Kevin’s World

Art Onstage and Off

The November entertainment calendar in any college town is bound to be a little lopsided. There’s usually a flurry of shows and activities during the first few weeks before things quiet down following the Thanksgiving egress. Quietly, though, since nature abhors a vacuum, comes the influx of prodigal BoCoMo natives to gather with family and […]

flood

Endless Grooves

More than any of the blues fests I’ve attended over the years, this month’s Roots N Blues N BBQ Festival in Stephens Lake Park showcases local players front and center and in their best light. Any given year Chump Change, the Bel Airs, Fried Crawdaddies and their ilk have kept the tone fierce but mellow […]

Berry

Farewell Chuck Berry

“Poetry is my life’s blood,” Chuck Berry said, on meeting Columbia Public Schools’ Linda Harlan, circa 1991. The best way to end this tribute is to begin at the end: Chuck Berry’s appearance in Columbia in 2009, an outdoor performance on Ninth Street — his last local show of seven, since 1993. Columbia Public Schools […]

Chuck

Farewell Chuck Berry

“While no individual can be said to have invented rock and roll, Chuck Berry comes the closest of any single figure to being the one who put all the essential pieces together. It was his particular genius to graft country and western guitar licks onto a rhythm and blues chassis in his very first single, […]

berry

Farewell Chuck Berry

Part One: Chuck Berry was, in so many ways, the iconic Missourian. He told tall tales and reveled in language, especially the poetry of vernacular. His seeming close-mouthed cussedness in later years was an attitude that kept many a Missourian alive during the tumult and confusion of the Civil War. And despite everything, he shared […]

Muddy

Big Muddy Folk Festival

The world is so noisy … music has been wounded by Steve Jobs’ technology … the main role of the artist is to serve the song, as opposed to him or herself.” — Musician and actor Wil Oldham There is something sincere, in this ironic age, about Prairie Home Companion’s Pat Donohue being a headliner […]

molly

Delta Thrash

Photo courtesy of mollygenemusic.com. March is Women’s Month here in the United States. This is funny because it is just one month out of 12 when not only does this noble gender outnumber their male counterparts, they also, judging by January’s march, can out-organize men and make their point without inciting violence. Women, they say, […]

Micheaux

Body & Soul

Oscar Micheaux was an African-American filmmaker and entrepreneur, who produced and directed more than 40 films from 1919 to 1948. Micheaux’s movies were known as “race” films — made by black filmmakers, with an all-black cast for black audiences. These projects were a reaction to what was then a segregated Hollywood industry in a segregated society. […]

Elk

“Middle Grounds”

When I first arrived at MU in 1975, Columbia didn’t even have cable TV. But, the History Department offered “Epic America,” a pair of courses on Native American culture in a kind of primitive virtual classroom — just a black and white monitor bolted to the wall of a second floor Arts and Sciences classroom. […]