Save Our Stages Kansas City: recordBar and the future of live music at a crossroads in the Crossroads
Steve Tulipana. // photo by Ben McBee
Save Our Stages Kansas City is a series of conversations with KC independent music venues. We’ll discuss the pandemic’s (continuing) effects, some challenges facing smaller venues, the value and economic impact these spaces have on our city, and what we can do to support them now and in the future.
The Wednesday before the Super Bowl, and exactly one week before the parade, we took a stroll behind recordBar to meet with Steve Tulipana, co-owner of recordBar, miniBar, and partner with Lemonade Park. We had just seen him a few weeks before as one of the lead vocalists for The Band That Fell To Earth—an incredible tribute to the legacy of David Bowie. We entered through the back door to find Steve working on administrative tasks and taking deliveries from their various vendors.
Steve’s involvement with live music began when he was around 16, having made the trip from Liberty into Kansas City to check out DIY house shows, as well as touring artists, such as Black Flag and The Meat Puppets at venues like The Foolkiller. As an ambitious editor for the Liberty High School newspaper, he and his partner in crime, columnist Dan Jones, somehow managed to convince the owner of The Strand to let them do some press coverage for the ’80s indie rock band The Leaving Trains’ show at the legendary adult cinema theater at 35th and Troost.
Spending more time in KC led Steve to closer connections and relationships in the music community, eventually forming the much-loved and critically acclaimed band Season To Risk. Working at The Hurricane—later The Riot Room—for over a decade cemented his ties to the music industry, and served as a solid income source when the band wasn’t touring. Season To Risk released two albums on a major label which eventually afforded the band the funds to build a recording studio in KC, but an untimely flood dashed those plans.
Steve and his close friend Shawn Sherrill—co-owner of recordBar, miniBar, musician, and all-around great human—had publicly discussed the desire to find their own space over the years as another career option outside of music. Word on the street told them that Molloy Brothers were looking to sell their Irish pub in Westport. Molloy Brothers had leased a space that had been the home of several other establishments—now the home of Nature’s Own grocery store—and conveniently located off Southwest Trafficway and Westport Road.
The Pitch: What was your plan with Shawn when you first began recordBar?
When we bought the Molloy Brothers’ business, they were an Irish pub with a restaurant license. Our only intention was to have a small, neighborhood bar that Shawn and I could both work at, but we weren’t planning to do live music at all. We were both getting older and looking for a back-up plan outside of our lives performing as musicians.
Steve Tulipana: You had worked in music venues in several capacities, but when did you start booking bands?
I booked bands going back to maybe 1988 (as a 20-year-old). The first show I ever booked was Bad Religion and L7. Bad Religion didn’t show up, but L7 came. Now they are massively huge, but at that time they were just starting out.
Duane Trower was booking bands, and Paul Malinowski—future Season To Risk members—was running the PA at these underground loft house shows at 2nd and Delaware. Bands like Killdozer, The Cows, Ultraman, touring bands, and our bands would play. I kind of watched how Duane and Paul did it. You just got phone numbers, and you called the bands and got their information.
We also met this Rastafarian guy, Brother Charles, who had this space, One Drop Records, on 42nd and Troost. Above the record store there was a little hall, and they had their kind of religious meetings up there. We did some shows there and called it “The Space,” but I’ve seen posters of other promoters there, and they called it the “Jazzafrass Tea House.”
It all seems like it was such a short period of time, but it also feels like it was a long stretch of time. Later, there were shows being done there in the basement and you had to enter in the back. That whole area of 47th and Troost has been torn down, and is now the Gates Plaza area.
What led you to reach out to L7?
I was reaching out to Triple X Records in LA because they had some bands I liked, particularly Mind Over Four. They had Doggystyle, and they did the first Jane’s Addiction record.
Did you send them an email? Oh yeah, there was no such thing.
You just called them. They had their phone number on the inserts of their CDs and records. You just called the office and you would talk to a guy. Duane and Paul were also making connections, and as you set things up, pretty soon your name got on a list of contacts.
Jennifer Finch of L7 worked there, and she answered the phone. She said that L7 was getting ready to go on their first tour with Bad Religion. They would be out this way and she said they would love to come to Kansas City. I said let’s go and try to find a date. There was no guarantee. At that time, you would just hope to earn enough gas money and then crash on people’s couches to get by.
You just called back then. Today with email, you can basically do the same thing, and I do like it when people are forthright. I get so many emails. For independent artists, it’s this is who I am, this is where I am from, this is what we have done, this is what we want to do, and these are the dates we are looking for.
You listen to their music and decide if you like it, or if it fits what you are looking for. Then you look at the date, but these days, nine times out of ten, I don’t have the date. I’ve always tried to give a handful of other possible options, like here are some emails of other venues in Kansas City.
There are millions of bands, and there is a lot of stuff to wade through. To be honest, I used to answer every single email, but I just can’t do it anymore.
You were coming into Kansas City at 16 or 17, catching shows unbeknownst to your parents, frequenting record stores, and making some connections. You start to book shows and create a band or two, and now you are in your twenties. I’m trying to understand how you got a taste for booking and venues.
A lot of what we did booking shows worked as a tool for us as a band to meet other bands. You met people who did similar things in other cities. When Season To Risk started, we all lived down in a warehouse across the street from where those early Delaware underground shows were.
We then had a space down on Woodswether Road where we threw some huge parties. We had rent money parties where we would invite our friends from St. Louis, earn money and pay the bands, and then use the rest to record demos in Chicago. We were still doing that DIY, and then in the next year we got signed.
We always lived together in a house, doing things old school as cheaply as we could, and then got in the van. That’s all we wanted to do was get in the van, go to other cities, meet those people, share information, and bring those people to KC.
We kept doing that, and when we didn’t have the venue or spaces to do our own shows, we now knew the people at the KC clubs and could suggest doing shows with our new friends from other cities. Bands still do that now, particularly at miniBar. To me, that’s the most important thing about music and venues—the community. It’s about being a pipeline and sharing that creative energy.
Quixotic. // photo by Todd Zimmer
The quote I love on your website says it all: “It has become a second home, a church even, to music fans. It is respected and lauded by musicians and fans the world over. It’s where you go to see live music up-close and personal in Kansas City.” Just perfect.
At recordBar, because of the size, calendar, and staff, we can’t have 100% original, creative music all the time. We have to do special events, tribute shows, and cover bands. The goal is to never have that be the driving factor where it’s just commerce.
Not meaning to disrespect those groups because you are still sharing culture, musicianship, and creativity in its own right as players, even though they are not writing their own music. When I was younger, I invalidated cover bands, but as I aged, I realized there was a lot to learn on your instrument from playing others’ music.
I would say probably at least 80% of what we present is original music.
I think that’s one thing that sets you apart from some other venues here. You are not just having DJs or cover bands. You’re providing a space where people can create their own music. I also believe you are the only venue of your size in KC strictly serving as a music venue with no food. When did you meet Shawn?
I met Shawn in college at UMKC. He wasn’t a musician at the time. He worked with Paul and Allen Epley—from Shiner—at a dental lab, and then got into the service/restaurant industry at Classic Cup. Allen convinced him to take up the bass and join Shiner, they started touring, and then Shiner got signed.
Shawn and I were roommates for about 7 years. We lived above the record store Groove Farm on Westport Road near the Flea Market. Shawn and I started playing many years later as a Joy Division tribute—Unknown Pleasures—for a Halloween party, and then as the Roman Numerals. In the meantime, Shawn had gotten into restaurant management and had good complementary skills for running a venue.
How did music come about, then, at recordBar?
We weren’t interested in live music, as we knew there are so many variables in having a music venue. For instance, it’s expensive. PAs are expensive, and we didn’t have one.
When we leased the space in 2005, we inherited Bob Walkenhorst from the Molloy Brothers, as he had played there every Wednesday. They had a little PA in there, and our thought was if a band happened to be coming through KC on an off night, we could possibly set them up in the corner, but we were not calling and going after bands.
There was some shake-up in the Lawrence music scene, and at that time, a lot of bands and people were going to Lawrence. Early on, we had done a couple of benefits, one for Katrina, and packed our place out. Jackie Becker from Up to Eleven Productions saw that we were doing some things, and she reached out to ask if she could bring The National to recordBar. I’d heard of The National, but not many people knew The National in October of 2005. We didn’t have the proper PA in there or anything.
It was successful, and we were like, ok, so now we’re a music venue, and this is what we’re doing. The next thing you know, we invested in a PA. Billy Smith—KC music renaissance man—started booking local and national bands for us, and he was really proactive and started reaching out to booking agents and touring bands. (He had done that at The Hurricane and lived in Chicago for some time).
We also had relationships with Jacki, Jeff Fortier—Mammoth Productions—and people we had known for years. We realized we didn’t want to step on each other’s toes and wanted to work together. Let everyone have space, and work in the niche they wanted to do.
That was a learning curve for us to understand what agents are yours, and what bands are your regulars. Some people would be like, screw that, I’ll bid against them, I don’t care. But I don’t subscribe to that. Why can’t we all just be one big happy family and figure out how to carve a little piece out and make it flow?
When did miniBar come on the scene?
miniBar opened in 2012 at 38th and Broadway. It was just going to be a lounge downstairs. The upstairs was trashed.
We used the upstairs as a rehearsal space for our bands. At some point, I had a sound engineer friend who wanted to do a project. He started sound reinforcing the room and made it much better. We did it real lo-fi and told interested bands they could give us like $50 and book whatever they wanted. Just like recordBar, it kind of grew organically, so we ran some numbers and said let’s figure it out and make it better, bootstrap by bootstrap.
Then, over COVID, we had all that time and decided to legitimize the space and put in bathrooms. We did it on a shoestring budget, but instead of it just being a chunk of a boot, it was like a full-to-the-knee punk rock boot.
Radkey. // photo by Todd Zimmer
What were some of the immediate impacts of the pandemic?
I thought it was game over for a few months. For one, I thought, who do I know who is going to die? I didn’t know how bad it was going to get. Like, what would happen to my wife, my loved ones? And people did die that we know. I know people in the healthcare industry whose families were losing their minds.
Financially, not knowing what to do, I started selling some things, personal collections. There were no tools to guide us at the time as a business owner.
The PPP didn’t really apply to us, as none of our staff really had a salary. Our employees were hourly when we were open. You could work 40 hours in three days, based on shows, but then maybe you didn’t work six or seven days. That’s why NIVA—National Independent Venue Association—started.
How did you get involved in NIVA?
For the first time ever in history, independent venues all over the country that were driving economic forces for cities decided to band together and essentially become a lobby. First Avenue in Minneapolis, Empty Bottle in Chicago, and other venues like recordBar across the country.
NIVA brought us together through zoom meetings to discuss what we were going to do to navigate the pandemic. There is even a Missouri version of it. In some ways, COVID opened our doors to do a little more networking. Now we have contacts to help us with questions like where we purchase our wristbands, or to share best practices.
How long were you actually shuttered? I remember the capacity limits—like, you could only have 10% of your full capacity. Let’s say a venue holds 100 folks, you could only have 10 people spaced out. There is no way you could even cover the costs of a door person or sound person, let alone make money for the bartenders.
The first thing we tried to do was in October 2020—seven months after the shutdown. We did one event and tried to do that with the limited seating thing. We did a private party for somebody for the Super Bowl in 2021, but we were basically closed for a year.
We couldn’t really sell to-go alcohol because no one was going to come down to recordBar and grab some to-go booze if they couldn’t find a quick parking spot. We focused on Lemonade Park, our recordBar 15-year anniversary Kickstarter, and a community auction.
We took every employee we could to Lemonade Park. Everyone was on unemployment, so they could only work a certain number of hours until that expired. Everybody rode it out until the NIVA bill finally passed a year later, and we somehow eked our way through it.
By that time, people were willing to pay more for ticket prices, people were tipping more, and buying more merchandise online to support us. We did everything we could to pay our bills and not lose our lease. The landlord did as best they could too, but they also had a pretty big note to pay. In the end, we had to make up and pay back all of our bills.
How did Lemonade Park come about?
Wes Gartner—owner of Voltaire, who Steve had met as the drummer in Doris Henson—called and said that he had just leased the parking lot behind Voltaire in the West Bottoms at the beginning of 2020. Everybody that went to Voltaire parked at the lot across the street, but then they started building apartments there, so he paid for the lot behind the restaurant.
He couldn’t use it now because everything was shut down, but he still had to pay for it with no income. He asked what we were going to do, and I told him I thought we were done as a business.
Wes said he had an idea for the space to hold live music, and I was like, you are crazy. He had had conversations with John O’Brien—developer and designer—and he had some connections with electricians and carpenters. The truck is from an artist and welder who towed it down there and made it a stage.
It was mostly Wes’ baby, along with Jill Myers from the Golden Ox and Moxie Catering. We did the booking, managing the bar, and running events. It’s slowly been changing over the years.
I remember the first year, starting in June, it was capped at 100 people. Picnic tables spaced out, and masks if you were not seated at your table. The turn signals and designs of the parking lot, along with the artificial grass and signage made it crystal clear for the audience to understand movement and safety expectations.
You were seriously the only place in Kansas City offering a safe space for artists to perform and audiences to attend at that time. I also remember there were some challenges with the city’s ever-changing requirements, and you had to postpone or cancel some events.
I don’t think we had any instances of anyone getting sick.
Like I said to Lotta at The Ship in the last segment, you seriously saved our lives. The artists, the audiences, the employees. Incredibly grateful for you. What would you tell your younger self about the challenges of having live music?
A lot of stuff has changed over the years. Insurance is just absurd. General liability. Liquor license liability. Insurance companies drop you because you haven’t had any claims in 4 or 5 years, so they figure you are overdue for a claim and they excise you. Then you have to find a new carrier.
Anytime you go into a building you don’t own and have to lease, pay the money and get a mechanical inspection for electrical and plumbing conditions. All of the plumbing in the old recordBar—now Nature’s Own—is now brand-new thanks to our significant investments.
What would you tell the general public about how live music impacts a local economy?
That was one of the things we did with NIVA on the zoom with Senator Hawley’s office. We presented hard numbers about the economic impact of live performances. For example, when we have a show at recordBar, 70% of those people are going to go out to eat, and spend money on gas and parking. They might go out to another business like a record store, clothing store, really any business, and spend money. The tax benefit from the entertainment industry is exponential.
NIVA tried to get Hawley to sign off on the NIVA bill, but he never did. He felt like it was showing favoritism to one industry over the other. The NIVA representatives countered with statistics showing how much money the state of Missouri gives to the airline industry, and the actual tax revenue created by the airlines versus the entertainment industry is negligible. According to the data, we actually probably create more revenue. Congressman Emanuel Cleaver did sign off on it and it was a bipartisan agreement.
Madisen Ward and Mama Bear. // photo by Todd Zimmer
Do you feel like you are now out of it as far as the challenges from COVID?
There are some good things and bad things. People became more used to paying more for tickets. There has been an adjustment with inflation in general, as all the costs of everything went up a crazy amount. Labor is up about 30%, which is good because it needed to be adjusted, but it needed to be adjusted to the old prices, not the new prices.
We’re now in this frustrating rebalancing period. Since ticket prices went up, agents and bands are asking for more, which again is good, but we’re catching up with 20+ years of stagnation.
On top of that, there are twice as many shows, as every artist wants to tour because they hadn’t been able to for a long time. For a while, people wanted to go to every show because there were so few, but now people are like, I can’t go to everything. Big arena shows went from $40-$50, to now $300. People are paying it, but now skipping the local shows.
People are willing to pay the increased ticket prices, but they’re going to fewer performances. My budget is $100, and I can see 4 shows for $25, or 2 for $50.
The sad part of it is we lost some venues in Kansas City like The Riot Room, Davey’s Uptown Rambler’s Club, and Westport Saloon. The Brick didn’t do music for quite a while. So now we get the emails from bands that those venues used to get.
I guess there’s the perception that we suddenly lost all these venues, but from my perspective, we’ve been losing them for the past 20 plus years. Back in the day in Westport, we could walk to a dozen places a night to catch shows. How are you feeling about these next few years?
We have some big plans for our 20th anniversary next year. Hopefully, they’ll come to fruition.
Update 3/24/24
Steve took the time to meet with us for brunch today as we wanted to get his thoughts on the Royals’ announcement to move into the East Crossroads. recordBar would look directly across Grand to see the new structure. Parking is already at a premium in this area, and it can be challenging for folks attending a show on a normal night.
As we waited for our table, we found a large stack of freshly-printed fliers from the Royals on the host stand, and prominently placed posters on the windows in support of voting “Yes.”
“Our formal stance is we are fans of baseball, fans of the Royals. We were always supportive of the idea of a downtown stadium.
However, we were surprised with the news of the East Crossroads location on February 13, one day before the parade. There had not been any previous mention of that potential location for over two years from the Royals’ ownership. Gobsmacked.
In addition, we have also been eager to see some hard, actual statistics and studies about the economic benefits of a stadium. As a business owner in the Crossroads district since 2016, we have been here through thick and thin, and feel we have contributed to the success of the neighborhood and community.
That being said, we have never had formal conversations with any of the Royals’ organization since they announced their initial plans. To this day, still no one from the Royals’ representatives has contacted us. As a faithful tax-contributing business owner, this is disappointing.
As a voter, it’s hard to make an informed choice without having the specific facts. Furthermore, we now feel rushed and without the time to digest any new information just a few weeks (now one week) before the vote.
We believe that arts—specifically live music—are as economically beneficial to cities as other businesses such as sports teams, if not even more prosperous. This is proven in numerous studies about live music’s economic impact in and of itself, in addition to the ancillary businesses that earn revenue from concertgoers before and after shows.
We learned this first-hand from our participation as founding members of NIVA. We were presented with the financial numbers from venues around the country and world, and we could clearly see the significant revenue they brought to the county, city, and state.
Of course, we also employ tax-paying staff throughout the year. For example, we have an upcoming run of about 20 straight shows in a row. Post-pandemic, we probably host 250+ dates a year at recordBar alone, plus miniBar and Lemonade Park. Obviously, there are other music venues in the area including The Brick, The Truman, the Chartreuse Saloon, The Pairing, Green Lady Lounge, Black Dolphin, and Grinders.
In short, we are against the current proposal to build a stadium at tax-payer expense in the Crossroads. Lack of specific economic impact, lack of communication over a long period of time, rushed and forced decision-making, and now a feeling that we are being threatened with our teams leaving, all consider into our decision to vote ‘No,” Tulipana says.
Tulipana had to leave for recordBar, as they were holding a benefit for the Volker Park Concert Series that night—The ongoing free summer concerts held on the first Sundays of each month. Just south of the Nelson-Atkins Museum, the shows are a throwback to the hundreds of Sunday afternoon rock concerts in the ’60s and ’70s, and now presented in partnership with the Kansas City Missouri Parks Department. Steve will perform with Dan Jones and the Squids, along with several other KC artists.
On Wednesday, March 27, recordBar is partnering with the Rural Grit organization to present “The Great Big K(NO)W Show.” They are helping organize the voices in our community who love local, live music, the arts, and the community that all of us have helped create over the last three decades.
The concert will begin at 6:00 p.m., and the artists will perform in 15-minute slots until 10:00 p.m. In between each performance, there will be guest speakers sharing facts and information, as well as organizations and arts representatives to share information with attendees.
Performances will be from Bob Walkenhorst, Gerald Trimble & Jambaroque, Cody Wyoming & Friends, Havilah Bruders with Rich Hill, A Living Breathing Folk Song, Starhaven Rounders, The Musical, Steddy P, The Uncouth, Kadesh Flow, and Freight Train Rabbit Killer.
More information on that show here.
In addition to hosting thousands of local, regional, national, and international bands, recordBar also hosts weddings, retirement parties, celebrations of life, charity events, and community fundraisers.
Performances are 18+, and minors are permitted with parents.
For more information, please visit their site.
