The Pitch: March 26, 2015

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march 26-april 1, 2015 | free | Vol. 34 No. 39 | pitch.com

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I

f every recovering addict is a redemption in waiting, a shaky rise after a crushing fall, David Widner will tell

you that he descended from a higher altitude than most.

“I had a net worth of $1.4 million in 2001,” Widner told me in February. “Cocaine took it all.”

He had met me for coffee at Crows, south of the Plaza, on a short break from studying at the University of Missouri–Kansas City library for his Series 7 exam, which will allow him to regain his stockbroker’s license.

Widner was a retail broker and financial adviser — Paine Webber, UBS — in Kansas City for 20 years. The leftovers of his upperclass lifestyle are still visible in faded traces: Patagonia fleece, North Face backpack, a chipped iPhone 4. His cheeks are pockmarked and scarred. Behind owlish reading glasses, his eyes are those of someone who has lived through nightmares.

Widner’s drug use spiraled out of control around 2002, he says. He lost his job, then his savings, then his marriage. He spent the better part of the next decade in and out of treatment centers. “I did stints at all the big ones: Hazelden, Sierra Tucson, [the] Farley [Center],” Widner said.

He finally got clean at Welcome House, a gritty recovery program for men. There, at 27th Street and the Paseo, he eventually started helping out: preparing food, assisting with administrative tasks, running errands. He went back to school at UMKC to get a degree in chemistry. He found a roommate and an apartment, then a job at UMKC as a lab assistant. He worked at the university from January 2013 to June 2014.

But he lost that job — he says funding cuts at his research lab forced a layoff — and he started drinking again. He got in a bike accident that caused a concussion. A temporary stint late last year as a chemist at Belfonte Ice Cream lasted only a few months.

“I decided, at that point, I was sick of being poor and wanted to go back into brokerage,” Widner said. “And my sponsor stepped in and said, ‘You’re drinking.

You’re out of a job. If you want to get back into finance, you should go to a transitional recovery house first and get stable.’

So I started looking for an Oxford House to move into.”

A

n Oxford House is, essentially, transitional housing: a supportive environment where a recovering addict lives alongside others who are also trying to stay clean, find work and restart their lives.

The first Oxford House was started in Washington, D.C., in 1975 by a man named Paul Molloy, after the halfway house

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where he was staying lost its funding. He and the other residents kept that house’s lease and made their own rules of sober self-governance.

Today, about 1,800 Oxford Houses operate worldwide. Any group of recovering individuals can start one if they adhere to a few requirements. They must line up a house to rent, set up a house bank account to pay for expenses, and apply to Oxford House Inc. for a charter. The Marylandbased parent organization doesn’t charge for the charter, but each house is encouraged to tithe monthly to OHI. All Oxford Houses have the same three rules. They must be run democratically (with house members electing a president, a treasurer and a comptroller), they must be financially self-supporting, and they must expel any resident who drinks alcohol or takes drugs.

“Oxford is a name brand in the world of recovery,” Widner tells The Pitch. “I’d stayed at a couple years before, during various attempts to get sober. And given the situation I was in, and being out of money, Oxford was a good alternative. For $85 a week, you get a room, TV, Internet, a place to cook and a safe environment.

Supposedly.”

In late January of this year, Widner got online and searched “Missouri Oxford House” and found, on OHI’s website, addresses and phone numbers for Kansas City–area houses with Oxford House charters. He called about a vacancy at Oxford House Swope Park, at 3401 East Meyer Boulevard. A man named Howard Robinson answered.

According to Oxford House bylaws, prospective members are supposed to attend a house meeting with the current residents, who vote to accept or deny the applicant.

According to Widner, though, Robinson told Widner that he could stay at the Swope house as long as he had $305: two weeks’ rent, at $85, and $135 for a deposit.

“We had a meeting with the other residents only after I moved in and paid him,” Widner says.

Widner soon learned that the Swope house did not operate like the previous Oxford Houses where he had stayed. The setup, for instance, was not democratic, he says. Instead, Robinson was calling all the shots.

And Robinson didn’t seem to like Widner. His first continued on page 9

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continued from page 7 night at the Swope Oxford House, he says, Robinson yelled at him and said he could throw him out at any time. “Several times, he entered my room without knocking and would turn on the lights and ask me why I wasn’t looking for a job. I’d been there a day.”

On his second day there, Widner says, he was threatened with fines for not making his bed. Widner says he asked for a list of rules, and Robinson responded by calling an emergency meeting, at 9 p.m., to evict Widner. “His reasoning was that I was arrogant,” Widner told me. “When the house voted, I was not removed, which caused him to drug-test me.

I passed. In the meeting, I was ridiculed and criticized for over an hour by him. He called me a fuckup, an asshole and an arrogant piece of shit.”

The next day, Widner contacted Oxford House headquarters to ask about Robinson and to express concern that some of the Swope residents didn’t fit the Oxford House model. “There were mental patients from treatment centers and people who are not alcoholics or drug addicts,” he says. “We had Ernesto, a sex addict, and David, a schizophrenic patient who we were not capable of helping.”

An Oxford House representative named Mollie Brown replied to Widner in an e-mail:

“We have no field staff in MO to put anything right there — we have never started houses in that state — the houses were started by the State of MO Drug and Alcohol Division who then abandoned the houses and left them without a staff member to take care of problems. No point in calling the state; they will deny that they are at all involved with Oxford House at this time. Their last field staff person was pulled two years ago … You need to look at other programs or other Oxford Houses not started by this man Howard.”

Widner was puzzled. If Robinson’s house wasn’t a sanctioned Oxford House, then why was it listed on the Oxford House website? If Oxford House never chartered any properties in Missouri and had nobody to take care of

any problems in the state, as Brown wrote, why were any Oxford Houses operating here?

And why did the state of Missouri start and then abandon Oxford Houses?

When Widner arrived home later that day, Robinson confronted him again. “He says, ‘Did you call someone at world [OHI]?’ I said, ‘Yeah, about the deposit.’ He says, ‘Your brain is so fucking fried, you don’t understand how this works. You’re not to call those people

ever. You violated the chain of command. You come to me first.’ Then he repeated that his name was on the deed to the house and he could remove me at any time without a democratic vote.”

Robinson’s name is not, in fact, on t he de e d to t he house at 3401 East Meyer. But he tells The Pitch that he has “opened” seven

Oxford Houses in Kansas City in the past four years — meaning that he finds homeowners and landlords willing to rent their properties as Oxford Houses, then recruits recovering addicts to live in them. He also says he is the “sole proprietor” on each property’s Oxford House bank account for the first few months, until stable members of the house emerge to take responsibility.

“The last thing to do is give someone control of a house account who has a few weeks of sobriety,” Robinson says.

“We’ve had house bank accounts wiped out that way. We need mature people with some clean time under their belt to come forward — people for whom the house’s money is not a temptation.”

But several current and former residents, many of whom have asked to remain anonymous because of embarrassment about their addictions, argue that Robinson’s approach conflicts with the Oxford House ethos of self-governance. They say Robinson has leveraged his position to accrue power and he continues to meddle long after stability has been achieved

in the houses. They say he has turned what is supposed to be a democratic recovery environment into an authoritarian regime. And they say there’s no system in place to hold Robinson accountable.

The average time that a person lives in an Oxford House is one year, according to the Oxford House website, though two or three years are not uncommon. Robinson has lived in Oxford Houses in Kansas City for 10 consecutive years. According to several residents, he drives two Mercedes-Benz vehicles.

“Everybody’s afraid of him,” Widner says.

“They’re all addicts, and they’re afraid. I’m afraid to go home. You don’t know what he’s going to do.”

V

eterans’ treatment programs, professional counseling programs, drug courts, prison re-entry programs, prison treatment centers, homeless shelters, addiction-recovery facilities — people arrive at an Oxford House from a number of places.

One such place in Kansas City is Imani House, at 3950 East 51st Street, a program within Swope Health Services. While addicts are at Imani getting clean, they must also find a safe, healthy place where they can live upon graduation from the program. Sometimes family members step up and open their doors. But transitional housing is necessary for many.

“Howard actually graduated from our program here at Imani years ago,” Adrienne Powell, program manager at Imani House, says of Robinson. “So later, when he got into his position at Robinson’s houses, OHI reports, are Oxford House, he came to us and said he wanted to help get Imani cli“not in good neighborhoods.” ents into supportive housing. So we were a referral source for him, and he would assist in getting our clients into a safe place expeditiously.”

That mea nt t hat Robi nson would go to Imani, meet with a prospective client, and take him or her on a tour of an Oxford House. When the client was approved, Robinson would then submit a request for the client’s initial Oxford House fees (usually around $200).

Imani House would front that money but later be reimbursed by the Missouri Department of Mental Health.

Imani House no longer recommends that its graduates go to Oxford Houses with which Robinson is affiliated.

“Over time, it got to where there were too many complaints,” Powell says. “We’d hear that he would put people out in the middle of the night over a disagreement. He’d cuss people out. He’d make unilateral decisions, which, as I understand it, goes against the rules of Oxford Houses. He would also ask us to write the checks directly to him, rather than the Oxford House bank account. We had From top: the Oxford Houses at 1229 Benton Boulevard, to call [OHI] and ask whether that was appro3401 East Meyer Boulevard and 3444 Indiana priate, and it wasn’t.” continued on page 11

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continued from page 9 Powell says Robinson would come to Imani House unannounced and demand checks.

“He’d stand outside my office and say, ‘Is it [the check] ready yet?’ When’s it going to be ready?’” Powell says. “He was very concerned about the money. The last time, I told him about a client who had come in [to Imani House] crying about their experience at one of his houses. He said, ‘You don’t know what I have to deal with. I won’t have anybody mistreating me.’ But there were just too many people, who didn’t know each other, telling us the same kinds of stories. It wasn’t collusion. So we told him we wouldn’t be sending our clients to his houses, and there was no reason for him to continue coming back here to pass out Oxford House information.”

Five years ago, Karen Gibbs first went to Oxford House Karnes, a women’s house in midtown Kansas City, from a VA treatment facility. She was aware that Robinson was involved with Oxford Houses in the area but she didn’t have much interaction with him.

“It was a good experience,” Gibbs says. “All the rules were followed. It was what Oxford House is supposed to be.”

She left after eight months but relapsed a year later. After she got out of the VA again, she called to see about again joining an Oxford House. Robinson, who by then was (as he remains) housing-services chairman for Oxford Houses in the Kansas City area, told her that she could stay at one if she had the money.

“You’re supposed to be voted in,” Gibbs says. “He said I didn’t have to worry about that. So I knew something had changed. And I got there, and everything was chaotic.”

In Gibbs’ second week back at Karnes, Robinson told the president of the house that Gibbs would be replacing her as president. “I became president at his say-so,” Gibbs says. “I thought, This isn’t how this is supposed to work.

But the Karnes house means a lot to me, and I didn’t want it to fall apart.”

Gibbs tried to turn the house around, to reintroduce the Oxford House rules. Robinson, she says, stood in the way. He attended every house business meeting and kept control of the house’s finances. He required the women to pay him, out of the house bank account, for any work that needed to be done at the house, such as fixing a ceiling fan or mowing the lawn. (Robinson operates a landscaping and snow-removal service.)

“He was running the show,” Gibbs says.

“And he would get mad and scream in these women’s faces. I watched him scream at the top of his lungs, ‘Get the fuck out! Pack your shit!’ to a woman. Then, five minutes later, he’s talking about God and sobriety. It was a very volatile environment.”

Gibbs contacted OHI with concerns about Robinson — including word that had come to her from contacts at ReDiscover that some

Widner lives now at the Oxford House at 2741 Holmes, whose members chartered it in Kansas to avoid the dysfunction and volatility of Missouri Oxford Houses. women had complained about Robinson’s sexually harassing them. (ReDiscover declined to comment on Robinson or Oxford Houses in Kansas City.) She says she did not hear much back. She left after a tense seven months and started her own women’s transitional recovery house. “Every woman in the Karnes house except one eventually ended up in my house,” she says. “One by one, they called me and asked to come to my house. It was like they were living in a prison.”

Melissa (not her real name), a woman who until recently lived in the Karnes house, says Robinson would regularly scream “nose to nose” at women in the Karnes house. She also reports that Robinson allowed a woman known to be using drugs to stay in the house “because he [Robinson] liked her.” She says this woman was also allowed to stay at the Karnes house after she had stolen money from the checking account.

Trena Shows lived in the Karnes House at the same time that Melissa did. She also says Robinson was sleeping with the woman who stole from the checking account. “It was a given,” Shows says. “He was sleeping with her. He would pick her up at the house and then drop her off later.” She also says Robinson once grabbed Shows’ phone out of her hand and threatened to “throw my shit on the porch and kick me out of the house” for attempting to call an Oxford House representative regarding Robinson’s flouting Oxford House rules.

The Karnes house, open since 1989, closed last year. Robinson has since opened another women’s house in the Westport area.

Robinson declined to discuss his personal relationships. He denied the accusations of Widner, Gibbs and the others. But he did offer some general thoughts on recovery-house peacekeeping.

“It’s not always peaches and cream.

Women can be very vindictive, especially

when they’re dealing with addiction. Talk to anybody in the world of recovery and they’ll tell you women are especially hard to manage.

“I can’t force people into recovery,” he says. “Sometimes, if people don’t get their way or are voted out of their house, they’ll try a campaign to smear us. I’ve heard all types of allegations the last 10 years. As housing services chairman, I’m trying to get the Oxford atmosphere right. It’s not for everyone.

But we’re the most relaxed transitional living program on the planet.”

He adds that addicts are often experts at manipulation and lying.

“I always say that you could load up a van with a bunch of addicts, bus them into Universal Studios, and replace the real actors with addicts, and the studios wouldn’t lose a dime,” he says.

I

t is conceivable that Widner, Gibbs, Shows and Melissa — and the other half-dozen former and current residents of Robinson’s Oxford Houses whom I spoke with for this story — were all bad fits for an Oxford House environment.

But in a traditional halfway house or transitional living situation, there would be a governing body to investigate their claims.

In other states where Oxford Houses are located, procedures are in place to address complaints.

Not in Missouri.

That hasn’t always been the case. Missouri was one of the first states to work with Oxford House Inc. Kansas City received a $25,000 state grant in 1990 to bring two experienced Oxford House residents to the city and start the first two Missouri Oxford Houses. For a time, the state worked with OHI, assisting in its expansion and supervision. Later, the

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state hired its own people to help set up and monitor Oxford Houses.

That’s not how Oxford House Inc. likes to operate, though. It prefers to avoid bureaucracy. As a 2009 Oxford House report on Missouri notes, “Beginning in 1995, [Missouri] decided to directly hire outreach workers.

This practice, coupled with pre-clearance of house location with the state legislator for a particular area, has slowed expansion.

[It is] a less effective way to provide necessary outreach support to start new houses and to keep existing houses on track than the system used by many other states that relies upon a direct contract with Oxford House, Inc.” That report also notes that arrangements such as Missouri’s are at the mercy of fluctuating state budgets. There were five Oxford House outreach workers in Missouri in the 1990s but only two by 2009. “The state is simply too large to enable them to … help the houses to stay on track through mutual support organization such as chapters and state associations,” the report reads.

In 2010, budget cuts “forced the reassignment of Oxford House staff and the termination of the [Oxford House] contract,” according to Debra Walker, of the Missouri Department of Mental Health.

Molloy, founder of Oxford House Inc., tells The Pitch: “This is conjecture on my part, but my gut tells me that the state employees were getting calls from Oxford Houses in Missouri every time there was a little problem, and the state director got sick of having to take all those calls. Whereas in 20 other states we operate in, the arrangement would be such that the state hires us to manage and supervise the houses. And those state agencies don’t have to hear the complaints because we take care of it ourselves.”

For the past four continued on page 13

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Bleak House

continued from page 11 years, the state of Missouri has had nothing to do with monitoring Oxford Houses. But state money still finds its way into Oxford Houses.

“A few Oxford Houses have received funds from treatment providers,” Walker says in an e-mail. “However, it is infrequent and not a permanent financial commitment. From July 2013 to present, a total of $1,616 in state funds have been used to purchase Oxford Housing for individuals in treatment.”

That doesn’t include funds that have reached Oxford Houses indirectly, as in the example of Imani House, where the state repays treatment centers after they front the costs for individuals to join. Walker says the state keeps track only of the money it sends the original treatment centers, not where that money ultimately ends up.

“An annual allocation is given to Swope [Health Services] from the DMH Division of Behavioral Health,” she says. “The Division of Behavioral Health tracks the allocation expenditures by services provided, rather than by the providers’ sites.”

One might assume that Oxford House Inc. would have stepped up to supervise its Missouri houses following the loss of funding in the state. But, as Widner’s e-mail response from OHI indicates, OHI doesn’t have anybody monitoring Missouri, either.

Molloy offers little specific information about how OHI handles governance of Oxford Houses in states where there are no supervisory boots on the ground.

“We try to help long distance. We’ll call the landlord if we have to,” Molloy says. “We try to get the offending house to shape up and fly right — through patience, tolerance, education, a little bit of Irish guilt. You know, ‘Here you are in recovery, and you’re being an asshole.’”

He adds: “Our first instinct is, people can solve their own problems.”

After the state funding was eliminated, members of Missouri Oxford Houses, including Robinson, put together a state board of their own. But it disbanded last year.

“It was supposed to serve as oversight over the chapters in each of the Missouri cities: Kansas City, St. Louis, St. Charles, Columbia, Springfield,” Robinson says. “Each city was required to send a chapter chairman to a meeting every other month. We held them in Columbia because it’s centrally located. But there was a lack of participation. People didn’t want to make the drive. It just fizzled out.”

Two weeks ago, OHI sent an outreach worker to Missouri to look into the claims against Robinson. Powell, at Imani House, also says an Oxford House representative came this past December to investigate similar allegations.

The most recent report, obtained by The Pitch, says the following about Kansas City, Missouri, Oxford Houses: • Robinson has been distributing a busi-

a

check out FIND

ness card that falsely identifies him as being affiliated with Oxford House Inc. • Robinson was the signer on most checking accounts. “No other house members had access to them, as far as I could ascertain,” the outreach worker writes. “The members I talked to had not a clue how much money was in their account.”

• Houses “had a lack of democracy when approving new members and overall operation of the house.”

• There was “no information concerning a charter or its requirements except in three houses.”

• Houses were “not in good neighborhoods.” (An Oxford House tenet is that the houses are supposed to be rented in lowcrime neighborhoods, providing both distance from bad old habits and an opportunity to acclimate to a positive lifestyle.)

• Robinson “has access to most houses, leading to visits that may change houses’ ability to achieve autonomy.”

The report also contains what it labels “good facts,” including high occupancy rates, good furnishings, bills paid on time, and Robinson’s “leadership ability.”

It concludes with the recommendation that a committee be formed to “repair the damage done by neglect, rumors, and misunderstandings.”

Robinson is to be a member of the committee.

R

on Harris is reluctant to speak ill of Oxford House. He credits it with his four and a half years of sobriety.

“Oxford House is one of the best entities out there for a person in recovery,” he told me in February, sitting in the living room of Oxford House Holmes, at 2741 Holmes.

The Holmes house is clean, in a good neighborhood and runs on a democratic basis — a model of the Oxford House ethos.

But it is an outlier in Kansas City, Missouri —

it applied for its charter across the state line.

“We were recently accepted into the Kansas chapter,” Harris said. “There’s unity and camaraderie over there. We were welcomed.

Everybody had input. It wasn’t a thing where only one person talked. It ran the way Oxford is supposed to run. Missouri Oxford Houses — or the ones in Kansas City, at least — are sick.

They need help, and it’s been a long time since anybody provided it.”

Harris said the Holmes house has succeeded because its members have kept Robinson at a distance. He said Robinson is no longer welcome at the Holmes house. The locks have been changed.

“Howard used to come into this house for meetings and threaten to throw people out based on them being five days late on a payment,” Harris said. “Based on that, he wants to throw a guy out then and there. It was diametrically opposed to what we wanted. He didn’t even live here.”

He added: “I think with Howard, it started as a passion, but now it’s turned into a business. He has the gift of gab, and he meets with landlords and gets them to put him in a position as property manager or house manager.

He tells them he’ll make sure the property is clean and make sure everybody pays rent on time. And he does. But he also abuses that power. He’s always positioning himself to control these houses. It’s like a chess game to him.”

Robinson says Harris is carrying a grudge over losing to Robinson in an election for housing-services chairman when the Missouri state board was still up and running. He says he has recently been offered a job as an outreach worker with Oxford House Inc. They’re flying him out to Washington, D.C., to talk about it.

He thinks the message is pretty clear.

“If Oxford House didn’t like what I’m doing here in Kansas City,” he says, “then why are they trying to hire me?”

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THE CREATOR To call Ferran Adrià, of Spain’s now-closed elBulli restaurant, merely a chef undersells his wizardly impact on gastronomy around the world and, one presumes, the surrounding cosmos. At the NelsonAtkins Museum of Art, the Drawing Center exhibition Ferran Adrià: Notes on Creativity offers a fascinating, visually arresting cross-section of his elaborate processes. Adrià speaks at the museum in a sold-out program Monday evening. The show is reviewed on page 19.

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i will dare

Breathing Lessons

Master my thoughts? Lisa Ash helps me meditate on that idea.

By

A ngel A l u t z

W

If you are goIng to go out, you mIght as well get paId

SaunderS Fine art

hen I worked in a dreary corporate office, I used to meditate during my lunch break. I’d park my car in an empty strip-mall parking lot, close my eyes and focus on the sound of traffic whizzing down the nearby highway, trying desperately to think of nothing.

My brain would not cooperate.

Instead of relaxing, I found myself fixating on the e-mail I forgot to send, the résumé I needed to update, the money I wasn’t sure I had enough of to buy groceries at Whole Foods that week.

According to Lisa Ash, lead instructor at Maya Yoga (215 West 18th Street) and studio manager at Westport Yoga (4304 Bell), that inability to silence such distractions isn’t such a bad thing.

“Your brain is not supposed to stop,” she says. “If your brain stops, you die. You’re supposed to gain mastery over your thoughts.”

Ash is explaining this to me on a Friday morning before yoga class, the two of us sitting cross-legged on large, fluffy pillows in the studio’s office. A former first-grade teacher, Ash is always smiling, and her voice has a lyrical quality. She inspires trust that the twisting, one-legged pose she’s asking you to hold is beneficial not only to you but also, somehow, to the whole planet. I want to believe her when she says I can learn to master my thoughts.

And meditation, Ash tells me, really could be beneficial to the whole planet. By 2020, she says, depression and anxiety are predicted to trail only heart disease among U.S. ailments.

Sounds right, I think, as I recall the two drivers I cussed out on the way to meet her.

The idea is that I learn to chill out mentally, and that my body chills out physiologically.

“As soon as you take a breath, your adrenaline goes down,” she says.

In her own life, she has noticed that the contemplative practice has helped her control her emotions, especially anger. Unlike me, she can shrug off an idiot who, say, cuts you off in a QuikTrip parking lot. “Whatever — it’s their journey,” she says with a laugh.

This ability to let life’s bullshit slide, this whole mastering-your-thoughts thing, Ash calls “exercising discernment.” It means choosing to accept or ignore feelings as they arise — separating reality from drama without becoming overwhelmed.

“I’ve never met a person who said, ‘My goal is to be angry and frustrated and stressed,’” Ash says. “When people learn to meditate, they can learn to be at ease. At first, it’s only for maybe 30 seconds because your back hurts or your knee hurts and your brain is going, Oh, my God, I have all these things I have to do.”

Ash recommends that I attend classes to help me overcome distractions. Meditation,

Ash: a guide to Zen she says, is more complex than just sitting in one position, just as riding a bike is more involved than just pedaling your feet. It’s possible to achieve Zen on your own, but it’s easier if you have a guide.

“When you’re at home, your brain turns on, and you get up and go to the bathroom,” Ash says. “Or you go make lunch or you start vacuuming. I do it, too. When other people are there, it’s like a commitment and a support group, in a really nonjudgmental way.”

So I return to Maya the following Sunday morning for Ash’s meditation class, which by design follows a one-hour yoga class. I’ve done yoga for years, primarily to benefit my abs and my ass, but Ash has told me that the ancient practice was originally intended to prepare participants for lengthy meditation.

With the late-morning sun streaming in through the windows, 10 of us sit in a circle, our foreheads still damp with sweat. Following Ash’s calm instructions, I close my eyes

and start counting each breath — inhale, exhale. As thoughts pop up, I imagine accepting or rejecting them by swiping them left or right, like pictures on Tinder.

Once, I almost fall asleep. After I snap awake, my mind starts to wander. If I were at home, this would be the moment when I give up and turn on Law & Order. Here, I close my eyes and try again. If everyone else can sit still for 15 minutes, I can, too.

Then I remember something Ash told me during our previous conversation: “You have no idea what everyone else is thinking.

They’re usually writing their grocery list, too.

They’re pretending to meditate, just like you are. And that’s OK.” With this bit of encouragement, I settle into relaxation about two minutes before the timer sounds. After class, I feel good, as though I’ve woken from a midday nap — a bit dazed but calmer than when I arrived. I don’t even cuss anyone out on the way home. Ah.

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19

art

TasTe, Maker

Ferran Adrià’s Notes on Creativity plates one delicious brain.

I

n years to come, I’ll be able to name the day when my lifelong recurring dream of a Borgesian archive, endlessly lined with factual fictions forever unopened, mutated into one of such a repository tended by baby octopuses.

Those who can claim to have dined at chef Ferran Adrià’s elBulli, the legendary and now-closed Spanish citadel of avantgarde gastronomy, are said to dream of their evening’s many impossible plates. Those who see the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art’s Notes on Creativity — the Drawing Center’s traveling exhibition of Àdria’s two- and three-dimensional scrawlings, renderings and ephemera that led to all those plates — may find themselves dreaming of what unrelenting genius looks like when it is borne from the mind one scrap of paper at a time: like, for one thing, a vast, Borgesian archive.

A nd the tiny cepha lopods? I bla me Bourdain.

The day after I first walked through Notes on Creativity, I watched the episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations that centered on elBulli’s final dinner service. (After turning out some 1,846 dishes, Adrià the deconstructionist made the ultimate deconstructionist’s move and closed the restaurant in 2011.) In it, Bourdain necessarily packages the Adrià experience for a broad audience of Travel Channel watchers, with fast-paced lessons in tapas culture, Catalan cuisine and elBulli’s evolution from sleepy coastal secret to Michelin-starred Shangri-La. There’s also, of course, that last meal, edited for basic cable into a sequence that’s both high-test food porn and moving epitaph. There is much looking skyward in thanks. There is much male bonding among Bourdain, guest José Andrés (the larger-thanlife restaurateur who came up alongside Adrià) and Adrià himself. And there is a dish of spectrally translucent baby octopuses, and it all but raptures Bourdain to heaven.

During the episode, an hour that vividly underscores the colossal audacity of Adrià’s vision, the word creativity is uttered more than once — by Bourdain, by Andrés and by Adrià. Americans are used to hearing that assessment as faint or ironic praise rather than as reverent encomium. Yet on that occasion, even conveyed in the spirit of its purest definition, it’s not enough, a genuflection before a barely comprehended spirit.

Notes on Creativity makes that spirit somewhat easier to understand. As Brett Littman, the Drawing Center’s executive director and this show’s curator, told an audience at the Nelson earlier this month, what’s here isn’t visual art of a kind typically displayed. Yes, a certain Picasso molecule is evident in the most colorful of Adrià’s drawings (such as the

one on the cover of this week’s Pitch), but it’s dominated by the DNA of other organisms — cave dwellers discovering fire, for instance, or French chef Auguste Escoffier discovering peach melba. Adrià has spent his career parsing the genome of cuisine, and he has done it by questioning the creative urge itself.

The exhibition is laid out counterclockwise, with the roughest, earliest notions to your right as you enter the gallery. Along that wall, graph paper, tractor-feed printer spools and flow charts are full of the chef’s cribbed block print, writing that predates the processtracking pyramids and colorful faux foods also on display. His rigorous, disciplined mind is at work, but these first artifacts suggest not a coming menu but rather a witnessing of the world’s most intellectually omnivorous accountant learning how to perform an audit.

Across the space and many years removed from that Adrià is the show’s high point, a reproduction of his archive built here as a small, enclosed annex. Inside it, eight Plexiglas-encased bulletin boards outline specific elBulli undertakings; they rest against walls lined with photos of Adrià’s shelves, organized by year and each seeming to hold countless stores of data and ideas. (On the other side of those walls are large, blown-up photos of

Detail of “Plating Diagram,” circa 2000–04 elBulli’s kitchen crew at work, sometimes drawing and sometimes executing the chef’s elaborate visions. In one such image, their heads are down, facing their work but suggesting monastic communion, ritual, telepathy.)

You could stare a long time at these bulletin boards without quite knowing where an idea started or how it ended up. Sure, when he wants to spray an atomized cocktail into your mouth, he starts with pencil and paper, lines and words, and with the obsessive drive to place that notion on the continuum of human creative endeavor. But even when the resulting flask is here, alongside its conceptual art, the through line is pleasingly unapparent. For just this reason, that flask is among the exhibition’s chief satisfactions. Seeing it, you relax for a moment, secure that Adrià shares this finite plane with you after all, that his art is, no less than any other practice, about problem solving and about the ways in which good collaboration alters one vision by expanding it.

Then again, for a lot of people the high point of the whole thing might just be the small Matt Groening rendering of Adrià as a Simpsons character, all yellow skin and white drawbridge teeth and insinuating eyes.

pitch.com

By

s c o t t w il s on

It comes from Simpsons producer James L. Brooks’ having dined at elBulli and talked at length with Adrià. It’s a kick to imagine the chef ushered momentarily into another kind of kitchen, the most fabled writer’s room in the history of TV comedy. (That Groening image is one of the few on display here that’s not reproduced in the exhibition’s catalog, a fine, lucid and often pretty volume that’s approachable in both content and, at $25 for the paperback, price.)

More, perhaps, than a valediction of elBulli the restaurant, Notes on Creativity functions as a cheerful advertisement for the chef’s upcoming El Bulli Foundation. (A New York Times story about that project this past January made it sound thrilling and thrillingly insane; the same story noted that Adrià’s going fee for a short address on the matter of creativity was about $97,000, making this exhibition’s $12 ticket a true bargain.) One of the show’s display cases holds a model and some sketches for the foundation’s site, and one of the monitors on the wall plays, on a loop, a conspicuously flashy video outlining Adrià’s heady mission there. It looks sort of like a trailer for a Michael Bay remake of that No Reservations episode.

Absent being able to get to the foundation or see that movie, we have Notes on Creativity.

And what it offers isn’t the memory of Adrià’s cuisine or its genesis, or even the fascinating representations of it as visual art. Rather, these are tissue samples taken from the collective creative corpus — samples presented as a set of courses, not unlike elBulli’s food, with a nearly tactile force. By the time you get to the slightly tucked-away monitor that screens a parade of high-definition close-ups of his ephemeral confections, you’d almost rather enroll in an Adrià class and learn how he learned to think this way than sit for an elBulli meal.

Almost.

Those octopuses haunt me in part because, after almost 20 years of militant vegetarianism, I’ve spent a few days wondering whether I’d submit to an Adrià meal, with all its brains and marrows and newborn marine life. Notes on Creativity is, among other commendable things, a convincing argument that I’d be eating thought — or art — before I’d be eating flesh. And that’s not a meal you turn down.

E-mail scott.wilson@pitch.com Ferran Adrià Notes on Creativity Through August 2 at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 4525 Oak, nelson-atkins.org

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here’s bar food and then there’s, well, bar food.

There are fried pepper poppers, greasy burgers and neon-orange nachos. And then there are the aspirational dishes that appear on tavern menus in which the poppers and plain burgers and molten Tex-Mex typically await your future regret.

In the latter category you can put the new Barrel 31, the gastropub that took over the former Velvet Dog space. And you can label that category “Trying Hard.” As any intrepid business owner would have to, given the Velvet Dog’s justified rep for wildly erratic food.

“It was bar food,” says chef Eric Carter, who oversees the kitchen at Barrel 31. He doesn’t mean that in a positive way. But that was then.

The hiring of Carter — formerly the executive chef at the President Hotel — is an obvious sign that Barrel 31’s owners, including Chris Ridler (Sol Cantina, the Drop), are serious about upgrading the cuisine on Martini Corner.

Another sign: Carter uses the g-word a lot.

“We’re going in the direction of a gastropub,” he says. “But not like Gram & Dun. Good, familiar food, without a lot of pretense.”

For one thing, then, ranch dressing is not on the menu at Barrel 31. Not even for the salads.

“I’m on a one-man mission to stop ranch dressing,” Carter says. Instead, he has revived a classic dressing from the 1920s. It’s sort of like ranch dressing with class.

“I use mayonnaise, buttermilk, garlic, fresh lemon, basil, tarragon, parsley and cilantro,” e r o M he says. “It’s got a nice, creamy quality, with a touch of acid. Our cuse at n i l On m tomers love it.” pitch.co I agree that it makes an unexpected, tasty dipping sauce for Carter’s more traditional starters, such as fried green tomatoes and housesmoked chicken wings (meaty and impossibly messy, with the right balance of smoke and vinegar).

The menu at Barrel 31 isn’t yet an all-Carter creation. Since he took over the kitchen, in January, he has held onto many of the more popular dishes from the previous menu, including deviled eggs topped with fried oysters, a sandwich of pork belly and pulled pork, and fried chicken. He has tweaked much of it, with mixed results.

I’m not sure about the rustic shepherd’s pie, topped with a flaky canopy of puff pastry rather than with the traditional spuds. The

Barrel 31

Barrel 31 rolls out the fried green tomatoes. one I ordered collapsed into a heap of golden shards the moment my fork pierced it. Inside, though, I found tender steak in lieu of the traditional lamb, a smart variation on oldschool bar food (and one that plays well with that gastropub staple, hand-cut fries). The fried chicken, too, suggests classic midtown saloon fare, though Carter has replaced the restaurant’s white cream gravy (“It was so boring,” my server told me the day I sampled it) with an apricot-colored smoked-duck gravy that also comes on the poutine appetizer. It’s far too rich to be poured over the chicken and belongs in a ramekin, if it belongs at all.

But the fried bird comes off the menu in June, when Carter plans to introduce his first all-original menu. (Bye-bye, pork-belly sandwich, too.)

I vote for the puffy fried-pork rinds to take a streetcar ride to oblivion, too. What is the fascination with a snack that tastes more like packing peanuts than like pork? At least Carter serves the meat wisps with a memorable dipping sauce, a Japanese-style aioli made with togarashi, a peppery condiment that Carter prefers to Sriracha. “It has heat but a lot more depth,” he says, and I tend to agree.

That sauce complements Carter’s crispy purple beet fries, which he roasts and smokes before dusting with cornstarch and plunging into the fryer. The sweetness of the beet benefits from a fiery counterpoint, and the togarashi is a lot classier than chili sauce. This is Advanced Bar Food.

Fried green tomatoes........................................$7 Three pig dip sandwich.....................................$11 Shepherd’s pie.................................................. $14 Fried chicken .................................................... $16 Beet fries.............................................................$6 Sticky toffee pudding .......................................$6 And Carter has already made a serious improvement to the sandwich formerly known as the “hippie burger” (a name banished along with the dish’s avocado slices), an appealing, light turkey patty — delectably moist because he uses both white and dark meat — heaped with goat cheese, sage pesto and cucumbers. It tastes vaguely healthy without suggesting a kitchen full of flower children.

The “traditional” burger, with cheddar, needs the same reconsideration. The kitchen defaults to medium, but what arrived at my table was beyond medium-well — dry and not up to Category 1 Bar Food standards.

Three desserts are on the menu, but on my visits only one was available, a “sticky toffee pudding” that was neither sticky nor pudding.

It was, rather, a dry fig-flavored puck drizzled with salted butterscotch.

“We don’t sell many desserts yet,” Carter says. Come June, he’ll consider beignets or cookies, either of which would be preferable to the toffee failure.

Of course, you don’t go to a bar for housemade sweets, unless they’re deep-fried. But even a gastropub shouldn’t necessarily throw out the Twinkie oil just yet.

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EmpE T

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Fat C

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his is th on a m looks at th Oak. Meta wooden fr on the set Thomp McCoy’s P but he’s ab already se the windo address is rial, a fou Thompso Room 39 r Rich Kasy here to tal “The Cr me,” Habi here for fo something “It was says Thom sultant for adds, is “s The leas as Grinder the loan a out the 16 Thompson By which few (if any Velvet Dog with Jona the buildin They ex 10 weeks. “ ably take u Habiger sa we’ll be op Thomp the east en kitchen — a muddy p Thompson point to a Scribe. Th ners will li Custom will build B able to dou efficiently production one-offs, w it. We can The pa brewhouse Nest, whic friend of a panel’s Jap through th thing goes

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EmpErial march

McCoy’s Keith Thompson, Room 39’s Ted Habiger and Rich Kasyjanski come together for a Crossroads brewpub.

By

Ju s t in K e nd a l l

T

Renegade night, with Depravity Peanut

Butter Cup Milk Stout and brewer Brian O’Connell, at Barley’s Brewhaus (5031 W. 135th St., Leawood), 4:30 p.m.

Tapping of Prairie Artisan Ales and Siren’s Ratchet, at Flying Saucer (101 E. 13th St.), 7 p.m.

Sweet $2 16-ounce beers , at Gordon Biersch (11652 Ash, Leawood), 3–11 p.m.

Friday, March 27

Final Firkin Friday, with a tapping of Abita’s

oak barrel–aged Pecan Harvest Ale, Barley’s (16649 Midland Dr., Shawnee), 4:30 p.m.

KC Design Week kickoff party, with Torn Label, at the Bauer Event Space (115 W. 18th St.), 8–11 p.m.

Odell tasting, at Gomer’s (3838 Broadway),

Dillon Kinnison

his is the beginning,” says Keith Thompson on a misty, gray mid-March morning as he looks at the graffiti-covered building at 1829 Oak. Metal bars block the windows, and the wooden front door would have looked at home on the set of The Wire.

Thompson has worked as the brewmaster at McCoy’s Public House since its 1997 opening, but he’s about to make his mark here. You can already see it: a “BE” he has added to one of the windows in white paint. This tagged-up address is the future home of Brewery Emperial, a four-vessel, 15-barrel brewhouse that Thompson says he’ll open in August with Room 39 restaurateur Ted Habiger and friend Rich Kasyjanski. The partners have met me here to talk about their venture.

“The Crossroads has always been a goal for me,” Habiger says. “I’ve been looking down here for four years for a possible place to do something else.”

“It was just time for me to do a brewery,” says Thompson, who is still working as a consultant for McCoy’s. His longtime employer, he adds, is “still my baby and my legacy.”

The lease for the building, on the same block as Grinders and CrossroadsKC, is signed, and the loan approved. The next step is to build out the 16,000-square-foot property, which Thompson says is “a little bit of a blank slate.”

By which he means: four cinder-block walls, few (if any) utilities, some old stools from the Velvet Dog, a line of kegs. They’re consulting with Jonathan O’Neil Cole, of Pendulum, on the building design.

They expect construction to begin in about 10 weeks. “Once we break ground, it will probably take us three months to start brewing,” Habiger says. “And maybe a month after that, we’ll be open.”

Thompson, Habiger and Kasyjanski walk to the east end of the building — into the future kitchen — and open the garage door and enter a muddy parking lot where the “hot side” of Thompson’s brewhouse will be built. They point to a couple of murals by graffiti artist Scribe. Those will stay, they say, but the partners will likely paint over the rest.

Custom Metalcraft, in Springfield, Missouri, will build Brewery Emperial’s tanks. “We’ll be able to double-, triple-, quadruple-batch more efficiently,” Thompson says. “So it’s built for production. However, when we want to do our one-offs, we don’t have to brew 60 barrels of it. We can do a 15-barrel batch.”

The partners have already purchased a brewhouse from Japanese brewery Hitachino Nest, which recently upgraded its system. A friend of a friend has translated the control panel’s Japanese labels. “He’s been working through the inside, figuring out where everything goes,” Thompson says. (As a tribute to

Thursday, March 26

Hitachino Nest, Brewery Emperial may incorporate owls into its logos.)

On the building’s north side, a free-span steel structure will house the brewhouse cellar and fermentation tanks. The building’s south side calls for an open-air biergarten (for about 150 drinkers) enclosed by metal shipping containers. “That’s where the fun’s going to be,” Thompson says. He envisions something similar to a European courtyard.

Brewery Emperial joins a neighborhood that’s growing into a brewery district, with Border Brewing Co. nearby and Double Shift Brewing Co. under construction and Torn Label Brewing Co. farther east. (Emperial’s name pays sly homage to the long-defunct Imperial Brewery, whose old plant still stands, west of the Crossroads.)

Thompson refers to the boomlet as “the brewmuda triangle.” He adds: “Now it’s a quad.” He likens the East Crossroads’ emergence as a craft-brewing zip code to industry growth in Denver and Portland, Oregon. But he says Emperial boasts a couple of significant distinctions from its neighbors: his more than two decades of brewing and Habiger’s cooking.

Habiger plans a casual menu centered on locally sourced meats and vegetables. He calls it “elevated pub food,” distinct from Room 39’s in part because of the wood-fired grill that he says will be a centerpiece of Emperial’s kitchen.

“When you walk in the front door, you’ll see the flames,” Habiger says. “We’ll be cooking off live oak the whole time, and hickory and apple and pecan and all of these different woods, and doing a lot of whole-animal butchering and some whole-animal cooking, in addition to a lot of great roasted veggies.

“Things like that are going to happen,” he adds. So are burgers.

4–7 p.m.

Sierra Nevada Hop Hunter IPA, at the Other

Place (7324 W. 80th St., Overland Park), 4 p.m.

sunday, March 29

Thompson, Kasyjanski and Habiger (from left) move into the Crossroads.

Beer trivia, at Free State Brewery (636 Massachusetts, Lawrence)

“They’re not going to be those big, cookedto-order burgers that we do at Room 39,” he says. “These will be more like thin patties, and doing singles, doubles or triples.” Habiger also has in mind “a big ol’ wood-fired steak,” a Scotch egg, poutine and weekend brunch.

Thompson and Habiger met in the mid-’90s, in server-training classes at 75th Street Brewery. Then their paths veered.

“Ultimately, the pairing is much better that he has the culinary skills because I have zero,” Thompson says.

Thompson and Kasyjanski helped open McCoy’s, but Kasyjanski left after he won a Missouri Lottery jackpot in 2001. Thompson happened to call Kasyjanski on the same day that his friend was retiring from teaching math at Wyandotte High School.

“This is something that I’ve always wanted to do,” Kasyjanski says. “This is someone who I have revered as a brewer and always been like, ‘What’s next? What are your brewing now?’ So I wanted to be a part of it.”

Coming out of Brewery Emperial taps, at first: four beers and a flexible rotation.

“I love lagers — Munich lagers, Vienna lagers,” Thompson says. “Some of those styles that you don’t see a lot of in the market will come out. You kind of have to do an IPA.” Distribution isn’t in the works yet, but the partners hope to steadily branch out within the 435 loop and then into other parts of the region.

“There are going to be a dozen terrific breweries,” Habiger says, “and we want to be part of that mix.”

E-mail justin.kendall@pitch.com pitch.com

Monday, March 30

Kansas Craft Beer Week launch party, with

Tallgrass, Free State and High Noon, at Barley’s (16649 Midland Dr., Shawnee), 4:30 p.m.

Tuesday, March 31

Free State tap takeover, at Barley’s (11924 W. 119th St., Overland Park), 5–7 p.m.

Left Hand ginger night, with Great Juju, Good

Juju and a cask, at Bier Station (120 E. Gregory Blvd.), 5–11 p.m.

Tallgrass tasting, at Rimann Liquors (3917 Prairie Ln., Prairie Village), 4:30–6:30 p.m.

Tallgrass five-course beer dinner, at Pig and Finch (11570 Ash, Leawood), $45, 913-322-7444 for reservations, 7 p.m.

Odell tap takeover, with Brazzle, Friek, Fifty-

Niner, Barrel Thief, Barrel-Aged Myrcenary, Rufus Corvus and Footprint Region Ale, at Barley’s (16649 Midland, Shawnee), 4:30 p.m.

Wednesday, april 1

Beer and Bites featuring Free State, at Hank Charcuterie (1900 Massachusetts, Lawrence), 7–9 p.m.

Bottle-share night, at the Belfry (1532 Grand).

Bring a 750 ml bottle of a sour to share, $20, 6:30 p.m.

Free State sampling, at Lukas Liquor (7541 W. 119th St., Overland Park), 4–6 p.m.

Prairie Artisan Ales tap takeover, at Waldo

Pizza (7433 Broadway), 5 p.m.

Tallgrass tasting, at Rimann Liquors (15117 W. 87th St. Pkwy., Lenexa), 4:30–6:30 p.m.

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bartender's notebook

Barrel Coming

At Cleaver & Cork, Andrew Olsen and Rachel Freeman are swimming in bourbon.

By

Natalie GallaGher

ourbon is as American as apple pie,” bartender Rachel Freeman tells me. She leans against the bar at the Power & Light District’s newest restaurant, Cleaver & Cork, having set out more than a half-dozen tasting glasses filled with that golden-brown nectar.

Bar manager Andrew Olsen nods his agreement with Freeman, and indeed there’s no arguing the point. Bourbon was born in America’s Deep South in the early 19th century (maybe even earlier, according to some legends).

“You just have to remember that whiskey is an umbrella,” Olsen says. “Under that umbrella, you have Canadian, Irish, Kentucky, Scotch and Kansas City whiskey — which is recognized by the FDA as being its own category.” Olsen is referring to J. Rieger & Co.’s whiskey, which launched last November. “So what makes a bourbon a bourbon is that it is made from 51 percent corn or more. It has to go into the barrel at a certain proof — 125 — and it can only be made in new American charredoak casks. And all bourbon has to be made in the U.S.” In advance of The Pitch’s second-annual Bacon & Bourbon event April 16, Olsen and Freeman have agreed to give me a crash course in bourbon appreciation. Four bottles sit among us: Old Rip Van Winkle 10 Year, Four Roses Small Batch, Blanton’s and Rittenhouse (all Kentucky bourbons except the latter).

These are, as Olsen puts it, some premier shit.

We taste the Old Rip first. “To me, the best representation of American straight bourbon comes from this distiller,” Olsen says. There are several other award-winning varietals in the Van Winkle line, all aged longer (and with a higher price tag) than the Old Rip, but there’s no room to complain as we enjoy our sips.

“When you’re tasting bourbon, you’re looking for something rich, with a full mouthfeel and texture, and that’s what I get here,” Olsen says. “A lot of the time with bourbon, the older you age it, the more it tastes like the wood it sat in. But I get a lot of different flavors here.”

I pick up notes of caramel, brown sugar and white pepper. The Old Rip is a far cry from the well shots that once put me off whiskey.

Olsen pushes the next taste toward me: Four Roses Small Batch. “Four Roses is a blend of several different whiskeys, and the product isn’t aged as long as the others, so you get more of the natural flavor,” he says. “Usually, American oak will add some vanilla characteristics to a bourbon, but in younger bourbons, you’ll get elements of the mash itself. Four Roses might taste a little sweeter because it hasn’t aged very long.”

Next he pushes the Blanton’s toward me, another Kentucky bourbon, this one aged for nine years.

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“I want to have things that are a little older,” he explains. “That’s just my personal preference because I think you get so much more complexity out of it.”

This one gives off a hearty, warm perfume.

On the tongue, it’s plenty spicy but not harsh, and there’s a long, honeyed finish.

“That’ll clear your sinuses,” Freeman says with a laugh.

Last comes Rittenhouse, and it’s not like the others. In addition to being the only rye whiskey in the lineup, it’s from a bottle that’s utterly unsexy: plastic screw-top cap, plain black-and-red label.

“Bartenders across the world love Rittenhouse because it’s got good body and good flavor,” Olsen says. “The rye gives it that extra little spice, which is great for drinks — it makes a badass Manhattan or old fashioned. By the bottling, you feel like you’re slumming it, but just because it’s inexpensive doesn’t mean it’s low-quality. It’s spicy and it’s got some heat on it — heavy texture, good vanilla notes. You can’t get much better than that unless you want to pay, like, $100 a bottle.”

As Olsen and I drain our glasses, Freeman takes over the conversation. Now that I feel prepared to enjoy bourbon, I’m ready to try her bourbon cocktails. She’s one of six featured bartenders who have enlisted in Bacon & Bourbon’s Cocktail Corner, where she will produce a signature cocktail en masse, and she has agreed to show off some of her skills ahead of the game.

The first drink she prepares is called Strange Fruit, a recipe that she perfected during her stint at Cocobolos. It calls for bourbon, mezcal and fresh pear.

“What inspired this was, I was doing a lot

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of grilling last year, and I got into grilling fruits and everything,” Freeman says. “So I was like, I want a cocktail that tastes like a grilled peach.”

Freeman goes to work, muddling a pear — this one, she says with a groan, not quite having reached her preferred ripeness — and combining Angostura bitters, Buffalo Trace bourbon, Del Maguey Vida mezcal and a small amount of Bénédictine (a sweet French herbal liqueur). She shakes the mixture vigorously, then dumps it over ice in a large rocks glass.

Chunks of pear give the liquid an enticing, golden glitter.

“Some of my favorite things to do are cocktails that are boozy as fuck but don’t taste like it,” Freeman says. “So this one is pretty much all alcohol.”

Oh, yes, it is — and I could scarcely be more pleased. It has the aroma of a freshly baked pear tart but it drinks like a grown-up cocktail. As Freeman goes to work on her second creation, I will myself not to scavenge pear slivers from among the ice cubes.

Freeman’s second drink is a bourbon sour, more of a lightweight summer sipper. She muddles some fresh ginger and adds Woodford Reserve bourbon, homemade cinnamon-bark syrup, lemon juice and an egg white.

So far, so safe, until Freeman takes two long orange peels, drops them into a glass and lights them on fire. This is not just flaming: Freeman keeps her makeshift bonfire going for several moments, coating the peels with bitters and constantly stirring them as the oils burn off.

It’s quite a show, and the bar fills with the scent of orange zest.

Finally, Freeman takes the peels and the orange bitters that she has just created and adds them to her mixer and shakes. She double

Freeman lights your bourbon fire. strains this sunset-colored liquid into a coupe glass and drops a few dots of Angostura bitters onto the froth.

“I wanted to be a painter before I was a bartender,” Freeman says, smiling as she creates a sun motif on the top of the drink.

I take a few generous sips and find smoke and flavors like an orange Creamsicle commingling perfectly. Who’s to say Freeman isn’t an artist?

STRANGE FRUIT

1½ ounces Buffalo Trace bourbon 3/4 ounce Del Maguey Vida mezcal 1/2 ounce Bénédictine 2 slices of very ripe pear (or peach) 2-4 dashes of Forbidden or Angostura bitters to taste

Freeman: Muddle fruit, combine all ingredients and shake. Pour over ice in a double rocks glass.

SWEET & SOUR

2 ounces Woodford Reserve bourbon 1 ounce cinnamon-bark syrup 1/2 ounce lemon juice 1 egg white 2 muddled ginger coins 2 flamed orange peels

Freeman: Muddle ginger coins and combine all ingredients except orange peels. Flame the orange peels, combine and shake. Double strain, top with Angostura bitters.

E-mail natalie.gallagher@pitch.com

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band of six

Lawrence’s Paper Buffalo finds its place on the Plains.

By

N ata l ie G a l l a Ghe r

awrence’s Paper Buffalo holds its weekly practice in the basement of bassist John McCain’s childhood home. The room is crammed with relics of an early 1990s boyhood, the bookshelves stacked with thick genre mass-market paperbacks and VHS tapes and the walls adorned with bird illustrations.

One corner of the room remains dedicated to what appears to be a high school pottery class’s key achievements.

Even with all that ephemera, the space lets Paper Buffalo’s six members spread out, though they seem more comfortable standing inches apart from one another, their instruments nearly touching. On this mid-March afternoon, the group runs through a handful of songs from its latest EP, White on White, released earlier this month.

The songs sound explosive in the basement, their breakneck rhythms even more coked-out, their riffs incendiary. Frontman and guitarist Jon Fitzgerald sometimes sings but more often wails. Singer Sadie McEniry adds warm harmonies, and drummer Kainen Spooner barely makes it through the first verse of the first song before gleefully stripping off his shirt. Next to him, percussionist Brogan Sievers hunches over his drums, his hands working rapidly. Guitarist Jesse Hickock stands next to McCain, and the two share an expression of we’ve-got-the-toughjob concentration.

And this is just rehearsal.

If Paper Buffalo seems like a band with a lot going on, that’s partly due to the diversity of its membership. Three years ago, founder Fitzgerald started the group as a folkish, mostly solo acoustic project. Spooner joined shortly after, coming from a metal background. The other four came later — Hickock as recently as last December — but each has left a distinctive thumbprint on the music.

These newest songs match dizzying mathrock chord progressions with foot-tapping hooks. It’s a sound that demands precision from the musicians and, sometimes, from the listener. But White on White’s high energy is also highly danceable.

“We were building what that EP would sound like for over a year, and we kind of cemented it when we had to add Jesse,” Fitzgerald tells me. “We had to get rid of our old guitarist, and Jesse had to learn all our songs, and it became such a concrete thing at that point.”

Another recent change in Paper Buffalo’s sound came when the band’s saxophonist, Drew Long, left last May. Losing that instrument meant reconfiguring a chunk of the band’s songs — a task that Fitzgerald and Spooner have come to regard as a blessing in disguise.

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and in their early 20s, and that’s also very “I think that a big part of what’s really starting to cement our sound is that every time inspiring.”

With all six members between 18 and 20 something bad happens to us — like, our bassist leaves, and we have to get a new bassist or years old, Paper Buffalo, too, can count itself in the overachieving-youth category. I point we need to replace our guitarist, or our saxothis out, and the phonist disappears half-dozen born-andand we no longer have raised Lawrencians that element — it ends Paper Buffalo share a laugh. up being a fortunate FFriday, March 27, at the Bottleneck “It doesn’t feel thing,” Spooner says. like a competition,” “Jessie is way more McEniry says. “I feel into that math-rock like all the musicians in Lawrence are kind vibe than our previous guitarist, and John of there for each other no matter what, and McCain just gives way more care to the band the ones that aren’t are kind of pushed to than our old bassist did.”

He goes on: “It’s just through these cir- the side.”

As McEniry speaks, her bandmates nod cumstances that we’re finding band members their agreement. The basement opens up who are comfortable with what they’re doing to McCain’s expansive backyard, and we’ve and want to continue doing that with us.”

McCain and Sievers are quick to add that spread out on stray lawn chairs as the family the chemistry among Paper Buffalo’s mem- dog, Marley, nudges at our hands. The sun is out, and laughter comes easily to this group. I bers is also a simple byproduct of the tightknit look at their unlined, carefree faces, six sets of Lawrence music community. Before there teeth smiling back at me. I decide to dampen was this band, there were several high school the mood. bands. And when there weren’t bands, there “Anyone else planning on leaving the band were friendships.

“I think something that makes being in soon?” I ask. “Any conflicts? Any quitters?”

Bodies shift uncomfortably and concerned Paper Buffalo so fun is that the Lawrence looks are exchanged. There’s a silence. Then, music scene is really great,” McEniry says. at once, everyone has something to say.

“It’s really amazing to see all these young “I’m not planning on leaving,” McEniry musicians, like Oils and Psychic Heat and Westerners, doing their thing. Some are re- says, glancing around.

“No way,” Sievers says. ally young musicians, just out of high school

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Paper Buffalo: a wild herd Spooner grins. “I think we’re pretty much all about Paper Buffalo,” he says.

I nod. I believe them.

E-mail natalie.gallagher@pitch.com

J a z z B e at CandaCE Evans, at thE Broadway Jazz CluB

There’s a precious quality to Candace Evans’ voice. The striking singer has a childlike intonation at times, vivacious and charming — the kind of voice with which to wile away an evening. Evans accompanies herself on piano, a doublethreat talent. And though her repertoire is wide — from Broadway to classic pop — you’ll find no bubbly lounge jazz in her bevy of songs. Evans is a powerhouse, whether she’s delivering a ballad with smooth precision or putting her own fiery twist on jazz standards and blues numbers. Thursday night at the Broadway Jazz Club, she’s joined by Ricky Anderson on bass.

— Larry Kopitnik Candace Evans, 7–10 p.m. Thursday, March 26, at the Broadway Jazz Club (3601 Broadway, 816-298-6316), no cover.

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Den Mother

Danielle Schnebelen on life and

By

family after Trampled Under Foot

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IRT U Q S Y T DJ DIR MARCH

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ast fall, when Trampled Under Foot announced its breakup after 12 years as a KC blues mainstay — and following the sibling act’s most successful year — a collective wail went up.

The mourning period has turned out to be relatively short.

March 10, Danielle Schnebelen’s new Danielle Nicole Band issued an EP titled Wolf Den: six smoldering, slick blues numbers all but sure to thrill any TUF die-hard.

Ahead of that recording’s release show at Knuckleheads Saloon, I chatted with Schnebelen about life after TUF and family planning.

The Pitch: Pretty much immediately following the end of Trampled Under Foot, you started promoting the Danielle Nicole Band.

Seems like you were poised for it.

Schnebelen: You know when Kris [Schnebelen, drums] left the band at the beginning of 2014, we knew that we were going to end the project. I had started getting myself together while we toured out the rest of the year with TUF, working on some solo stuff. Being a parent and a working musician, I knew I had to feed my family when TUF was put to bed.

I did a handful of gigs with my new lineup on the side last year, and we started focusing on bringing it out in November.

But it was all in the making for a while. In September [2014], I went to New Orleans to make the record. We wanted to give the rest of the year to our fans, so that they’d have some closure for the 12 years we had with TUF. We wanted it to feel like it was an easy transition for everyone.

Tell me about who’s in the Danielle Nicole Band.

The Danielle Nicole Band consists of myself and Shinetop [keyboardist Mike “Shinetop” Sedovic], who we’ve played with for many years. He joined TUF in the beginning of 2014. On drums, from the band Levee Town, we have Jan Faircloth, and our guitarist is Brandon Miller [of the blues act Brandon Miller Band], who has a strong name in Kansas City.

So they’re all familiar names and faces, which is nice for everyone regionally, and for myself, also, because we’ve known each other for a long time. I’m big on that. I like feeling like family on the road because that’s all you have when you’re on the road — each other.

How is this band different from TUF, besides the lineup?

I’m singing the whole time. With TUF, Nick [Schnebelen, guitar] and I were splitting vocals, so the main thing is that I’m the only lead singer in the band.

I’m also doing a lot more writing. I’m bringing originals to the table. We’re definitely expanding our foundations as a blues

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Schnebelen: family first band and getting more into the roots side of things because I didn’t want to pigeonhole myself. I want people to find what inspires them in our songs. I’m doing a lot more of my originals in this band, but there’s a lot of familiarity because I’m still going to have my sound. I think we’re expanding on the varieties of blues that we’ve grown up with and that we’ve been playing for a number of years, which is a good feeling.

Grammy Award–winning producer and guitarist Anders Osborne worked with you on four of Wolf Den’s six songs. How did you come to work with him?

We were in between the TUF tours, in June [2014], and Concord Records — who released our last album, Badlands — approached me about releasing my first solo album. They asked me about really getting out of my comfort zone and recording with different producers. So I went to New Orleans to record with Anders, and I went down there and we got to write with each other and get to know each other. Immediately after I got out of that session, I called my manager and was like, “I have to work with this guy!” We just really responded to each other. So we kept in touch, and it was in September, when we had another week off with TUF, that Shinetop and I went down to record. We had six days to get those tracks down, and we’re so happy with what the record yields. I brought six fully written songs to the table and got to write some with Anders, which was incredible.

What’s happening next for the new band?

Danielle Nicole Band Saturday, March 28, at Knuckleheads Saloon

We’re getting ready to go on tour with George Thorogood, and then we come back and we’re going to hit some festivals in July.

I’m actually seven months pregnant right now, so we’re trying to have a baby in all of this.

Well, you don’t sound busy at all.

[Laughs.] Nature is not without a sense of humor, I’ll tell you that. For me, the main thing is that family has always taken priority, and I had the luxury of being able to prioritize that with TUF because it was my brothers.

Now that I have a band with musicians who have families, I try to stress to them that they need to be there for their kids’ birthdays, and it’s going to be hard to juggle it, but that has to be the priority. Touring becomes tricky, but it’s essential. It’s really easy to lose sight of that when you’ve got dollar signs in your eyes, but what’s better for your emotional health and your family.

I really feel like I’m meant to play and share music with the world, but before that, I’m a mother. I have people who depend on me to raise them and sculpt their minds. Surrounding myself with people who have the same values and surrounding myself with a team that realizes that family is more important than having money any day, that’s crucial.

E-mail natalie.gallagher@pitch.com

29

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1515 WESTPORT RD. • 816-931-9417

Wed 3/25 - Billy Beale Thu 3/26 - hippie Billy happy hour Fri 3/27 - Full CounT Band SaT 3/28 - ouTlaW JunCTion Thu 4/2 - landon leiST

WIFI NOW AVAILABLE!

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12 Baltimore | Located inside the Hotel Phillips 106 W 12th Street | Kansas City | 816.221.7000 pitch.com

M A R C H 26 -A P R I L 1 , 20 1 5

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30

Music

Music Forecast

By

n ata l ie G a l l a Ghe r

Ben Caplan & the Casual Smokers

With his cavemanlike hair and beard and his old-fashioned glasses, Ben Caplan certainly looks the part of the artist. That he is some kind of Hercules-voiced powerhouse musician is just a bonus. Caplan’s songs are part primal blues, part vaudeville and every bit soul-awakening. Heads-up: This dude is already a huge deal in Australia and Europe, and his shelfful of music awards from his native Canada isn’t just for show. Caplan’s most recent full-length, In the Time of the Great Remembering, is a gritty, potent effort from the closest thing we have to a Tom Waits heir.

Thursday, March 26, RecordBar (1020 Westport Road, 816-753-5207)

Andrew Jackson Jihad

LIVE MUSIC:

MARCH 27-30 OUGHT 6 EVERY SATURDAYTHE BLUE BONE BROTHERS OPEN JAM APRIL 3 - PLATINUM BLUE APRIL 10 - OASIS APRIL 17 - JOSH VOWELL BAND 1036 N AGNES | IN THE EAST BOTTOMS 816-241-4626

Sean Bonnette is as bizarre as he is brilliant.

The man has spent 11 years as the principal songwriter and frontman for Arizona’s Andrew Jackson Jihad, turning out lyrics that are fantastically detailed and memorably irreverent. Last year’s Christmas Island was no exception; listen to the song “Children of God” and see if you can forget the image of eyes as red as a dog’s asshole when you see it shitting. Sunday at the Granada, enlist in the Jihad.

Sunday, March 29, the Granada (1020 Massachusetts, Lawrence, 785-842-1390)

Liverpool

There are cover bands and there are tribute bands, and then there is Liverpool. Since 1989, the four-piece has been performing Beatles’ songs as faithfully as John, Paul, George and Ringo might have, if they’d turned up at a family reunion or an office party or a club around KC. The act is so convincing, it might give you pause. Earlier in March, Liverpool was inducted into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame.

Saturday, at the VooDoo Lounge at Harrah’s Casino, the group celebrates that iconic status.

Saturday, March 28, VooDoo Lounge (Harrah's Casino, 1 Riverboat Drive, 816-889-4237)

Fleetwood Mac goes your way.

Fleetwood Mac

Legions of die-hard fans would totally sell their newborn children on Craigslist if that meant getting tickets to Fleetwood Mac’s Saturday-night Sprint Center show. One reason: Keyboardist and singer Christine McVie has returned to the band after a 17year absence. Another: This classic lineup, solidified first on 1975’s self-titled album, still throws off sparks — musical and otherwise — from the old days, when making Rumours was basically a wild Univision soap opera.

McVie, singer Stevie Nicks, guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie are all on hand for Fleetwood Mac’s “On With the Show” tour, a night that promises to be one for the books.

Saturday, March 28, Sprint Center (1407 Grand, 816-949-7000)

f o r e c a s t

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M A R C H 26 -A P R I L 1 , 20 1 5

PB

The Preatures

The Preatures hail from Sydney, Australia, where, we assume, everything is all sunshine, all the time. Lead singer Isabella Manfredi’s voice supports that belief. On the band’s 2014 debut, Blue Planet Eyes, she soars over a spirited collection of sugaredup, synth-heavy tracks that make you want to twirl around barefoot on some grass. The Preatures are unabashed babies of the ’80s and ’90s, and they carry their influences around like fashionably ironic fanny packs.

On paper, that might make you roll your eyes, yet Blue Planet Eyes sounds so assured, and its songs are so likable, that it’s hard to find fault.

Monday, March 30, RecordBar (1020 Westport Road, 816-753-5207)

K e Y

Pick of the Week

Legend Status

Let It Be

Drama for Days

These Lyrics Will Give You Life

Join the Jihad

O Canada

Wild Man

Up From Down Under

Beatlemania

Worth the Weeknight

Folk Meets Punk

pitch.com

the pitch

m o n t h x x–x x , 2 0 0 x

pitch.com

31

he r

Live Music

every FriDay Night 8-12pM 3/27 Allied Saints

4/3 The Kaopectones

4/10 - June Bug and The Porchlights 4/17 - Amanda Fish

CheCk out our website for food speCials & upComing band dates!

523 E. Red Bridge Rd. KCMO • Red Bridge Shopping Center •

816.942.0400 • www.theDailyLimitkc.com

LiverpooL KS MuSic HoF induction ceLebration concert

3/28 | 8pm Doors ticKetS: ticKetMaSter.coM/voodooKc

w/ Lyin Eyes: A Tribute to The Eagles Special ForceS: a Salute to .38 Special

March 27 | $5 cover

Australia, s all sunr Isabella belief. On Eyes, she sugaredyou want grass. The f the ’80s nfluences ny packs. roll your o assured, ’s hard to

r 207)

Let It Be

he Jihad

wn Under

ets Punk

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32

AgendA

continued from page 15

Thursday | 3.26 | L i t e r a r y/ S p o k e n W o r d

Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusi­ tania , a discussion with author Erik Larson, co-

sponsored by the National World War I Museum | 7 p.m. Unity Temple on the Plaza, 707 W. 47th St., rainydaybooks.com

the merchant of venice

Community BenefitS

kC tip off: Scott mcCreery, benefiting KC’s Medicine Cabinet | 6 p.m. Uptown Theater, 3700 Broadway, kcmedicinecabinet.org muSiC

Bongotini | 7-9 p.m. Frank’s North Star Tavern, 508 Locust, Lawrence

Comedy

Arts Bar, 3611 Broadway

Sean tyler’s Comedy Block party | 8 p.m.

Improv Comedy Club and Dinner Theater, 7260 N.W. 87th St.

michael Winslow | 8 p.m. Stanford’s Comedy Club,

7328 W. 119th St., Overland Park

TheaTer

Johnny Boyd | 8 p.m. Knuckleheads Saloon, 2715

Rochester

fr iday

Brody Buster | 7 p.m. The Phoenix, 302 W. Eighth St. Ben Caplan & the Casual Smokers, the Ghost of paul revere, freight train rabbit killer

9:45 p.m. RecordBar, 1020 Westport Rd.

diamond empire | The Brick, 1727 McGee, J. diggs | 9 p.m. The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway

3.27

jeff rumans

kauf drops with dustin kaufman | 10 p.m. Uptown

g fish Baitin l witha

The Merchant of Venice | Heart of America Shakespeare Festival, JCCC’s Polsky Theatre, 12345 College Blvd.,

kcshakes.org

tinsley ellis | 7 p.m. Knuckleheads Saloon, 2715

eXpoS

Rochester

mondo disco with ray Velasquez | 10 p.m. The

Dates and times vary.

Angels in America: Part I and Part II | Kansas

Candace evans duo | 7 p.m. Broadway Jazz Club,

open-mic night | 8 p.m. The Tank Room, 1813 Grand

mopaCa invitational alpaca Show | 5:30 p.m.

Hale Arena, 1701 American Royal Ct., mopaca.org

umberto, finer things | 10 p.m. MiniBar, 3810

muSiC

Brett Jackson Quartet | 9 p.m. Green Lady Lounge,

Broadway

City Repertory Theatre, Copaken Stage, 13th Street and Walnut, kcrep.org

3601 Broadway

The Art of Murder | KC Mystery Train, venues

1809 Grand

Barefoot in the Park: a Script-in-hand performance | Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre

1205 E. 85th St.

vary, kcmysterytrain.com

John paul’s flying Circus | B.B.’s Lawnside BBQ,

Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club, 3402 Main

Dr. Seuss’ The Cat In The Hat | Starting

making movies | 7 p.m. The Blue Room, 1600 E. 18th St.

Hair Retrospection | Kansas City Repertory Theatre, 4949 Cherry, kcrep.org The Merchant of Venice | Heart of America

Friday | 3.27 | performinG artS

| 2 p.m. Sunday, Kansas City Plaza Library, 4801 Main, metkc.org

Tuesday, the Coterie Theatre, Crown Center, 2450 Grand Crown Center, thecoterie.org

Foundry, 424 Westport Rd.

Lesserhasbeens, temp tat, Seakings | 9 p.m.

maybe not, not Like igor, alccal | 10 p.m. Replay Lounge, 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence

merica records Showcase | 7 p.m. Uptown Arts Bar, 3611 Broadway

Shakespeare Festival, JCCC’s Polsky Theatre, 12345 College Blvd., kcshakes.org

pope of dope, dirty force Brass Band | 8 p.m.

Peter and the Starcatcher | Starting Tuesday,

eric Sardinas | 8:30 p.m. Knuckleheads Saloon, 2715

The Ship, 1217 Union

Cheers! A Tribute to the British Isles, presented

by American Opera Studio | 7 p.m. First Christian Church of Olathe, 200 E. Loula, Olathe

kC Symphony: kalmar conducts dvorák and Beethoven, featuring pianist Yevgeny Sudbin | 8 p.m.

Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, 1601 Broadway, kcsymphony.org

momiX: Alchemia | 8 p.m. JCCC’s Yardley Hall, 12345 College Blvd., Overland Park, jccc.edu/performingarts-series L i t e r a r y/ S p o k e n W o r d

7 p.m. Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, 1601 Broadway, theaterleague.com/kansascity

Rochester

Remington Steele Magnolias | Late Night

E. 13th St.

Theatre, Missie B’s, 805 W. 39th St.

White Rabbit, Red Rabbit | KC Fringe, H&R Block City Stage Theater, Union Station, 30 W. Pershing Rd., kcfringe.org

Women Playing Hamlet | Unicorn Theatre,

natalie Stovall & the drive | PBR Big Sky Bar, 111

Granada, 1020 Massachusetts, Lawrence

yung Grandpa, tvrnt | 9 p.m. The Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire, Lawrence

3828 Main, unicorntheatre.org

32

the pitch

Gilbert Gottfried | 7:30 & 9:45 p.m. Improv Comedy Club and Dinner Theater, 7260 N.W. 87th St. Brandt tobler & friends | 6:30 p.m. Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club, 3402 Main

niGhtLife

dJ thundercutz | 10 p.m. Vandals, 3740 Broadway M A R C H 26 -A P R I L 1 , 20 1 5

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the dock ellis Band, dr. Cotton | 8 p.m. Westport Saloon, 4112 Pennsylvania

the far West, the Grisly hand | 9:30 p.m. Davey’s

Uptown Ramblers Club, 3402 Main

amanda fish | 9 p.m. B.B.’s Lawnside BBQ, 1205 E. 85th St.

Golden donna, umberto, daniel Wyche, Scammers | The Brick, 1727 McGee Gunsafe, tyler Gregory, pretty drunk | 6 p.m.

Replay Lounge, 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence

rich hill | 4:30 p.m. Broadway Jazz Club, 3601 Broadway

phantoms of kC presents Workers of Kansas City, Unite! The Story of Kansas City’s Working Class | 5 p.m. Uptown Arts Bar, 3611 Broadway Comedy

Walk the moon, the Griswolds | 8 p.m. The

atlantic express with hal Wakes | 8:30 p.m.

Knuckleheads Saloon, 2715 Rochester

michael Winslow | 7:45 & 9:45 p.m. Stanford’s Comedy

Club, 7328 W. 119th St., Overland Park

kathleen holeman, kelley Gant duo | 7 p.m.

Broadway Jazz Club, 3601 Broadway

J-izzie, mista excel, Jooby truth, 9 deuce, tone, dom Chronicles | 9:45 p.m. RecordBar, 1020 Westport Rd.

Jazz disciples with Book of Gaia, Lady d |

5:30 p.m. The Blue Room, 1600 E. 18th St.

the nicks, molly hammer | 8:30 p.m. Green Lady Lounge, 1809 Grand

33

Art Exhibits & EvEnts

mExico vs. pArAguAy mEn’s soccEr

Ferran Adrià: Notes on Creativity | Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 4525 Oak, nelson-atkins.org

7230 W 75th St 913.236.6211 kilroysroxybar.com

/ kilroysroxy

American Soldier | Nelson-Atkins Museum

of Art, 4525 Oak

OPEN MIC

Animalia: 19th- and 20th-Century European Prints and Drawings | Nelson-Atkins

THURSDAY • MARCH 26

RETURN OF LEJO FRIDAY • MARCH 27

Museum of Art, 4525 Oak

Final Friday Art Walk | Massachusetts be-

tween Seventh and 11th streets, Lawrence

Final Friday Lawrence Art Party | 5:30-

9:30 p.m. Lawrence Creates Makerspace, 512 E. Ninth St., Lawrence

Make Your Mark | Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, 4420 Warwick Blvd., kemperart.org

TITAN BAND NIGHT

y tu e s d a

3.31

BEATING WOOLY BULLY SEVENTH DAY HOLMES STREET MOLLY ERWIN

a me tiful g A beau tiful u a e b at a place

SATURDAY • MARCH 28

Mapping Coyote Black, Natalie Ball | Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, 12345 College Blvd., Overland Park, nermanmuseum.org

Mexico vs. Paraguay men’s soccer | 8 p.m. Arrowhead Stadium, 1 Arrowhead Dr.

THE IN CROWD SUNDAY • MARCH 29

Piranesi: Imaginative Spaces | Nelson-Atkins

The Zeros | Local Tap, 7300 W. 119th St., Overland Park

CoMeDy

NIghTLIFe

Comedy Showcase with Jsun Nelsun | 8 p.m.

KC BEER PONG TUESDAY • MARCH 31

Museum of Art, 4525 Oak

A Shared Legacy: Folk Art in America | Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 4525 Oak

DJ e | Quaff Bar & Grill, 1010 Broadway

To Honor the Unidentified and Its Honor Is Here Pledged, gina Adams | Nerman

DJ Mahf | 11 p.m. The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway

Uptown Arts Bar, 3611 Broadway

gilbert gottfried | 7 & 9:45 p.m. Improv Comedy Club and Dinner Theater, 7260 N.W. 87th St.

Museum of Contemporary Art, 12345 College Blvd., Overland Park, nermanmuseum.org

goomba Nights with Bear Club | 10 p.m. Replay

Michael Winslow | 7:45 & 9:45 p.m. Stanford’s Comedy Club, 7328 W. 119th St., Overland Park

World War I and the Rise of Modernism |

Raqs Boheme | 6 p.m. RecordBar, 1020 Westport Rd.

eXPoS

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 4525 Oak

Paper Buffalo, Westerners | 9 p.m. The Bottleneck,

737 New Hampshire, Lawrence

Mike Saint-Jules, Bobby Bohn, Brian Flinn, John Lecoque | 8 p.m. The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway

Lounge, 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence

Soul Preservers featuring Brian Danker | 8 p.m.

The Ship, 1217 Union

Spinstyles vs. DJ Rico, DJ Sike Steez | 10 p.m.

MiniBar, 3810 Broadway

Saturday | 3.28 |

MR. PERFECT PRESENTS THURSDAY • APRIL 2 C’MON BACK

KC Food Circle’s eat Local & organic expo |

9 a.m.-2 p.m. Johnson County Community College, 12345 College Blvd., Overland Park, kcfoodcircle.org

MoPACA Invitational Alpaca Show | 9 a.m. Hale Arena, 1701 American Royal Ct., mopaca.org F e S T I VA L S

Sons of Brasil | 8 p.m. Take Five Coffee + Bar, 6601 W. 135th St., Overland Park

Special Forces: A Tribute to .38 Special |

9 p.m. VooDoo, Harrah’s Casino, 1 Riverboat Dr., North Kansas City

PeRFoRMINg ARTS

Cheers! A Tribute to the British Isles, presented

by American Opera Studio | 7 p.m. First Christian Church of Olathe, 200 E. Loula, Olathe

heartland Men’s Chorus: Modern Families |

Spirit Is the Spirit, the Philistines, Bonzo Madrid | 10 p.m. Replay Lounge, 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence Jonathan Theobald, Calvin Arsenia | 9 p.m. The

8 p.m. Folly Theater, 300 W. 12th St., follytheater.org

KC Symphony: Kalmar conducts Dvorák and Beethoven, featuring pianist Yevgeny Sudbin | 8 p.m.

Tank Room, 1813 Grand

Kauffman Center, 1601 Broadway, kcsymphony.org

Chris Tomlin | 7 p.m. Independence Events Center,

MoMIX: Alchemia | 8 p.m. JCCC’s Yardley Hall,

19100 E. Valley View Pkwy., Independence

Tornado Rose | 10 p.m. Jazzhaus, 926-1/2 Massachu-

setts, Lawrence

Vaski | 8 p.m. The Granada, 1020 Massachusetts,

Lawrence

12345 College Blvd., Overland Park, jccc.edu/performingarts-series L I T e R A R y/ S P o K e N W o R D

Louder Than a Bomb 2015 Finals | 7 p.m. Gem

Theater, 1615 E. 18th St.

Northland ethnic Festival | 11 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Park Hill South High School, 4500 River Park Dr., Riverside CoMMuNITy BeNeFITS

Kids Night out 2015 with Keith urban, benefiting

the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Kansas City | 5:30 p.m.

Overland Park Convention Center, 6000 College Blvd., Overland Park, bgc-gkc.org/events

Lyric opera Champagne Ball | 6 p.m., $250 and up, Kansas City Convention Center, 301 W. 13th St., kcopera.org CoMMuNITy eVeNTS

Art + Feminism Wikipedia edit-a-Thon | Noon-

4:30 p.m. Kansas City Central Library, 14 W. 10th St., bit.ly/1xnoOAq

continued on page 34

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33

34 Cowtown: History of the Kansas City Stockyards | Kansas City Central Library, 14 W. 10th St. Ingenious Objects: geometric puzzles by Stewart coffin | Linda Hall Library, 5109

Cherry, lindahall.org

Lewis and Clark: Great Journey West | Union

Station, 30 W. Pershing Rd., unionstation.org

Xtreme BUGS | Union Station, 30 W. Pershing Rd., unionstation.org/bugs

liverpool, lyin’ eyes | 9 p.m. VooDoo, Harrah’s

i sa Puccin la re x

mothercoat, psychic Heat, Arc Flash | 10 p.m.

Replay Lounge, 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence

music of the Jazz messengers featuring michael Shults | 8 p.m. Take Five Coffee + Bar, 6601 W.

135th St., Overland Park

nesto the owner earless Album Show | 8:30 p.m.

perpetual change | Local Tap, 7300 W. 119th St.,

kclibrary.org

3.30y

ida mcBeth | 8:30 p.m. Knuckleheads, 2715 Rochester

Film

love on the Rocks film series: Cruel Intentions | 1:30 p.m. Kansas City Central Library, 14 W. 10th St.,

y m o n da

lonesome Hank | 7 p.m. Jazz, 1823 W. 39th St.

Aftershock, 5240 Merriam Dr., Merriam

continued from page 33

At eAse with operA: tosca

Casino, 1 Riverboat Dr., North Kansas City

Overland Park

cole porter Band, Golden Groves | 7 p.m. The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway

C o r y W e av e r f o r S a n f r a n C i S C o o p e r a

MUseUM exhibits & events

F00d & dRink

Fast Johnny Ricker | 9 p.m. B.B.’s Lawnside BBQ,

At ease With opera: Tosca | 7 p.m. Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, 4801 Rockhill Rd.

6:30-9 p.m. The Grove at Zona Rosa, 8640 N. Dixson, concernedcarekc.org

Somekindofwonderful, mark Scibilia | 9:30 p.m.

kc Symphony: kalmar conducts dvorák and Beethoven, featuring pianist Yevgeny Sudbin | 2 p.m.

SpoRtS & Rec

Viva, the Giraffe Bros | 10 p.m. MiniBar, 3810

in the Shade of the Vine: a wine and food tasting event benefiting Concerned Care KC |

1205 E. 85th St.

RecordBar, 1020 Westport Rd.

Broadway

missouri mavericks vs. Wichita thunder men’s hockey | 7:05 p.m. Independence Events Center, 19100 E. Valley View Pkwy., Independence muSic

Adam Breckenridge & Brown Sugar Bourbon, the BAm House Band, benefiting the Base Academy

James Ward Band | 8:30 p.m. The Blue Room, 1600 E. 18th St.

Wyatt West and the urbanites, Janet the planet, the irieplaceables Ska orchestra | 9 p.m.

Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club, 3402 Main

of Music | 6 p.m. The Brick, 1727 McGee

Kauffman Center, 1601 Broadway, kcsymphony.org

midwest chamber ensemble: Song and dance with Harp | 7:30 p.m. Lutheran Church of the Resurrection, 9100 Mission, Prairie Village, midwestchamberensemble.org comedY

Gilbert Gottfried | 7 p.m. Improv Comedy Club and Dinner Theater, 7260 N.W. 87th St.

niGHtliFe

excision, minnesota, protohype | 8 p.m. The

Midland, 1228 Main

Futuristic & Sam lachow, the Skeptics, Bizzy, Geek Squad & dev3n | 8 p.m. The Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire, Lawrence

Jeff Harshbarger’s Alternative Jazz Series with nathan Hanson | 8 p.m. RecordBar, 1020 Westport Rd.

Jazz brunch with Gerald Spaits, Rod Fleeman and paul Smith | 10 a.m. Take Five Coffee + Bar, 6601 W. 135th St., Overland Park

expoS

Bukeka, oJt | 6 p.m. Green Lady Lounge, 1809 Grand

designer drugs, Spinstyles, dJ trace Beats |

kemet coleman, eddie moore & the outer circle | 9 p.m. The Tank Room, 1813 Grand

dirty Stomp with Hector the Selector | 10 p.m.

danielle nicole Band ep-release show with katy Guillen & the Girls | 8:30 p.m. Knuckleheads

Saloon, 2715 Rochester

Fleetwood mac | 8 p.m. Sprint Center, 1407 Grand eboni Fondren, max Groove | 7 p.m. Broadway Jazz Club, 3601 Broadway

Four Fried chickens and a coke | 8 p.m. Trouser Mouse, 410 S. Hwy. 7, Blue Springs

Joe Buck Yourself, clawhammer, Acoustica noir, crybaby Ranch | 8 p.m. Westport Saloon,

10 p.m. The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway

dJ e | Quaff Bar & Grill, 1010 Broadway dJ Rico | 10 p.m. MiniBar, 3810 Broadway Resistance is Futile: A Star trek Quiz, presented by Geeks Who drink | 1-3 p.m. The Burg & Barrel, 7042 W. 76th St., Overland Park

Superwolf and Andy noble | 8 p.m. The Ship, 1217 Union

kansas city Bear Fighters, missouri Homegrown, the Ready Brothers | 9 p.m. The Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire, Lawrence

34

the pitch

Film

donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, presented by the Royal

Opera House | 1 p.m. Tivoli Cinemas, 4050 Pennsylvania, tivolikc.com SpoRtS & Rec

Women of the Arts kc benefit for homeless women, with Angela Hagenbach, lisa Henry, pamela Baskin-Watson, luqman Hamza and others | 2 p.m. The Blue Room, 1600 E. 18th St. niGHtliFe

dell Harris, Spinstyles | 10 p.m. The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway

missouri mavericks vs. Quad city mallards men’s hockey | 4:05 p.m. Independence Events Center,

19100 E. Valley View Pkwy., Independence

Monday | 3.30 |

muSic

Sunday | 3.29 | Cheers! A Tribute to the British Isles, presented

chris Hazelton trio | 9 p.m. Green Lady Lounge, Andrew Jackson Jihad, the Smith Street Band, Jeff Rosenstock, chumped | 7:30 p.m.

The Granada, 1020 Massachusetts, Lawrence

by American Opera Studio | 3 p.m. First Christian Church of Olathe, 200 E. Loula, Olathe

Boogaloo 7, Jazz cigarettes | 5 p.m. Replay Lounge,

Heartland men’s chorus: Modern Families |

dead Skeletons | 3 p.m. Holy Cow Market & Music,

4 p.m. Folly Theater, 300 W. 12th St., follytheater.org

M A R C H 26 -A P R I L 1 , 20 1 5

Visitors, Sundiver, After nations, temp tats, Via luna | 8 p.m. The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway

muSic

peRFoRminG ARtS

Ameristar Dr.

Arena, 1701 American Royal Ct., mopaca.org

Replay Lounge, 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence

4112 Pennsylvania

kansas | Star Pavilion at Ameristar Casino, 3200 N.

mopAcA invitational Alpaca Show | 9 a.m. Hale

pitch.com

946 Massachusetts, Lawrence

3109 Gillham Rd.

1809 Grand

new Jazz order Big Band | 7 p.m. The Blue Room,

1600 E. 18th St.

the preatures, the Bots | 9:30 p.m. RecordBar,

1020 Westport Rd.

Rural Grit Happy Hour | 6-9 p.m. The Brick, 1727 McGee

35 Sex Snobs, Bummer, Drugs & Attics, the Bends | 8 p.m. The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway

Tuesday | 3.31 |

trivia Blitz | 7:30-9:30 p.m. Tower Tavern, 401 E. 31st St.

Wednesday | 4.1 | ComeDy

L i t e r A r y/ S p o k e n W o r D

Creatures of the night Comedy tour | 8 p.m. The

emily Giffin talks about her novel The One & Only | 7 p.m. Unity Temple on the Plaza, 707 W. 47th St.,

rainydaybooks.com

Tank Room, 1813 Grand

Steve kramer | 8 p.m. Stanford’s Comedy Club, 7328 W. 119th St., Overland Park

ComeDy

Comedy night | 8 p.m. The Tank Room, 1813 Grand FiLm

The Telephone Book, presented by Vinegar Syndrome | 10 p.m. Alamo Drafthouse, 1400 Main, drafthouse.com

muSiC

30 seconds east of the Power & Light District

robert DeLong, Sheppa | 9:30 p.m. RecordBar,

2800 East 12th Street • Kansas City, MO 64127 816.231.9696 • www.KcShadyLady.com

1020 Westport Rd.

Dopapod, mouth | 9 p.m. The Bottleneck, 737 New

Hampshire, Lawrence

matt Hopper trio | 7:30 p.m. Green Lady Lounge,

muSiC

Bad religion | 7 p.m. Liberty Hall, 644 Massachusetts,

Lawrence

Blues Jam with Coyote Bill | 9 p.m. Westport Saloon,

1809 Grand

Jim Lower | 7-10 p.m. Broadway Jazz Club, 3601 Broadway

Hermon mehari trio | 6 p.m. The Majestic, 931

4112 Pennsylvania

Broadway

the everymen, Gnarly Davidson, Varma Cross | 10 p.m. Replay Lounge, 946 Massachusetts, Lawrence

Overland Park

Hillbilly Casino | 8 p.m. Knuckleheads Saloon, 2715

of montreal, yip Deceiver | 9 p.m. The Granada,

incite, Better Left unsaid, Spades and Blades, rimJob, meatshank | 8 p.m. The Riot Room, 4048

organ Jazz trio | 9 p.m. Green Lady Lounge, 1809

Rochester

Broadway

Lyric Lab: music open mic | 9-11:30 p.m. Uptown

Arts Bar, 3611 Broadway

Hermon mehari trio | 6 p.m. The Majestic, 931 Broadway

phaze ii | 8 p.m. Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club, 3402 Main

rock, paper, Scissors | 7 p.m. RecordBar, 1020

Westport Rd.

nick Schnebelen trio | 7 p.m. B.B.’s Lawnside BBQ,

1205 E. 85th St.

mikey needleman | Local Tap, 7300 W. 119th St.,

1020 Massachusetts, Lawrence

Grand

rose Quartz, ishi | 8 p.m. The Riot Room, 4048 Broadway

Brian ruskin Band | 7 p.m. The Phoenix, 302 W. Eighth St.

Adam Schlozman’s earth trio, oJt | 7:30 p.m.

Green Lady Lounge, 1809 Grand

Smash the State, American Discord, koffin kats | 8:30 p.m. Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club, 3402

Main

til Willis and the erratic Cowboy | Local Tap,

7300 W. 119th St., Overland Park

Sequel Quartet | 9 p.m. Green Lady Lounge, 1809

Grand

niGHtLiFe

DJ Adam marquette | 10 p.m. MiniBar, 3810 Broad-

turquoise Jeep, Flynt Flossy, yung Humma, Whatchyamacallit, pretty raheem, yung Grandpa, Boatss, maal a Goomba | 9 p.m. The Granada, 1020 Massachusetts, Lawrence niGHtLiFe

DJ rico & the Boss Hooligan Soundsystem | 10 p.m. Vandals, 3740 Broadway

karaoke with paul nelson | 9 p.m. MiniBar, 3810 Broadway

• Voted KC’s Best Gentleman’s Club • 70 Girls • Oldest Adult Club in Missouri • Full Service Kitchen • Great Place to Watch Sporting Events • VIP Lounge ª Cover Friday & Saturday ONLY! • Premium Bottle Service

way

Girlz of Westport | 8 p.m. Californos, 4124 Pennsylvania

trivioke | The Dubliner, 170 E. 14th St.

E-mail submissions to calendar@pitch.com or enter submissions at pitch.com, where you can search our complete listings guide.

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S ava g e L o v e

Massive CoCk BloCks Dear Dan: I found this in an online sex ad: “Straight guy with an addiction to massive cocks in my ass.” This “straight guy” went on to mention his girlfriend. Can a person really identify as straight while wanting to be fucked by men? I understand that straight guys can like ass play, too, but it’s not like he wants to be pegged by his girlfriend or use a dildo on himself. He’s straight-up (heh-heh) looking for hung dudes to fuck his ass.

Wants It Less Tedious

Dear JAWDROP: Can a person identify as

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the pitch

Dear Dan: My girlfriend can’t use hormonal birth control and “doesn’t like” condoms but wants sex. What would you do?

Paternal Anxiety Upsetting Sexual Escapades Dear PAUSE: I would fuck her in the ass but only with her enthusiastic and sustained consent. And one day I would leave her, come out as gay and get myself a boyfriend who likes condoms, and start fucking him in the ass instead.

Dear Dan: I recently started dating a girl who likes to be submissive. It’s more of a psychological thing than a pain thing. She opened up about her kink, and I was all for it, thinking myself the ultimate GGG lover. Thing is, I find being a Dom quite boring. I love getting her off, but I just can’t get into the role. I’m not sure if this is funny or horrible, but the other day she was strapped to the bed, and just as she was reaching a climax, I stopped. I uncuffed her, told her I was leaving the room and ordered her not to take the blindfold off or touch herself. She loved it, but I did it

M A R C H 26 -A P R I L 1 , 20 1 5

D a n S ava ge

Dear Dan: I love my girlfriend. However, she has an issue with things she considers “icky” — like sperm, saliva, sex when menstruating, and anal sex as well as the resulting santorum. She also regards dressing up for sex and talking dirty as silly. She enjoys sex, but it is pretty plain vanilla.

Any advice on how to move her in a more experimentalist direction would be appreciated. I am not looking to turn her into an anal fanatic or a sloppy blowjob queen, but rather for her to put aside her preconceived notions and give some things a try by embracing them fully.

Jaded and Wondering, Dude’s Really on Pussy? straight while wanting to be fucked by men?

Ha-ha-ha. Yes. I was pretending to be straight when I was 15. Pastor Ted “Meth and Man Ass” Haggard was pretending to be straight when he was 45, and Congressman Aaron Schock is still pretending to be straight.

As for the guy behind that online sex ad: He’s most likely bisexual and rounding himself down to straight. There’s a much smaller chance that he’s straight, and it isn’t the massive cocks that turn him on but the boundaryshattering, identity-upending violation that being pounded by massive cocks represents.

It could also be a “forced bi” thing, and he’s doing this to please a dominant girlfriend. Or he’s a gay guy who pretends to be a straight guy online because the ruse attracts gay and bi guys turned on by the boundary-crossing, identityupending violation that shoving their massive cocks up a straight guy’s ass represents.

Only way to know for sure: Ask him yourself. No guarantee you’ll get a straight answer, but only he knows for sure what’s up with him.

By

Dear WILT: Anal isn’t for everyone, and sloppy

so I could go to the toilet and check my phone.

I’d say something to her if I found it gross or it wasn’t working, but she enjoys it to the point where she has little interest in doing anything else. Even when regular intercourse takes place, there are still clear submissive overtones — to have vanilla sex at all, I basically have to lecture her first about her dirty ways to get her going. I like more “mutual” activities like 69ing, massages, etc. She seems open to it but steers it back to her submissiveness. I enjoy sex with her, but this Dom/sub thing is a roadblock to my getting off. Am I just being self-centered?

Dom Only on Demand Dear DOOD: All BDSM tops — all Masters,

Mistresses, Pro-Doms, switches, vanillabut-GGG partners of submissive types — occasionally check their phones, go to the toilet, take a snack break, etc., while their subs wait blindfolded or hooded back in the bedroom/playroom/dungeon. The sub gets to tremble in anticipation; the Dom gets to relax for a second. So taking a quick toilet/ phone break doesn’t mean you are a lousy Dom, but I definitely see why you’re bored: BDSM isn’t your thing, you’re doing it for her, and she’s taking you for granted. You’re being GGG (and indulging all her kinks); she’s not being GGG (she’s making it all about her kinks). Tell your girlfriend that she’ll have to lecture herself about her dirty ways when you two are having vanilla PIV sex, 69ing or swapping massages, if that’s what it takes to get her going, because you don’t want to have to play at being dominant every time you have sex.

I suspect the Dom/sub play will feel like less of a roadblock if every sexual interaction with your girlfriend isn’t colored by it.

blowjobs aren’t for everyone, but a fear of all bodily secretions — with the convenient exception of her own vaginal secretions — isn’t just sex-negative but childish. Let her know that, as much as you love her, this relationship won’t last if she can’t get a little more comfortable with human bodies and the stuff that leaks from them before, during and after sex.

Dear Dan: I want to thank you for your constant

advice to explore fantasies, communicate desires and get thorough consent in a sexy way. I’m a bi-ish college girl and used to be in a sexually unsatisfying long-distance relationship. Then I started saying, “What would Dan do?” Now I’m friends with BDSM benefits with my ex — he buys me sexy lingerie and bath products while I remind him what a naughty boy he is — and I’m currently planning a super-hot threesome with a rugby player and his girlfriend! And none of it would have happened without you!

Satisfied Lady Dear SL: I feel conflicted about your letter.

Let’s say your ex violates the terms of your arrangement and starts presenting you with unsexy PJs and dishwashing soap. Or that rugby player is a lousy lay who can’t find your clit, and his girlfriend is a nut who keys your car in a fit of post-threesome jealousy. If I took credit for all the awesome sex you’re having and/or looking forward to, I would have to take responsibility for the unsexy PJs, the dishwashing soap, the lousy-in-bed rugby player, your car, etc.

So instead of accepting your thanks, I’ll just say this: I’m happy you’re happy and I’m pleased my column was helpful, but the adventurous sex you’re having and/or looking forward to now? You always had that in you.

Reading my column may have helped you tap into your adventurous spirit, but the credit for your sex life — and the responsibility for your sex life — ultimately rests with you.

Have a question for Dan savage? e-mail him at mail@savagelove.net

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