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Read more Kansas City Music Guide.
It’s a Holiday Week, so shows are predictably light as people head out of town, to parks and lake beaches, and grilling with the family (while trying not to hurt yourself with fireworks – take care of those pets!).
Let’s take look at the Kansas City / Lawrence KS metro musical happenings for the upcoming week, from July 1st-7th.
(ticket hyperlinks are embedded in each show's headline)
MONDAY JULY 1
TUESDAY JULY 2
JJ Grey & Mofro, July 2, Knuckleheads, SOLD OUT
The regularly-touring Grey, wrote all the material on new record, Olustee, as usual, and served as producer for the first time. Olustee is JJ Grey & Mofro’s follow-up to 2015’s Ol’ Glory, which he started seven years ago, but would put it down and pick it back up, as inspiration would come and go.
The album has a bigger sound, courtesy of Ronen Landa, who engineered the record and handled the orchestral arrangements for the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, which appears on four tracks (though there were some strings on [2007’s] Country Ghetto and [2008’s] Orange Blossoms too.)
This outing is the group’s largest touring roster to date. “I’m adding four more people onstage,” Grey discloses. “While the makeup of the band has changed over the years, for the last decade, it’s been more or less a seven-piece—me, a drummer, bass player, guitar player, keyboard player and two horn players. Now, I’m adding a sax player to the horn group, two ladies who will be singing background vocals, and then a buddy of mine playing percussion.”
WEDNESDAY JULY 3
THURSDAY JULY 4
Happy Birthday, ‘Merica!
FRIDAY JULY 5
The Robert Cray Band, July 5, Knuckleheads, $40
A member of the Blues Hall of Fame with an Americana Music Lifetime Achievement Award, the longtime Blues singer and guitarist is out on his 50th anniversary tour, but the “strong persuader” and his “smoking gun” guitar show no signs of stopping anytime soon.
Cray comments about the tour, “We're always looking to pick and choose things that we've done in the past that we haven't done for a while, just to flavor things up and after the 50 years we've been together the book is quite large and it's always nice to pick out stuff and do something haven't done for a while. Then change that up. As a matter of fact, kind of on a nightly basis we'll do a few of the favorites, but we always try to pepper it up with something different on a nightly basis.”
SATURDAY JULY 6
In support of his twentieth studio and latest album, Born (which came out in late March via Blue Chair/Warner Nashville), Country’s hardest-working stadium headliner Chesney is about halfway through his current Sun Goes Down Tour and makes a stop in the home of the Super Bowl Champions.
The 18-show run started on April 20 in Tampa and will wrap in August at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, MA. Joining the "There Goes My Life" musician on the road as support are Zac Brown Band, Megan Moroney and Uncle Kracker.
“I wanted a name that suggested – obviously – when all the good stuff starts to happen. The one thing I’ve learned about No Shoes Nation and these stadium shows is they start the good times early and they just keep it going,” Chesney says of his tour name in a press release statement. “But we all know, when the sun goes down, that’s when people really get loose and enjoy themselves."
He added: “So, I can’t wait to get back out there, stadium-sized ’cause there’s nothing like 60,000 members of No Shoes Nation singing these songs. It’s gonna be awesome.” We joined No Shoes Nation in 2022 for his Here and Now Tour at this same venue, which was also stacked with great acts and managed to chase away the rain before Chesney’s memorable hit-filled set that night.
“The End is near” - Los Angeles punk veterans X are calling it quits following this tour and the upcoming release of their final album, Smoke & Fiction (out Aug. 2 via Fat Possum Records). First single “Big Black X” takes stock of the band’s 47-year career, looking back at how things have changed for them and the city where they formed.
Exene Cervenka, John Doe, D.J. Bonebrake and Billy Zoom have been touring on and off already this year, but the ongoing itinerary will be their last as a band. The group will also play Little Steven’s Underground Garage cruise next May. Their previous album, Alphabetland, was released in 2020 and was their first with guitarist Zoom since 1985 and the long-awaited follow-up to 1993’s Hey Zeus!
We’ve caught the band live often in recent years- with Psychedelic Furs in 2022, at Rock the Garden in 2019, and acoustically with Blondie and Garbage in 2017.
SUNDAY JULY 7
Thomas Dolby, GrindersKC, $49.50-$90
The glory years of 1980s-era music videos live again with this new touring new wave festival which hits 22 North American cities this year with an impressive lineup led by Thomas Dolby and Thompson Twins’ singer/songwriter Tom Bailey.
Kansas City’s date also features Men Without Hats (who we caught in 2017 with Howard Jones) and The Plimsouls (who were a million miles away in Athens in 2016) while other stops will include Modern English, Bow Wow Wow and Tommy Tutone.
The Romantics were also set to join the bill, but The Tubes and Wang Chung have joined the lineup in place of them, who’ve canceled due to an “unforeseen medical situation.” A portion of ticket proceeds will be donated to local food banks.
Dolby has remained busy of late, prepping a 40th anniversary expanded reissue of second album The Flat Earth, which released last week, and his latest novel, Prevailing Wind, also came out last week.
National Touring act coming to Kansas City, Lawrence, KS, Topeka, KS, or vicinity? Let us know so we can spotlight the appearance-email [email protected]
| john c ([email protected]) ♥ weheartmusic.com ♥ X / twitter.com |
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