RecordBar owners Steve Tulipana and Shawn Sherrill prepare to say goodbye to their music club … for now

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A week before Christmas, RecordBar co-owners Steve Tulipana and Shawn Sherrill are struggling to find the balance between managing their busiest season and closing the doors forever on their club’s first address.

In July, the two announced that their lease at 1020 Westport Road, in the Old Westport Shopping Center, would expire December 31 and that their landlord, Cooper Weeks, had declined to renew it. Weeks has refused to comment on the reasons for his decision, but he said in a phone conversation that he hopes to put a retail outlet in the 3,200-square-foot venue.

It’s a decision that has been unpopular, not only with Tulipana and Sherrill but also with a large portion of the Kansas City music community. RecordBar has hosted concerts, weddings and parties since opening in 2005, and neither Tulipana nor Sherrill envisioned the end this way.

In the venue’s basement office, Tulipana reclines in a deteriorating leather office chair with highlighter-yellow stuffing poking out of an armrest. Sherrill, arms crossed, leans against the doorframe, a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other. He’s in the middle of his liquor and supply ordering, which, at the moment, is a tricky game.

“Trying to figure out the plan for closing a bar when it’s at the apex of its busy season is like nothing I’ve ever been involved with before,” Sherrill says. “We’re trying not to order too much because we don’t have much time left, but I want to be able to sell liquor to people because we’re packed this whole month.”

“Closing when you’re still active is kind of uncharted territory,” Tulipana says. “It would be another story if we were in dire circumstances, if we were just hanging on or something. Everybody would be angry at you. But we’ve got nothing but love and concern right now, and it’s really weird.”

With just a month to move out, Tulipana and Sherrill haven’t done much in the way of packing. Everything upstairs is in order: Framed records are still affixed to the walls. Liquor shelves are stocked. When I arrive, a sound guy is setting up the stage for the evening’s show.

The actual dismantling, Tulipana says, won’t happen until after the first of the year. RecordBar’s final show is January 2, and Weeks has given them until the end of that month to get through the housekeeping.

“Right now, we’re in denial,” Tulipana says with a short laugh. “No, we’re just throwing shit away, cleaning things up, trying to figure out what we want to keep and what we want to sell. We’ll probably have a sale and an auction a couple weeks into January, where stuff that we don’t want is on tables — records and equipment and neon signs. There’s all kinds of stuff that it doesn’t even make sense to pack up. We’ll sell drinks during the sale if any alcohol is left. It’ll help us pay some bills that way — we’ll still have a lot of bills to pay.”

When January is over, Tulipana and Sherrill agree, the most difficult work will begin: All of their energy will be spent in the search for a new RecordBar home.

“We’ve been doing soul-searching and researching, trying to figure out, you know, what is the success rate of a place that has moved?” Tulipana says. “If this is going to continue on, what are the things that we know we’d like to change? So we’ve got lists going for all kinds of different scenarios. And on top of it, we’ve already visited so many buildings and met so many different property owners, and people have been throwing different ideas at us.”

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“All the while knowing that no matter how well developed your plan is,” Sherrill says, “it’s going to ultimately depend on the kind of space that we find.”

“We know we can’t replicate it — nor do we want to,” Tulipana adds. “It’s going to be different, but it still has to be warm and inviting, and that has a lot to do with the staff and the food and the aesthetic, and we want to protect that as much as we can. We know, no matter what, even if we went four doors down, we’re going to lose some people, so there’s a lot at risk to continue.” Tulipana pauses. “To not continue it is not off the table,” he says, his eyes on Sherrill, “but I think it’s starting to get shoved to the side more and more.”

The hunt for a new space is somewhat simplified, Sherrill says, by the long list of built-in requirements that RecordBar needs to exist. The ideal future property will be a 3,000- to 4,000-square-foot space that already has a kitchen and a bar, plus room for a stage, with ample parking and room for loading buses.

“It starts being easy to mark places off your list,” Sherrill says, “when you look at available places right now that have been a bar or a restaurant and what we really need.”

I ask Tulipana and Sherrill what inspires them to soldier on, given the enormous struggle ahead of them. In the end, they tell me, the list of pros is far more substantive than the cons.

“I thought about some of the stuff that [my wife] Cheryl said to me,” Tulipana says. “Like, is there a legacy? Is it just personal ego? Is it money? Is it the obligation to employees and people that love the place? And that’s one that gets checked off pretty quickly. I just feel like we’ve built this thing, and I feel obligated to see it through.”

“And we’re also proud of it,” Sherrill says. “I don’t think we knew, 10 years ago, what it was going to grow into. But I think it means a lot to a lot of different people. People have had some really important moments here. I’ve had important moments here. It’s nice to feel like you’re responsible for something that the city looks at favorably, especially in this industry, because that’s hard to accomplish.”

“At the same time,” Tulipana adds, “if we continue, we’ve got to find the things that make it grow and make it better.”

For that, Tulipana says, he’s counting on the contributions of the RecordBar staff. He doesn’t relish the idea of his workers’ joblessness, but in the interim, until plans for a new RecordBar are firmed up, he’s got at least one short-term solution for his bartenders.

“We don’t open for happy hour at MiniBar,” Tulipana says, referring to RecordBar’s late-night counterpart at 3810 Broadway. “But we told any of the RecordBar employees that if they wanted to initiate a happy hour there, they were welcome to it. So starting in January next year, from 4 to 7 p.m., we’re going to do a RecordBar pop-up happy hour, so anyone who wants to see their regular RecordBar faces, they can see them there.”

RecordBar staff members will be the first to know when they’re out of the woods, Sherrill adds. “They know what’s going on,” he says. “They’ve known since the beginning. We talk to them every day, and they answer the same questions just as often as we do.”

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“And they hear twice as many rumors as we do,” Tulipana adds with a wry laugh.

I ask Tulipana about a few of those rumors, and I share a few of the more interesting bits of gossip I’ve heard. Sherrill quickly defuses my buzz.

“Everything is false,” Sherrill says. “There’s nothing to announce right now. And even if we did find something in the next couple weeks, I feel like this place needs a break. Even if we found a spot tomorrow, trying to shut down a bar and move out is not something I’m looking forward to doing. Trying to open a bar at the same time — those are two completely separate things.”

Vacating, Tulipana says, is depressing enough. He gestures to the mostly empty wall above his desk; last week, he tells me, it was covered in old show posters and clever — if wildly inappropriate — doodles and art (much like the cartoon penises decorating the wall above Sherrill’s desk).

It’s an observation that sparks a fountain of reminiscing, and I ask Tulipana and Sherrill about some of their fondest memories from the last decade. There were the childhood heroes who made for momentous shows, such as Gary Numan in August 2006; the time that, Tulipana says, St. Vincent played to 13 people in 2007, when she was first starting; when the National played to a crowd of just 25 in 2005, and Tulipana and Sherrill took the band out drinking afterward. The partners have no trouble thinking of excellent shows they have hosted, but the best memories were the first ones.

“I go back to the early days,” Sherrill says. “We got to do so many things that we never knew we could do. It’s just a bunch of weird intangibles. There was the Molloy’s staff [of the former Molloy Brothers Irish Pub] that we inherited, and I remember being here late, just drinking and trying to brainstorm ideas for pizzas.”

It’s a process, Tulipana and Sherrill agree, that they’re ready to begin again.

“As much as we’ve been doing this for 10 years, I always feel like we’re still learning and getting better at it and honing things,” Sherrill says. “You can’t please everyone, but we’re just trying to do what we like to do. We’ve realized that this is important to us and a bunch of other people, and I think that’s why it’s worth another try. Next time will be the first time we’re going to walk into a room knowing what we want to do with it, and I think we can do it even better.”

Pitch Music Contributors Share Their Favorite
RecordBar Memories

RecordBar was the first music venue I came to when I visited Kansas City for the first time, and it was central in convincing me that live local music was a thing of beauty and pride here. I’ve had too many great nights here in my two years in this city to recount, but I’ll never forget Wednesday, September 3, 2014, when the Breeders — on tour with the original lineup from their seminal 1993 album, Last Splash — headlined.

Kim Deal brushed past me as I pressed myself as close to the stage as possible, and I got chills. She is, honest to God, the coolest woman on the planet, and I stood transfixed by her for the Breeders’ entire 80-minute set. As the years carry me closer to old age, my dislike for crowds and my low tolerance for other people’s body odor steadily increase, but you know what? I’d wrestle in the mud with every single person in that sold-out audience if it meant hearing “Off You” live one more time.
— Natalie Gallagher

It’s difficult to place a single dominant memory of RecordBar; rather, I’m struck by just how many bands that I’ve loved have chosen it as the venue to play a reunion show. It must be something to do with the fact that the place has been a music lover’s dream in terms of sight lines, sound and drink selections. I’ve seen so many bands play sets after years apart, and it always seemed so natural. Be it a raucous, never-ending pit that left me soaked with sweat for Tanka Ray in February 2008 or a grinning sing-along with the Creature Comforts in June 2009, RecordBar has let me have many more “one more time” shows with my favorite bands.

— Nick Spacek

Saxophonist Mark Southerland, wearing a hard hat with a headlamp, led a parade of musicians down one side of the RecordBar stage, winding through a cheering audience to the opposite side and back onto the stage. That’s when, at this 2010 People’s Liberation Big Band of Greater Kansas City show, I got it. I’d seen the lauded PLBB a few first Sundays of the month, but somehow, they were different this time. I wasn’t sure I appreciated the music they played, even as I realized that this was a helluva collection of KC jazz talent. But as Southerland, followed by a female cellist, marched past me, I understood that these were musicians having a blast and bringing the audience along for the ride. This was big-band jazz so far outside the box, there was no container for it — no container, that is, except RecordBar.
— Larry Kopitnik

RecordBar reunions, like the return of Ricky Dean Sinatra and the bona fide resurrection of the Pedaljets, kept the region’s past triumphs alive.

The club always had room for genius experiments, like the annual Love Hangover “surprise duo” shows, curated by Scott Easterday. In 2009, Howard Iceberg and Amy Farrand dusted off old songs and added brand-new, previously unimaginable touches. Barclay Martin and Sara Swenson soared together, and operatic tenor Nathan Granner and jazz singer Valery Price paired up as a perfect example of how this place redefined a “scene.” Those shows and other ill-advised but brilliant ideas will all find homes, but it won’t be quite the same.

— Mike Warren

I’ll always remember being heckled by comedian Doug Stanhope at an excellent show almost 10 years ago for my recording part of his set with a horrible point-and-shoot camera. (This experience also taught me to never record comedy sets, for many more reasons beyond plain embarrassment.) It was also my first experience with stand-up comedy outside a comedy club, and it was refreshing. RecordBar felt, especially because of Stanhope, like a great and authentic comedy venue.

My other favorite RecordBar show was Junior Boys’ 2009 performance. I had moved to Westport after several years of living in Lawrence, and being able to walk to such a comfortable, fun bar for an amazing dance party affirmed to me that I had absolutely made the right decision.

Thank you to Shawn and Steve, as well as all the wonderful bartenders, sound techs and staff at RB for always giving us a great place to hang out, eat and see live music. I’ll follow you wherever you go.
— April Fleming