Jazz Standard: Jeff Shirley plays his part five nights a week at Green Lady Lounge

Jeff Shirley. // Courtesy photo

Currently playing five nights a week at the Kansas City jazz hub known as Green Lady Lounge, local guitarist Jeff Shirley shares all original tunes onstage and in his several jazz releases. His discography includes the albums 3 Degrees Above Absolute Zero (2012), Point of the Story (2018), and his latest, Blue Gold (2022).

The Pitch sat down with Shirley to discuss all things KC jazz, his early career, and his journey to longstanding residencies at some of KC’s hottest jazz lounges.

The Pitch: How did you get started in jazz as a child, and what made you fall in love with it?

Jeff Shirley: My grandpa gave me a guitar when I was 12. I started with fingerstyle, and then I was into so much other music. Of course, the rock and guitar virtuosos. Then I realized that the only way to play guitar and big band—or the only way to play guitar in high school—was to join the jazz band. So I auditioned, and the instructor [Danny Watring] was happy to have me. And I just fell in love with it. He showed us a lot of music—he showed me Pat Metheny, who’s from Lee’s Summit, and who’s won over 20 Grammys. Once I found Pat Metheny, it was all over to some extent because I just love that music. I wasn’t always attracted to the older-sounding music from the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s. But I love how jazz can be so many things: fusion and how it can be hip, and you can combine any kind of music with it. So it’s kind of a genre-shattering approach. 

How did you break into the Kansas City jazz scene after college?

I knew coming back to Kansas City that it’s a great place to grow as a musician. When I first got back, I started focusing on working on computer and electronic music and seeing if I could combine jazz and electronic music. And then eventually, I said I wanted to play with more people and try to break into this scene, which was kind of intimidating because I was still building up my confidence even after college. [Around 2010] was when I started to go to all the jam sessions—at one time, you could almost go to a jam session every night of the week. So I would go to the Blue Room on Mondays. The Phoenix on Tuesdays. Then the Mutual Musicians Foundation on Friday and Saturday. I just started to meet these people, and eventually, I started to host at the Mutual Musicians Foundation.

What were those jam sessions like?

You show up with your instrument, and there’s just a real friendly atmosphere of helping each other. At The Phoenix, it was always Matt Hopper. He was nice enough that I got to use his amplifier. So I’m always thankful to those people I got to jam with. And when you show up, you don’t know what songs are going to be called—sometimes you get to call a tune, and sometimes you’re just along for the ride. You never know how it’s going to go. It was a little intimidating at first. But to get over my nerves, I would say to myself, “Okay, don’t do this for you. Do it for them. Do it for the audience, or do it for someone that might really need some music today.” So instead of doing it for myself, I tried to do it for them.

How did you get started at Green Lady?

I made an album in 2018, Point of the Story. And the owner of Green Lady, John Scott, found it, and he liked a lot of stuff happening on it. So he started to play it inside his club. I had already had a couple of gigs there, but then during the pandemic, I was working with Mark Slimm from RSS Trio, and we did some things with Black Dolphin, like live streaming. And one thing led to another, and now I’m getting to play with my group, Jeff Shirley Organ Trio, Mondays and Thursdays late at night. And with RSS Trio, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I’ve now been playing there five nights a week for a couple of years. 

What can listeners expect from one of your shows at Green Lady?

They can expect some classic bebop songs, some classic swing, but also a lot of funky songs that make you want to dance. There’ll be some modern tunes that might have an upbeat feel, and there’ll be some more pensive and heartfelt ballads. So we try to mix it in and try to watch the audience and give them kind of what they want. A lot of times, the front of the audience is really engaged with us. We try to give a high-level sound experience that’s also fun and serves as a form of escape. When I’m up there getting to play music, I’m so thankful to do it because the stress of the world goes away, at least during the set. I get to just focus on the music and really dig into that. It’s a place where we can be creative and tune everything else out to some extent, and people that go there feel the same way. The stress of the world can just stay behind.

​​How would you say the jazz music scene in Kansas City has evolved or changed since you joined around 2010?

Over time, I’ve seen certain clubs close and some open. Some come and go, and others stick around for a long, long time. Like Green Lady Lounge has been here for a long time. We get a lot of tourists and people from all over the country, like from LA or Chicago, and they say, “Oh gosh, there’s nothing like this in our city.” Sometimes people come back to the city to visit another time, and Green Lady is the main reason they return. It’s developing a real nationwide and worldwide reputation. It’s quite amazing. KC is a real treasure trove of great world-class musicians. So it’s fun to get to be a part of that.

Overall, there are still places to go jam here. UMKC’s jazz program and KCKCC’s jazz program are still such a big part of it. There’s great jazz education here—a lot of things are the same, just more of it. I think, in many ways, it’s just grown and grown and grown and kept growing.

How did your latest album, Blue Gold come to be?

Since the owner of Green Lady wants all original material, that was an excuse to write a lot of music. A lot was being composed for us in 2020 and 2021. So that was fun. Pretty soon, I had enough tunes to record an album. Blue Gold was inspired by some of my spirituality because back in 2017, I had a spiritual reawakening through Bhakti yoga and the Rupanuga Vedic College. Blue Gold was my first try at dovetailing my love of music and jazz and my spirituality. For instance, some of the melodies—I’ve written them with a different mantra in mind. It’s a science of mantra and vibration, and it resonates on a deep level. And the Maha-mantra is the greatest mantra, so sometimes when I write a melody nowadays, I’ll have that in mind. 

You can catch the Jeff Shirley Organ Trio on Mondays and Thursdays in the late-night slot at Green Lady Lounge and hear Shirley play along with RSS Trio on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.