Krystle Warren returns to KC to jam out at two separate shows this week

Krystle Warren. // Photo Courtesy of Emily Lodigensky

Kansas City ex-pat Krystle Warren, currently living in Paris, is coming back to town for two shows this week. The first show is Thursday, June 13, at Percheron, with a Saturday slot on the Elevate Stage at Boulevardia, as well. Her band for these shows features Brad Cox, Mike Stover, and David Dawda, with Sacha Groschang on Thursday’s show, and Fritz Hutchison on Saturday’s.

Warren’s music is an amalgamation of what makes Kansas City sound so great, with elements of jazz, blues, folk, and country permeating various aspects of her lengthy discography. The musician left Kansas City at a young age for New York, and from there, moved on to Paris, where she now resides. We began our conversation by asking what returning to the area means at this point, and how hometown shows differ from those she’s done all over the world.

“They’re terrifically stressful,” Warren says with instant candor. “I love being home, and just before touchdown, I have this anxiety that just overwhelms me because I can hear these voices just outside my little keyhole of a window: ‘What are you doing on this night? Do you have any plans?’”

That gets her really worked up, Warren admits, but at the same time, she says, there’s no other place that she wants to be.

“I love being in Kansas City and I’m grateful that I have a job that allows me to get there as often as I can, roughly once a year,” she says. “It’s exciting and stressful all at once, which means it’s a dream come true.”

Given that a hometown Krystle Warren performance is such a rare thing, to say nothing of two in the same week, we attempt to tease out from the musician just what folks can expect from her setlist. Given that her discography is so very vast at this point, with Warren embracing her own music, as well as the music of others.

“I’m not going to tell you, but it’s so tempting to tell you,” Warren says. “I will say that one of the things that Brad Cox and I have gotten up to for the past two decades and some change is, we tend to obsess over the same music, and I have a recent obsession. Then, I sent him an email. I said, ‘What about if we do this?’”

Warren alludes that there are some tunes that are now part of the show that she’s so excited to get to interpret, but will say no more other than the fact that each show will be different. “Absolutely different from the other,” she says.

“I don’t know what I love more actually—if it’s writing tunes or singing just exquisite tunes that someone else has written,” Warren says.

The Percheron show will feature no drummer, with an intimacy coming from strings, whereas the the Boulevardia show will see Warren rocking.

“We decided, ‘Why don’t we rock?’” she says. “’Cause I don’t rock. I love rock. In fact, in high school—and even now—I had that Zeppelin all over the place. I was so envious of Robert Plant. I wanted to be able to sing like that. I wanted to rock and it just wasn’t meant to be, until the 15 of June. That’s when I’m going to attempt to rock, and I’m excited for us to have that sort of oomph performance.”

Krystle Warren plays Percheron at Crossroads Hotel on Thursday, June 13. Details on that show here. She also plays Boulevardia’s Elevate Stage on Saturday, June 15. Details on that show here.