The Pitch: July Music Issue 2024 by The Pitch KC

KC Current crew continue to dominate the NWSl

As we head to press on this issue of the magazine, KC Current has just broken their own franchise league record, knocking out an impressive 15game undefeated streak. Hopefully, by the time you’re reading this, that’s extended to 17 or so. [If it is not at 17, please do not write in claiming we “jinxed it.” We would never.] Playing at their new, stunning stadium and kicking ass out on the road, we’ve had fieldside coverage of all the games via our very own Tarik Sykes. His eye has captured some iconic shots this year, both on the pitch and of the hardcore fans in the stands. Follow the link to check out our many photo galleries.

lETTER

letter from the Editor

Desperate journalist in ongoing meaningful review situation BY BROCK WILBUR

CulTuRE

The Pitch’s 2024 Scavenger Hunt

Our 2024 Scavenger Hunt had adventurers movin’ and groovin’ around KC BY SARAH SIPPLE

FOOD & DRINK

letterman’s Jacket

Varsity Club is more than just spaghett and bangarang BY JORDAN BARANOWSKI

The1994Project reanimates producer Katie Gilchrist’s favorite cultural moment It’s a concert series. And a reading series. And burlesque, drag, food, adventure, and so much more. It’s also rooted in charity, fun, and community— thanks to producer Katie Gilchrist. This series is in two parts throughout the year, with 22 shows scheduled. The sessions include a live music series highlighting the albums and singles of 1994. Then there’s the fundraising film series: live staged readings of iconic films from that year, with proceeds benefiting different charitable organizations in KC. Read more about this nostalgia wormhole by following the QR code.

Eat This Now

Shrimp and grits at Urban BY SARAH SIPPLE

Drink This Now Emo shakes at Sweet EMOtion BY SARAH SIPPLE

Mise en Place

Laura Comer conducts an approachable symphony of flavors for Kauffman Center BY SARAH SIPPLE

14 MuSIC

Money Time love

On the eve of their breakthrough album release, Hembree is primed for Better Days BY AUSTIN WOODS

Schrödinger’s Boombox

Debuting in KC this summer, Sound Mandala teleports listeners to other worlds BY ELLEN BESHUK

TCs Fully loaded sets roots in KC while honoring the past in Japan & Alabama

Since 2019, TCs Fully Loaded food truck has frequented local music festivals, office buildings, and countless obscure boulevards. The niche dish is a combination of succulent protein and homemade sauce atop a baked potato. It has been well-received as an alternative to traditional, often fried, food truck options. However, these nomadic spuds will soon have a permanent home near downtown Kansas City. We sat down with Thomas Clark, the innovator behind TCs Fully Loaded, to delve into his international culinary influences, the nuances of his menu, and the opening of his inaugural brickand-mortar restaurant.

Take Offs and landings

The Greeting Committee’s latest LP turns infinitely inward BY KAYLYNN MULLINS

World Class lass

Songstress Eboni Fondren set to release debut album BY NINA CHERRY

Attempts at a Cover-up

Mitch Thompson’s Blind Covers Project sparks a universal language of pop’s power BY NICK SPACEK

Hatchet Job

The Shining Opera casts a permanent shadow with official cast recording BY BROCK WILBUR

EVENTS

July Events Calendar BY THE PITCH STAFF

ADVICE

Keep Them Coming Hot and bothered harmonies BY KRISTEN THOMAS

KC CARES

Arts and KCrafts Northeast Arts KC adds a splash of color BY BETH LIPOFF

Cover design by Cassondra Jones

Photo Courtesy of The1994Project

Photo by Tarik Sykes

Photo Courtesy of TCs Fully Loaded

Editor-in-Chief

Brock Wilbur

President & Chief Operating Officer

Andrew Miller

Director of Marketing & Promotions

Jason Dockery

Community Manager & Food Editor

Sarah Sipple

Music Editor

Nick Spacek

Film Editor

Abby Olcese

Little Village Creative Services

Jordan Sellergren

Art Director

Cassondra Jones

Contributing Editor

Joe Ellett

Editorial Interns

Ellen Beshuk, Aleah Gollier, Zach Gunter, Kaylynn Mullins, Austin Woods

Contributing Writers

Michael Mackie, Barb Shelly, Beth Lipoff, Kristen Thomas, Jordan Baranowski, Lauren Textor, Adrian Torres, Scott Poore, Hana Kim, Nina Cherry, Jollene Hastings, Emily Jacobs, Zoe Strohm, Andrew Dodderidge, Mike Dahlor, Tyler Fox, Raymart Dinglas, Maddie McBratney, Tiffany Watts

Contributing Photographers

Zach Bauman, Maura Dayton, Isabella Galvan, Allison Scavo, Tarik Sykes, Jordan Hirsekorn, Haley Mullenix, Stephen Fuller

VOICE MEDIA GROUP

National Advertising

1-888-278-9866 vmgadvertising.com

DISTRIBUTION

The Pitch distributes 20,000 copies a month and is available free throughout Greater Kansas City, limited to one copy per reader. Additional copies may be purchased for $5 each, payable at The Pitch’s office in advance. The Pitch may be distributed only by The Pitch’s authorized independent contractors or authorized distributors. No person may, without prior written permission of The Pitch, take more than one copy of each week’s issue. Mail subscriptions: $22.50 for six months or $45 per year, payable in advance. Application to mail at second-class postage rates is pending at Kansas City, MO 64108.

The Pitch 3543 Broadway Blvd. Kansas City, MO 64111

For information or to share a story tip, email: tips@thepitchkc.com For advertising: andrew@thepitchkc.com or 816-218-6792

Letter from the Editor

DESPERATE

JOURNALIST IN ONGOING MEANINGFUL REVIEW SITUATION

By Brock Wilbur

Greetings dearest reader, and welcome to the July print issue of The Pitch: our annual dedicated Music Issue. This one is always a beast to tackle, mainly because everyone in our orbit wants to contribute. There is simply too much great music—and along with it, too many great stories—for us to have enough page space to squeeze everyone in.

The title of this Letter from the Editor is borrowed from my favorite diss track—a song by The Cure in 1979, wherein they respond to an NME critic whomst didn’t dig their new album. More so than just being a delightfully petty move, Robert Smith went the extra mile and even quoted full lines from the scathing review, so that he could refute them in real time. It’s both a blistering rebuke but equally an unparalleled level of “living rent-free” in someone’s head. Whereas ‘79 was a peak time to ask how dare music journalists pay their rent by judging the output of strangers, the title, and general vibes radiating from this song have evolved in recent years into a bleaker yet more universal situation. In part, because no one can pay their rent with music journalism anymore. Many of the best-paying publications in the field have been liquidated in the last decade, or sold off into shells of what they once were. Some remain, but in a form that never brings a critical lens to anything, instead serving as advertising for no one. Even the “Ongoing Meaningful Review Situation” of the song’s title refers to the (then) common practice of music journalists embedding with a band for a week, in order to add color to their profiles. Back in the ‘90s, this publication could fly people overseas for music coverage. Now, I’m just jealous of any outlet that can cover gas and parking.

As dire as things have become for music journalism—and journalism across the board—these last few years have gone even worse for musicians themselves. Our last few annual music issues went from covering the few artists that were managing to release new music during lockdown, to covering the venues that were trying to make a comeback as lockdown lifted, to celebrating the lesser highlighted folks in the shadows of the industry—tour managers, sound engineers, roadies, and the other un-spotlighted superstars that make the musical world go round. 2024 has seen that capital-

ism itself can create pile-ons worse than a worldwide superbug.

When I interviewed CAKE’s John McCrea at the start of the year, the notoriously dry songwriter and I matched each other’s freak (depression!) in conversation about a circling of the drain. Music venues across the world have started imposing fees on artists selling their own merch at live shows. Payouts to artists for their own music on streaming platforms have hit new lows. The ticketing industry itself has spiraled so far out of control that the Justice Department is suing Live Nation-Ticketmaster. This, alongside the fact that COVID remains, and one member of a touring team contracting it can mean several days of surprise cancellations mid-tour. When I asked McCrea if there was any reason to even try to be a professional musician these days, all factors included, he said that bands should have formed a union 50 years ago, but it was probably too late now. “Streaming platforms aren’t going to be nice to us because we’re creative or something. We have to aggregate our power into economic power.”

Amid all that unpleasantness, there are so many folks in The Pitch’s orbit that persevere, because they believe in the power of this community, and the importance of our platform to keeping rock’n’roll alive. The beating heart of all of this is our own Nick Spacek.

Spacek, our music editor, has been taking a huge hand in our coverage of the region for the better part of two decades now. The man with a “Rockstar Journalist” tattoo has simply never run out of passion for the human beings behind every loud sound in the Lawrence/KC area. Each and every week is a grab bag of surprises for me, as I never know what ridiculous touring rock

god or local high school punk he’s chosen to profile. The man spends more time at Replay Lounge than at his own home, and his personal challenge to never cease living on the cusp of the new is a testament to journalistic obsession.

He’s also wonderfully fucking weird. In an interview this summer with the lead singer of TOOL, a Facebook commenter decried Spacek for asking questions about minutiae like coffee and spreadsheets. I’m sorry dude, but who else is going to get answers from one of the world’s biggest rock stars on his personal caffeination levels and Google Docs situation? That’s Pitch exclusive material, man.

What most don’t know is that Spacek manages the entirety of music coverage at this publication, and that involves tracking, training, and tirading with managers, PR, venues, bands, security, etc.—He makes sure that several dozen writers and photographers get access to anyone, anywhere, anytime. When you check out our website and see photos, write-ups, or interviews from 15 shows in a single week, that’s all Spacek’s doing. When we get glowing emails from musicians who cannot believe an outlet of our size is still covering live shows in the region, that’s Spacek.

We would not be the same publication without our modern, enduring version of a desperate journalist in an ongoing meaningful review situation. [Nick, please take the compliment. I know you’re bad at that, but I phrased it in derogatory framing, so meet me halfway.]

Pitch in, and we’ll make it through,

Photo Courtesy of Nick Spacek

OUR 2024 SCAVENGER HUNT HAD ADVENTURERS MOVIN’ AND GROOVIN’ AROUND KC

By Sarah Sipple

Adventure is out there! And by out there, we mean in our own backyard.

For The Pitch’s 2024 Scavenger Hunt, teams solved our riddles and ventured around the metro—from Lenexa to Gladstone, and Independence to West Bottoms. Discovering a mix of fun sponsored stops, KC iconography, and hidden gems, they captured the spirit of our May magazine and got active.

As a special feature this year, I met the gamers at a couple of spots throughout the weekend, handing out water, Vine Street Brewing beer, and Pitch swag. But the teams who visited sponsored stops like Kate Smith Soiree and Duck Donuts were “treated” well with free goodies to fuel their hunt.

“So fun! We saw things never seen before,” says returning team Forever Neon Bulldogs.

Team Whim went all out with themed props for many of the stops. And last year’s champ, Team Pinkies and the Brain, brought back their stellar photo editing skills for a tie-breaker submission as good as (or better than) some of our actual magazine covers.

But it was Team Deeze Nuts who took home first place, $500, and a fab prize pack. They used it as a practice run before applying to The Amazing Race, so let’s hope this is the first of many victories for Deeze Nuts.

Letterman’s Jacket

VARSITY CLUB IS MORE THAN JUST SPAGHETT AND BANGARANG

By Jordan Baranowski

Even for people with the most discerning tastes, there’s just something special about the perfect neighborhood bar. A place where you can meet with your buddies or just cozy up to the bar and make new friends. A place where you feel at home ordering a signature cocktail just as much as you feel at home ordering a shot of Beam and a Miller Lite. A place where you can satisfy those after-hour cravings for some top-shelf bar food. That’s exactly the type of place that brothers Caleb and Levi Roye hope their new “neighborhood lounge,” Varsity Club, can become.

Located at 319 Delaware in the River Market, Varsity Club is a 1970s-inspired cocktail bar. The Royes both have experience at some of our favorite Kansas City drink spots, including The Campground, Swordfish Tom’s, Hillsiders, The W, and The Mercury Room. When the two decided to go in together on a new concept, they settled on a theme and location pretty quickly. “We both love craft cocktails, but we’ve spent so much time in upscale cocktail bars that we tend to prefer the atmosphere of dive bars,” Caleb says. “We wanted to bring the neighborhood feel you get somewhere like Strawberry Hill to a new location, and the River Market seemed like the perfect fit.”

The Royes had the idea and the drinks covered, but they still wanted to get a final piece of the puzzle in place. They ran the concept by their buddy Matt Chapman— one of the owners of food pop-up favorite Disco Burger—and Chapman knew that Varsity Club was something he wanted to be a part of. Disco Burger will have a permanent residence at Varsity Club, serving up their small-but-mighty menu—smash burgers, specialty hot dogs, etc.—to complement the bar’s cocktails and other drinks.

So, what sets Varsity Club’s craft cocktails apart? For one, they’re trying to step away from the over-complex obscurity that many cocktail bars tend toward. “We still want to explore new and interesting combinations with our drinks,” Levi says. “We just don’t want to force people to Google four different ingredients just to understand what they’re ordering.”

This results in early favorites like the Grilled Olive Martini, lending a distinct spin on the classic sophisticated drink, and the Vodka Energy—vodka Red Bull made with Blanc Vermouth for a slightly more enlightened age. If you really want the Varsity Club experience, the Royes recommend the Bangarang—a choose-your-own-spirit drink that features a housemade pear-citrus

soda, served in a branded plastic cup. One of the Royes claims Irish Whiskey as their go-to Bangarang spirit, while the other opts for mezcal. They both agree the rum is the sleeper option, but “literally anything works well, depending on what you’re feeling.”

Another drink the Royes are excited about is still being workshopped but is almost ready. “The Spaghett has been a crushable summer fave for those in the know for a long time,” Levi says. “As far as we know, we’ll be the first bar in Kansas City to have this simple but delicious drink on draft.” Typically, a Spaghett is made by drinking part of a Miller High Life, then replacing the missing few ounces with Aperol and lemon juice. Varsity Club will have that ideal ratio ready on tap at all times—the perfect porch-pounder to enjoy alongside a Disco Burger special.

All told, Varsity Club’s staff will sling a menu of standards and favorites—about 6–10—that will be on the menu at all times

alongside their half dozen or so proprietary drinks. Of course, they’ll also have a selection of taps and canned beers on hand. “We want Varsity Club to be a place where any and all types of people can find a place to relax, build stronger friendships, and have a good time,” Caleb says.

Varsity Club will seat about 50 people inside, with room for another two dozen or so on the patio. The entire spot is being built new and, as of this writing, has yet to open its doors as the team waits for their final permits to come through. “July at the absolute latest,” is the plan, according to the Royes, and they’ll be open five days a week. They’ll have weekend lunch and be open late, so there is plenty of opportunity to go try a Bangarang for yourself. Keep an eye on their Instagram for more news about their opening, and save us a spot at the bar.

Varsity Club is located at 319 Delaware Street, Kansas City, MO 64105 in the River Market.

Photos by Darren Carter

Shrimp and grits at Urban

By Sarah Sipple

lately, I’ve found myself thinking of food more in the context of function rather than fun, con nection, pleasure, and culture. Hopefully, I get over that soon. So, while searching for my next lunch spot, I skimmed through half a dozen menus before inspiration struck.

On Urban’s website, shrimp and grits caught my attention as an uncommon dish around here. Second, these were no ordinary grits—They were gouda grits. And once I saw that it was served with collard greens, I was sold.

Urban is a newly-opened revamp of Urban Cafe, which had a location a few blocks away and still has a spot in the new airport.

On the breakfast menu, Shrimp and Grits ($19) included gouda grits, collard greens, bacon chunks, and plump tiger shrimp.

First, I dove in for a standalone bite of the cheesy grits. The choice of gouda made for a deeper, earthier cheese flavor for the grits than similar recipes. The grits themselves were cooked to perfection—not quite mush, but close. A firmness remained amongst the starch.

It all sat in a pool of savory, gouda-blessed, warm broth—likely a mix of the remaining “juice” from the collard greens and grits. The greens were some of the thickest I’ve tried, and like the grits, they were cooked to perfection. Next time, I’ll ask for a side of collard greens, but it’s not currently on the menu.

Five plump shrimp—specifically tiger prawns—lay under the greens, onions, bacon, and microgreens. Nestled in the grits, they stayed warm and continued to take on the dish’s flavor.

The impressive realization I had about this dish is that despite the cheesiness, the collard greens, heck, even bacon, it was not defined by saltiness. It was thoroughly seasoned and flavored, indeed. But as someone who is particularly sensitive to salt, this dish was simply satisfying.

Emo shakes at Sweet EMOtion

By Sarah Sipple

Black nail polish, snare drum backbeats, and allll feels. I love a niche. It’s a risky business move, but when it connects with the intended audience, magic happens. Such is the case for Sweet EMOtion—a pop-punk and emo-themed oat milk ice cream parlor.

In the same building as The Rino in North KC, black walls, con cert flyers, and angsty music set the ambiance. And just like my visit to the original Springfield location, the North KC one is usually full of millennials. See, it wasn’t a phase

A staple menu of sweet concoctions like Jimmy Eat Swirl, The Black Parade, and Motion City Meltown can be served in the form of a shake, pint, or bowl of ice cream. The entire menu is vegan, and about 95% of it is gluten-free.

Peanut butter usually wins my palate, so I chose the Smashed Into “Reese’s” Pieces ($9) as a shake. A frozen oat milk base is blended with hot fudge, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and graham crackers, then topped with marshmallows, whipped cream, and graham cracker dust.

The shake’s consistency is thinner than a classic milkshake, but the soft lingering mouthfeel remains. Chunks of Reese’s lay at the bottom for your thick straw to excavate. The graham crackers were not visible after blending, but absolutely lent a s’mores taste. With sticky fingers, the vegan mini marshmallows that rested on top were a true treat to pluck out and devour individually.

Sweet EMOtion is open until 10 p.m. on Wednesdays through Saturdays, aligning with most live music performances. Consider this your sign to lace up those Converse (unless you’re team Vans like me), break out your favorite band tee, and go see a show. Ice cream shakes (no Lactaid required) are totally the new Monster.

Sarah Sipple

Mise En Place is a series of questions, answers, recommendations, and culinary wisdom from the food and drink masters that push KC flavor further. The following answers have been edited for length and clarity.

steady paycheck.

The thing I loved doing the most was decorating cakes, which I taught myself to do when I was 16 at Dairy Queen. And I thought, I want to do this. So I went to culinary school with really no professional cooking background at all.

In what ways does your music background impact your work as a chef? I think it helps in collaboration with a lot of the artists and event menus because sometimes we’ll theme our menu. Like with the Lyric Opera, the symphony, or ballet, it’s fun to give diners or donors in suites little nods to the show. I think having some knowledge, understanding, and also a lot of appreciation for that makes a difference.

What inspires your menu? I lean super local and seasonal. That almost seems trite these days, because everybody’s saying that, but I think it’s important. I support that because we just know the food is better. Responsible purchasing is one thing, but also, we’re a big Kansas City landmark, so I think it’s important to feed Kansas City with Kansas City.

What can diners look forward to for the rest of 2024? We kind of run like a school year, so we close in July and Aug. and start back in Sept. We reopen with the symphony and our late summer/fall menu through Nov.

When the holidays start, we will become a pop-up because those are so much fun. I love Christmas. We transform this place. We have a hot chocolate train for the kids—we’re one of the pop-ups that are very kid-friendly because of The Nutcracker.

Do you cook specialty meals for performers? Yes, we do food and drink for all the artists, and then they always have riders. But whatever they want, we’ll get them. There’s rarely something completely insane, but we did have one that comes to mind. For one person, they requested seven different meals at once. So I was running all over town—I had to get Thai food and Chinese food, and then we made a ton, like salmon and sweet potatoes. Nothing went together. Nothing made sense at all.

Tell us about your perfect day dining out and about in Kansas City. I’m gonna go all local, because I think it’s important to shout out our people, right?

So a coffee at Hammerhand. And then for breakfast, The Farmhouse in River Market. For lunch—Well this may be shocking to hear from a chef, but I can’t eat three meals a day. So I have to go with a snack. Andres has beautiful stuff. Enchante is amazing too. For dinner, it would probably be Acre. I am just blown away by every dish that they make.

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Photos Courtesy of Laura Comer

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Money Time Love

ON THE EVE OF THEIR BREAKTHROUGH ALBUM RELEASE, HEMBREE IS PRIMED FOR BETTER DAYS

By Austin Woods

upon learning that I wouldn’t get to chat with Hembree in person for this story, I was overcome with disappointment.

Virtual interviews just aren’t the same, I brooded. Something will inevitably be lost I grew certain that—with them in L.A. and myself in Kansas City—the lack of face-toface engagement would cause the group to hold back. I expected to walk away from the interview with no sense of their personal dynamic, no impression of how they get along, and no clue about what makes them tick. As far as I was concerned, my article was dead on arrival.

This was a failure on my part to recognize the significance of Hembree’s makeup. The band is composed of two brothers, two brothers-in-law, and a pair of childhood friends—and, as it turns out, these bonds are perceptible even from 1,600 miles away. The moment our video call commenced, the group was cracking jokes, riffing off each other, and screwing around the way only lifelong friends do. Yes, virtual interviews are far from ideal. Yes, something was lost—but, with a band like Hembree, it couldn’t have been much.

It helps that the group is in especially high spirits right now, and it isn’t hard to see why. This past May, they completed their third full-length album Better Days, scheduled for release on Aug. 9. The band will then play two album release shows at the Crossroads Hotel rooftop on Aug. 14 and 15.

This is all the more meaningful to Hembree, given the circumstances under which its previous album, It’s a Dream!, was created. Recording throughout 2020 as stay-at-home orders were in full swing, the band was forced into separation, with sessions conducted via Zoom, and song files shared back and forth via Dropbox links. On the few occasions that certain band members could meet in person, face masks were worn—protective against COVID, but certainly not conducive to feelings of creative spontaneity or camaraderie.

Hembree is a deeply symbiotic group. Each member plays a critical role in the album recording process, and it’s usual for the entire band to contribute to each song, trading ideas and feeding off each other’s energy. For a group like this, being splintered into isolation might as well have been a death sentence. Nay, it felt like something even worse than a death sentence—a day job.

“There were deadlines and things, but there wasn’t that human interaction,” bassist Garrett Childers says. “We weren’t getting to spend time with each other in person. We weren’t getting to play shows. So it felt much more like checklists.”

Following this experience, the recording process for Better Days—while otherwise typical—felt like a godsend.

As with most Hembree albums, the basic structures of each track were laid out by singer Isaac Flynn, who recorded a batch of 20 demos throughout 2022 and 2023 that were later fleshed out by the full band. Each musician brings his own unique skill set to the latter process—Alex Ward offers idiosyncratic guitar lines—“That’s lack of ability to play,” he shrugs. “It lends itself to being creative”—while his brother Austin provides attention to detail. Eric Davis ensures the band stays true to its voice, and Childers—by the rest of the group’s admission—has the sharpest sense of melody.

After narrowing down 15 of the strongest demos, the group recorded drums at Kingsize Soundlabs in Los Angeles, and other instrumental tracks at Peermusic’s recording studio and Flynn’s home. The bulk of the project emerged from Kingsize Soundlabs in Los Angeles. These 15 tracks were then pared down again to the 11 songs that make up the Better Days tracklist.

“We felt like we were discovering ourselves as a band again, as cliche as that might sound,” Flynn says.

The music itself drips with this feeling

of gleeful rediscovery. The moodiness of signature tracks like “Culture” and “Holy Water” is largely absent—Instead, Hembree opts for swelling, ebullient choruses, trading the creeping textures of its biggest hits for a sound that’s slicker, sunnier, and more synth-driven. Though they’ll always consider themselves a Kansas City group, one gets the impression that L.A. has rubbed off on them quite a bit.

It’s not just the climate, either. Since moving to the city in 2019, Flynn has spent most of his time working as a professional songwriter for music publisher Peermusic—a line of work that’s allowed him to hone his craft considerably over the past five years. Thus, Better Days contains some of Hembree’s suavest, most finely executed tracks yet. Songwriting is like any other muscle. To get good at it, you simply have to do it a lot. And it’s increasingly clear that Flynn gets his reps in every day.

One of his main sources of inspiration is new pieces of musical equipment. If you’re a musician, you’re probably familiar with “gear acquisition syndrome”—the relentless urge to buy new instruments, effects pedals, and other baubles that obliterate your bank account and inevitably go unused. Flynn is the rare artist who turns this disease to his advantage. The songs on It’s A Dream! were largely built around a newly-acquired Roland Juno-106 synthesizer. For Better Days, his weapon of choice was a 1990 Roland Rhodes, which he discovered in the garage of a home he was looking to

rent. He didn’t wind up signing the lease but instead walked away with the hulking digital piano for $100.

However, the most crucial piece of songwriting wisdom that Flynn has picked up through his work is to simply write what you would want to hear.

“Everyone I know who I think is incredibly good at songwriting stays so true to themselves, and they don’t chase the money, or lack thereof,” Flynn says. “I think people can tell when it’s authentic and real.”

It’s tempting to write this off as a tired platitude, and, well, maybe it is. But it’s trite only because it’s worth saying again and again, especially in the contemporary music industry, where content is too often prized over creativity. As artists are increasingly expected to tailor their music for maximum virality and to constantly satisfy the almighty algorithm, staying true to oneself—not an easy task to begin with—is perhaps more challenging than ever.

“There’s a lot of pressure to have a pretty immediate hook or some sort of grab that’s going to get that attention span of a viewer scrolling on their phone,” Austin says. “They hear five seconds of something, and that five seconds has to be an attention-grabber.”

Unsurprisingly, these pressures have proved deleterious to artists’ mental health, and many have chosen to retreat from social media entirely. But logging off is a priv-

Photo by Jono Bowles

ilege afforded only to those who are already successful enough to not have to play the game in the first place. Smaller artists aren’t so lucky, and “digital burnout” has rapidly become endemic among musicians. As vivacious as Flynn and his bandmates are, even they grew disillusioned with the music industry for a period of time.

FIGHTING FATIGUE

Post-pandemic, Hembree found itself mired in an endlessly demanding digital landscape. Before they knew it, they were caught in the pernicious cycle of churning out nonstop content to feed the insatiable algorithm beast. Flynn calls it the “music casino”—a digital netherworld where artists shuffle in and out like ghosts, chasing the ever-elusive viral moment in the hope that they can one day rise above the attention-sucking din.

“You put so much of your time and energy into it, and you’re like, ‘Man, is this even worth it?’” he says. “We have to basically make a bunch of social media videos and hope that an algorithm puts our song into a different stratosphere.”

The stringent demands of social media aren’t the only thing bogging so many musicians down. There’s also the sorry state of the modern touring business. Granted, traveling cross-country in a van with five grown men has never been the most regal affair. But after the pandemic, a slew of factors created the perfect storm for smaller artists—diminished audiences, surging costs of gas, food, and lodging, and, of course, much-dreaded “merch cuts”—a common practice by which live venues take a hefty percentage of artists’ merchandise sales.

Hembree is no stranger to these challenges, and many of its peers have been forced to stop touring altogether.

“I know people are like, ‘Shut up! Go sleep on a floor.’ But it’s like, man, I’m 32 years old,” Flynn says. “I’ve been playing in a band forever.”

“We’ve all slept on floors,” Austin mutters, to which his brother adds, “Hembree’s paid its dues.”

To ease the burden of food costs, Hembree launched a tongue-in-cheek fundraising campaign earlier this year. The premise was simple: Fans were encouraged to Venmo the band during its February 2024 tour, with the guarantee that their money would be spent exclusively at local Chili’s restaurants on the road. In return, donors were each given a shoutout on Hembree’s Instagram story and were sent exclusive photos of the group’s dining experience.

“The last time we went to Chili’s on this past tour, we were like, ‘We officially have to take a break from eating here,’ because it was physically weighing us down a little bit,” Austin says. His brother concurs, calling it a “joke that went a little too far.”

The Hembree Chili’s tour fund might have been a joke, but like all good jokes, there’s a sad truth at the heart of it—Even

after your band has existed for a decade, the mental and material pitfalls will persist. You will continue to sleep on floors. You will fork your merch profits over to venues. You will resort to fundraising for a Chicken Crispers combo meal, and you will like it.

If Flynn and Co. were still in their 20s, this wouldn’t be such a bad way to live. When you’re young, you can get away with sleeping in a van and living off of QuikTrip hot dogs. But now that the group is in their 30s—with Flynn, Davis, and Childers having families to support—the touring lifestyle is much harder to sustain.

“In the past, I don’t feel like there was anyone missing me on that intense level, like a kid misses their dad, or a spouse misses their husband or wife,” Childers says. “As we’ve grown up as people, you learn that a lot of decisions aren’t made to help these touring musicians. They’re not made to make their personal lives any easier.”

Recording It’s a Dream! in solitude, getting trapped in the music casino, grappling with the utterly bleak touring business—eventually, it all became too much for Hembree, resulting in a period of burnout that the group has only just started to recover from.

In this regard, Better Days seems like an apt title. But the post-pandemic music industry remains fraught, especially for smaller acts like Hembree. Touring is still unaffordable for grassroots musicians, and the problems of streaming and social media aren’t likely to go away anytime soon. This begs the question: How exactly are these “better days?”

RHYTHM REVIVAL

Perhaps these aren’t actually better days, and maybe the album title is a bit of a misnomer. After all, Hembree hasn’t experienced a change in circumstances—only a change in attitude. At the beginning of 2024, they gathered for a band meeting during which they laid out a goal for the new year— ditch the pessimism, and adopt a more positive outlook on the music business, despite all its broken aspects.

Of course, positively thinking isn’t some sort of cure-all—embracing a shitty situation doesn’t make it any less shitty, nor is Hembree naive enough to think so. But sometimes it’s the best you can do, and it certainly makes a difference.

For Hembree, this change in attitude often means finding creative opportunities in unlikely places, including the music casino. Instead of viewing social media as a detriment to creativity, the group now considers it a tool, like anything else on the artist’s palette. “Content creation” and “artistry” are not diametrically opposed, they argue, and the promotional requirements of social media are only as deleterious to a musician’s integrity as they let it be.

“Austin and I have backgrounds in video editing, and we’re huge film buffs,” Alex says. “We’ve had the opportunity to use

some of those skills for social media content.”

And besides, even if you disagree about the artistic potential of the digital landscape, you can’t escape the fact that this is how the music business operates now. As Flynn points out, artists can either accept this and adapt accordingly, or remain disaffected and potentially fall to the wayside.

“There’s always been some completely bullshit aspect to the music industry throughout its entire history,” he says. “So right now, if that’s navigating the algorithms and a demand for content, then that’s not the worst thing in the world. Times have changed, and we never want to be too big of naysayers.”

But perhaps the most important change has been realizing that these responsibilities, while important, are merely secondary to the simple thrill of writing and performing songs with your friends. As precarious as life can be as a smaller act, the music makes it infinitely worthwhile.

This was easy to lose sight of during the isolated recording of It’s A Dream!. But after recording together for the first time in two years for Better Days, Hembree was reminded not to take the joys of being in a band for granted. Following lockdown, the group was more eager than ever to perform together and enjoy the freewheeling creative process that attracted them to a music career in the first place. In a catalog of highly collaborative records, Better Days might be the band’s most collaborative one yet.

If there’s one song that encapsulates the spirit of the project, it’s “Wenatchee.”

The track came together in the city of the same name—located in Washington state and dubbed the “Apple Capital of the World” for its many orchards—as the band conducted a soundcheck before a show at its performing arts center in Oct. 2022.

With the sound technician distracted by the Seattle Mariners playoff game on TV, Flynn, Davis, and the Ward brothers decided to jam over a guitar riff to pass the time. Childers, who was busy setting up the merch table in another room, initially thought the song was being played over the venue’s P.A. system. After realizing the music was coming from his bandmates, he suggested they develop the piece further.

This not only reflects the collaborative nature of Better Days, but also the group’s commitment to embracing a more positive outlook on the music industry—with the right attitude, even something as tedious as a soundcheck can offer a creative opportunity.

Another crucial experience happened over the course of ten days in Oct. 2023, when Flynn lived with Nashville-based boy band Post Sex Nachos to produce its latest album, Prima/Vera

The opportunity to work with the band renewed Flynn’s excitement for the album recording process. He later channeled this excitement into the remaining work for Bet-

ter Days, which was halfway complete at this point. To an extent, his work on Prima/ Vera influenced the sound of Better Days as well. Flynn’s approach as a producer was to retain Post Sex Nacho’s live energy as much as possible, which later compelled him to make sure Better Days didn’t sound too sterile or overproduced upon returning to L.A.

The ten-day period also brought on a deluge of memories for Flynn. Being with Post Sex Nachos—a relatively young group—in its home studio reminded him of his own beginnings with Hembree when he was still recording at his parents’ house in Lawrence, KS.

“It was a full-circle sort of moment for me,” Flynn says. “A reminder of how awesome it is to record music with a crew of people you really care about.”

ON TO THE NEXT

With just two months left before the release of Better Days, Hembree is feeling a strange mix of emotions. Pride. Excitement. A trace of anxiety. But by the time it comes out, these will have mostly subsided, and the group expects to, instead, feel slightly bored with the project. At that point, they’ll be so accustomed to the material, so exhausted by the release process, that Better Days will, ironically, sound old to them.

“It’s weird, because it’s this thing that you’re chipping away at for so long, and it feels so important, and it’s your whole life, and then you get the masters back, and it’s done and you feel like, ‘What do I do now?’” Flynn says. “Yeah, I guess on to the next one.”

Such is life—even after accomplishing something great, your happiness rarely lasts. At best, most of your time will be spent in utter tedium. But, as Hembree has discovered, recognizing this can be liberating. It’s not that the group no longer aspires for success—They continue to challenge themselves and take their craft seriously. However, now that they’re able to embrace all the frustrations that accompany that effort, the lows no longer feel so low, and a bit of excitement can be gleaned from even the most mundane aspects of the music business.

“I don’t even really know what the ultimate goal is anymore, and I kind of mean that in a positive way,” Childers says. “As long as we’re still mostly having fun, as long as we’re still proud of what we’re doing, and enjoying the time together, then you can’t discredit that.”

As Alex said, Hembree has paid its dues. As a smaller group, they’ll likely be paying them for quite some time. But so what? They can always take solace in one thing—that they get to chip away at it with each other.

“I think we’re lucky, the five of us, to be really good friends,” Childers says. “It’s nice working on something you care about with people you love.”

Schrödinger’s Boombox

DEBUTING IN KC THIS SUMMER, SOUND MANDALA TELEPORTS LISTENERS TO OTHER WORLDS

By Ellen Beshuk

I sit with anticipation in the center of a dimly lit room. At the first sharp sounds of typewriting, I am unnerved as my eyes search around and behind for its source. What starts as a random click here or there begins to unify and revolve around me into a sensation the composer compares to Starling birds’ flight. Then, silence. As my mind returns to the center of the room, I see, not birds in flight, but walls of speakers.

Surrounded by dozens of speakers, each one devoted to a single sound, I experienced audio like never before: The Sound Mandala.

The Sound Mandala is a room with 80+ speakers on every wall, with even the floor immersing listeners in a web of sounds. Each song or dialogue plays all around the audience, encasing them in an intense story where sound transforms into a vivid, sensory experience.

Behind my chair stands the creator of this Sound Mandala, Tom Mardikes, Professor of Sound Design at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC).

“While it starts as just random notes, you can start to see the shape that the patterns make as they move around the room,” Mardikes says. “Some people say, it sounds like they are inside a guitar, inside the music.”

Another composition is loaded; This time, a dialogue of an eternal female spirit, recounting her rage against the world and her cursed existence. Although nothing is shown, I know we are near a stony beach and crashing waves. The crisp, salty air and terrifying voice fill the room. I am the woman feeling fury as goosebumps run up my arm. A colossal scaled monster approaches my rampage. Its footsteps shake the ground, his power is discernible, but my voice goes on unthreatened. As my anger mounts, the sounds fade, and I am once again facing the speakers.

Instead of the usual amplified output

that presents the arrangement as an already mixed, complete piece, each sound is precisely outputted from one speaker at a time and interpreted by the audience. As eyes track the movement of the audio, the mind tries to form an image of what it might be experiencing.

Mardikes’ unique fascination began with what he calls “air mixing.” Rather than mixing the instruments and vocals in the console, he wondered how a song would differ when mixed in the air.

He began experimenting with this technology in 1997 and wanted to discover just how much sound humans can perceive. What originally attracted researchers from all over the country, is now being compared to the advancement of moving images.

“I’ve had an undying curiosity and passion for multi-channel, immersive sound,” Mardikes says. “I’m most interested in the sound an audience member is hearing that sounds like real life.”

With the help of graduate students

from around the world, Mardikes tested this method at the BlackBox theater in 2015. This venue allowed listeners to hear shapes and patterns through air mixing for the first time. Two years later, the Sound Mandala grew to a 40-speaker room in a small office next to Mardikes’ at UMKC, which is no longer standing.

Just as the Tibetan monks precisely place grains of sand into their spiral mandala designs, each sound is carefully curated for a specific time and space, allowing audio to take shape and immerse anyone listening.

Mardikes’ background in theater and sound design informs where he places the audio to steer the audience’s reaction, whether it’s making the hair stand on the back of their neck or feeling like they are orbiting in space.

“The experience or feeling you have is really dependent on the track,” Mardikes says. “You can have more undulating music for dialogues or more textured sound that

could stir a different reaction, depending on what you want your audience to feel.”

With the technology directly deprived from Kansas City, the Sound Mandala will be debuting locally at the KC Fringe Festival, the largest celebration of arts and culture in town. This showing will include pop, rock, jazz, and Celtic tracks, and several short, dialogue scenes. With double the speakers on the ceiling, floor, and wall, the audience can be some of the first people to take part in this new way of experiencing one of their five senses.

“Immersed in a symphony of orchestrated sounds emanating from various locations, altered my perception of size and space, evoking smells, memories, and vivid visuals,” Executive Director of the KC Fringe Festival Audrey Crabtree says. “This kind of immersive experience aligns perfectly with our mission at the KC Fringe Festival, where we strive to celebrate the innovative and unique arts in Kansas City.”

The Fringe Festival is just the beginning as Mardikes has many ideas for what this project may become. With the ability to mix any genre of music, and tell any type of story, permanent Sound Mandala structures could begin to pop up around Kansas City and beyond.

Spaces like museums, galleries, and haunted houses could create a new level of immersion for eventgoers with this technology, and could even be used alongside visual storytelling with dance and film.

“I’m mostly focused on what we can do with audio right now, but eventually, we could add and get a really visually immersive experience,” Mardikes says. “That isn’t the focus right now, and I don’t think it necessarily needs to be tied to a visual.”

While there are samples on the Sound Mandala website, none hold a candle to the experience within the vessel. With speakers on every surface, Mardikes plans to bring an experience to remember at the KC Fringe Festival, July 18-28.

Photos by Ellen Beshuk

cent of Rumors-era Fleetwood Mac or a guitar-slinging Gallagher brother. The Greeting Committee’s story isn’t malicious, but rather one of the growing pains most of us face during our respective quarter-life crises.

“I’m very aware that I would never want to put something out that makes somebody feel hurt or betrayed. I do think that’s just like general respect,” Sartino says. Former guitarist, Brandon Yangmi, even got a “warning” text about the album name, “and he just kind of laughed at the album title,” telling Sartino, “Damn you really went there. You always knew how to pull from what you were going through.”

“The original four-piece did therapy. It wasn’t a decision that anyone took lightly. At the end of the day, mental health, happiness, and safety all need to be prioritized,” Sartino says.

“I wouldn’t say this album is necessarily directly about us parting ways with our two previous band members. Maybe even more so actually, our manager from the beginning, just some very core people within our group, within our community that had sort of gone away for all different reasons,” says Turcotte about the various “goodbyes” that inspired this album.

Take Offs and Landings

THE GREETING COMMITTEE’S LATEST LP TURNS INFINITELY INWARD

By Kaylynn Mullins

“I think the way that life is, at least for me, is just constantly getting hit in the face,” The Greeting Committee lead singer Addie Sartino says. “And it’s like, cool, just keep walking. What else are you gonna do?”

It’s been quite the decade for Kansas City natives The Greeting Committee. 10 years after its formation in Overland Park, the original four-member band was known for its youthful angst, stories of first loves, and lively guitars and rhythms. Now a decade later, the band has won over the hearts of Kansas City, and even the country. Despite their success, hard times fell on the band when two founding members disbanded shortly after the release of their 2022 album Dandelion

Founding members—vocalist Addie Sartino and bassist Pierce Turcotte—have

withstood the revolving door of bandmates. The duo channeled all the grief, heartbreak, and excessive self-reflection that came with the transformation to create their first independent record Everyone’s Gone And I Know I’m The Cause, which will be released on June 21.

“I feel like this new record sort of encompasses all those different feelings of change,” Turcotte says.

Many day-one fans may speculate about the band’s new faces, sound, and direction following the founding guitarist and drummer’s departure. It begs the question, “What even is a band?” Music, genre, and bands have consistently broken away from the boxes people place them in. Whether it’s Beyoncé going country, or Tame Impala being a one-man psychedelic ensemble, any harsh definition doesn’t fare well in art.

Sartino and Turcotte easily could have gone their separate ways and created their own careers in music, but they remain intertwined with the transcendent soul of The Greeting Committee.

“I’m not gonna abandon something that I’ve put so much of myself into, I wouldn’t even know how to do that. So it’s always just one foot in front of the other,” Sartino says. “I think that’s what plays a huge role in us continuing and trudging forward, despite, and in spite, of whatever changes get thrown our way. We love the community that we’ve built and the community that has built us.” Now backed by guitarist Noah Spencer and drummer Micah Ritchie, The Greeting Committee ushers in a new age for the band.

When people hear about bands parting ways, they typically picture fallouts reminis-

Everyone’s Gone And I Know I’m The Cause shows fans a different side of The Greeting Committee. Their previous work followed a more traditional indie sound, with excitable guitars backing passionate vocals about the melodrama of early adulthood. The lead single “popmoneyhits” takes on the guitar loops of The 1975, with the catchy chorus of a Charli XCX hit—definitely a change from the acoustic love ballad, “Hands Down,” that put them on the map.

“That song is ironic and I think a lot of people miss that,” Sartino says. With lyrics about how they want to be “dirty, dirty rich” and lose themselves to get what they want, “popmoneyhits” pokes fun at the allegations of them selling out. “That song was kind of my reward to myself. I have created enough songs that I feel are emotionally intelligent and lyrically challenging. I can have this one,” Sartino says.

The pop inspirations behind the album may lead fans to think of all the bad thoughts of selling out and going mainstream. “It’s funny knowing that people are probably going to say, ‘Oh, a sellout record, this production, blah, blah, blah,’” Sartino says. “This record of all records is the one that most things come from that living room in Kansas City.”

Sartino and Turcotte lived together for nine months here in KC, working from the production station—a small desk littered with various synths and a computer.

The track “Cyclical” sets the tone for the major themes of the album, which has a very After Laughter by Paramore feel, deceptively happy guitars, and rhythms with soul-crushing lyrics. Almost like the ran-

Photo by Tyler Krippaehne

dom wave of loneliness that hits you after being overserved at a party. “I think that’s where it creatively clicked into, ‘Okay, this is what this album is about,’” Turcotte says. “This is actually what the album has to be about,” Sartino adds. “Because my body is saying and screaming, ‘This is what we’re gonna go through. This is what we’re going to heal.’”

Major life changes, finding your footing in your career, and saying difficult goodbyes all contribute to the miserably exciting era of a person’s twenties. The album alludes to all the hardships of the comingof-age’s final stages, which almost everyone can relate to. “This is not a unique, original experience. It’s something that’s kind of an inevitable feat of life,” Sartino says. “I think, to me, that is a part of the healing. Sharing it with other people, because that is how I realize that I’m not alone.”

Even when we cognitively understand that we aren’t the only person to have faced a certain emotion, or experienced a particular grievance, it’s only human to still feel isolated in a moment. “All Alone” will be the most familiar track on the album, as it could easily fit into previous records like Dandelion. However, there’s an overwhelming somberness that can only come from a place of maturity. The sound is a dangerous mix for anyone on the verge of breaking no contact.

Something that The Greeting Com-

mittee excels in is the essential love songs. Many fan-favorite tracks include songs like “Elise” or “Hands Down,” which make you teary-eyed when you’re in love, and absolutely sob if you’re heartbroken. Despite all the turbulence throughout the album, romance found its way into the tracklist.

R&B’s sensual melodies and piano find their way onto the record in “Sex and Taxes.” “I don’t think my grandma will like that title,” Turcotte says. The band brought on an outside artist, Charlie Burg, to create this track. “I don’t think we could have done this just me and Addie. He really set a very different vibe with just his keyboard playing,” he says.

Outside artists influenced and assisted in the creation of some of the tracks, and worked to explore the more pop-based writing and production. Indie band Flipturn appears on “Where’d All My Friends Go?” and Coin’s Chase Lawrence helped write “A Little Bit More,” as well as “How It Goes.” “I thought that was really fun. It’s nice to work on a song with a complete stranger, then kind of wave goodbye, and then continue working on the rest of the record without them,” Turcotte says. “Maybe it’s the lack of attachment. It feels very freeing.”

When asked about what sets this album apart from previous Greeting Committee works, Sartino says, “I think all of those pieces of work are kind of built off of four

people disagreeing with each other. And I think something really beautiful came out of that. This album is what it looks like when two people are really united in what they’re trying to do.”

Turcotte and Sartino shared the same mindset of wanting to break the rigid nature of a genre or a certain persona. “I think some of that freedom to write with a more pop mindset comes from putting in the time doing the really sad and vicious,” Sartino says. “I think having done that really allowed for us to say, ‘Okay, we’ve done that, it’s okay to try something new.’”

This August, The Greeting Committee will return to KC at the Midland Theatre for a special 10-year anniversary show. With more upbeat, dance-worthy tracks on the new album, fans can expect a damn good time. “There’s definitely an intention to try and write more visceral feeling music. I want the songs to rip when we play on tour,” Turcotte says.

The homecoming marks a big milestone for the band. “Oh, gosh, I’m so excited and nervous. I feel like I can’t even actually sit with the fact that we’re gonna play the Midland. That’s been a dream of mine for forever,” Sartino says. With a stacked lineup of Beach Bunny, Boyish, Miloe, and Caleb Hearon, there’s no doubt the show will be one fans won’t want to miss.

“I just really want to show off Kansas

City in the best way that I can. I think that’s putting on a kickass show but also rallying with different businesses, artists, and creators that we like to show what we’re about,” Sartino says. Despite their move to Nashville, Kansas City still holds a special place in the band’s heart. “It’s still my hometown, and I have all my family and I still have a lot of friends who live there. I still want to represent our hometown and feel connected to it,” Turcotte says.

The KC fanbase’s connection to the band remains incredibly strong, with a big portion of fans feeling like they grew up alongside these songs. “We were teenagers at the same time they were teenagers, and now we’re all in our 20s,” Sartino says. “There’s this specific group that really has been there for all 10 of those years.”

Everyone’s Gone And I Know I’m The Cause was released on June 21, and the big hometown show will be at The Midland on August 17. The new Greeting Committee era will provide a wonderful whirlwind summer for new and old fans. Whether you need a song to strut on the treadmill, serenade a paramour, or throw a pity party for yourself on your kitchen floor, this new record will provide the perfect soundtrack for all the big, scary feelings. Fans can rest assured that The Greeting Committee’s journey will continue, and Kansas City will remain as the pumping heart of the band.

World Class Lass

By Nina Cherry

On a Thursday night in late May, the rainy weather finally let up and I enjoyed a rare no-cover night at The Ship. At the West Bottoms venue, vocalist Eboni Fondren and her quartet performed to a crowd of doom scrollers and first dates who mostly seemed not to realize that the performance was top-notch.

Fondren was joined by Chris Hazelton, who hauled out his Hammond B3 organ, drummer Danny Rojas, and guitarist Jamie Anderson. I listened closely as the vocalist and her band delivered a lively and outstanding show.

As I scanned the room that evening, observing the smallish crowd, it felt as though I was in on some sort of secret: Fondren is one of many world-class talents that Kansas City is fortunate to have right at their fingertips.

The singer is a performer in a classic sense. It doesn’t matter if there are three or three hundred people in the audience, she will still reliably bring every ounce of charisma, energy, and warmth to the stage. Fondren looks as if she stepped out of a vintage jazz concert poster—akin to the style of Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald—and that’s part of what draws her loyal followers in. She’s always turning looks and bringing an inviting and affirming presence to the

stage, whether with her quartet at The Ship or headlining with the Kansas City Jazz Orchestra at the Kauffman Center.

Fondren’s Thursday night gig in KC’s West Bottoms was a stark contrast from her performances this past spring, where the songstress played for attentive listeners at packed clubs in Paris and was highly praised for her talent.

“After spending a month in Paris, where they really love, respect, and appreciate American jazz music, then coming back to a town that is the birthplace of bebop and not really feeling the love so much, it’s really hard,” Fondren says.

EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON

In early 2020, Fondren was eagerly preparing to head to Paris for a string of performances. The trip was scheduled to be the Kansas City performer’s third time in France within the past five years. Gradually, she had built up her connections and was getting to know the scene better.

Looking forward to seeing what opportunities would come her way throughout that visit, she felt she had momentum.

When March 2020 rolled around, the pandemic ultimately canceled her plans. Instead of dining at sidewalk cafés in the fresh, spring air and scatting at late-night jazz jams, Fondren was stuck at home in KC.

Later, as the world gradually transitioned to a new normal, Fondren focused on bouncing back from the pandemic. Her dream of a Parisian adventure went on the back burner.

Fast forward to earlier this year, the singer was sorting through her email inbox when she saw a deal she couldn’t pass up: a roundtrip flight to Paris covered by her airline points. She promptly booked the flight and began making phone calls.

“Everything happens for a reason,” Fondren says.

This past March, Fondren spent the month in Paris gigging, jamming, and even recording. Quickly beloved by European audiences, the trip lit a fire within her.

LIVE FROM UPTOWN LOUNGE

Throughout her dozen-year professional career, Fondren has yet to release an album. Now, her debut album is scheduled to be released on July 23. The project was

recorded live this past January, exactly six months prior to its release date, at Uptown Lounge—a Midtown cocktail bar that was formerly Davey’s Uptown.

In the era of ample home studios and an abundance of post-production frills, Fondren’s first record showcases her for who she is: the real deal.

While she’s best known as a jazz singer, the performer’s skill set spans far and wide. She belts pop songs in a wedding band, does voiceover work, has been involved in professional theater productions, and of course, regularly swings her tail off at clubs like Corvino and The Ship.

But she says her love for so many different styles of music was one of the biggest obstacles she encountered when she began planning the recording project.

“I felt like I was all over the place because I like doing so many different things,” Fondren says. “But Kadesh Flow told me ‘just record.’ That was the best piece of advice. It really helped me get over the hump and just do it.”

The 11-track LP showcases a bit of everything in her wheelhouse, including varied approaches to jazz standards, sometimes swinging and straight-ahead, while contemporary at other times. Much like her chic fashion sense, Fondren’s interpreta-

SONGSTRESS EBONI FONDREN SET TO RELEASE DEBUT ALBUM

Photo Courtesy of Heirloom Photo Company

tions of standards are simultaneously classic and modern.

The singer also highlights her songwriting skills. While two of the album’s three originals were previously recorded as a featured artist on last year’s Kansas City Jazz Orchestra album In the Key of KC, her latest recordings of the tunes are significantly pared down from the big band recordings.

Fondren’s forthcoming album is a community effort, featuring quite the cast

colleagues and friends, including Chris Hazelton’s screaming Hammond B3. which had me wanting to hop on the dance floor while listening in my car, and once again, drummer Rojas. United by their shared mentorship under DeVan, their shared “schooling” and longtime bond shines through in a funky presentation of another Ellington tune—“Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me”—which also spotlights a bit of scatting from the singer and a sax solo from

“HEPUTMEONTHEBANDSTAND, TAUGHT ME ALL THE THINGS I KNOW,ANDSHOWEDMEHOW TOSCAT.ANDHEREIAM.”

of collaborators from several different band iterations.

The energetic opening track, “One Million Five,” exemplifies her work as, not just a singer, but as a storyteller. The original song is a tribute to her mentor—late organist Everette DeVan—and a fictionalized retelling of how she got her nickname for always looking “better than a million bucks.”

“He put me on the bandstand, taught me all the things I know, and showed me how to scat,” Fondren says. “And here I am.”

Fondren brings down the house with “Ain’t Nobody Like My Baby”—a homage of sorts to the historically often risqué local jazz legend Julia Lee. Lined with the blues, the singer’s growling love song emanates the classic Kansas City jazz style and shows off her rich low range alongside pianist Mark Lowrey, bassist James Albright, and drummer Danny Rojas.

The singer’s latest original, “Hollow,” diverges from her other compositions. The soul-jazz heartbreak ballad featuring Ezgi Karakus on cello, Lowrey’s empathetic piano accompaniment, bassist Sam Eckhoff, and Rojas’ percussion—is lush, dynamic, and wailing.

“I cried the first time we all played it together,” Fondren says. “That’s the one I’m most scared for people to hear.”

On “Angel Eyes,” the singer is joined by her latest core band. Eckhoff’s funky electric bass, with a tight Jaco Pastorius-esque tone, and Lowrey appear on “Angel Eyes.” Fondren released the neo-soul spin on Matt Dennis’ nearly eighty-year-old ballad in April as a single from the album.

Swinging hard on Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s standard “Satin Doll” are deft, young players—bassist Jordan Faught, pianist Parker Woolworth, and drummer Andrew Wray. Faught and Woolworth were consistent members of Fondren’s house band at her former Tuesday night jam session at Uptown Lounge.

Fondren also features her longtime

Ian Corbett. Corbett also recorded, mixed, and mastered the album.

“I’m a collector of people,” Fondren says.

CONFIRMING THE CLOUT

Fondren has more music on the way. During her month-long stay in Paris, the singer recorded another full-length album. Collaborating with Laurent Marode, the French pianist and arranger orchestrated tunes tailor-made for Fondren and his chamber orchestra Nonette—a nine-member ensemble that combines a jazz quintet and a four-piece string section.

Fondren hopes to release the album this fall, following with a corresponding European release and tour.

While Fondren is certainly beloved at home in KC, the appreciation she felt abroad—in a region where art is viewed as essential—was an appreciated change. She played in standing-room-only clubs, watching intergenerational crowds cheer as she announced the next standard in her setlist. Other Kansas City jazz musicians, such as trumpeter Hermon Mehari and vocalist Deborah Brown, have also found more appreciation and popularity overseas than they did in the States.

Despite her success, the singer says that, like many creatives, she still struggles with impostor syndrome. The tour served as a much-needed affirmation.

“I just have to keep telling myself, ‘You deserve this. You’ve worked hard,’” Fondren says. “But sometimes it’s nice to go to a place and have all of those things confirmed.”

Now, Fondren feels she has more direction than ever before in the past dozen years of her career and is hopeful that her future will include more time on the road.

“I’m focused on moving into the next phase of my career,” Fondren says.

ATTEMPTS AT A COVER-UP

MITCH THOMPSON’S BLIND COVERS

PROJECT SPARKS A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE OF POP’S POWER

By Nick Spacek

The youTube series Blind Covers started nearly ten years ago as a way for Kansas City native Mitch Thompson to deal with the frustrations of trying to break into the film industry in los Angeles. The premise is simple: Thompson gives a band or artist the lyrics to an existing song with no other information, and the musicians have one hour to create their own song using said lyrics. The results are wildly different, with rapper Cuee taking on pop-punkers Four Year Strong, indie-rocker Chris Farren tackling the White Stripes, and The Get Up Kids’ Matt Pryor covering Regina Spektor, to only name but a few, yet they’re always entertaining.

Nearly 17,000 subscribers are now following the program on YouTube alone.

As the show has gone along, its release schedule has ebbed and flowed, attracting interest from studios and labels interested in monetizing the program. Taking inspiration from the likes of Tech N9ne, Thompson instead opted for creative control over financial security and decided at the end of 2019 that the following year would be “the year of Blind Covers.”

Plans for 2020 didn’t pan out for most folks, especially those wanting to do creative endeavors such as cramming a bunch of people into a room and hanging out for an entire day.

“I bought really nice cameras,” Thompson says. “I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to have a plan. This is the year I really pour myself into it,’ and it just went away.”

Thompson was left sitting at home, unable to work as a propmaker and prop master, just thinking about the show. One of the things he thought about was the fact that he knew it could be more than what it was, and that it would be more, but he just hadn’t had the chance yet. It wasn’t until Christmas of 2022 that an opportunity would present itself to bring Blind Covers back, and in a way of which he’d always dreamed.

“Before this was all happening, we always shot our Los Angeles episodes with Mitchell Haeuszer, who just had a home studio where he was renting, and would let us come in, set up lights, shoot for the day, and he would take a day rate,” Thompson says.

In 2022, Thompson had a Christmas party and invited Haeuszer. Haeuszer then invited Thompson to a living room showcase he was having, with artists playing a

couple of songs.

“It was just this cool little communal thing that he loves to do,” Thompson says. “Since I had been there, he had fully redecorated the living room and I started thinking, God, you can shoot in here and it would look really nice.”

A little while later, Thompson took Haeuszer out to lunch and asked the recording engineer if he could retrofit Haeuszer’s living room to be a standing set, as part of bringing back Blind Covers. As Thompson explains, one of the biggest issues with the original set of episodes was the sheer amount of time it took to set up lights and set the stage so that the artists could perform in a place that didn’t look slapdash.

Unfortunately, that production value would add an hour and a half of setup and teardown to the beginning and end of each day, resulting in 14-15-hour stints. In an effort to find a location where the Blind Covers crew could just walk in, flip switches, and get to work, Thompson asked Haeuszer if his home would be available.

“I was just like, ‘Basically, can I renovate your studio if you let us shoot in there?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, of course, sure.’ I don’t think he realized the extent to which I was going to disassemble his studio,” Thompson says.

Thompson would then literally tear said studio down to its studs and rebuild it, to the point of burning out a vacuum in the process. In the end, Haeuszer was so impressed after a month of work by Thompson that he ended up coming on as a producer to ensure that Blind Covers would continue to happen.

Because film work is a freelance business, Thompson often has long stretches without work, so he was used to kicking into what he calls “gotta find a project” mode. That means, when it hit February 2023 and no work had started for Thompson or anyone else, the creator hit a breaking point.

“I was like, ‘I need something to pour my hyper-focus into, or I will go crazy,’” he says. “I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have this.”

However, there is a silver lining: With Thompson having that much time to sit and think about Blind Covers and work on it, all that thought made it easier to come back. However, he’s willing to admit that it’s not 100% great.

“I definitely think it is fully a blessing and a curse,” Thompson continues. “It’s great when I’m able to take in lots of different art and inspiration and stuff, but if I’m just sitting alone with nothing to do and it runs in a circle, that’s where I get in trouble.”

The freedom of the project being fully in his hands took the Blind Covers creator back to what he was doing in film school at the University of Missouri.

“When I was at Mizzou, there wasn’t really a production track, so it was just me and a bunch of friends being like, ‘All right, what are we shooting? We all really want

to make movies. Let’s bang out a script or a sketch or a fake commercial,’” Thompson says. “‘Let’s figure out what resources we can get together and let’s shoot it.’”

Thompson says that he doesn’t think he and his friends realized at the time that what they were doing was basically learning how to produce. He calls it “The Muppet effect.”

“The first two Muppet movies are like, let’s get this weird band of misfits together and make a show,” Thompson says. “That’s always where the Muppets work best for me—when it’s like, these are a bunch of fucking weirdos. These people are insane, and if they did any other job, it would be a nightmare, but because they found each other, and because they all have this weird drive and they all have different skills that they bring to the table.”

Essentially, this is what Thompson has been chasing his whole life: “How can I get to hang out and make stuff with my friends? And, yeah, if I can get paid for it, that would be great,” he says.

The renewed enthusiasm is readily apparent in the new episodes of Blind Covers. While seeing the end result is the whole point of the show—with an artist taking a song in a direction wholly unexpected, and then their response to hearing the original track—the show really succeeds, due to Thompson’s pure and unfettered love for music and bringing out that love in the artists who appear on the show.

A discussion with indie rocker Talker sees her deeply and enthusiastically discussing just what records you put on at the end of a party when it’s just the stragglers, and her certainty that Khruangbin and “instrumental, vibey shit” is what works is pure joy to watch. Thompson respects these folks, and you can see them opening up in really delightful ways.

“I think that that is core to it,” Thompson says. “These artists are trusting us not only with their time but literally with their creative life—what pays their bills in a lot of cases—and I want to give them the most comfortable space to operate in because, ultimately, the show lives or dies by what the artists are able to do in that hour. If I am not putting myself out there and taking creative risks, why would I expect them?”

At the end of the day, Thompson hopes to create an environment wherein everyone acknowledges the goofiness and low-stakes atmosphere, using it to create something where the creators and the viewers end up having fun as it goes along.

“Let’s just play together and see what we can do with it,” Thompson says. “It’s giving them a comforting space, and then, a lot of times, the artists themselves are amazed by what they can do in that hour.”

Blind Covers drops a new episode on the first Friday of every month on their YouTube channel and can be found on Facebook at Facebook.com/BlindCovers.

The renewed enthusiasm is readily apparent in the new episodes of Blind Covers. While seeing the end result is the whole point of the show— with an artist taking a song in a direction wholly unexpected, and then their response to hearing the original track— the show really succeeds, due to Thompson’s pure and unfettered love for music and bringing out that love in the artists who appear on the show.

Photos Courtesy of Blind Covers

HATCHET JOB

By Brock Wilbur

last year, Kansas City got a chance to witness the spectacle and scale of a new opera, based on Stephen King’s novel The Shining. Sharing a title with the book, the show adapts the directly from the 1977 horror novel, pulling narratives and character arcs that divert (at points sharply) from the 1980 Kubrick film.

While English language operas—and modern operas in general—have a difficult time finding footing with the medium’s traditional audience, this sprawling, epic tale of tortured psychological trauma and addiction/abuse cycles made a horrifying debut on stage at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.

For those in attendance last year for the limited run of three shows, there was a surprise waiting right at the start of the show: an announcement that these performances were being recorded. Yes, the KC show was captured to serve as the official, original, worldwide debut cast recording of

the opera—which had seen several productions since 2016.

Debut cast recordings of a show are, obviously, a huge deal. Most musicals and operas will only get one official release, and Paul Moravec and Mark Campbell’s opera The Shining this will forever belong to a performance (and audience) in KC. We’ve yet to track down any other musical or opera to have its original cast recording captured in this region—making this release an impressive feather in our city’s cap on the international arts stage. Even for those who have never seen an opera, this is the kind of thing we should all have a chance to feel civic pride around.

Also marking the singular nature of this release, it’s wild to hear a full show recording for a new work taken from a live recording. Everything that made this final release was taken from the stage at Kauffman. The opening seconds of the album include the sound of a car’s engine chugging along, as

the family vehicle on stage pulls up to the Overlook Hotel. It’s almost distractingly outside of the box to have a show documented with all the sound effects and a live audience included, especially in the opera space. But again: this all serves to further cement this record’s place in KC history.

Deborah Sandler Kemper (General Director of the Lyric Opera) explains that one of the best recording teams in the biz was brought in to handle things, but that the audience did require some coaxing to take a chance on this. “I don’t watch sicko movies,” she says, of having never seen the Kubrick film, and taking some shit from her kids over it. “I don’t like the way Jack Nicholson looks in that. No thank you. But the opera regulars who came out to take a chance on this really seemed to understand exactly what this was going for, with unyielding foreboding instead of blood and guts.”

The all-star cast included Edward Parks and Kelly Kaduce. Making his Lyric Op-

era of Kansas City debut, Gerard Schwarz, the internationally renowned (14 Grammy Awards and eight Emmy Awards) American conductor, conducted the Kansas City Symphony. Baritones Aubrey Allicock and Malcolm MacKenzie, and tenor Roger Honeywell also made their Lyric Opera debuts.

The digital recording is available for streaming on all the usual outlets, but we recommend the physical copies in an elaborately designed clamshell with bonus content. You can track those down at the Kauffman Center Box Office.

Photos by Ken Howard

Help keep your family and friends healthy this summer: BE SAFE

• Follow the SkyCast at AirQKC.org for the air quality forecast

• Schedule outdoor activities before 10 a.m. or after 7 p.m.

• Tell caregivers about SkyCast and the health risks of air pollution

• Support older adults, children and those with asthma, emphysema or other respiratory problems

REDUCE POLLUTION

• Reduce vehicle emissions: Walk, bike, carpool or ride the bus

• Reduce evaporated fuel: Gas up after 7 p.m. and stop when the pump clicks

• Reduce fuel use: String errands into one well-ordered trip and avoid hauling unnecessary weight

• Drive efficiently: Use cruise control and avoid rapid starts and stops

THE PITCH EVENTS

July 2024 Calendar

ONGOING

July 9-14

Disney’s The Little Mermaid, Starlight Theatre

July 10-12

Art of the Imagination

Summer Camp, National Museum Of Toys And Miniatures

July 19 and 20

Summer Chill Art & Craft

Expo, The Pavilion at John Knox Village

July 31-August 3

Leavenworth County Fair, Leavenworth County

July 23-August 4

Moulin Rouge, Music Hall

EVENTS

July 2

JJ Grey & Mofro, Knuckleheads

July 3

Independence Day (Film), Screenland Armour Theatre Red, White, & Bluhawk, Bluhawk

July 4

Stars and Stripes Picnic, National WWI Museum and Memorial

Tyler Booth, Power & Light Lenexa Freedom Run/ Community Days Parade, Lenexa

Four on the Fourth, Ward Parkway

4th of July Celebration, Downtown Parkville

Liberty 4th Fest, Capitol Federal Sports Complex of Liberty

Red, White, & Blue Springs, Blue Springs South High School

July 4th Fireworks, College Boulevard Activity Center Olathe

Platte City 4th of July, Platte City Independence Day, Baldwin City Golf Course

Smithville Fireworks Show, Smith’s Fork Park

Star-Spangled Spectacular, Corporate Woods Office

Founders’ Park

CarrollTON’s of Fun Day, Carrollton Recreation Park 4th of July Celebration & Bike Parade, Deanna Rose Children’s Farmstead Independence Day, Missouri Town Living History Museum De Soto Celebration, Riverfest Park

July 6

David Marshall, KC Wine Co. Kenny Chesney with Zac Brown Band, GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium

July 7

Totally Tubular Festival w/ Thomas Dolby and Men Without Hats, Grinders KC

July 11

Mitchell Tenpenny, Power & Light

Fireworks: 1860s Style!, Mahaffie Stagecoach Stop & Farm

July 12

Wallflowers, Liberty Hall Friday Flamingle: Christmas In July, Kansas City Zoo & Aquarium

July 13

AnnaLee and the So & So’s, Downtown Raytown Greenspace homesick. New Paintings & Old Photographs, Alcott Arts Center

Legends of Whiskey Festival, Children’s Mercy Park

Yelawolf & Prof, Grinders KC

July 14

The Beach Boys, Uptown Theater

July 15

Barbie: The Movie in Concert, Starlight Theatre

July 16

Niall Horan, Starlight Theatre

July 18

Festival of Butterflies, Powell Gardens

Randall King, Power & Light Bowling for Soup, The Truman

July 19

Royals vs White Sox: Teachers Night, Kauffman Stadium

Pride Concert featuring Alex Newell, Folly Theater

July 21

Jason Mraz, Starlight Theatre Lawn Party, Country Club Plaza

Down Dog Yoga, Casual Animal Brewing Company

July 22

Vampire Weekend, Starlight Theatre

Tesla, The Truman

Maren Morris, The Midland

July 26

Olivia Rodrigo, T-Mobile Center

July 27

Chalk Walk, The Concourse Park

Sarah Sherman, The Truman

July 28

GM & Corvette Car Show for Children’s Mercy, 19100 E. Valley View Pkwy

July 31

Charley Crockett, The Midland

July

25 The Room + Big Shark with Greg Sestero

Screenland Armour Theatre

Widely known as one of the “worst movies ever made,” Tommy Wiseau’s The Room will be screened at the Screenland Armour Theatre for its 20th anniversary, featuring live commentary and a Q&A with actor Greg Sestero. Sestero is also known for his critically-acclaimed 2013 memoir, The Disaster Artist, which details the film’s tumultuous development and production. The book was later adapted into a film of the same name starring and directed by James Franco. Sestero also recently appeared in the 2020 Netflix miniseries The Haunting of Bly Manor. After The Room screening, Sestero will present Tommy Wiseau’s 2023 film Big Shark for its Kansas City debut. Big Shark follows three firefighters—Georgie, Patrick, and Tim—who must save New Orleans from a gigantic shark. Like The Room, the film stars Sestero along with Wiseau himself. In addition to providing live commentary and a Q&A, Sestero will offer a meetand-greet opportunity for filmgoers after the screening. To purchase tickets or find more information about the screening, visit screenland.com.

July 31

The last Dinner Party

The Truman

British Indie band The Last Dinner Party will be coming to Kansas City at the end of the month to perform their latest record Prelude to Ecstasy. The female and queer-led band has had a massive year with hits “Sinner” and “Nothing Matters” taking off so quickly that they’ve faced industry plant allegations. After touring with Hozier last year as an opening act, they will be kicking off their solo American leg right here in KC. With their campy aesthetics and Kate Bush-inspired tracks, the show will definitely not be one to miss. Tickets are selling now, and they’re selling fast. Be sure to get yours before it’s too late.

Photo Courtesy of Greg Sestero

Photo Courtesy of Island Records

HOT AND BOTHERED HARMONIES

Music has been part of humanity’s culture for at least 40,000 years. Music, dancing, and singing are a part of us on a primal level. For millennia, people have used the universal language of music to express emotions and enhance intimacy with their lovers, with musicians often playing their instruments to impress and attract their partners long before Kens or rock stars existed. This deep connection between music and sexual energy offers a fascinating exploration into how melodies and rhythms can set the mood, impact our psychological state, and even improve sexual health or education.

Using music as a gateway for accessing pleasure is ancient. The oldest song about sex was written in Mesopotamia around 2300 BCE by Enheduanna—a woman who was the world’s first historically recognized author. The “Hymn to Inanna”—the Goddess of war, love, and fertility—includes explicit references as part of its religious and ritualistic devotion to Inanna. It’s less smutty and more battle cry, because she’s singing about fertility and banging after verses about slaying her enemies.

Learning about sex from music is and

the Cleveland Clinic. Work, family, and time pressures can mount up, causing some folks to deprioritize pleasure. It’s hard to feel in the mood when you’re stressed the fuck out in this economy and feeling the aches and pains of life or a disability.

Dr. Emily Nagoski’s research gave us the “dual control model”, showing that many of us need the right context to be ready for sexy time. We need both the brakes re-

Collaborate with your lover on genres or specific songs to co-curate a playlist that gets your body and mind engaged. Choose songs together that make you want to move, touch, and vibe with another body—gooey songs, sultry songs, explicit songs. “I always have sex to music, it sets the mood, increases the sensory experience, and makes it feel almost cinematic,” musician and Playboy Model Cassie Taylor says.

“The connection between sex and music is fascinating. Both are linked to the release of dopamine.”

leased and the gas pedal pushed to be ready for intimacy. While music or dancing won’t solve all of life’s issues, both can help relieve stress, giving us more space to allow desire and pleasure to thrive. Go for a walk, workout, clean, or drive home to your favorite genre or playlist that puts your mind at ease and revs your engine so you can be more present for a pleasure session.

Discuss songs you love and what yummy sensations they evoke for each of you. “One of my all-time favorite songs is D’Angelo’s ‘Untitled,’” Taylor says. “The way the song builds feels like a music climax.” Bacon raises the question: ”Is Sade a genre?”

has been common. Robert Plant taught us about anal in “Whole Lotta Love.” Musician and 90.9 The Bridge personality Michelle Bacon says, “I remember seeing the video for “Red Light Special” by TLC when I was probably 10 or 11 and didn’t totally understand what I was feeling at the time.”

Music can create a visceral reaction in our bodies. “The word frisson comes to mind,” for Dr. Norelyn Parker when she thinks about the tie between sex and music. “It’s a French term for ‘aesthetic chills’ or ‘shivers’ that are experienced as waves of pleasure across the skin and up the spine. Some researchers even refer to it as a ‘skin orgasm,’” she says.

Sex and couples therapist Mieke Doornick says, “The connection between sex and music is fascinating. Both are linked to the release of dopamine—a neurotransmitter associated with the brain’s reward system. Listening to music can evoke a pleasurable experience similar to that of sexual activity, and the idea of combining the two is quite intriguing. Double the dopamine whammy!”

One of the top causes attributed to a low/lowered libido is stress, according to

Music can help people get out of their heads, especially if they have anxiety over sex noises—your breathing, licking sounds, or a squeaky bed frame. It can also serve as white noise if you’re concerned about your kids or neighbors hearing anything. Using a playlist to escalate the energy or slow it down can delight your lover, especially one who digs edging.

Having a beat to match can help keep pace for some sex acts. It can go to a weird place if you’re selecting songs based solely on rhythm and not taking lyrics or melody into consideration. Take, for example, the viral Reddit post by user TylerLife, where he shared with the whole world that Hudson Mohawke’s “Cbat” was the inspo beat for his coital thrust timing. I’m not gonna kink shame the guy—The worst I can say is he didn’t read the room and his girlfriend shouldn’t have waited two years to speak up! Word to the wise—collaborate.

“As a sex coach, I see fulfilling sexual experiences having less to do with technique and more to do with cultivating the trust with self and others where one can explore our edges the way a good dubstep song teaches us to enjoy the build and to fully surrender into the drop,” Parker says. It’s not the song or beat you should rely upon, but it should be about how the song makes you and your lover feel.

Music that makes you move your body and release your pelvic floor or root chakra—however you define it—can help your body both release stress or anxiety you’re holding on to and make space for something else, like sex and pleasure. Moving to music you enjoy increases blood flow, promotes good circulation (including for your genitals), and produces feel-good neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin, plus the combo can be a pain reliever. Listening to music can also make your body release less cortisol (the stress hormone) and alleviate fatigue.

Do you need to get back in touch with desire in your life? Feeling more like the Sahara Desert and less like Niagara Falls? Try connecting to music in some way, such as listening to a playlist curated online, going to a music store and perusing as they spin tunes for customers, or going see a band play a live show. Dance in the kitchen to music on your phone. Move your booty. Sing along. Try to embody the sensuality you hear in the music with your voice or movements—anything to get your brain and/or body engaged.

You can find Kristen @OpenTheDoorsKC on Instagram or openthedoorscoaching com. Check out her podcast Keep Them Coming.

Photo by Nicole Bissey. Illustrations by Shelby Phelps

Arts and KCrafts

NORTHEAST ARTS KC ADDS A SPLASH OF COLOR

By Beth Lipoff

first come, first served. Details can be found at northeastartskc.org.

And if you’re not feeling artistic but want to contribute, Koop says they always need volunteers for the event.

During the height of the pandemic, the group kept Chalk Walk afloat by distributing chalk to individuals to draw on the pavement at their own homes, then hosting an online

gallery of photos of the art people made. The organization promotes more than one type of art. Its scope includes everything from visual and performing arts to beautifying the area through planting a community garden.

Taking advantage of the warm weather, the big annual performing arts event is the SummerDusk concert series, with upcoming shows on July 19 and Aug. 16, both starting at 7 p.m., at The Concourse Park. Koop says the series is the group’s longest-running program.

July’s performance features harpist Calvin Arsenia, while August will have trombonist Trevor Turla. The concerts bring “a good vibe” to the neighborhood, Hobart says.

“It’s fun to see the kids playing around and laughing. That’s good for the soul. I’ve seen that firsthand in the neighborhood. People wander by and say, ‘Hey what’s happening here? Let’s hang out for a while.’ It builds conversations and positive energy in a really tangible way,” he says.

Summer isn’t the only time Northeast Arts KC is connecting the community with art. It helps organize and provide materials for classes and workshops with local artists throughout the year.

“They do live drawing classes. We have one guy doing a doodle class. It’s a 12-foot sheet of paper, 30 inches wide, with the community adding their doodles, drawings, and coloring it all in,” Koop says.

Over the past two years, they’ve organized open studio events for local artists, giving them opportunities to display and sell their work at the Economic Growth Gallery and the Pendleton Arts Block. Last year, approximately 12 artists participated, but Koop hopes to get more this year.

“It exposes our community to the talent that’s already here and also engages the community with art,” Koop says.

They occasionally do an Arty Barter informal meet-up—open to all—where artists can trade or sell extra materials.

With so many different outlets for arts, the group hopes to reach a wide variety of people.

“I think ultimately it just opens people’s eyes to things their friends and neighbors are doing or can do. Maybe they didn’t realize there was so much talent in the neighborhood,” Hobart says.

Photos Courtesy of Northeast