Kurt Allen Band rocks Outlaw Cigar Brewery this weekend

Kurt Allen. // photo courtesy the artist

Kansas City blues rocker Kurt Allen and his eponymously-named Kurt Allen Band play a lot of shows every year. Like, a lot a lot–between 150-200, per his publicist–so when we hopped on the phone with him last week, we had to start out by asking just how he does it.

“A lot of hustling, a lot of hustling,” Allen says with humility. “A lot of good people on my team.”

That team of people gets Allen and his band into some great spots all around the country, such as this Saturday, January 13’s show at Outlaw Cigar Brewery in North KC, one myriad interesting venues to which Allen takes his fiery guitar work.

“I’ve always had a goal to play some very cool spots,” explains the guitarist. “I’ve kept plugging away, like I said, trying to make sure I’ve got the the right people on my team to help me get into the spots that I want to play and continue growing. That’s always been my goal.”

Along those lines, Kurt Allen Band’s last album, Live From The Red Shed, was recorded in–of all places–Hutchinson, proving that a good show can appear anywhere.

“Oh, yeah,” Allen agrees. “Jeff Stephens and the cast out there at the Red Shed, they’re great people. That’s an amazing little venue. That’s just a killer spot.”

Outlaw Cigar Brewery in North KC is rapidly becoming another out-of-the-way “killer spot,” with upcoming shows from the likes of Old No. 5’s, Howard Mahan and Miki P, and Supermassive Black Holes, to name but three shows on the next couple months’ packed calendar. It’s a venue Allen knows well, having taken to its stage four or five times since the venue opened in September of 2021.

“It’s a very cool spot,” says the musician of the brewery-meets-venue-meets-cigar shop. “For us, it’s local. They got a great stage, great sound system. It’s just a really cool place, and they’ve always treated us very well there.”

As Allen puts it, part of the appeal of the venue is that it’s centrally located north of the river, but just north of the river, with an easy exit just off the Heart of America Bridge for those coming from points south. Outlaw Cigar’s owner, Kendall Culbertson, looks at it as just one of the myriad things which makes his spot so appealing to both those on stage and those in front of it.

“You know, I own two other stores, and they’re basically cigar stores and lounges,” Culbertson says by phone. “With this one, what I attempted to do is find everything.”

As he explains, cigars are–generally speaking–an old guy’s game. He admits that they get young guys and women, too, but says that the core business for the three Outlaw Cigar locations is “old dudes.”

“What I attempted to do is create a place that has multiple things going on that old dudes want to see and one of those is live music,” the owner continues. “Old guys, they don’t want all this modern stuff. They really want some old blues, some old country, some old rock and roll, classic rock. The reason for the live music is to just add another element for entertainment for the same clientele we already have.”

Outlaw Cigar. // photo courtesy the venue

With Outlaw Cigar Brewery, what Culbertson is attempting to do is create some unique experiences for those people that enjoy smoking cigars.

“Now obviously everybody’s welcome and our air filtration is incredible, but at the end of the day, we’re a smoking place,” he says. “I want to create experiences for my customers, basically.”

It’s a continuation of that for which Culbertson’s venue has become known. We first heard of Outlaw Cigar Brewery from some enthusing about the club’s whiskey selection and the fact that they can help pair a cigar with whatever you’re drinking and vice versa. The music is just another compliment to that whole experience.

“The other thing is, when you go to bars and watch music, it’s not the same experience you’ll have at my place,” points out Culbertson. “My chairs are leather chairs. You’re not sitting at tables. You’re not sitting on hard stools. But once again, I’m looking at that 50-60 year-old guy and going, ‘What’s he want to sit in? He wants to sit in a leather chair and be able to sit there all night and be comfortable.’”

It’s not your usual venue, to be sure. As Culbertson puts it, what he attempted to do is make a place that when you walk in, you feel like you’re outdoors in an old Western town.

“There’s no materials in this place that did not exist in the late 1800s,” Culbertson enthuses. “I had the Amish create all my wood and all that stuff so that it’s very rustic and feels very historic. When you walk in, you feel like you’re in an old Western town. People that walk in at the first time, they don’t get any farther than three feet from the door and they just stop and just stare at the place.”

An old Western town recreated indoors just north of the river is just so very Midwest and thus, kind of makes for the perfect place for the Kurt Allen Band to play, because Allen and his bandmates are taking KC on the road with every show they play. We ask Allen what he takes from Kansas City when he goes out into the rest of the country, and he answers without hesitation.

“Oh, I would say just my Midwest work ethic, you know?” Allen confidently replies. “Most people that I know from KC, they’re all hard workers. Busting tail every day, all day to get stuff done to make sure they can live their lives. That’s what I take from it. Kansas City’s got a rich music history, and we’re trying to spread that out, as well.”

Kurt Allen Band plays Outlaw Cigar Brewery on Saturday, January 13. Details on that show here.