Clubs With Views

Now let’s hear from the clubs.

This is the second week of excerpting articles from the latest issue of Jam, on the streets now (it’s free) or downloadable from here. This issue celebrates the magazine’s thirtieth anniversary by asking, what is the future of jazz in Kansas City? Last week quizzed the mayor on 18th and Vine. This time, John Scott from Green Lady Lounge and Gerald Dunn from the Blue Room offer insights into their operations.

*****

Stepping into the Green Lady Lounge feels like stepping back into the 1940s. Dim lighting, red walls, red drapes and faux-classic art lining the walls all build a classic ambiance. This must be what a jazz club in Kansas City used to feel like.

That’s all by design. It’s owner John Scott’s vision or, as he puts it, his point of view.

“It’s the club’s responsibility to get the patrons in,” Scott explains. “When I hear club owners say, we want that band to get butts in seats, I don’t think that’s a useful phrase, and I don’t ever want to hear anybody representing Green Lady Lounge to use that phrase. It’s beyond the ability, generally, of a band in the jazz genre to put butts in seats.

“There’s a lot of things marketing-wise that can make a jazz musician or a jazz band popular. If you go somewhere where they don’t get a lot of jazz, then maybe a jazz band can put butts in seats. But in Kansas City there’s jazz everywhere. It’s so rich. It’s like gold to the Mayans.

“So that can’t be the primary draw. You cannot expect amazing, world-class jazz musicians to draw people into a barn. The club has to have a certain aesthetic. It has to have a point of view.

“That point of view comes from me. The look, the paint, the color, the accessories, the dark lighting, all of those things to me are pleasing. For a lot of reasons I’ve incorporated them into the bar. Some of them are very pragmatic. The drop ceiling is both an aesthetic, useful thing, and it’s practical, relatively inexpensive. It connects the two sides of the building which were cut in half originally. This building has been around since 1889.”

That point of view equally encompasses the music.

“The first year was a sampler platter of a whole variety of kinds of music,” Scott says. “I was listening and trying to figure out the Kansas City sound. What is it in the past? What is it now? What is it going to be in the future? And what do I want to help give a home to?

“I learned to really dislike pick-up gigs, where people are just kind of filling time on stage. I wanted bands. I wanted people who play together on a regular basis to bring their best. I don’t want jam sessions. This is not the venue for that. This is a place where people come, experience the ambiance and there’s a band that plays together and is also producing original content.”

Often that content includes an organ. You will not find a piano on the club’s main floor, unless a musician has brought his own keyboard. Instead you’ll see a Hammond B-3 organ. A favorite ensemble in the room is OJT. They’re the classic organ trio with Ken Lovern on organ, Brian Baggett on guitar and Kevin Frazee on drums.

Scott describes OJT as “a kind of a north star, a point to guide everything else by. It’s a sound that I feel combines a dirt road kind of blues and a real jazz sophistication. OJT is a Kansas City sound to me that combines swing with a lot of sophistication.”

Yet Scott also looks beyond classic jazz ensembles. Another favorite is vibraphonist Peter Schlamb’s eclectic group Electric Tinks.

“To me, Electric Tinks is not experimenting,” Scott says. “It’s progressive. It is pushing the genre. You can see from where he’s pulling but he’s doing a lot of original stuff. His musicianship is fantastic. And talk about a point of view. They’ve got a great a future and I’m incorporating them into our rotation.”

Whether you agree with it or disagree, John Scott’s point of view is working. He pegs half his customers as coming from outside of Kansas City.

“Kansas City jazz is something that already exists out there, this brand,” he says. “We just realize the product and give it justice, give it support and help market it. People come to Kansas City and if they hear on Huffington Post or some Facebook feed, or however they heard about Kansas City jazz, and then they hear about Green Lady, associate it with Kansas City jazz, then they seek it out. That’s what’s happening.

“Green Lady is an evangelical jazz club because we’re not just preaching to the people who already know they love jazz, but rather I believe in getting people exposed to jazz and I believe they will like it.

That point of view extends to Scott’s vision for growing Kansas City jazz.

“If there isn’t a jazz scene, then you take a shotgun approach. But when a scene is vital and rich, clubs can more narrowly define, deeply and richly, what your take on the Kansas City sound is. Evidence of a rich scene would be that each club books a more focused part of the overall scene.

“Other private people need to come along and join the scene in earnest. If they don’t think it’s commercially viable, they’re wrong. If they want some help, I can help them. That doesn’t mean making it just like the Green Lady but it does mean having an aesthetic that is unique to you and consistent in your point of view and care.

“We have excellent, amazing musicians in Kansas City who, given the right environment, will really spread the love of Kansas City jazz.”

*****

Gerald Dunn has worked at the American Jazz Museum since the day it opened. But he originally turned them down.

“I was living in New York at the time and had just come off touring the south of France for the whole month of June with Illinois Jacquet’s big band,” Dunn recalled. “I started working in Harlem, subbing for different bands, subbing at the Cotton Club. I felt at the time that if I left I would lose those connections.”

The museum asked again. He talked the offer over with his parents.

“My dad said, ‘Let me help you out. You have no more times to call to borrow money.’”

Today at the museum Dunn is Director of Entertainment and Blue Room General Manager.

The Blue Room, Dunn said, “started out only booking local musicians. We wanted to build a strong relationship with the community.”

Dunn remembers discussing jazz with veteran musicians like Jay McShann and Eddie Saunders. “Listening to them talk about why people played the music,” he said, “what music meant to them, what music meant to their friends, that gave me a good foundation of understanding what to look for.

“The older guys set a level of consistency. When you saw the Scamps perform on the stage, they brought an experience to you. The tunes that they sang, you could feel the song, you could feel the lyrics because they lived the lyrics. Those songs excited them. When they were playing from the stage, you were seeing that excitement. When it’s coming out of their horns, it’s exciting, it’s happening.

“Sometimes Eddie [Saunders] would be one of the grumpiest guys on earth, but once he put the horn in his mouth it became happy songs.

“I tell some of these stories to the young guys so that they can see there are legacies that they are a part of.”

In a city brimming with young jazz talent, nearly all wanting to play at the fabled corner of 18th and Vine, Dunn is looking “at how people are willing to work with others, how people are willing to respond to the crowd, how they’re willing to present themselves to the crowd.

“Make sure you have enough variety in your repertoire to be able to entertain the crowd. You can play original music, and that’s cool. But as people are coming in to understand you as an artist it’s good to be able to accommodate them and give them something that they might be able to grasp.

“It’s not always playing the best solo. A lot of times it’s being able to release the audience. Give them a break. Lay something in their lap. Get into their soul. Make them feel like clapping is what they want to be doing.”

Dunn has worked to understand who comes to the Blue Room.

“It’s people who want to have a Kansas City experience. They read about it and they want to experience it. We’re conscious of trying to bring in diverse crowds and bringing in the most diversity when it comes to artists.

Moving forward, does the Blue Room need to evolve?

“We’re changing now,” Dunn responded. “We’re constantly moving. The scene forces you to change. You can’t stay the same.

“We’re opening up to other communities. We’re opening up the neo-soul community. We’re opening up to the Latin jazz community. Those pieces are infusing into the jazz pieces. Some of the younger jazz guys have a lot of those pieces. Fusion is a part of Dominque [Sanders]’s music. Hermon [Mehari] plays with some of the neo-soul acts.”

And when a young musician with a non-jazz background approaches Dunn, “I don’t have to say, you can’t play here because you don’t play jazz. Come in, check out what goes on, and see how you can contribute to what’s going on. Let’s see how you can fit in. Let’s find ways to include you.

“We pay respect to the traditions of Kansas City jazz. And we pay respect to what kids have access to now.”

Another One Bites the Dust

Broadway Kansas City, until earlier this year The Broadway Jazz Club, has been sold. The space will become a Scandinavian restaurant (their website is here). The new owners tell The Pitch (here) that they see their concept as a destination. Presumably, it will be a destination without live music. The sale does not include the sound system or piano.

Tentative plans are for Clint Ashlock’s wonderful New Jazz Order Big Band, which had established itself as a Tuesday Broadway favorite, to relocate to the Green Lady Lounge’s downstairs Orion Room early in November on Wednesdays from 7 to 9 p.m., leading into Ken Lovern’s weekly OJT gig upstairs at 9:00. Recordings scheduled yet for this year of the good music/bad comedy radio program 12th Street Jump will supplant New Jazz Order in the Orion Room on two upcoming Wednesdays, including November 18th for a show featuring Kevin Mahogany.

It’s been six years since I tried – and failed – to open a jazz club in Kansas City (the recession interfered). In researching a plan at the time, I found two successful business models employed by other jazz clubs: Turn the audience twice a night or also open during the day. Either can generate a revenue stream sufficient to pay rent and investors.

The two-shows-a-night model is used by clubs in larger cities, such as the Village Vanguard or Blue Note in New York, or Jazz Alley in Seattle. Jardine’s practiced it on weekends. But Kansas City’s jazz audience clearly isn’t large enough for that model to succeed here nightly.

A friend was among the group that bought Milton’s from Milton Morris’ niece decades ago. He told me that the iconic Kansas City jazz bar was essentially a break-even business. But it wouldn’t have been even that without the lushes who wandered in off a then-grittier Main Street throughout the day.

More than once, as I sat among a crowded but quite settled in weekend audience, I wondered how The Broadway Jazz Club was surviving. Listeners were enjoying outstanding jazz. But they weren’t leaving. The room wasn’t turning over. How could Broadway afford to pay performers what Jardine’s paid yet sell half as many dinners? How were they making financial ends meet?

Turns out, as initial investor and eventual owner Jim Pollock revealed in a timeline six weeks ago (here), they weren’t. They never did. This club wanted, initially anyway, to be the next Jardine’s. But there was never an apparent effort to turn the room on weekend nights as Jardine’s did. It’s not a new notion. Milton Morris boasted of a 1930s New Year’s Eve when he paid police to “raid” his  jazz club and clear it for a fresh crowd (though that’s probably going a bit further than The Broadway Jazz Club needed).

More, this was the wrong neighborhood for the next Jardine’s. My blog post about being attacked by youths with a gun on my fifth visit certainly didn’t help. But approaching 3600 Broadway from the south after dark, visitors drive past a Sprint store with steel bars covering its windows. There’s a rougher, uneasy midtown quality to this neighborhood, unlike Jardine’s just-north-of-the-Plaza, look-you-can-see-Nichols-Fountain-from-here location. This part of town, in 2015, works for eclectic restaurants, like the nearby Hamburger Mary’s. Kansas City will support a dinner jazz club. But not here.

Broadway's demise follows the closing of Take Five Coffee + Bar. Take Five embraced the revenue-throughout-the-day business model, but in a pricey Johnson County development that never developed except, at the end, for another coffee shop in a nearby sporting goods store.

Yet, there is a jazz club success story in our midst: The Green Lady Lounge. With a bar hugging the length of one wall designed to serve a large number of customers quickly, a 3 a.m. license (a rarity in the Crossroads district), an inviting and classic environment, and a simple and direct marketing message of jazz and drinks seven nights a week, owner John Scott has tripled revenues since opening his second stage downstairs.

Green Lady Lounge is a variation of the turn-the-crowd model, with the later license, no cover charge and that long bar facilitating volume business. It’s proof that a smartly conceived and operated jazz business can indeed succeed in Kansas City.

It’s probably best that I didn’t start a jazz club six years ago. While I was working with experienced consultants and remain convinced that I’d targeted a solid location, my lack of service industry experience, in the end, would have likely doomed the venture. Small businesses die every day. But had I tried and failed, the business would have ended because of me, because of my lack of club smarts and acumen, because I wasn’t sufficiently savvy.

It would not have died because it featured jazz. In Kansas City, run right, a jazz business will succeed.

Two CDs With Dominique, Ryan and a Green Lady

A correction: Steven Lambert – Quartet and Trio…LIVE! was recorded at The Broadway Jazz Club, not at Green Lady Lounge. So as you read the reviews that follow, please keep in mind that these albums prove at least two KC jazz clubs are exemplary sites to record a CD. And to enjoy outstanding jazz.

*****

Two new CDs come with three points in common: Dominque Sanders, Ryan Lee,and the Green Lady Lounge.

Steven Lambert – Quartet and Trio…LIVE! and Paul Shinn Trio – Easy Now: Live at the Green Lady Lounge were both recorded just as the title of Shinn’s CD describes it. Green Lady Lounge is well known as one of the most perfect atmospheres for jazz, where stepping through the door feels as if Mr. Peabody’s Way Back Machine (any fan of Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons will surely remember that) has brought you to 1940s Kansas City. But most nights you need to sit close to the band to appreciate the music. I’d never have expected this venue could give birth to a technically magnificent recording, shedding all of the ambient noise. But here’s two albums that prove it can.

These albums prove something more: Some of the best young musicians performing jazz today reside in – or often return to – Kansas City.

That’s not news to anyone frequenting KC’s jazz scene for the last half dozen years. But both of these albums bring a maturity to the music, built with experience and with the familiarity of musicians playing together repeatedly over time.

I’ve heard Lambert through these years perform the gamut of jazz, from standards behind singer Megan Birdsall, to big band hits with the Foundation 627 Big Band and Bobby Watson’s big band, to be-bop that caught the attention of Marilyn Maye’s drummer at the 2013 Prairie Village Jazz Festival with the Mutual Musicians Foundation All Stars, to the music of Lennie Tristano in Sam Wisman’s group Crosscurrent, to jazz as modern as it gets with the KC Sound Collective.

Steven Lambert – Quartet and Trio…LIVE! finds Lambert in a contemporary groove. Sometimes on this CD, the tenor sax storms in at a frenetic pace. Unfinished Melody and both takes of No Reason pepper the listener with originality in a wealth of freshly imagined and intelligent ideas. Contrast those numbers with the ballads Trust and Love Letters, where a more tender pace draws you in. On Mariah, Lambert’s flute and Andrew Ouellette’s piano intrigue, each pulling you along a sublime journey.

Lambert is joined by Ouellette on piano and keyboard, Sanders on bass and Lee on drums. Everyone has a chance to shine: Ouellette’s solo on For You stands out, as do Sanders and Lee on Children of the Night. But more importantly, this is a group of musicians who know and drive each other. There’s an integrated sophistication here that’s sometimes lacking in modern jazz.

Where Lambert’s CD can be a juggernaut, Paul Shinn Trio – Easy Now: Live at the Green Lady Lounge, from its first notes, is marked by a more intimate yet no less energetic sophistication. On this album, the piano is the star. The opening number, Lucidity, builds joyfully, weaving this way and that with an intricate playfulness. Swing has been around for over eighty years, the blues even longer, yet Handful of Keys, High Five Blues and Birth of the Blues are sway-your-arms fun while performed with an originality that marks them as Shinn’s take alone.

And as much as Shinn’s piano excels, Ryan Lee’s drums and Dominique Sanders’s bass are vital. Sanders starts a conversation with the piano then carries it back and forth on Ton of Simple, before joining Lee in laying the perfect base for Shinn’s compelling improvisation. Drums and bass add a uniquely intricate depth to A Desolate Cath. On this CD, we’re eavesdropping on conversations between musicians who instinctively understand each other. And, with Paul Shinn in control, the conversations are complete delights.

Steven Lambert – Quartet and Trio…LIVE! and Paul Shinn Trio – Easy Now: Live at the Green Lady Lounge make one more point eminently clear: You can hear some outstanding jazz at the Green Lady Lounge.

Steven Lambert – Quartet and Trio…LIVE! can be found on CD Baby here, on CD Universe here, and on iTunes here. Paul Shinn Trio – Easy Now: Live at the Green Lady Lounge can be found on CD Baby here, on CD Universe here, and on iTunes here.

The Foundation 627 Big Band at the Green Lady Lounge

Sunday nights are as much about the club as the big band.

The Foundation 627 Big Band, the newest in a long line of big bands born since the 1930s at the Mutual Musicians Foundation, performs every Sunday night from 8:30 to 12:30 at the Green Lady Lounge. I don’t know the names of all of the musicians in this group. But this is a solid collection of KC talent. Consider a front line of saxophonists Steve Lambert, Mike Hererra, David Chael and Brett Jackson; a rhythm section with Chris Clark on keyboards, Dominique Sanders on bass and John Kizilarmut on drums; and players like trumpeters Stan Kessler and Ryan Thielman, and trombonist Jason Goudeau.

Now place this big band in a room where stepping through the front door feels like stepping seven decades back in time. Red walls and drapes, faux classic paintings adorning the walls, a long narrow space with a classic bar lining one wall and leather lined booths the other. This feels exactly like the kind of place where you ought to hear jazz.

Place the big band in the front of that space, get yourself a drink and, well, you can DVR all those Sunday night TV programs you wanted to see. Watch them later. The Foundation 627 Big Band in the Green Lady Lounge isn’t going to show up on your DVR.

They’re going to show up as you see in the photos below, this time presented without captions. These were taken the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, on August 31st. As always, clicking on a shot should open a larger version of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Celebration of Dionne

It was the happiest room in town, and it was the saddest room in town.

This was a tribute to Dionne Jeroue, the young singer who passed a week and a half earlier, and who was adored by everyone in Kansas City jazz who knew her. This was a celebration of Dionne’s life. Musicians and friends swung at their best. Heads swayed, arms thrust forward in time, bodies twisted to and fro in their seats, people rose and danced.

And tears streamed.

The Green Lady Lounge opened early Monday, April 7th, following a memorial service for Dionne, for family, friends and musicians to gather. The Kansas City jazz community draws close when it looses one of its own. Partly, it’s to share grief with friends. But largely, it’s knowing that the person lost is not just honored, but is somewhere smiling broadly at being remembered through a magnificent jam.

Below are photos of just a few of the musicians who celebrated Dionne Jeroue at The Green Lady Lounge. As always, clicking on a photo should open a larger version of it.

Ian Corbett, Lori Tucker and Matt Hopper

Everette DeVan on Hammond B3 and, just beyond, flowers in tribute to Dionne

Ian Corbett and Eboni Fondren

Left to right in The Green Lady Lounge: Chris Hazelton on Hammond B3, Ian Corbett on alto sax, Eboni Fondren, vocals, Danny Rojas on drums, Matt Hopper on guitar, Kent Means on vibes

Trumpets riff along the wall

Matt Hopper and Stephanie Moore

Stephanie Moore

Chris Hazelton

Chris Hazelton and Molly Hammer

Eboni Fondren

Shay Estes

Leaving condolences

Left to right, jamming in The Green Lady Lounge: Everette DeVan on Hammond B3, Steve Lambert on tenor sax, Phillip Wakefield on drums, Lori Tucker, vocals, Matt Hopper on guitar, Kent Means on vibes

Friday Night and the Green Lady Lounge

Bobby Watson put together a big band and, with the Kansas City Symphony, crammed the Kauffman Center. At the same time, The Folly stood nearly half filled – better than recent shows – for Kenny Garrett. Stan Kessler’s quartet was playing Louie’s Wine Dive over at 71st and Wornall. Ken Lovern’s trio entertained a packed Kill Devil Club downtown while Charles Williams brought piano mastery to The Blue Room at 18th and Vine and Michael Pagán’s trio played The Majestic’s one-time speakeasy and Rob Foster’s violin fronted Take Five way out in Leawood. Later, overnight, crowds would swarm the Mutual Musicians Foundation. And let’s not forget that Lonnie McFadden opened the night at The Phoenix.

So don’t try to tell me jazz is dead in Kansas City.

Especially when you can add another new club to the list.

By 9:00 on Friday night, on Grand Boulevard just south of 18th Street, in the Crossroads district, the Green Lady Lounge was filling up for Mark Lowrey on piano, Sam Wisman on drums and Shay Estes’s vocals.

With jazz six nights a week, the Green Lady Lounge is growing an urban audience in a distinctive space.

If listening to jazz in Leawood’s Take Five is like enjoying a live band with friends in your uncle’s living room, walking into the Green Lady Lounge is like stepping back in time some 70 years. This must be what it felt like in the jazz bars lining 12th Street when Count Basie and Mary Lou Williams played them. A long, thin space, the bar hugs one wall and black booths the other. A few tables sprinkle the front and back. A tin ceiling hangs overhead. Everything is red: the drapes, the walls. But near the front, as you step inside the door, sits a magnificent grand piano and the space where a jazz band performs. The room can be noisy, but speakers line the walls to carry the music just right.

The Blue Room books wonderful music, but looks like what it is: a bar in a museum. The Kill Devil Club is a modern delight. The Mutual Musicians Foundation is authentic history, and downstairs at the Majestic retains its speakeasy heritage. But there is something about this space – maybe it’s the red walls, or the faux-classic paintings hanging on them that pretend to bestow class, or maybe it’s that big grand piano greeting you – that transcends time and leaves 2013 outside the front door.

It’s an urban juke joint with a neighborhood atmosphere. Last Friday night, the crowd was friendly, predominantly thirty-somethings, not your stereotypical jazz aged. Some danced. The staff was welcoming. Drinks were priced reasonably. Food is a short offering of small plates. The one I sampled was quite good. The music was superb. Parking, as in most of the Crossroads district, is challenging. But if you don’t mind walking a block, south of 19th Street on Grand, at least last weekend, sat plenty of unused on-street spots.

The Green Lady Lounge is quietly building an urban jazz delight. Their website is here. Their calendar is here. Their Facebook page is here.