Where to begin…
The Kansas City concert scene has so many loose ends at this point, it’s all but impossible to stitch them together.
In short, things are a mess, on top of which there are plenty of nasty, behind the scenes politics with only a few fleeting signs of actual life….like at Knuckleheads.
For starters, everything pretty much skidded to a halt in March when the coronavirus hit.
Which mostly the kibosh on all things entertainment from the Bottleneck, Granada and Liberty Hall in Lawrence to the Uptown, Truman, Starlight, Sandstone and Kauffman in KC.
Local promoters like Jeff Fortier scrambled to try and live-to-tell-the-story, by joining with other promoters nationally and among other things, reaching out to the Governor of Missouri for a helping hand.
The idea being if smaller local and regional promoters and venues go out of biz, concertgoers and locals will be at the mercy of huge organizations like Live Nation and AEG.
And while things are starting to open up slowly, most of the heavy duty touring acts have postponed or cancelled their shows for the balance of the year.
Leaving less deep-pocketed venues like the Uptown, Liberty Hall, Sandstone and what used to be the Crossroads on life support with no guarantee of survival.
Speaking of which, a falling out between longtime area promoter Brett Mosiman and rival promoter Jeff Fortier and Grinders owner – the artist known as Stretch – resulted in Crossroads KC losing the rights to use its well-established name.
Worse yet, most of the 50-something concerts the venue has hosted every year for the past 10-plus years, have either been postponed, cancelled or not booked. And finding the venue’s two-or-three show calendar takes a bit of work given that Fortier and Stretch are forbidden by the court from using the C word (Crossroads).
No matter how you cut the cake, impossibly hard times have fallen on local venues and promoters, and at this stage of the game, it’s impossible to say who may make it.
If anyone..
“I don’t see how any of them will survive this frankly,” says one entertainment industry veteran. “Think about it, they all closed around March 15th and through October some of them have maybe two or three shows and have had to cancel probably 20 or 30 shows. Tell me how you survive under those circumstances.”
Most likely to succeed: “Nobody.”
Stay tuned…
Knuckleheads has some surprisingly good shows. The last one I attended was Gangstagrass, about a year ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQqjA4ZlgRI
Lawrence is used to zero crowds over the summer indoors in non ac venues when the students are gone, theyll be fine.
Stretch doesnt need to work another day and sits on paid off land.
The only one in danger is the Midland and thats because AMC is going under
AMC and the Midland? Huh?
There are tons of danger out there starting with Liberty Hall, the Granda – and who knows about smaller venues here like The Truman.
The people that are most worried are the small promoters like Jeff Fortier – which is why he has banded together in a new support group w other promoters nationally and called on the governor of Missouri for help.
That said, Fortier has pretty strong survival skills. He’s basically blossomed from what amounts to a skinhead with an “FU” tattoo on the inside of his lower lip to THE guy here among small to midsize promoters. He survived the nasty demise of his Beaumont Club operation here in Westport – a financial disaster – but he just bought a commercial office building in Lawrence, adding to his overhead at the exact wrong time.
Hey, but who isn’t having a hard time these days?