Kansas
Can a storied Kansas rocker put his ‘Bad Reputation’ in the past and find a future in folk music?
Freedy Johnston was almost certainly the only musician at Kansas City’s 2024 Folk Alliance International Conference who once had a video in rotation on MTV. Yet the acclaimed indie-rocker of the 1990s didn’t feel out of place among the 3,000 attendees.
Instead, Johnston viewed the music industry’s most important convention for folk artists as “a job fair,” he said.
In his first time at the annual conference, Johnston hoped to impress domestic and international folk music presenters capable of sustaining his already lengthy career, and overcome bias from people who only associate him with his 1995 rock hit, “Bad Reputation.”
“It would be hard to tell the difference between me and someone else with an acoustic guitar, no matter what their appearance or their lyric content,” Johnston said from the lobby of the Sheraton Kansas City Hotel at Crown Center. “I think I fit in.”
Bill Brownlee
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KCUR 89.3
Johnston’s style and presentation have certainly evolved in the intervening decades, and changing tastes dictate he now often performs in solo acoustic settings.
But while ambitious acts meticulously rehearsed for the occasion, Johnston took a curiously casual approach.
During his 30-minute showcase performance in a hotel ballroom, Johnston worked without a setlist. And rather than featuring his best-known material, he opted for unlikely selections like “Sparky the Heroic Dog,” a novelty song he wrote in high school.
Only a delicate reading of “Darlin’,” a highlight of his 2022 album “Back on the Road to You,” demonstrated the profundity of his talent.
The song features background vocals from one of Johnston’s friends, Aimee Mann, the singer-songwriter who rose to fame in the 1980s with the band Til Tuesday.
Mann also created sketches used in an animated video of the song, about grieving parents.
The online publication Americana UK called the album “a gorgeous collection of guitar jangling summery pop music.” Appearances by Susan Cowsill, of the Cowsills, and Susannah Hoffs, of the Bangles, accentuate the breezy sound.
“If you’re judged by your friends, I hope I’m judged well,” Johnston told KCUR.
Craig Grossman, a booking agent based in Minneapolis with Black Oak Artists, counts himself among Johnston’s friends.
“A lot of people have called Freedy a songwriters’ songwriter,” said Grossman, who has seen plenty of musicians receive big breaks at the conference.
“In the folk world, you could do one or two good size festivals and that can honestly set up your career for many, many years,” Grossman said. “Admittedly, it’s not the same thing as when you’re the new, hot thing and you come in and then everybody wants to be a part of it.”
Johnston was that new hot thing in 1992 when his second album, “Can You Fly,” was rapturously received by critics. The influential music writer Robert Christgau gave the album a rare A+ review in The Village Voice, and NPR contributor Tom Moon included it in his 2008 survey, “1,000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die.”
Marla Norton
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Freedy Johnston
Johnston added to the album’s appeal by including his own backstory in the opening track, “Trying to Tell You I Don’t Know.”
“I inherited farmland from my grandfather and I decided to sell it right away,” Johnston said. “It was the land, the first house I lived in … (and) the house where I learned to walk.”
The sale bankrolled Johnston’s then-fledgling music career, and financed his move from Lawrence, Kansas, to New York City.
“I sold everything, you know… just to do this,” he said. “Just about the stupidest thing that anybody could ever do. It worked out in my case.”
In spite of critical adulation and guidance over the years from elite producers like T Bone Burnett and Butch Vig, Johnston, now 62 and based in Portland, Oregon, operates on the fringes of the music industry.
Even so, he isn’t bitter.
“My mother got to see me on MTV for a minute, you know? And I flew her to see me open up for Sheryl Crow — huge deal. The first time she’d ever been on a jet plane, all that stuff,” Johnston said. “So I backed it up, you know?”
Johnston backed up his legacy at the Folk Alliance International Conference this year with flashes of his unique talent. And whether or not he caught a break in Kansas City, he intends to persevere.
“I have to keep doing it, it’s not really a choice. There’s not an exit strategy,” Johnston confessed. “I’m a songwriter, you know? That’s all I can do.”
TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) – Below is a look at the results from Tuesday night’s high school basketball sub-state semifinals in Northeast Kansas.
Editor’s Note: This story will be updated with what schools are hosting when that information becomes readily available.
WIBW Scoreboard
BOYS
5A East Boys: Tuesday’s sub-state semifinal results
- KC Washington 68, Highland Park 38
- Shawnee Heights 49, De Soto 37 (will play Leavenworth Friday)
5A West Boys: Tuesday’s sub-state semifinal results
- Topeka West 55, Hutchinson 32 (will play Bishop Carroll Friday)
- Emporia 61, Great Bend 41 (will play Maize South Friday)
- Seaman 73, Valley Center 51 (will play Hays Friday)
3A West Franklin Boys: Tuesday’s sub-state semifinal results
- Burlington 60, Osage City 35 (will play Baxter Springs Friday)
3A Sabetha Boys: Tuesday’s sub-state semifinal results
- Hiawatha 73, Oskaloosa 48 (will play Heritage Christian Friday)
- Silver Lake 58, Sabetha 39 (will play Perry-Lecompton Friday 7:30 p.m.)
GIRLS
6A West Girls: Tuesday’s sub-state semifinal results
- Washburn Rural 60, Wichita South 32 (will play Derby)
- Topeka High 69, Maize 45 (will play Liberal)
- Manhattan 67, Free State 21 (will play Wichita East)
4A East Girls: Tuesday’s sub-state semifinal results
- Rock Creek 71, Parsons 23 (will play Tonganoxie)
- Wamego 54, Labette County 33 (will play Bishop Miege)
- Hayden 2, Athison 0 (will play Baldwin)
2A Eskridge/Mission Valley Girls: Tuesday’s sub-state semifinal results
- Rossville 71, KC Christian 49 (will play Maur Hill-Mount Academy)
- Lyndon 61, Jeff. Co. North 31 (will play Valley Heights)
- Valley Heights 65, Doniphan West 41 (will play Lyndon)
Copyright 2026 WIBW. All rights reserved.
In early 2026, the Kansas state legislature passed SB 244, a law which prohibits transgender people from using public restrooms on government property that align with their gender identity and establishes a private right of action that allows anyone who suspects someone is transgender and in violation of the law to sue that person for “damages” totaling $1,000.
The law also invalidates state-issued driver’s licenses with updated gender markers that reflect the carrier’s gender identity. In February 2026, transgender people across the state received letters from the state Department of Revenue’s Division of Vehicles informing them that their driver’s licenses “will no longer be valid,” effective immediately. SB 244 also prohibits transgender Kansans – or those born in Kansas – from updating the gender marker on state-issued birth certificates and driver’s licenses in the future.
The same day SB 244 went into effect, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Kansas, and Ballard Spahr LLP filed a lawsuit challenging SB 244 in the District Court of Douglas County on behalf of two transgender men who had their driver’s licenses invalidated under the law. The lawsuit charges that SB 244 violates the Kansas Constitution’s protections for personal autonomy, privacy, equality under the law, due process, and freedom of speech.
“The invalidation of state-issued IDs threatens to out transgender people against their will every time they apply for a job, rent an apartment, or interact with police,” said Harper Seldin, Senior Staff Attorney for the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Rights Project. “Taken as a whole, SB 244 is a transparent attempt to deny transgender people autonomy over their own identities and push them out of public life altogether.”
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) – A Kansas City man was sentenced in federal court for his role in a drug trafficking conspiracy and possession of an illegal firearm.
According to the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri, 22-year-old Antoine R. Gillum was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison without parole.
His sentencing stems from a June 2024 incident in a metro gas station. KCPD investigators contacted Gillum inside and found that he had discarded a 9 mm pistol in an aisle between the merchandise. He also discarded a pill bottle containing multiple illegal substances: cocaine base, oxycodone/acetaminophen and oxycodone.
Officers searched the vehicle Gillum had arrived in and found approximately 32 grams of cocaine base.
On May 6, 2025, Gillum pleaded guilty to one count each of possession with intent to distribute cocaine and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime.
This case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Jennings. It’s a part of ‘Operation Take Back America,’ a nationwide Department of Justice initiative to eliminate cartels and transnational criminal organizations.
No further information has been released.
Copyright 2026 KCTV. All rights reserved.
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