Music Stories

Six years ago, cook and guitarist Mark Vick got tired of spending St. Patrick’s Day working behind the bar instead of jamming onstage. So he and a few of his musician friends started the band, Blarney Stoned.

Cellist Sascha Groschang and violinist Laurel Morgan Parks have been good friends since they trained together as classical musicians at UMKC’s Conservatory of Music and Dance. They perform around the region, and internationally, in symphony orchestras and chamber groups.  They’ve also delved into traditional folk, rock and jazz genres.  (Parks plays in the Kansas City folk-rock band, In The Pines.)

The MidCoast Takeover is a concert of local talent at Austin’s South by Southwest music festival to take place next weekend.  It’s generating a lot of local excitement as the festival is quickly approaching and the local bands are preparing. The MidCoast Takover is organized with the help of The Midwest Music Foundation a local organization that support local musicians.  We're in conversation with Sondra Freemans of the Midwest Music Foundation to talk the ways the MidCoast Takeover supports local musicians and hear some of the local bands she's most excited to be heard in Austin.

About a year and a half ago, local band Making Movies opened for Los Lobos when the legendary Latin rock band was in Kansas City. Making Movies had been incorporating more Latin rhythms into their Spanish- and English-language rock, and one Los Lobos member liked what he heard.

Between sets, Lobo Steve Berlin asked Making Movies if he could produce their next recording. They released the result, entitled “A La Deriva,” on March 5th, and they’re reaching out to create an international audience.