Cultural shorts

Wichita's Haymakers will celebrate the release of Live At Art Church this weekend with a Sunday afternoon gig at The Brickyard. The CD collects some of the group's most popular live favorites and spotlights the longstanding musical relationship between founding members Tom Page and Dustin Arbuckle. The band recorded a show at Art Church in Malvern, Iowa. It's a venue that both Arbuckle and Page say they enjoy returning to while on tour with the band. The pair recently discussed two of the album's 10 songs. I wanted to talk about a song on the new record that you wrote, Tom. "Lights Along Broadway." Tom Page: It's a tribute to veterans that I've known and loved and that we've known and loved. Both of us are sons of Vietnam veterans. I was having a taco over at what is now El Patio at Central and Topeka. You may notice that there's a big red 6 in the parking lot there. At one time, that was Bill's Big 6 Burgers. Bill was a Bataan Death March survivor, and he had kind of a shrine to his

Guitarist Greg Skaff's latest album, Polaris , finds the former Wichitan and longtime New York City resident accompanied by two of the greatest living jazz players: bassist Ron Carter and drummer Albert "Tootie" Heath. Comprised of original material from Skaff as well as a bevy of standards, the record demonstrates Skaff's particular genius on his instrument, including his singular phrasing and the ability to reimagine standards in such a way that renders them new. Not a small feat, but then neither is recruiting two legends for your record and finishing the LP at the dawn of a pandemic. Polaris , as Skaff tells it, was tracked in two quick bursts of activity: The first in August 2019 and the second in March 2020, amid circumstances that were filled with levity (in the case of Carter and Heath reuniting for the first time in decades) and gravity (the arrival of COVID-19 and the fate of sessions hanging in the balance). As bandleader, Skaff has issued albums such as Ellington Boulevard

The documentary "The Truffle Hunters" follows a small group of secretive old men in the Piedmont region of Italy, who've spent their lives digging up the rare, and exceedingly expensive, white truffle. The movie looks at their quiet, quirky lives as they deal with a changing economic and global climate, and revel in the companionship of their truffle-sniffing dogs. KMUW's Fletcher Powell recently spoke with the movie's directors, Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, about how they bring the audience into this unusual world. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. FLETCHER POWELL: When I think of all of our five senses, the one that's the most difficult to convey in a movie is smell. Which is too bad, because it's also the one that biologically is the most connected to our memory and our emotions. And for you, it was something that you had to figure out because, I gather, the key to understanding the allure of truffles is smell. So, I'm curious what you talked about as you

The Wichita Orpheum Theatre reopens its doors this evening with a special performance from Wichita musician Jenny Wood. Dubbed Phoenix: Strength of the Songbird , the show includes new songs and past favorites from Wood's career with one-act plays between the material, inviting listeners to experience the inspiration for the work. Joining her on the stage will be a full band, including Kansas City musicians Katy Guillen, Stephanie Williams, and Michelle Bacon, with other special guests. Wood, who was seriously injured in a 2019 car accident in which her niece and mother were killed, began her own kind of quarantine in late 2019, focusing on her recovery and finding time to make music in solitude. She says that the time between her last performance and the one on Friday night has given her a newfound strength. It's been interesting to talk to artists over the last year and talk about creativity because I've seen everything. Some people say, "Oh man, I've never been so prolific in my

Journalist Sian-Pierre Regis and his mother, Rebecca Danigelis, became something of a minor sensation in 2017 when word got out that, following Rebecca’s sudden firing from her decades-long hotel housekeeping job, Sian-Pierre came up with a novel way to help her cope: He asked her to create a bucket list of things she’d always wanted to do, but that her job had kept her from trying. He documents their sometimes-joyful, sometimes-profound journey in the new film Duty Free , a movie they hope will shed light on the experiences of caregivers and the obstacles facing the older generation in this country. KMUW's Fletcher Powell recently spoke with Sian-Pierre Regis and Rebecca Danigelis about the shock that set their story into motion. Sian-Pierre Regis : You know, this film in a lot of ways was a cry for help on my part. When my mom lost her job and was given two weeks pay and essentially an eviction notice, I realized that her world was crumbling and that the only person that would be

When Katie Jo Oberthaler interned at KMUW as a high school student, she says she never expected to end up on the air. More specifically, she never expected that songs she'd written would wind up on the airwaves at that very same station. But her new album, Pawn Shop Queen (recorded as Katie Jo), is changing that. The record, tracked in Long Beach, California, is already earning her critical acclaim and airplay. The record itself is deeply in tune with country music of a bygone era, adorned with pedal steel guitar and the singer's authoritative and authentic voice. In some ways, it harkens to the country music that came out of Los Angeles in the early '70s via bands such as The Flying Burrito Brothers or as heard on early albums from Jackson Browne and the Eagles. But there's something that goes even further back, into the music's rural roots. The lyrics are untouched by trappings of contemporary life: There are no references to heartbreak delivered via text message or old flames

The Sundance Film Festival has helped launch some of the biggest names in filmmaking over the last three decades, including Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh, and Paul Thomas Anderson.

Self-Acceptance Speech , the new album from Old News, arrives Oct. 15 via We're Trying Records. The band's first full-length album finds guitarist/vocalist Beau Harris, drummer Max Abood and bassist Blaine Martin subverting expectations of the math rock and emo genres across material such as "Pulling Teeth," "Heads Like Projectors" and "Sunday Suit." With basic tracks recorded at Wichita's Zeptepland, the band also worked at engineer Joey Lemon's home studio, in the Lawrence Public Library and elsewhere. Will Erickson (Team Tremolo, Spirit of the Stairs) also served as an engineer with mastering from John Naclerio (My Chemical Romance, Microwave). The band was joined by close friends Josué Estrada, Sage Judd and Natalie Lade, who added their talents to the material. The LP is released digitally now with physical copies on CD and cassette to follow in the future. Harris recently spoke with KMUW from his home in Lawrence. You've made what is essentially a quarter-life crisis record. What

Oct. 9 sees the release of Forest Standards Vol.2, the new album from guitarist David Lord and his second collaboration with the BIG EGO label. As with its predecessor, Lord tracked the majority of the music in Los Angeles, then finished work at his own Air House Studios. Joining him on the sessions for the second Forest Standards collection is the core band of Jeff Parker (Tortoise, Isotope 217) on guitar, drummer Chad Taylor (Chicago Underground Duo) and bassist Billy Mohler (Dolly Parton). Sam Hake adds vibraphone throughout. These two releases find Lord moving into new musical terrain, striking out on a path that is increasingly his own and increasingly singular. Veteran music critic Bill Milkowski ( DownBeat , JazzTimes ) wrote of Lord, in 2018, "This is an inventive player freed from convention, the peer pressure of conservatories or a need to fit into any competitive big town scene. He's creating on his own terms and what this rara avis comes up with here are subversive little

Matt Wilson's 2018 LP Honey and Salt: Music Inspired by the Poetry of Carl Sandburg earned the veteran musician a Musician of the Year from the Jazz Journalist Association while the LP itself was named Record of the Year. Wilson, who is no stranger to accolades, has earned some new ones with his latest release, Hug! , credited to the Matt Wilson Quartet. Joined by his longtime collaborators Jeff Lederer (Brooklyn Blowhards, Swing N' Dix, Honey Ear Trio), Kirk Knuffke (Josh Roseman's Extended Constellations, Allison Miller's Boom Tic Boom), and Chris Lightcap (Dianne Reeves, Marc Ribot, Anthony Coleman). Featuring compositions from Gene Ammons ("The One Before"), Abdullah Ibrahim ("Jabulani") and Charlie Haden ("In the Moment"), Hug! also gives evidence of Wilson's inimitable humor and appreciation of American music's various streams, though jazz, of course, remains the primary one. Wilson recently spoke with KMUW from his home in New York state. How did this new record, Hug!, come

My Getaway is the full-length debut album from Dustin Arbuckle & The Damnations. The record features songs written primarily since the group's inception in 2017 and taps into the collective's rich confluence of musical influences, including various strands of blues, rock and jazz. Joining Arbuckle on the recording are bassist Mark Foley, guitarist Brandon Hudspeth and drummer Kendall Newby. (Caleb Drummond performs bass duties on three tracks.) Arbuckle, who spent more than a decade collaborating with guitarist Aaron Moreland in the band Moreland & Arbuckle, says that the new album serves as a kind of calling card, demonstrating the unit's musical diversity and roots-driven sound. He spoke with KMUW about the album from his home in Wichita. When did this material start coming together? We started writing some of the songs as early as the summer of 2017, right after the band came together. But over the course of about a year and a half, we got the group of songs that wound up

Storm Large will perform at Salina's Stiefel Theatre on Saturday, Feb. 8. The multi-faceted Large continues to impress with her range of talents, including acting, writing and playwriting, though singing remains central to it all. Her musical performances are dynamic, dramatic and cover a wide range of material.

The Wichita stage production of The Wiz debuts at Roxy’s Downtown next week. The show is based on the classical musical fantasy The Wizard of Oz , but with an all-black cast and an R&B and jazz score.

St. Louis-based singer-songwriter Beth Bombara will perform at Barleycorn's Tuesday, Jan. 21, on a bill with Joey Lemon and Samantha Crain. Bombara's 2019 album Evergreen earned accolades from the critical community and further established her as a recording and touring entity. She recently spoke with KMUW about the album and her ongoing friendship with Crain. At times Evergreen recalls Neil Young or Emmylou Harris albums from the '70s. Were those touchstones for you? My intention was to harken back to some of those albums. A happy medium between the cool, vibe-y stuff that was going in the '70s and now. How was it that Evergreen became the title cut? It was the song, to me, that thematically summarized what I felt like I wanted the album to be about. The energy that I wanted to put out. A more optimistic [point of view]. Life happens and I'm going to take the approach that I'm going to look at things in a positive light. Things might happen and I'm going to be constantly looking for

Though she shares a name (and manager) with blues pianist and vocalist Kelley Hunt, Kansas City-based singer-songwriter Kelly Hunt has a sound distinctly her own. The Tennessee native's songwriting is steeped in the Americana tradition — her songs spare and intimate, as heard on her debut album Even The Sparrow . Released in May 2019, the record has already earned Hunt a global audience and acclaim from outlets such as Rolling Stone and PopMatters . It was selected as a finalist for the International Folk Awards Album of The Year. Hunt performs at Barleycorn's on Thursday, Jan. 16. She spoke with KMUW from her home in Kansas City. Tell me about the process of making Even The Sparrow . This was a little bit of a longer process? It was my first attempt at making a record. I spent the better part of two-and-a-half to three years making it. A lot of that was just figuring out what that entailed. I was working full-time and recording piecemeal on weekends, just figuring out how to be in the

Nashville-based singer-songwriter Kyshona will perform at the Dyck Arboretum in Hesston Sunday, Nov. 24, as part of the Prairie Window Concert Series. The show begins at 4 p.m. Kyshona will also release the album "Listen" on Feb. 28, 2020. The former full-time music therapist recently spoke with KMUW about her past work and this upcoming release.

Author and Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Timothy Egan often delves into history with his writing. He did so in his personal life, too. Prompted by his Irish Catholic family's complicated history with the church, Egan decided to find answers by walking one of the oldest pilgrimage trails in the world, taking him from Canterbury to Rome and a hopeful audience with the pope. KMUW's Beth Golay spoke with Egan about his new book, "A Pilgrimage to Eternity" -- a personal journey he's been reluctant to tell before now. Egan will be in Wichita on Thursday, October 24 for a 6 o'clock book talk at Watermark Books. Beth Golay: You are known for your creative nonfiction, your book about the Dust Bowl--The Worst Hard Time. This, too, is a work of nonfiction. The title is "A Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of Faith." So even though this is creative nonfiction, it's a bit of a departure because it's personal. So why did you decide to go on this pilgrimage? What was going

Bobcat Goldthwait has been known for 40 years for his highly unconventional approach to comedy, and more recently for writing and directing in film and television. Saturday night, the Tallgrass Film Festival will give Goldthwait their annual Ad Astra award, given to luminaries who have dedicated their careers to the cinematic arts. KMUW's Fletcher Powell reached Goldthwait at his home in Los Angeles ahead of his appearance at the festival to talk about his work and the motivation behind it.

Ken Burns is to contemporary television what baseball is to contemporary sports: a vestige that remains relevant, no matter that there are gadgets and gizmos galore competing for our attention. Just as families once flocked to the box on Sunday nights to see Ed Sullivan introduce the most exciting entertainers of the day or others gathered around the tube to witness historic programs such as Roots , so too do we find occasion to hunker down and dig into a new Burns series every now and again and learn something more about America's cultural heritage.

During the settlement of the West, one in four cowboys were black. But their contributions have long been overlooked by the mainstream historical record. One need only look at the backlash over 2019's biggest single, Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road," to see how overlooked black cowboys have become. When Wrangler jeans teamed with the rapper, the company faced criticism over what some claimed was cultural appropriation—that the cowboy image was the province of white America. "Old Town Road" became the longest-running, number-one single in the history of the Billboard charts and spawned a wider interest in the tradition of black cowboys. Dr. Robert Weems is the Distinguished Professor of Business History at Wichita State University. "Even though we've been led to believe that all the cowboys were white and that if there were any blacks around, they were servants to the white cowboys," Weems said, "you had a significant number of black cowboys who did all of the things that white cowboys did

For many music lovers, Woody Guthrie is the quintessential folk artist. He is the man who scrawled "This Machine Kills Fascists" on his guitar and sang about social injustices. But Guthrie's musical legacy reaches far beyond the folk designation. For some, he is a founding father of country music.

Kansas native Chuck Mead is the subject of KMUW's upcoming music tasting on Thursday, Sept. 5, at Roxy's Downtown. Raised in Lawrence, Mead is a founding member of the Grammy-nominated band BR549. He also brought the Tony Award-winning musical Million Dollar Quartet to life via his understanding of the intersection between rural and urban music. As a member of Lawrence's Homestead Grays in the 1980s and '90s, he forged the future of Americana music by combining elements of country and rock ‘n' roll. Since BR549's disbandment in 2006, Mead has created a series of acclaimed solo albums, including Free State Serenade and this year's Close To Home . In two interviews with KMUW, he discussed his Kansas roots and his memories of the Sunflower State. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Music was the family business for you. When my mother was young, my grandpa, my grandma and my mom's two brothers had a radio show in Nevada, Missouri. Right down 54 on a station called KNEM.

Earlier in 2019, Gov't Mule released Bring On The Music: Live at the Capitol Theatre, a multi-format collection celebrating the outfit's quarter-century career. In addition to a stand-alone live album, fans can also witness the concert via a DVD/Blu-ray release, which features behind-the-scenes footage and band interviews. Directed by Danny Clinch, the film captures the veteran act's visual impact in great detail.

Texas-based musician Scott H. Biram has been something of a touring phenomenon over the last two decades but says that these days he's pulling back a little. Are you touring more these days than in the past? No. I've actually tried to dial it back in the last few years. I was doing 200 dates a year at one point. In the last couple of years, I've tried to dial it back a little bit. I probably do 150-165 dates a year. Four or five tours a year it seems like. Talk to me about that dialing back because I think maybe people don't realize how exhausting that can be to be on the road all the time. Travelling and rolling, rolling all the time is taxing in its own special way. I've found myself laying down in the back of the van, rolling down the highway before, thinking, "God, I wish I could stop moving for a second." And there's the day-to-day stuff that comes with touring: Hustling to get there. There's a lot of hurry up and wait. You have to get there to do the soundcheck and then there's

Earlier this year, Wichita-based band After Judo released its first album, Harvard Avenue , and now the band is about to embark on its first-ever tour. Band members Joe Hagen and An Nguyen recently visited the KMUW studios to talk about the band's history. Take me back and tell me how this whole thing started. Joe Hagen: It was me and my fellow guitarist/vocalist Ryne Carballo and out trumpeter Rob [Mabrey], we all lived on the same dorm floor freshman year at WSU. I'd hear them play guitar in the courtyard. One day I saw them walking by. They were going to Judo club. I was, like, "What the heck? Judo club?" I had nothing better to do so I just followed them. We met at Judo and we would practice music after Judo. That's where the name comes from. We picked up An from Judo as well. Our drummer Flavio [Perez] came along because we needed a drummer. So everyone practices Judo? JH: Everyone except Flavio started in Judo. Some of us have kind of fallen off, stopped doing it. Rob is the

Wichita is the latest stop on a tour in support of Shawn James' latest album, The Dark & The Light . Influenced by soul, gospel, blues, rhythm and blues, and more, James provides a seamless blend of all those styles through the music on the deeply personal album.

Josh Berwanger was a member of the highly revered Lawrence, Kansas, band The Anniversary, which issued a series of enduring albums and EPs between 1997 and 2003.

Released in January 2019, Old News is the sophomore release from Nashville's The Steel Woods. The record encapsulates the collective's musical diversity. Neither entirely country nor entirely southern rock, the band appeals to fans of a variety of idioms, often within a single tune. "I love James Brown as much as I love bluegrass as much as I love Bill Monroe. I like good music," says co-founder Jason "Rowdy" Cope. "I guess we're a classic rock band. We're just not old enough to be classic rock." The Steel Woods perform at Wave on Wednesday, June 19. Cope recently spoke with KMUW from Nashville. I understand that you recorded Old News fairly quickly. We spent a week at Echo Mountain in Asheville, NC, recording live as much as possible. We did some touch ups at Blackbird in Nashville. We went to Jamey Johnson's studio and brought Joanna Cotten in to do some harmony singing. Tell me a little bit about the covers on the album. I thought [Black Sabbath's] "Changes," which Charles Bradley

Brit Floyd is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Pink Floyd's classic double album The Wall . Guitarist Damian Darlington recently spoke with KMUW about his love of Floyd guitarist David Gilmour's playing.

Four-time Grammy award-winning singer Yolanda Adams will headline the Gospelfest at Wichita’s Riverfest on Monday night.

If you lived in Lawrence between 2000 and 2002, there's a good chance you remember some of the city's key bands: The Get Up Kids. The Appleseed Cast. Mates of State. Laces Loose. Laces who? The quartet made its mark on the scene at the time with idiosyncratic compositions that defied songwriting logic and probably had more than one listener uttering, "They're an acquired taste." Over the next few weeks, the quartet — guitarist Torin Andersen (who is employed as an engineer by KMUW), bassist/vocalist Adam Crispin, keyboardist Matt Campbell and drummer Ben Steinbauer — will perform its first shows in 17 years. And Steinbauer, an acclaimed documentarian, has brought a film crew with him to capture both the spirit and the spit. "There was never a question about whether or not I'd film this," Steinbauer says. "I was always going to film it. "Why I'm filming it is maybe a deeper question that I don't totally have the answer to, and what this will become, I'm not 100 percent sure. I think it