has also started bartending at the Union on Mondays], we’ve all toured a bunch, and we know people all around the country,” Kupfer says. “You drive through town, and people hook you up with a show, and you sleep on their floor, and they get you some beer and accommodate you. When those people go on tour, they’ll call us, and it’s great to be able to offer them a place like the Union to play at.”

Kupfer books plenty of friends, he admits, but he also reminds me that the Union’s Monday bill isn’t an especially tough slate to join. The barrier to entry is simple: Kupfer is looking for bands with a certain DIY ethic.

One such band is Drugs & Attics. The Union was the first venue in which the local three-piece played, and the bar remains the band’s most regular concert spot. Lead singer and guitarist Willie Jordan has been with Mistake Mondays from the beginning.

“When it started, it was really hit-or-miss, and super-dead a lot of the time,” Jordan says. “But more and more seem to be finding it, which I think is because of Kenneth. He’s got not only the Kansas City punk community but the [broader] music community coming out to support each other. It feels like a place where local bands show up to support each other.”

For Kupfer, that’s far from a mistake.

“i just try to find bands that are kind of coming from the same place, not necessarily that sound the same,” he says. “I’m interested in people who are trying to make it happen for themselves.”