Kick off your summer with outdoor music and movies in Kansas City

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Summer season kicks off (formally) on the longest day of the 12 months, June 21, which marks the tip of Gemini season and the start of Most cancers season. However there’s extra to look out for than the same old celestial shifts; the solstice means it’s time to get again into Kansas Metropolis’s wonderful reside music and leisure scene. Outdoors!

So lots of our nice levels needed to shut their doorways throughout the pandemic — this could possibly be the 12 months you lastly see bucket checklist artists resembling Bon Iver on the Starlight Theatre or Thundercat at Grinders within the Crossroads. Really, why not each?

Within the Metropolis of Fountains, we’re simply fortunate like that. We’ve choices. From sprawling amphitheaters to funky neighborhood joints bedecked in string lights, let this be the season of exploring within the title of open-air leisure.

Lemonade Park

West Bottoms is getting numerous (well-deserved) love recently, so it ought to come as no shock that the historic neighborhood boasts its personal low-key outside music venue: Lemonade Park.

We are saying low-key as a result of Lemonade Park is an area to be stumbled upon. It’s aesthetically excellent in its unexpectedness, and seeing a present there may be equal elements yard shindig and industrial block celebration. If Kansas Metropolis appears like a small city typically, Lemonade Park — in all its unpretentiousness — offers large metropolis vibes.

Co-owned by the group behind miniBar and recordBar, Lemonade Park is the place to see up-and-coming acts earlier than they get large, in addition to veteran KC-area musicians resembling The Grisly Hand, taking part in July 9. Catch goth-country rock band Homicide by Dying on Aug. 9 with Amigo the Satan.

Grinders KC

One factor’s for certain: the summer time lineup at Grinders KC within the Crossroads is completely stacked.

The venue previously often known as CrossroadsKC is tucked behind the connected — and endearingly off-the-wall — restaurant of the identical title. In someday, on one block, you possibly can stroll the place Man Fieri walked, devour style bud-annihilating sizzling wings and see The Nationwide out again.

Different upcoming acts embody Fitz and The Tantrums (with St. Paul and The Damaged Bones, of gold-shoes-on-the-Tiny-Desk fame) on June 21, Sheryl Crow on July 21, and the aforementioned bass genius Thundercat on Aug. 8. As the children say, sheeeeesh!

Starlight Theatre

Situated southeast of downtown in grassy Swope Park is Kansas Metropolis’s Starlight Theatre. For greater than 50 years, locals and guests alike have skilled Broadway musicals and concert events on its mystical, castle-shaped stage.

Upon opening in June 1950, the venue celebrated Kansas Metropolis’s a centesimal birthday with its first efficiency and has since operated as a nonprofit group. In 2013, the Starlight was honored with the celebrated Venue Excellence Award. Traditional acts together with Styx, REO Speedwagon, Chicago and Earth, Wind & Fireplace ask to return regularly.

In case you’re trying to see a present on a stage like no different, Bon Iver will grace the Starlight in June, comic John Mulaney in July and Jack White in August.

Azura Amphitheater

In case you bear in mind going to a present at Sandstone again within the day, you’ve already been to Azura Amphitheater. Locals nonetheless lovingly confer with the huge, open-air venue by its previous title.

Situated close to the Kansas Speedway, Youngsters’s Mercy Park and the Legends procuring outlet, this Bonner Springs, Kansas, stage has hosted epic musical performances in some capability since 1984. To provide you an concept of the venue’s hugeness, it will possibly maintain as much as 18,000 folks.

Together with upcoming concert events from Incubus and Turnpike Troubadours in August and Kevin Gates in September, runners can register to take part in a 5K that includes glow-in-the-dark foam. Seems, you possibly can have all of it.

Outside cinema experiences

Music is not the one leisure you could find at outside venues this summer time. From old-fashioned drive-ins to outside cinema experiences, there’s loads for cinephiles to take pleasure in all through the season.

You’ll be able to catch the most recent blockbusters displaying at B&B Theatres Twin Drive-In in Independence, Missouri, and at Boulevard Drive-In in Kansas Metropolis, Kansas. Be sure you examine showtimes earlier than you go and do not forget to convey snacks!

In case you’re looking for an elevated outside cinema expertise for you and your mates, Tivoli Underneath the Stars is again for one more season on the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Artwork. Every film begins proper after sundown, and guests should reserve a ticketed “pod” on the garden prematurely, which might accommodate as much as 4 friends. Movies this season embody popular culture classics resembling “Sister Act,” “Convey it On,” “The Princess Bride” and extra.

In response to theater closures throughout the pandemic, Screenland Theatres in North Kansas Metropolis launched a sequence of easygoing outside movie screenings in its again parking zone. These Yard Films had been successful and have returned for one more season, permitting viewers to convey their very own chairs, buy snacks and even convey alongside well-behaved fur infants. Take a look at the 2022 lineup.

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