Calendar

March 01

GO: The Kansas City Curling Club’s new dedicated ice is at 2525 N.W. S. Outer Road, Blue Springs. Find a class or open ice time at kccurling.com. WHERE YOU WANT TO BE IN MARCH

IN THE People sometimes ask DeeAnn Moore, the president of the HOUSE Kansas City Curling Club, if they should plan to bring their own stones, like you would a bowling ball.

It’s a friendly question but one that shows just how little people understand the sport. The answer is definitely not—the forty-pound hunks of smoothed granite come from Alisa Craig, an island off the coast of Scotland, and a set costs thousands of dollars.

Every four years, curling gets a big bump in interest thanks to the Olympic games. It’s easy to understand the appeal for coach-locked spectators. You are definitely never going to fly off a ski jump or land even one axel, but maybe you could slide some rocks down the ice?

For the first time, Kansas Citians are positioned to find out, thanks to the local club’s brand-new facility in Blue Springs. It’s the only dedicated curling ice for more than three hundred miles, and it marks the first time Kansas Citians can actually try curling on dedicated sheets instead of attempting it on a rutted-up skating rink at odd hours. If you’ve dreamed of trying the sport, you can now pay $30 for a ninety-minute class at the club.

Be warned that it’s a little addictive—harder than it looks on TV but easy enough to keep you trying. And if you lose? Well, by tradition, the winner buys your first drink in the warm room overlooking the ice after all the stones are thrown. —MARTIN CIZMAR

March

WHAT YOU WANT TO DO THIS MONTH

The Thoma Collection

March 1-31

The newest exhibit at the Nelson-Atkins Museum is a show featuring fifteen works of artists who worked under Spanish colonial rule in Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru in the 1600s and 1700s. The show, which runs through September 4, has works pulled from the holdings of Chicago’s Thoma Foundation, which has an emphasis on work from the Spanish Americas. Through September 4. Nelson-Atkins Museum.

Sporting KC vs. Houston Dynamo

March 5, 2:30 pm

Sporting KC’s home opener finds the side facing some familiar foes. Houston’s new head coach is Paulo Nagamura, who won two ’chips as a player at Sporting and has been an assistant for the past five seasons. Nagamura also poached a number of assistants to fill out his Dynamo staff. Saturday, March 5. 2:30 pm. Children’s Mercy Park.

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Yvonne Osei's EXTENSIONS, from "Moving in Place"

Moving in Place

March 4–19

Charlotte Street’s Moving in Place is a site-specific show that features nine artists and includes performance, video art, sculpture and photography. The show was curated by Kimi Kitada, who gathered pieces in which the artists “use their own bodies as material and vessel for performance-based works.” The show includes work from artists based in Chicago, New York, L.A. and two locals (Haley Kostas and Johanna Winters), and in each work, the “presence of the body is integral to the realization of each piece.” Opening reception on Friday, March 4, 6–9 pm. Charlotte Street Gallery, 3333 Wyoming St., KCMO. Shows continue through March 19.

Bessie, Billie, & Nina

March 6, 7 pm

The Winterlude jazz series at JCCC continues with this show, a tribute to Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. The show has three vocalists fronting an all-female jazz band to pay homage to their legacies. Sunday, March 6. 7pm. Polsky Theatre at Johnson County Community College. $17-35.

The Royale

March 8–27

Jack Johnson was the first Black heavyweight champ, an American icon of the early twentieth century. KCRep is staging The Royale, a new work by playwright Marco Ramirez (Orange is the New Black, Daredevil) that shows the human cost of making history. Tuesday, March 8–Sunday, March 27. Various times. Copaken Stage.

Flogging Molly

March 11, 8 pm

A St. Patrick’s season tradition on par with Chicago turning its river green or undergrads skipping classes to pound green beer, Flogging Molly’s annual spring tour finds the Celtic punk act playing “Drink and Fight” for aged punks who do more of the former than the latter at this stage of their life. Friday, March 11. 8 pm. The Truman.

St. Patrick’s Day Warm-Up

March 12, 2 pm

Back in 2020, the annual Brookside St. Patrick’s Day Warm-Up was one of the first things canceled to “flatten the curve.” This is the third try at celebrating forty years with community groups, drill teams, Irish dancers, bagpipers and the mounted patrol parading down 63rd Street between Main Street and Wornall Road. Saturday, March 12. 2 pm.

Kansas Craft Brewers Expo

March 12

Beer festivals are slowly coming back, and that includes the tenth edition of the biggest one in Lawrence: this fest featuring forty breweries at Abe & Jake’s Landing. It’s your chance to try beers from some of the Sunflower State’s smallest and farthest-flung operations, including Gellas Diner & Liquid Bread Brewing Compa11 The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs March 11–13 Steve Jobs, the late CEO of Apple, is as close as modern Americans get to universal deification. That includes an operatic treatment of his life story, to be produced by the Lyric Opera of Kansas City. The piece was composed by Mason

Bates and librettist Mark Campbell and is making its local premiere. Friday, March 11–Sunday, March 13. Various times. Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.

ny of Hays, Walnut River of El Dorado and Center Pivot of Quinter (pop. 927). Saturday, March 12. Noon–3 pm and 4:30–7:30 pm. Abe & Jake’s Landing, 8 E. Sixth St., Lawrence. $40. kscraftbrewfest.com.

Just the Two of Us

March 12, 8 pm

The Kansas City Jazz Orchestra stages a breezy performance of “Just the Two of Us” featuring Grammy-winning saxophonist Kirk Whalum. The show features songs from the genre of contemporary jazz (“Breezin,” “Mister Magic,” and the title cut “Just the Two of Us”) arranged for a jazz orchestra. Saturday, March 12. 8 pm. Helzberg Hall of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.

Bobby Weir & Wolf Bros

March 15, 7 pm

Grateful Dead founder Bob Weir returns to the road for his first full-fledged solo tour since the pandemic, backed by the Wold Bros band and a string and brass quintet called the Wolfpack. Tuesday, March 15. 7 pm. Arvest Bank Theatre at The Midland. 29 Girl in Red March 29, 8 pm “Serotonin,” the single from Marie Ulven’s alt-pop project Girl in Red, has been a radio juggernaut. On the road for a series of shows that ends with her making her Coachella debut, she’ll play the Truman. The music is “Billie Eilish plays early ’00s college rock,” and Ulven’s got the bedazzled baggy jeans and logoless hoodies to match. Tuesday, March 29. 8 pm. The Truman.

CELTIC CROSSROADS

Mondegreens are a muse for Lawrence Celtic musician Ashley Davis.

BY LAUREN FOX

ASHLEY DAVIS DESCRIBES HERSELF AS A “POROUS” MUSICIAN. She finds inspiration by hearing people’s stories and the way they verbalize their emotions—a process in which she says she sees a lot of beauty.

A fifth-generation Kansan, Davis lives in Lawrence, where she is currently working on her ninth album, Songs of the Celtic Winter Part 2, which she plans to release in November.

We chatted with Davis about her inspiration, the Irish music scene in Kansas City and a few of her favorite spots around town before her appearance at Lawrence’s Liberty Hall on March 5.

How would you describe your music? I tend to say “world music.” Like any frontier kid, we don’t like boundaries. And so I don’t want to be put into a specific bin because I want to be able to continue to draw from any culture, any genre, and continue to make my music, which is a unique blend of a lot of different things. And though that’s sometimes going against the grain in my own genre of Celtic music, I think it’s what’s given me a unique voice.

FAVORITE SPOTS

Arthur Bryant’s Barbeque “I remember going there as a kid with my dad, and it is my favorite barbeque in the world. It’s the most unique sauce I’ve ever tasted. By far. And I give it as gifts all around the world. I’ll bring a bottle with me in my suitcase.”

Garazzo’s “The original Garozzo’s in north Kansas City. Mike Garozzo’s a good friend of my dad’s, and we’ve been going there since I was a kid. My mother’s Italian, and it just felt like the experience I had with her Italian side on the East Coast whenever I would go in there. So it would trigger a lot of memories of my Kansas family and her side also.”

Kauffman Stadium “Some of my most formative memories are there. I’ve been going there since I was born and have just incredible family memories of being there. I’m a huge Royals fan.” How do you come up with your lyrics? When I’m writing and I’m stuck, I will often go to volumes of poetry that I have on hand in my writing room. I usually read about three books at the same time, and I’m always taking notes. One habit that I have that is interesting as a writer is I will often mishear something that somebody says—maybe at a table beside me—and I’ll think, “That is an amazing way of expressing that,” but it’s incorrect. Or I’ll misread a text, and the misreading ends up being something really cool. The other day I was reading a book and it said, “This is also thought of as the”—and what I read was “awkward heart.” I thought, “What a great song title, ‘The awkward heart.’’’ I wrote it down and then came back and reread the sentence, and it actually was “awakened heart.” I do this all the time, and it’s like these little messages that I get. So the first track of the new winter album is called “The Awkward Heart.”

What’s something your fans might not know about you? A lot of people don’t know that I’m a Reiki practitioner and that when I’m not on the road, I see people who would like to be treated with energy work. I get to hear the stories of the people that I treat, and they are always stories of the heart. They sometimes influence how I might be writing something— because we are all made up of everyone’s stories, in a way.

And your story becomes my story today. I think I am a pretty porous writer and an empath, so I’m always sort of soaking in everybody’s language and energy and ideas.

GO: To find out more about Ashley Davis, go to ashleydavisband.com.