Checking back with Kelsyn Rooks from The Center for Recorded Music, and getting updated with present and future plans for their wide variety of outstanding musical projects. Great information and good fun!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the Danny Clinkscale Reasonably irreverent podcast, insightful and
witty commentary, probing interviews and detours from the beaten path.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Welcome to Kansas City Profiles, presented by Easton Roofing. And
it is a pleasure to catch up with one Kelson Rooks.
He is from the Center for Recording Music. He's the
man behind it. There are many people behind it, and
I'm sure he'll want to give them credit. But it's
only been a year since we did the first Kansas
City Profile podcast. I can't really even imagine that because
(00:36):
I've been to the listening room so many times and
had so much good fun there and brought some friends.
And of course that's just one of the many, many
different availabilities that music lovers can have with the Center
for Recorded Music. You just mentioned before we get on
this little call here to bump up against the full
(00:56):
Kansas City Profile, which we'll follow. That everything's crazy and
you're busy, and you've got two lives, a passion project
and everything else.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Right, Yeah, two lives, maybe three. Thanks for having me on, Danny.
And yeah, it's you know, not easy to work full
time and be the chair of the board and de
facto director of the Center for Recorded Music. We're just
(01:24):
amazed at what the last year year and a half
has brought. You know, we talked last year about opening
the listening Room. We've been playing music for people for
ten years, but the Listening Room opened in July of
twenty twenty four, and since that time, we've had over
two hundred and thirty different listening events you three or
(01:45):
four times a week. And that doesn't include our like
open spin events or private events that we've done for people.
That's just stuff that's on the calendars on Thursdays, Fridays
and Saturdays.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
And you've had sold out events, You've had events that
are great. The Open Spin Saturday has been just a
delight for me and I really have to take advantage
of some of the other more elaborate presentations. But I've
actually taken in a couple of the shorter ones or
ones where just features the album and a little bit
of information but not a full grown, blown curation of it.
(02:19):
But you have a whole variety of those things. How
has that grown over the last year or so.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
It's pretty incredible.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Yeah, we added those events on our calendar called Spin
Focus where we just wanted to focus in on an album,
and for a couple of reasons. One, it's just easier
for people to access what we do in a shorter
time period. It's hard to make a commitment for a
longer program sometimes, and we really wanted to keep a
(02:48):
tight thing. You know, there's people got busy lives and
hectic lives, So a one hour spin you show up,
have some snacks, have a drink, and listen to an
incredible album like you've never heard it before on a
world class stereo system. Those events have been really popular
Thursday nights. We've had twenty thirty forty people show up
for a Spin Focus event. So it's the easiest way
(03:10):
to access programming at the listening room. It's the one
that's got the least amount of.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Lift for you, right And on Saturday you often do one,
not every Saturday, And if you go for the open Spin,
you can just stay around, which I've done a couple
of times for the John Prime and Creeden's Clearwater Revival recently.
But you have, as we said, more structured and more
regular and more elaborately curated things like Behind the Glass
(03:38):
and Blues Kitchen and Jazz programming and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Yeah, and the original granddaddy of them all Listen KSE, which.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
Is my event that's been going for ten years now.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
So those events, you typically are going to have a
little more talking, a little more education and information, funny
stories shared, and then most people structure those with a
variety of songs, and some of those programs lead up
to a main album, and some of them are just
an interesting curated collection of music that you won't hear
(04:10):
anywhere else in Kansas City. But just looking at December,
I mean you mentioned we most of the time we
do have spin focus on Saturdays. This Saturday, we're doing
a very special tribute to Chuck Addics at UMKC at
the Student Union Theater, and so we our team has
to get down there, so we won't be doing a
Saturday Spin or a Saturday night program.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
We will be open for open Spin.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
But just over the next couple of weeks, we've got
you know, We've got Jimmy Buffett, Changes in Latitudes, We've
got Elton John's eleven ten seventy def Leppards, Pyromania, Chapel Roons,
Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. Those are all
you know, albums that you can expect to see featured
and presented lovingly by people who care about the music
(04:56):
and love music. And then my show this month is
the sixty the anniversary of Rubber Soul, which is widely
regarded as one of the first rock concept albums. It
kicked off a movement, it's what you know, convinced Brian
Wilson to make pet Sounds and started the Pet Sound
Sergeant Pepper's War. So every event you're going to learn something,
(05:17):
you're going to experience music in a way that you
probably haven't before. And the other thing that's most important is.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
That community of people. We have a great.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Community of people. Listeners that come in, people you get
to know because you see them time and time again.
Volunteers that support us. We have over fifty people have
volunteered in the last year and helped us catalog records,
clean records, helped at events, and our dedicated little team
(05:47):
that just keeps this thing moving along.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Well, you know, just to highlight what I will do.
For instance, I actually have gotten in the habit of
like going to Discourse Brewery on Monday. There's a man
who sells vinyl. I don't even have a turntable, so
I'll actually go and look for a bargain album and
they get it fixed up there. It doesn't cost anything.
But you always make a donation or you should and
(06:12):
I do, and then you can hear that, or you
can bring something, or you can make requests. And it's
just very very cool and it's really enlightened many a
Saturday for me over the past year.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Yeah, and it's funny. You should mention Discourse Brewing. We've
been doing a lot with them lately.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
We would you know, they've.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Come to our place, we've gone, we did a October
Fest at their place. You're going to expect to see
more collaboration between us and them this next year. We're
also working on some additional collap We love working with
other Kansas City nonprofits, arts organizations, and craft producers, whether
(06:50):
the beer and spirits or food or whoever. We partner
a lot with the Glenwood Arts Theater across the street
on events. We just love being at local and making
those connections within Kansas City as well.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
Well.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
We just passed Giving Tuesday, and that was a good
excuse for people to donate money or records or equipment
or everything else. Talk about how people get involved in
that way.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Yeah, so we we obviously we always like money.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
Money does a lot for us.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
I mean, you know, just because we're I mean we
are a nonprofit and we are primary I mean, we're
volunteer driven. None of nobody on my board or staff
takes a salary. But that does not mean that we
don't have costs. You know, insurance is a is a killer.
Music licensing fees. We have to pay ASCAT, B M
(07:43):
I and C Sack to play you guys music, even
though we own the media. So this thing doesn't run
for free. So money helps. Equipment helps the equipment. We
either we're either using it actively in our in our
environment in the listening room, or we we get it
fixed up. We get it checked out by a technician,
and we put it on sale for a very reasonable price.
(08:05):
I especially love when young people come in and get
their first stereo get started. I'll do anything to make
you give a kid the terrible addiction of record junkie.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Right. Yes, and we do have.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Like I said, we have a lot of volunteers. It's
real easy. We have a volunteer button on our website.
We also have volunteer information in our lobby, and Jane's
our volunteer coordinator. She reaches out and there's a wide
variety of ways people can get involved and help and
support us.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
So the listening room itself is at the NBKC Bank
building at West ninety fifth that's right across the street
from the aforementioned Glenn Wood Arts Theater as well. And
let's talk a little bit before we get to the
great profile we did of you in your life and times,
by what you think the near future or future period
(08:56):
holds for the Center for Recorded Music.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Well, I envision us being at the listening room and yeah,
huge thanks to MVKC Bank for making this possible. Again.
We have expenses to be there, but we don't have
to pay rent. They've been very generous in supporting our
mission and we thank them for that.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
They're they've been a great partner.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
I expect we're we are actively looking for our forever home,
not that they've said they're going to kick us out
anytime soon, but we need more space. We have only
about a twenty percent of our collection on display in
the listening room today. We have more of it in storage,
and we have grand ideas of how to have different
(09:40):
spaces that are tied to different decades of music and
different technologies and music.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
We're we're actively.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Looking for a twenty thousand ish square foot building. We'd
like it somewhere inside the inside the city, but we're
we're we've had such great luck in Leewood that you know,
Lee would Overland Park, Casemo, something like like that, and
we know we'll have to continue to operate while we're
getting towards that vision. So I expect us to be
(10:08):
continuing the headquarter out of the listening room for you know,
the next couple of years, and hopefully we get a.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
Building that that is a good fit for us.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
We'd also love to partner with other nonprofits if if
there's a larger building that's too big for us to
bite off.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
In one shoe, the center for the Center for Recorded
Music dot org. That's Center for Recorded Music dot org.
You can find out more. There are tabs to donate
and volunteer and do everything else. It's really been a
fantastic addition to my life and it's a great pleasure
to catch up with you Kelson and all the best.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
My man, Yeah, and just a quick shout out to
my team and my board. We got Scott and Phil
and Phil, Jane, Deb mel Alex We there's there's too
many people to name, actually, but if you come in,
you're going to meet somebody who's friendly, who loves me
as much as you do, who's there to help. And
(11:03):
I definitely couldn't do it without the support of my team.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
And let's find out more about Kelson Rooks in his
life and times and the genesis of the Center for
Recorded Music. It comes your way next on Kansas City
Profiles presented by Eastern Roofing.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
More of Danny's Reasonably Irreverend podcast after this.
Speaker 5 (11:23):
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(11:49):
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(12:19):
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Speaker 1 (13:42):
If you'd like to join these and other great sponsors
and market your business to a growing and engaged audience,
contact us at at Danny Clinkscale dot com. Look forward
to hearing from you Kelson.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
We will dive deeply into the Center for recorded music
during the course of this podcast, but let's start off
by getting a little background on yourself. What was it
like growing up when did you develop your love of music?
And of course you're a tech guy too, so tell
us a little bit about your journey.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
Yeah, Danny.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
The interesting thing about growing up, so my parents owned
Music Exchange, which was the largest record store in the
Midwest for about thirty years, and even prior to that,
my dad's main hobby and passion was music and record albums.
(14:36):
In fact, before he bought the Music Exchange, he actually
had had over fifteen thousand records that he was hiding
at friends' houses because my mom wouldn't let him bring
the record so manymore. But you know, so growing up,
it was just kind of it was normal. It was just,
(14:57):
you know, I didn't think anything of it. I you know,
going to concerts, hearing live music, having musicians at my house,
having records all the time.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
It was just I thought everybody grew up that way.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
And I also affected me from a you know, from
a family business perspective. You know, you don't really I
think that's partially where some of my work ethic comes from.
And there's no you know, taking taking time off if
your employees are sick, if something's going wrong. So my
dad was in there a lot, and uh, because of that,
(15:32):
we were in there a lot. And for the longest time,
I really didn't like I blamed I blamed the nature
of the business as opposed to just that's how family
businesses are run. But you know, I would carry heavy
boxes or records and get cuts and hurt myself and
do things, and I always thought it was you know,
oh wow, I wish my dad owned a video arcade
(15:53):
or a Porsche dealership or anything other than a record store.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
And but years later, after he.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Passed in two thousand and six, and after he passed,
you know, one way I had to kind of reconnect
with him was was through his personal record collection. The
store my mom had to had to sell off and
sell to an auction company, and she really final was
not back on the rise at the time, so she
(16:22):
really didn't have a you know, a great outlet for
selling that. But I did have my dad's personal collection,
and I've discovered a lot of kind of the roots
of my musical taste. I understand more where they came from.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
So it sounded like the fact that you had this
love of music, but you also saw the side of
the work that was taking your dad away from you,
et cetera. So I guess that moved you towards a
path where you weren't going to pursue this as a
profession per se at the start.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Yeah, I mean early on, I always, I mean I
was a computer you know, from from the youngest age.
And my parents both if were not super computer savvy,
but they appreciated the future that computers represented and they
gave me opportunities and access to computers at an early age.
(17:15):
So I you know from my I mean youngest memories
also of being five or six years old and the
family gets a personal computer and I have learned how to.
Speaker 4 (17:25):
Use it better than anybody else is going to learn
in the family by the time I was six or seven.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
By the time I was ten, I was taking the
computers apart and working on with soldering irons, and I
had been writing code for years and that just was
the path that called to me. But this this connection
with music was was ingrained at a level that you know,
it just wouldn't it just wouldn't go away.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Right, You went to UMKC. What was your college experience like?
And I was that starting the process of obviously moving
into the tech world. But how about the music part
of it when you were at um k C and
the academic.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Part well, interestingly not enough that you know, I mean nothing,
it's not you and k c's faults. By the time
I was at um k C, I was working full
time as a software developer, right and I was actually writing, uh,
software in newer languages than we're actually being taught at
school at the time. So you know, I h I
ended up exiting without a degree, and uh, I think,
(18:29):
if you have a path and it's working for you,
there's more than one way to achieve your goals and
hit your you know, do what you want. But for me,
it was it was really it was. It was interesting,
I because I was working full time going to college
at the same time. I don't think I really had
a traditional college experience. You know, most of the time
I got done with class and I was rushing off
(18:50):
to go to work right right. Absolutely, But throughout I
mean throughout you know, throughout my my you know, formative years,
high school, college, you know, after college as a young adult,
you know, concerts and access to music.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Access to music was never a problem for me.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
I had tons of ways to you know, I I
we knew everybody that ran every place in Westport. So
go into a concert at at the Grand Emporium or
the Beaumont Club or you know, seeing somebody play at
Blainey's or something like that.
Speaker 4 (19:22):
That was all just you know, for me, a normal.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Experience of walking in and going and seeing a show
and and growing up. I mean we you know, we
we saw an awful lot of concerts, and so it
just I didn't I don't feel like I missed out
on that aspect of anything. But I definitely was a
workaholic all the way through. While I still am.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
What were your musical taste through that time?
Speaker 4 (19:51):
I would say they're pretty varied.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
You know, we all we all tend to fall in
love with the music that we first discover.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
On our own.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
I think a formative moment for a lot of people
is is when they get when they get their first car,
or when they get they get access to like their
first their first boombox or stereo system or something where
they actually control the r.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
The content that they're that they have.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
And so I mean in the you know, late eighties nineties,
I was definitely into alternative rock and grunge and I remember,
you know, the first time I saw Nirvana play or.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
Pearl Jam play.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
And but I had a foundation in I mean my
you know, my dad made sure that my my musical
foundation was solid in in jazz, in in the history
of rock, in blues and soul, funk, uh, everything there were.
You know, there really was no such thing as as
(20:52):
bad music in our house. You know, one day you'd
be listening to bluegrass and country, and the next day
you'd be listening to Parliament, Funkadelic and George Clinton.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Right, So you moved through your career into various spots
and stayed a couple of years here, a couple of
years there. And then let's tell us about the genesis
of starting to think about doing something like the Center
for Recorded Music.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
So the genesis was really back in two thousand, late
twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, I had really I had really
started reconnecting, like I said, with my with my dad,
you know, through through the through his record collection of music.
And prior to that point, I was still a gear head.
I was still very much interested in stereo equipment and
(21:43):
the stuff you used to play music back. But I
had kind of always had a very laxadaisical approach to
the music itself.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
It was.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
I was very much in that audio file mindset of
listening to things to prove that the equips that I
was listening to was better or worse than something else.
But through the course of this kind of musical journey
I took, I realized that what was important was actually
the music itself and the emotions and the memories and
(22:16):
the things that that triggered. And I also realized at
the time that I had absorbed an incredible amount of
knowledge growing up about music that I didn't even consciously
think about, as far as you know, who produced this album,
who's playing drums on this track, interesting stories about how
how bands formed and broke up and got different members.
(22:37):
And as I would play music for people at my
house at parties or just entertaining, it kind of turned
into this almost like one man show about music. And
at some point it was suggested that this would be
a good activity to do out in public, and I
looked for a bunch of places I kind of shared
the idea around, and that's when Bill Bourne, who up
(23:01):
until recently here owned Waldo Pizza. He's still involved there,
but he sold that you know, Kansas City institution. Phil
had worked in the record business before buying Waldo Pizza,
and in fact, he had actually worked at my parents'
record store for many years as a manager. And when
I mentioned the idea to him, he said, well, why
don't we do it here? And I thought, well, this
(23:24):
is great. You know, I thought he would be too busy,
the restaurant would be too successful to try something new,
but we decided we landed on you know, Sunday afternoons
in the tap room when they were when they were
slow or closed anyways, And in May of twenty fifteen
we launched and we thought maybe ten or fifteen people
would show up, and that'd be fine.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
We'd have fun, we'd enjoy it.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
And fast forward, you know, to twenty nineteen, and by
the end of twenty nineteen beginning of twenty twenty, right
before the pandemic, we were selling out one hundred and
fifty seats every month on recognizing event and that Listen
Case program really was the anchor. But we also realized
(24:10):
that more people wanted access to this kind of product
and the environment that we were creating, and more voices.
We had lots of people that said, boy, I like
what you're doing, I'd like to do something similar. And
the problem was, it takes a lot of time and
energy to move all this equipment and set it all up.
(24:31):
And so we started the idea of maybe we create
a place where.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
This happens all the time.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
And I'll be honest, we were focused on the wrong
thing at the time. At the time, we were focused
on the building itself, you know, a physical location, but reality,
what we wanted to do and the reason we ended
up ultimately going the nonprofit route was we wanted to
create a community around resources that are accessed for everyone
(25:01):
to use to share these musical experiences and this mutual
love and respective music. And so that's what's set the
direction that ultimately became center for recorded music.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
More of Danny's Reasonably Irreverend podcast after this.
Speaker 5 (25:21):
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Danny at Danny Clinkscale dot com. Look forward to working
(27:48):
with you. Our guest, is Kelson rooks See is the
chairman of the board of directors at the Center for
Recorded Music. You can access that very easily at Center
four recorded Music dot org. That's one word, Center four
Recorded Music dot Org. We're going to talk about the
listen room and all kinds of good things coming up.
So you're doing this, it is obviously we'rek intensive to
(28:11):
have enough equipment to be listening well and presenting well,
and so obviously the direction eventually had to be towards
trying to find a location.
Speaker 8 (28:22):
How did that work well?
Speaker 3 (28:24):
When when we kind of came out of the hard
lockdown in COVID, we we ended up starting up our
programs back at UMKC. One of my advisory board members,
Andre Logan, is on the staff there at UMKC. He
made the introductions. We also have a long standing relationship
(28:46):
with Chuck Addicks and the Mars Sound Archives, so it
made a lot of sense and the UMKC space was
working fine for us, but we still had the same
problem that we had with the Waldo Pizza space, which
is every event was two to three hours to set
up in two to three hours to tear down after
you're done, and makes for a long day and it
also makes it hard to do like a spontaneous pop
(29:08):
up event.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
Or a one hour event.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
So earlier actually, at the beginning of twenty twenty four,
NBKC Bank put out a social media post about looking
for small business or nonprofit that could benefit from having
a rent free space. And it was a weird it's
a weird situation. It's it's inside their bank branch in
(29:32):
Leewould and just on the surface. When I looked at it,
I kind of went, I don't know how this is
going to work. But I decided, you know, I decided,
let's go ahead and apply for it. Let's see if
we'll you know what, does it hurt to ask or talk?
Speaker 4 (29:44):
Right?
Speaker 3 (29:45):
So we applied and a few tee weeks later, Peter
Mercer at the bank, who's been kind of our primary
contact and real champion there, reached out and said, why,
you know, why don't you come in and talk, tell
us what you're thinking, and check out the space. And
we looked at it and we or you know, we
saw potential there and ultimately, through a long selection process,
(30:06):
they chose us. We found out that we were selected
in late April, and then we basically got keys in June,
started the build out and we had our grand opening
July twenty seventh. The space is great. You know, again,
they are providing a rent free. We do pay for
our construction costs and operating expenses and utilities and insurance
(30:29):
and all that. It's not it's definitely not free to
operate a space, but they're incredibly generous in giving us
the foundation to have a space.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
And since then we have been open.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
On average, we've been open three to four days a
week and with some sort of event two to four
nights a week.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
It's a pretty amazing the wide variety of things you do.
But tell me about the evolution of what the presentations
were like and what the things that you were doing
at um case you were like, that you know, have
morphed into the wide variety of things you do at
the center.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
So, you know, going back to kind of the genesis
of this, Listen, Casey is really my show, which I
don't ask everybody to copy what I do, but it's
the framework that this was built on. My show Takes
typically takes a well regarded, well known or significant album
(31:28):
and focuses on the story about how this album came
to be. And sometimes every aspect of the show could
be different, depending on the album that you're picking. There's
a big difference between picking a band's first album and
their twenty fifth album as far as the story you
tell to get there, but fundamentally, it usually follows a
(31:51):
pattern of here are the influences from a musical perspective,
here are the songwriting influences and guitar playing, and if
it's a jazz album, here's here's where you know, here's
where John Coltrane or Miles Davis got some of their
influences in their playing style and their composition style. So
it's generally about an hour and a half of lead
(32:13):
up material where it's a few minutes of talking and
then two to three songs that kind of illustrate the
points that we were trying to make, and then we
get to the main album. And at the main album,
that's when this becomes more like a concert. We actually
turn the lights down. We asked everybody to honor our
one rule, which is be quiet during the performance, right
(32:34):
or are there to enjoy and learn and experience.
Speaker 4 (32:38):
And then we play back an album.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
We pick albums that really benefit from being a complete
work of art, not three hit songs and a bunch
of filler and we play that album and people, really,
you know, have kind of forgotten that lost art of
focusing on listening to music. A lot of us have
music on all the time in the background, but really
(33:01):
sitting there and paying attention and really honing in on it.
And it helps that we're playing back on almost two
hundred thousand dollars worth of.
Speaker 4 (33:07):
Stereo coin, right right.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
It definitely has a different experience than listening to it
on your headphones or on your Bluetooth speaker in your kitchen.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Absolutely, that's a listen case. We'll talk more about that.
So that's with a why. I assume that is a
takeoff on your name, which has a why in it.
Is that correct?
Speaker 4 (33:26):
It's a little bit of that.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
It's also the techie in me understanding that search results
work better if you have alternative spellings, and why is
a letter that actually shows up.
Speaker 4 (33:36):
And then our logo, the logo of listen Case.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
The why was a tone arm going across the record,
and so it worked on many different levels.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
Probably wouldn't have thought about the why if I wasn't
used to writing it every day, right, So.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
A mixture of a mixture of the thing I said
and the other there's.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
More than one reason for it, but fundamentally it probably
originates from having a hy in my name. But the
interesting evolution of listening case also is we've done some
other programs now that it basically continued that approach but
added new elements to it right out. You know, early
on in our um k C days, we had the
(34:14):
opportunity to bring you know, Canadian artist Bruce Coburn in,
and we did.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
We did an entire.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Program around his nineteen eighty four album Stealing Fire. And
what was exciting about that was, you know, the audience
got to spend some time with him where it was
very much this kind of interview process, and the answer
to every question was a song that we played. And
so what his first musical memory was, who his favorite
guitar players were, who was you know, who influenced his songwriting?
(34:43):
And and then we sat together in a room and
listened to this album and he sat there and listened
to it, and afterwards he said, you know, this is
the first time I've really listened to this album all
the way through since I wrote it thirty, you know,
forty years ago, right, And it was it was a
an incredibly different experience for people other than you know,
(35:03):
we're not trying to replace the live performance. It's you know,
it's unique and it's it's definitely something people walked away
from that and.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
Went, wow, this was incredible.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
Well, later that year, we helped Danny Cox celebrate his
eightieth birthday and because we also wanted to show some
love to know local musicians, not just national and international.
And then earlier this year, we brought in Grammy winning
producer Cheryl Pavelski and Grammy winning engineer Michael Graves and
(35:34):
they actually stayed and did two programs with us. They
played and talked about how they restored Nina Simone's first album,
Little Girl Blue, and that was part of our series
we've done this year for the anniversaries of all the
great jazz albums they came out in nineteen fifty nine.
And then they also presented their work on restoring all
(35:56):
these amazing singer songwriter demo taps that they had from
the Stack label in Memphis, and they, I mean, Michael
actually took us through the engineering process too, like here's
what the tape sounded like when they first stand it
in and first got it, and it was in.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
Many cases it sounded like a muffled mass.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Some of these tapes had been buried under mud and concrete.
Some of them had been left in hot addicts for decades,
hot and cold. They were definitely not well preserved tapes.
And at the end we heard ten of their favorite
cuts from this collection of one hundred and forty plus songs,
and they sounded like they were fresh out of the studio.
(36:35):
And their work was obviously well regarded because that written
in their Soul Stax collection won the Grammy for Best
Historical Work this year, and we had them here at
Center for Record of Music a month after the Grammy Awards.
We were just super lucky to have already had that
scheduled in working and those experiences very much still about
(36:57):
telling the story about how music is made, why it
sounds the way it does, where it comes from, how
it influences us. It's really just an evolution of what
I'm trying to do. It's just now when I tell
somebody about it, I have to double check my focks
really well, because the person who made the music is
sitting there right next to me.
Speaker 8 (37:16):
Right well.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
The listening room spelled ls t y NNG is opened
as of July. It's at thirty five to ten West
ninety fifth Street in Leewood. It is the NBKC Bank
branch in lee Wood. And if there's no event going on,
it's still open. What will people find if they were
to go there on a Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday from
(37:40):
one to five when it's open.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
What we encourage people to do is come talk to us,
learn about our mission. They can explore our collection in
that space. We have about twenty thousand recordings today that
are accessible. You can come in and pull something off
the shelf and ask us to play it. You can
bring your own music in and ask us to play it.
We we've also during the days, you know, we've were
(38:05):
working with school groups. We're working with UH corporate organizations
that want to do team building events.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
We find that music is a.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Great way to explore the bonds between people and the
commonalities that we have, and we have some programs designed
to help basically foster those connections and have people learn
about each other through.
Speaker 4 (38:28):
The music that they love.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
So we've got those events happening, but more than anything,
a lot of people just come. In a few weeks ago,
we had three gentlemen who you know, they they two
of them were in from out of town for the holidays.
They hadn't seen each other in a long time. One
of their favorite activities back in the day was getting
together and listening to records. And they came in and
(38:51):
I mean they just explored, uh, basically their they're shared.
Speaker 4 (38:55):
Past with us, and we just we love it. We
love putting music.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
On and seeing that spark, seeing people get excited, and
then you know, they tell stories about what what they remember,
you know, the first time they saw the band play live,
or the first time they saw you know, Muddy Waters,
and and and talk about their their their shared history
and experiences through the lens of music.
Speaker 4 (39:21):
It's it's incredible and we we we enjoy that. And
then we're also trying to.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Foster the same passion about music with kids and young people.
And that's where getting school groups involved and getting other
organizations involved has been incredibly fulfilling for us.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
There's a lots of a lot of things under the umbrella.
There's hey, there's even classic rock yoga, like on this
Saturday as we speak, so there's a lot of things
going on.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
Yeah, I mean, we're classic rock yoga is a great
example of that's one of our regular listeners, regular supporters.
She's been she's been with us since the very beginning,
Christ and Swan.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
She's a certified.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Yoga instructor and she's created a really neat program for
combining the movements with songs. And then she's also got
you know, it won't just be classic rock, it'll be
soul and sunk and yacht rock and jazz, and she's
got all sorts of ideas for how to follow up
with that one. We're working with the Glenwood Arts Theater
(40:22):
across the street. We've done several events with them already
where they play a music documentary and then that night
we do a cocktail hour listening session after that. So
we did that with Paul McCartney and Wings documentary One
Hand Clapping, We did that with the Tom Petty documentary
that came out recently, and it's just another fun way
to extend the experience.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Certainly is and this is really You can find out
more and see the shows and see the events easy
access at a fine website Center for Recruited Music dot org.
Now you're in this particular space, but I know you
have vision for the future because there's so much popularity
to what you're doing right now.
Speaker 4 (41:05):
Yeah, we really so.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
The one downside of the space is that we have
room for about in the main listening area that we
have in our space today, we have room for about
forty people.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
Well, you know our.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Shows at Young KC we could see hundred and fifty people.
Now there's a benefit of that in that the experiences
that we have are definitely more intimate, they're more relaxing.
You know, a room with forty people and it does
not feel the same as a room with one hundred
and fifty. But we know we have enough demand for
larger spaces. We know we have we've already run into
(41:40):
situations where we have more than one group that wants
to do something on the same night.
Speaker 4 (41:46):
That we can.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
Accommodate a little bit of that, but we our vision
really is to have a space that's got more room
for events, more room for programming.
Speaker 4 (41:56):
Also, we currently have about only a out.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
One third or not maybe even one quarter of our
collection in the listening room. The rest of it is
stored off site, so we need more space.
Speaker 4 (42:09):
We need thousands of square feet.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
For storing our collections as well, and ultimately one of
our other ideas that we really want to take people
through the history of music with both the recordings and
the equipment that made the recordings and the equipment that's
been used to.
Speaker 4 (42:24):
Play it back.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
So our vision includes basically building a space where we
can take you into a room from the nineteen fifties
that has nineteen fifties furniture and equipment and the music
that you would have listened to, and really almost take
you on a time machine into the past, take you
into the nineteen seventies and the birth of transistor, you know,
(42:45):
solid state equipment. And we can't decide whether to have
shad carpeting in that room because in a public space
it's a little hard to keep clean.
Speaker 4 (42:54):
But you know, the idea of that of basically.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
Putting you in the position and to appreciate the technology,
the environment and the music from that time period. And
that's another thing that differentiates us from a lot of
other music, you know, museum or nonprofit concepts. Our focus
is to get you as close to the music as possible.
We love this other we love memorabilia and the camera,
(43:21):
and we've got posters on our.
Speaker 4 (43:22):
Walls and things like that.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
But a lot of music museums today when you go in,
that's all they're focused on, you know, they're focused on
the instruments and the outfits the people wore, and and
all sorts of concert memorabilia. But we're trying to actually
make it sound as close as possible to the artists.
Speaker 4 (43:44):
Being there with you, and.
Speaker 3 (43:46):
That focus on the music and the love of music
is really what differentiates us from a lot of other
concepts that are out there.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
And of course all this takes money. As you noted earlier,
there is a donate button on the website, but what,
what levels and what aspects of fundraising do you can
you explain to us?
Speaker 3 (44:07):
So we we really have always had a vision for
more fundraising opportunities, and having a dedicated space now kind
of gives us gives us an anchor around that. So fundamentally,
we do have recurring donors. We have some corporate donors
that have been very generous with either cash or in
(44:28):
kind donations. We definitely we can definitely benefit from end
kind donations. We've got companies that have provided stereo equipment.
We've got companies that have provided food, We've got companies
that have provided alcohol, which.
Speaker 4 (44:42):
We are in nonprofits.
Speaker 3 (44:43):
So we we when we do fundraising events, we you know,
we can't sell alcohol, but if you donate, we we
can give you alcohol. So that's a great I mean,
that's been a great opportunity for us to to help.
So it's not just about cash and cash down, but fundamentally,
you know, our biggest source of funds today are through
(45:05):
donations to it.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
You know, when people attend.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
Events and memberships, and we have in many of our fans. Basically,
a membership is just a way to kind of donate
in advance to go to a bunch of events. And
if you donate, you if you participate in that, you
also get some extra benefits. So for example, we allow
members to reserve the space for a couple hours a
(45:28):
month and basically host their own private listening events. We
also have a way you can as a member, you
can actually reserve the entire facility, all thirty five hundred
square feet for events as well. So those mechanisms have
been great. We have been the biggest challenge we've had
to date is we haven't figured out the best way
(45:50):
to really tie into any sort of foundational giving or grants.
It's just been we've been full I mean, it's been
a long year of trying to on delivering content. It's
you know, we've kind of focused on delivering content first
and hoping the money will follow. Well, we're going to
(46:10):
have to take a slightly different approach in twenty twenty five.
The content's happening, So now we're going to really put
our fundraising hat on and figure out how we can
move this to the next level.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Well, clearly this is a labor of love. Obviously you
have a real quote unquote job, but this is sounds
like for a guy who when he was growing up
had a tiny bit of resentment that he was lugging
boxes of records around for a family business. Seems like
you're pouring your heart and soul and sweat into this.
Speaker 4 (46:38):
Yeah. I've had a lot of a lot of things.
Speaker 3 (46:41):
I've been a part of startups in the past, and
I'm on the board of a couple of other organizations
here in Kansas City.
Speaker 4 (46:47):
I've had my own ideas that I've wanted to lunch.
This thing has taken over.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
My wife accuses my wife, Amy, accuses my dad of
pulling my strings from beyond the veil. She also accuses
me of trying to basically get all of his records.
Speaker 4 (47:03):
Back, one record at a time.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
That's not the goal actually, but but it is interesting.
I mean it, I can't explain it. I don't think
about this most of the time. I don't think about
it as work. I think about as something that I
really love to do. And and and it's not just me.
I mean, when with when this, When this program first started,
it was me doing the program, but it was also
(47:27):
still still born providing the venue for us to get
started and understanding the vision and being willing to invest
some time and money from their perspective. And since then
the rest of my board of directors came on board.
They're you know, they're all equally enthusiastic about our mission.
And then we've continue to build out a team and
(47:48):
a few of our younger people are you know, part
time paid employees, but everybody else on our team is
all volunteer. Our boards all volunteer. The majority of our
staff is volunteer, and they're all, you know, they're all
giving something incredibly valuable, which is their time and their
expertise to us.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
They are indeed, you are in the middle of a
journey with the listening room and the Center for Recorded Music,
and it's something that really is spectacular. I noted it
as soon as I don't even know how I found it.
I think I got a newsletter or something, and I
was intrigued immediately. But you must be proud of how
(48:29):
this is developed and where it can go.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
I'm incredibly proud of. I mean, more than anything this year.
If we just think back last year, we would do
maybe one or two programs a month in twenty twenty three,
you know, twenty in twenty twenty four, we have done
We have gone from that one to two a month to.
Speaker 4 (48:55):
Every well, one day.
Speaker 3 (48:56):
We had seven programs on the International Jazz Day this year,
we did seven in different presentations including out of town
experts and guests all around both uh in nineteen sixty
you know, nineteen fifty nine jazz albums, as well as
just certain people's favorites and things they're experts in. We
since we've launched the listening Room in you know, July twenty.
Speaker 4 (49:19):
Seventh, we have had.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
Well, we've had over a thousand people walk through the doors,
and we've had, like I said, an average of three
to four events per week. And that's a that's an
incredible accomplishment to be creating and delivering that much you know,
that much content, and it wouldn't. It's not just my
full time staff that you know, or volunteer staff that
helps with that. We have local Kansas City music radio people,
(49:48):
record store people that are hosting these programs, creating these
programs for consumption and giving of their time and sharing,
so you know, it's it's not just even our tea
on the website. There there are lots of other people
that donate and give up their time to make this
thing a reality.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
We hope you enjoyed the latest Danny Clinkscale Reasonably Irreverent podcast.
Come back soon for something fresh and new. This podcast
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(50:30):
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Welcome to the Danny Clinkscale Reasonably irreverent podcast, insightful and
witty commentary, probing interviews and detours from the beaten path.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Welcome to Kansas City Profiles, presented by Easton Roofing. And
it is a pleasure to catch up with one Kelson Rooks.
He is from the Center for Recording Music. He's the
man behind it. There are many people behind it, and
I'm sure he'll want to give them credit. But it's
only been a year since we did the first Kansas
City Profile podcast. I can't really even imagine that because
(00:36):
I've been to the listening room so many times and
had so much good fun there and brought some friends.
And of course that's just one of the many, many
different availabilities that music lovers can have with the Center
for Recorded Music. You just mentioned before we get on
this little call here to bump up against the full
(00:56):
Kansas City Profile, which we'll follow. That everything's crazy and
you're busy, and you've got two lives, a passion project
and everything else.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Right, Yeah, two lives, maybe three. Thanks for having me on, Danny.
And yeah, it's you know, not easy to work full
time and be the chair of the board and de
facto director of the Center for Recorded Music. We're just
(01:24):
amazed at what the last year year and a half
has brought. You know, we talked last year about opening
the listening Room. We've been playing music for people for
ten years, but the Listening Room opened in July of
twenty twenty four, and since that time, we've had over
two hundred and thirty different listening events you three or
(01:45):
four times a week. And that doesn't include our like
open spin events or private events that we've done for people.
That's just stuff that's on the calendars on Thursdays, Fridays
and Saturdays.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
And you've had sold out events, You've had events that
are great. The Open Spin Saturday has been just a
delight for me and I really have to take advantage
of some of the other more elaborate presentations. But I've
actually taken in a couple of the shorter ones or
ones where just features the album and a little bit
of information but not a full grown, blown curation of it.
(02:19):
But you have a whole variety of those things. How
has that grown over the last year or so.
Speaker 4 (02:26):
It's pretty incredible.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Yeah, we added those events on our calendar called Spin
Focus where we just wanted to focus in on an album,
and for a couple of reasons. One, it's just easier
for people to access what we do in a shorter
time period. It's hard to make a commitment for a
longer program sometimes, and we really wanted to keep a
(02:48):
tight thing. You know, there's people got busy lives and
hectic lives, So a one hour spin you show up,
have some snacks, have a drink, and listen to an
incredible album like you've never heard it before on a
world class stereo system. Those events have been really popular
Thursday nights. We've had twenty thirty forty people show up
for a Spin Focus event. So it's the easiest way
(03:10):
to access programming at the listening room. It's the one
that's got the least amount of.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Lift for you, right And on Saturday you often do one,
not every Saturday, And if you go for the open Spin,
you can just stay around, which I've done a couple
of times for the John Prime and Creeden's Clearwater Revival recently.
But you have, as we said, more structured and more
regular and more elaborately curated things like Behind the Glass
(03:38):
and Blues Kitchen and Jazz programming and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
Yeah, and the original granddaddy of them all Listen KSE, which.
Speaker 4 (03:46):
Is my event that's been going for ten years now.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
So those events, you typically are going to have a
little more talking, a little more education and information, funny
stories shared, and then most people structure those with a
variety of songs, and some of those programs lead up
to a main album, and some of them are just
an interesting curated collection of music that you won't hear
(04:10):
anywhere else in Kansas City. But just looking at December,
I mean you mentioned we most of the time we
do have spin focus on Saturdays. This Saturday, we're doing
a very special tribute to Chuck Addics at UMKC at
the Student Union Theater, and so we our team has
to get down there, so we won't be doing a
Saturday Spin or a Saturday night program.
Speaker 4 (04:32):
We will be open for open Spin.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
But just over the next couple of weeks, we've got
you know, We've got Jimmy Buffett, Changes in Latitudes, We've
got Elton John's eleven ten seventy def Leppards, Pyromania, Chapel Roons,
Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. Those are all
you know, albums that you can expect to see featured
and presented lovingly by people who care about the music
(04:56):
and love music. And then my show this month is
the sixty the anniversary of Rubber Soul, which is widely
regarded as one of the first rock concept albums. It
kicked off a movement, it's what you know, convinced Brian
Wilson to make pet Sounds and started the Pet Sound
Sergeant Pepper's War. So every event you're going to learn something,
(05:17):
you're going to experience music in a way that you
probably haven't before. And the other thing that's most important is.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
That community of people. We have a great.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Community of people. Listeners that come in, people you get
to know because you see them time and time again.
Volunteers that support us. We have over fifty people have
volunteered in the last year and helped us catalog records,
clean records, helped at events, and our dedicated little team
(05:47):
that just keeps this thing moving along.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Well, you know, just to highlight what I will do.
For instance, I actually have gotten in the habit of
like going to Discourse Brewery on Monday. There's a man
who sells vinyl. I don't even have a turntable, so
I'll actually go and look for a bargain album and
they get it fixed up there. It doesn't cost anything.
But you always make a donation or you should and
(06:12):
I do, and then you can hear that, or you
can bring something, or you can make requests. And it's
just very very cool and it's really enlightened many a
Saturday for me over the past year.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Yeah, and it's funny. You should mention Discourse Brewing. We've
been doing a lot with them lately.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
We would you know, they've.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Come to our place, we've gone, we did a October
Fest at their place. You're going to expect to see
more collaboration between us and them this next year. We're
also working on some additional collap We love working with
other Kansas City nonprofits, arts organizations, and craft producers, whether
(06:50):
the beer and spirits or food or whoever. We partner
a lot with the Glenwood Arts Theater across the street
on events. We just love being at local and making
those connections within Kansas City as well.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
Well.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
We just passed Giving Tuesday, and that was a good
excuse for people to donate money or records or equipment
or everything else. Talk about how people get involved in
that way.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Yeah, so we we obviously we always like money.
Speaker 4 (07:21):
Money does a lot for us.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
I mean, you know, just because we're I mean we
are a nonprofit and we are primary I mean, we're
volunteer driven. None of nobody on my board or staff
takes a salary. But that does not mean that we
don't have costs. You know, insurance is a is a killer.
Music licensing fees. We have to pay ASCAT, B M
(07:43):
I and C Sack to play you guys music, even
though we own the media. So this thing doesn't run
for free. So money helps. Equipment helps the equipment. We
either we're either using it actively in our in our
environment in the listening room, or we we get it
fixed up. We get it checked out by a technician,
and we put it on sale for a very reasonable price.
(08:05):
I especially love when young people come in and get
their first stereo get started. I'll do anything to make
you give a kid the terrible addiction of record junkie.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Right. Yes, and we do have.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
Like I said, we have a lot of volunteers. It's
real easy. We have a volunteer button on our website.
We also have volunteer information in our lobby, and Jane's
our volunteer coordinator. She reaches out and there's a wide
variety of ways people can get involved and help and
support us.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
So the listening room itself is at the NBKC Bank
building at West ninety fifth that's right across the street
from the aforementioned Glenn Wood Arts Theater as well. And
let's talk a little bit before we get to the
great profile we did of you in your life and times,
by what you think the near future or future period
(08:56):
holds for the Center for Recorded Music.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Well, I envision us being at the listening room and yeah,
huge thanks to MVKC Bank for making this possible. Again.
We have expenses to be there, but we don't have
to pay rent. They've been very generous in supporting our
mission and we thank them for that.
Speaker 4 (09:16):
They're they've been a great partner.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
I expect we're we are actively looking for our forever home,
not that they've said they're going to kick us out
anytime soon, but we need more space. We have only
about a twenty percent of our collection on display in
the listening room today. We have more of it in storage,
and we have grand ideas of how to have different
(09:40):
spaces that are tied to different decades of music and
different technologies and music.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
We're we're actively.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Looking for a twenty thousand ish square foot building. We'd
like it somewhere inside the inside the city, but we're
we're we've had such great luck in Leewood that you know,
Lee would Overland Park, Casemo, something like like that, and
we know we'll have to continue to operate while we're
getting towards that vision. So I expect us to be
(10:08):
continuing the headquarter out of the listening room for you know,
the next couple of years, and hopefully we get a.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
Building that that is a good fit for us.
Speaker 3 (10:17):
We'd also love to partner with other nonprofits if if
there's a larger building that's too big for us to
bite off.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
In one shoe, the center for the Center for Recorded
Music dot org. That's Center for Recorded Music dot org.
You can find out more. There are tabs to donate
and volunteer and do everything else. It's really been a
fantastic addition to my life and it's a great pleasure
to catch up with you Kelson and all the best.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
My man, Yeah, and just a quick shout out to
my team and my board. We got Scott and Phil
and Phil, Jane, Deb mel Alex We there's there's too
many people to name, actually, but if you come in,
you're going to meet somebody who's friendly, who loves me
as much as you do, who's there to help. And
(11:03):
I definitely couldn't do it without the support of my team.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
And let's find out more about Kelson Rooks in his
life and times and the genesis of the Center for
Recorded Music. It comes your way next on Kansas City
Profiles presented by Eastern Roofing.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
More of Danny's Reasonably Irreverend podcast after this.
Speaker 5 (11:23):
Hey, Kansas City, Joe Spiker, Eastern Roofing here.
Speaker 6 (11:26):
Don't you hate it when people start talking about Christmas
before Thanksgiving? Even arrives me too, But right now I'm
that guy. Call Eastern Roofing today and get on the
schedule to have your custom Christmas lights installed before Thanksgiving
and receive a ten percent discount on your holiday light installation.
Stay off that ladder and let the pros hang your
custom holiday lights this year. Eastern Roofing integrity matters. It'll
(11:49):
be real nice, Clark.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
We're here with Matt Lewellen from the twenty third Street Brewery,
Hence brewery. So beer is important and you've got great ones.
Speaker 7 (11:58):
Yes, we do, and we've got a great brewer, Angelo
Ruiz has been here for three years now and just Bruce,
great great beer, always something new on tap. It's hard
to say what our best beers are because he always
has a new beer coming out for the season. I
was asked earlier today what we have coming up next,
and I'm like, I don't know. Ask Angelo. Come inside
(12:19):
the restaurant. Talk to Angelo, our brewer. He'll tell you everything,
but he might say he doesn't know either. No matter
what it is, Danny, it's a great beer though, and
Angelo Bruce all kinds of great.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Beer, great beers, great food, great fun. At the twenty
third Street Brewery, twenty third End, Cassle have.
Speaker 8 (12:34):
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over the years. The peaks are great and even the
valleys can provide opportunities for you as an investor. However,
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(12:55):
focusing mainly on Kansas and the Missouri area. I look
forward to meeting with you face to face with the
heights and lows throughout the financial landscape. My goal is
to make sure you feel protected once you've set your
retirement date. Growing up in a tight knit community, I
understand the importance of knowing you can rely on someone
to have your back. I'm always a phone call away
to talk with you about your investments. Make you feel
(13:17):
you're getting the most out of your retirement. Give me
a call today at Strategic Partners, Incorporated. Ask for Zach
Reidemeier at eight hundred four two one six two two seven.
That's eight hundred four to two one six two two seven.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Securities and advisory services offered through LPL Financial, a Registered
Investment Advisor member FINRA SIPC.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
If you'd like to join these and other great sponsors
and market your business to a growing and engaged audience,
contact us at at Danny Clinkscale dot com. Look forward
to hearing from you Kelson.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
We will dive deeply into the Center for recorded music
during the course of this podcast, but let's start off
by getting a little background on yourself. What was it
like growing up when did you develop your love of music?
And of course you're a tech guy too, so tell
us a little bit about your journey.
Speaker 4 (14:12):
Yeah, Danny.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
The interesting thing about growing up, so my parents owned
Music Exchange, which was the largest record store in the
Midwest for about thirty years, and even prior to that,
my dad's main hobby and passion was music and record albums.
(14:36):
In fact, before he bought the Music Exchange, he actually
had had over fifteen thousand records that he was hiding
at friends' houses because my mom wouldn't let him bring
the record so manymore. But you know, so growing up,
it was just kind of it was normal. It was just,
(14:57):
you know, I didn't think anything of it. I you know,
going to concerts, hearing live music, having musicians at my house,
having records all the time.
Speaker 4 (15:08):
It was just I thought everybody grew up that way.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
And I also affected me from a you know, from
a family business perspective. You know, you don't really I
think that's partially where some of my work ethic comes from.
And there's no you know, taking taking time off if
your employees are sick, if something's going wrong. So my
dad was in there a lot, and uh, because of that,
(15:32):
we were in there a lot. And for the longest time,
I really didn't like I blamed I blamed the nature
of the business as opposed to just that's how family
businesses are run. But you know, I would carry heavy
boxes or records and get cuts and hurt myself and
do things, and I always thought it was you know,
oh wow, I wish my dad owned a video arcade
(15:53):
or a Porsche dealership or anything other than a record store.
Speaker 4 (15:57):
And but years later, after he.
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Passed in two thousand and six, and after he passed,
you know, one way I had to kind of reconnect
with him was was through his personal record collection. The
store my mom had to had to sell off and
sell to an auction company, and she really final was
not back on the rise at the time, so she
(16:22):
really didn't have a you know, a great outlet for
selling that. But I did have my dad's personal collection,
and I've discovered a lot of kind of the roots
of my musical taste. I understand more where they came from.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
So it sounded like the fact that you had this
love of music, but you also saw the side of
the work that was taking your dad away from you,
et cetera. So I guess that moved you towards a
path where you weren't going to pursue this as a
profession per se at the start.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
Yeah, I mean early on, I always, I mean I
was a computer you know, from from the youngest age.
And my parents both if were not super computer savvy,
but they appreciated the future that computers represented and they
gave me opportunities and access to computers at an early age.
(17:15):
So I you know from my I mean youngest memories
also of being five or six years old and the
family gets a personal computer and I have learned how to.
Speaker 4 (17:25):
Use it better than anybody else is going to learn
in the family by the time I was six or seven.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
By the time I was ten, I was taking the
computers apart and working on with soldering irons, and I
had been writing code for years and that just was
the path that called to me. But this this connection
with music was was ingrained at a level that you know,
it just wouldn't it just wouldn't go away.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Right, You went to UMKC. What was your college experience like?
And I was that starting the process of obviously moving
into the tech world. But how about the music part
of it when you were at um k C and
the academic.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Part well, interestingly not enough that you know, I mean nothing,
it's not you and k c's faults. By the time
I was at um k C, I was working full
time as a software developer, right and I was actually writing, uh,
software in newer languages than we're actually being taught at
school at the time. So you know, I h I
ended up exiting without a degree, and uh, I think,
(18:29):
if you have a path and it's working for you,
there's more than one way to achieve your goals and
hit your you know, do what you want. But for me,
it was it was really it was. It was interesting,
I because I was working full time going to college
at the same time. I don't think I really had
a traditional college experience. You know, most of the time
I got done with class and I was rushing off
(18:50):
to go to work right right. Absolutely, But throughout I
mean throughout you know, throughout my my you know, formative years,
high school, college, you know, after college as a young adult,
you know, concerts and access to music.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Access to music was never a problem for me.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
I had tons of ways to you know, I I
we knew everybody that ran every place in Westport. So
go into a concert at at the Grand Emporium or
the Beaumont Club or you know, seeing somebody play at
Blainey's or something like that.
Speaker 4 (19:22):
That was all just you know, for me, a normal.
Speaker 3 (19:26):
Experience of walking in and going and seeing a show
and and growing up. I mean we you know, we
we saw an awful lot of concerts, and so it
just I didn't I don't feel like I missed out
on that aspect of anything. But I definitely was a
workaholic all the way through. While I still am.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
What were your musical taste through that time?
Speaker 4 (19:51):
I would say they're pretty varied.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
You know, we all we all tend to fall in
love with the music that we first discover.
Speaker 4 (19:59):
On our own.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
I think a formative moment for a lot of people
is is when they get when they get their first car,
or when they get they get access to like their
first their first boombox or stereo system or something where
they actually control the r.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
The content that they're that they have.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
And so I mean in the you know, late eighties nineties,
I was definitely into alternative rock and grunge and I remember,
you know, the first time I saw Nirvana play or.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
Pearl Jam play.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
And but I had a foundation in I mean my
you know, my dad made sure that my my musical
foundation was solid in in jazz, in in the history
of rock, in blues and soul, funk, uh, everything there were.
You know, there really was no such thing as as
(20:52):
bad music in our house. You know, one day you'd
be listening to bluegrass and country, and the next day
you'd be listening to Parliament, Funkadelic and George Clinton.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
Right, So you moved through your career into various spots
and stayed a couple of years here, a couple of
years there. And then let's tell us about the genesis
of starting to think about doing something like the Center
for Recorded Music.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
So the genesis was really back in two thousand, late
twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, I had really I had really
started reconnecting, like I said, with my with my dad,
you know, through through the through his record collection of music.
And prior to that point, I was still a gear head.
I was still very much interested in stereo equipment and
(21:43):
the stuff you used to play music back. But I
had kind of always had a very laxadaisical approach to
the music itself.
Speaker 4 (21:53):
It was.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
I was very much in that audio file mindset of
listening to things to prove that the equips that I
was listening to was better or worse than something else.
But through the course of this kind of musical journey
I took, I realized that what was important was actually
the music itself and the emotions and the memories and
(22:16):
the things that that triggered. And I also realized at
the time that I had absorbed an incredible amount of
knowledge growing up about music that I didn't even consciously
think about, as far as you know, who produced this album,
who's playing drums on this track, interesting stories about how
how bands formed and broke up and got different members.
(22:37):
And as I would play music for people at my
house at parties or just entertaining, it kind of turned
into this almost like one man show about music. And
at some point it was suggested that this would be
a good activity to do out in public, and I
looked for a bunch of places I kind of shared
the idea around, and that's when Bill Bourne, who up
(23:01):
until recently here owned Waldo Pizza. He's still involved there,
but he sold that you know, Kansas City institution. Phil
had worked in the record business before buying Waldo Pizza,
and in fact, he had actually worked at my parents'
record store for many years as a manager. And when
I mentioned the idea to him, he said, well, why
don't we do it here? And I thought, well, this
(23:24):
is great. You know, I thought he would be too busy,
the restaurant would be too successful to try something new,
but we decided we landed on you know, Sunday afternoons
in the tap room when they were when they were
slow or closed anyways, And in May of twenty fifteen
we launched and we thought maybe ten or fifteen people
would show up, and that'd be fine.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
We'd have fun, we'd enjoy it.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
And fast forward, you know, to twenty nineteen, and by
the end of twenty nineteen beginning of twenty twenty, right
before the pandemic, we were selling out one hundred and
fifty seats every month on recognizing event and that Listen
Case program really was the anchor. But we also realized
(24:10):
that more people wanted access to this kind of product
and the environment that we were creating, and more voices.
We had lots of people that said, boy, I like
what you're doing, I'd like to do something similar. And
the problem was, it takes a lot of time and
energy to move all this equipment and set it all up.
(24:31):
And so we started the idea of maybe we create
a place where.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
This happens all the time.
Speaker 3 (24:38):
And I'll be honest, we were focused on the wrong
thing at the time. At the time, we were focused
on the building itself, you know, a physical location, but reality,
what we wanted to do and the reason we ended
up ultimately going the nonprofit route was we wanted to
create a community around resources that are accessed for everyone
(25:01):
to use to share these musical experiences and this mutual
love and respective music. And so that's what's set the
direction that ultimately became center for recorded music.
Speaker 1 (25:14):
More of Danny's Reasonably Irreverend podcast after this.
Speaker 5 (25:21):
Hey, Kansas City, Joe Spiker Eastern Roofing here.
Speaker 6 (25:23):
Don't you hate it when people start talking about Christmas
before Thanksgiving?
Speaker 5 (25:27):
Even arrives? Me too, But right now I'm that guy.
Speaker 6 (25:31):
Call Eastern Roofing today and get on the schedule to
have your custom Christmas lights installed before Thanksgiving and receive
a ten percent discount on your holiday light installation. Stay
off that ladder and let the pros hang your custom
holiday lights This year Eastern Roofing integrity matters.
Speaker 5 (25:46):
It'll be real nice Clark.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
This is Danny for my friends at Active Life Physical Therapy,
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(26:33):
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that can help you out mentally and physically.
Speaker 9 (26:53):
We offer many services from chiropractic, acupuncture, nutritional work, and rehabilitation,
and we take care of patients of all ages from
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Speaker 2 (27:06):
What are some of the things that you can do
to help that.
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The first thing we're going to do is we're going
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Danny at Danny Clinkscale dot com. Look forward to working
(27:48):
with you. Our guest, is Kelson rooks See is the
chairman of the board of directors at the Center for
Recorded Music. You can access that very easily at Center
four recorded Music dot org. That's one word, Center four
Recorded Music dot Org. We're going to talk about the
listen room and all kinds of good things coming up.
So you're doing this, it is obviously we'rek intensive to
(28:11):
have enough equipment to be listening well and presenting well,
and so obviously the direction eventually had to be towards
trying to find a location.
Speaker 8 (28:22):
How did that work well?
Speaker 3 (28:24):
When when we kind of came out of the hard
lockdown in COVID, we we ended up starting up our
programs back at UMKC. One of my advisory board members,
Andre Logan, is on the staff there at UMKC. He
made the introductions. We also have a long standing relationship
(28:46):
with Chuck Addicks and the Mars Sound Archives, so it
made a lot of sense and the UMKC space was
working fine for us, but we still had the same
problem that we had with the Waldo Pizza space, which
is every event was two to three hours to set
up in two to three hours to tear down after
you're done, and makes for a long day and it
also makes it hard to do like a spontaneous pop
(29:08):
up event.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
Or a one hour event.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
So earlier actually, at the beginning of twenty twenty four,
NBKC Bank put out a social media post about looking
for small business or nonprofit that could benefit from having
a rent free space. And it was a weird it's
a weird situation. It's it's inside their bank branch in
(29:32):
Leewould and just on the surface. When I looked at it,
I kind of went, I don't know how this is
going to work. But I decided, you know, I decided,
let's go ahead and apply for it. Let's see if
we'll you know what, does it hurt to ask or talk?
Speaker 4 (29:44):
Right?
Speaker 3 (29:45):
So we applied and a few tee weeks later, Peter
Mercer at the bank, who's been kind of our primary
contact and real champion there, reached out and said, why,
you know, why don't you come in and talk, tell
us what you're thinking, and check out the space. And
we looked at it and we or you know, we
saw potential there and ultimately, through a long selection process,
(30:06):
they chose us. We found out that we were selected
in late April, and then we basically got keys in June,
started the build out and we had our grand opening
July twenty seventh. The space is great. You know, again,
they are providing a rent free. We do pay for
our construction costs and operating expenses and utilities and insurance
(30:29):
and all that. It's not it's definitely not free to
operate a space, but they're incredibly generous in giving us
the foundation to have a space.
Speaker 4 (30:39):
And since then we have been open.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
On average, we've been open three to four days a
week and with some sort of event two to four
nights a week.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
It's a pretty amazing the wide variety of things you do.
But tell me about the evolution of what the presentations
were like and what the things that you were doing
at um case you were like, that you know, have
morphed into the wide variety of things you do at
the center.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
So, you know, going back to kind of the genesis
of this, Listen, Casey is really my show, which I
don't ask everybody to copy what I do, but it's
the framework that this was built on. My show Takes
typically takes a well regarded, well known or significant album
(31:28):
and focuses on the story about how this album came
to be. And sometimes every aspect of the show could
be different, depending on the album that you're picking. There's
a big difference between picking a band's first album and
their twenty fifth album as far as the story you
tell to get there, but fundamentally, it usually follows a
(31:51):
pattern of here are the influences from a musical perspective,
here are the songwriting influences and guitar playing, and if
it's a jazz album, here's here's where you know, here's
where John Coltrane or Miles Davis got some of their
influences in their playing style and their composition style. So
it's generally about an hour and a half of lead
(32:13):
up material where it's a few minutes of talking and
then two to three songs that kind of illustrate the
points that we were trying to make, and then we
get to the main album. And at the main album,
that's when this becomes more like a concert. We actually
turn the lights down. We asked everybody to honor our
one rule, which is be quiet during the performance, right
(32:34):
or are there to enjoy and learn and experience.
Speaker 4 (32:38):
And then we play back an album.
Speaker 3 (32:40):
We pick albums that really benefit from being a complete
work of art, not three hit songs and a bunch
of filler and we play that album and people, really,
you know, have kind of forgotten that lost art of
focusing on listening to music. A lot of us have
music on all the time in the background, but really
(33:01):
sitting there and paying attention and really honing in on it.
And it helps that we're playing back on almost two
hundred thousand dollars worth of.
Speaker 4 (33:07):
Stereo coin, right right.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
It definitely has a different experience than listening to it
on your headphones or on your Bluetooth speaker in your kitchen.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
Absolutely, that's a listen case. We'll talk more about that.
So that's with a why. I assume that is a
takeoff on your name, which has a why in it.
Is that correct?
Speaker 4 (33:26):
It's a little bit of that.
Speaker 3 (33:27):
It's also the techie in me understanding that search results
work better if you have alternative spellings, and why is
a letter that actually shows up.
Speaker 4 (33:36):
And then our logo, the logo of listen Case.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
The why was a tone arm going across the record,
and so it worked on many different levels.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
Probably wouldn't have thought about the why if I wasn't
used to writing it every day, right, So.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
A mixture of a mixture of the thing I said
and the other there's.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
More than one reason for it, but fundamentally it probably
originates from having a hy in my name. But the
interesting evolution of listening case also is we've done some
other programs now that it basically continued that approach but
added new elements to it right out. You know, early
on in our um k C days, we had the
(34:14):
opportunity to bring you know, Canadian artist Bruce Coburn in,
and we did.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
We did an entire.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Program around his nineteen eighty four album Stealing Fire. And
what was exciting about that was, you know, the audience
got to spend some time with him where it was
very much this kind of interview process, and the answer
to every question was a song that we played. And
so what his first musical memory was, who his favorite
guitar players were, who was you know, who influenced his songwriting?
(34:43):
And and then we sat together in a room and
listened to this album and he sat there and listened
to it, and afterwards he said, you know, this is
the first time I've really listened to this album all
the way through since I wrote it thirty, you know,
forty years ago, right, And it was it was a
an incredibly different experience for people other than you know,
(35:03):
we're not trying to replace the live performance. It's you know,
it's unique and it's it's definitely something people walked away
from that and.
Speaker 4 (35:11):
Went, wow, this was incredible.
Speaker 3 (35:13):
Well, later that year, we helped Danny Cox celebrate his
eightieth birthday and because we also wanted to show some
love to know local musicians, not just national and international.
And then earlier this year, we brought in Grammy winning
producer Cheryl Pavelski and Grammy winning engineer Michael Graves and
(35:34):
they actually stayed and did two programs with us. They
played and talked about how they restored Nina Simone's first album,
Little Girl Blue, and that was part of our series
we've done this year for the anniversaries of all the
great jazz albums they came out in nineteen fifty nine.
And then they also presented their work on restoring all
(35:56):
these amazing singer songwriter demo taps that they had from
the Stack label in Memphis, and they, I mean, Michael
actually took us through the engineering process too, like here's
what the tape sounded like when they first stand it
in and first got it, and it was in.
Speaker 4 (36:12):
Many cases it sounded like a muffled mass.
Speaker 3 (36:14):
Some of these tapes had been buried under mud and concrete.
Some of them had been left in hot addicts for decades,
hot and cold. They were definitely not well preserved tapes.
And at the end we heard ten of their favorite
cuts from this collection of one hundred and forty plus songs,
and they sounded like they were fresh out of the studio.
(36:35):
And their work was obviously well regarded because that written
in their Soul Stax collection won the Grammy for Best
Historical Work this year, and we had them here at
Center for Record of Music a month after the Grammy Awards.
We were just super lucky to have already had that
scheduled in working and those experiences very much still about
(36:57):
telling the story about how music is made, why it
sounds the way it does, where it comes from, how
it influences us. It's really just an evolution of what
I'm trying to do. It's just now when I tell
somebody about it, I have to double check my focks
really well, because the person who made the music is
sitting there right next to me.
Speaker 8 (37:16):
Right well.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
The listening room spelled ls t y NNG is opened
as of July. It's at thirty five to ten West
ninety fifth Street in Leewood. It is the NBKC Bank
branch in lee Wood. And if there's no event going on,
it's still open. What will people find if they were
to go there on a Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday from
(37:40):
one to five when it's open.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
What we encourage people to do is come talk to us,
learn about our mission. They can explore our collection in
that space. We have about twenty thousand recordings today that
are accessible. You can come in and pull something off
the shelf and ask us to play it. You can
bring your own music in and ask us to play it.
We we've also during the days, you know, we've were
(38:05):
working with school groups. We're working with UH corporate organizations
that want to do team building events.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
We find that music is a.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Great way to explore the bonds between people and the
commonalities that we have, and we have some programs designed
to help basically foster those connections and have people learn
about each other through.
Speaker 4 (38:28):
The music that they love.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
So we've got those events happening, but more than anything,
a lot of people just come. In a few weeks ago,
we had three gentlemen who you know, they they two
of them were in from out of town for the holidays.
They hadn't seen each other in a long time. One
of their favorite activities back in the day was getting
together and listening to records. And they came in and
(38:51):
I mean they just explored, uh, basically their they're shared.
Speaker 4 (38:55):
Past with us, and we just we love it. We
love putting music.
Speaker 3 (39:00):
On and seeing that spark, seeing people get excited, and
then you know, they tell stories about what what they remember,
you know, the first time they saw the band play live,
or the first time they saw you know, Muddy Waters,
and and and talk about their their their shared history
and experiences through the lens of music.
Speaker 4 (39:21):
It's it's incredible and we we we enjoy that. And
then we're also trying to.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Foster the same passion about music with kids and young people.
And that's where getting school groups involved and getting other
organizations involved has been incredibly fulfilling for us.
Speaker 2 (39:38):
There's a lots of a lot of things under the umbrella.
There's hey, there's even classic rock yoga, like on this
Saturday as we speak, so there's a lot of things
going on.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
Yeah, I mean, we're classic rock yoga is a great
example of that's one of our regular listeners, regular supporters.
She's been she's been with us since the very beginning,
Christ and Swan.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
She's a certified.
Speaker 3 (40:00):
Yoga instructor and she's created a really neat program for
combining the movements with songs. And then she's also got
you know, it won't just be classic rock, it'll be
soul and sunk and yacht rock and jazz, and she's
got all sorts of ideas for how to follow up
with that one. We're working with the Glenwood Arts Theater
(40:22):
across the street. We've done several events with them already
where they play a music documentary and then that night
we do a cocktail hour listening session after that. So
we did that with Paul McCartney and Wings documentary One
Hand Clapping, We did that with the Tom Petty documentary
that came out recently, and it's just another fun way
to extend the experience.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
Certainly is and this is really You can find out
more and see the shows and see the events easy
access at a fine website Center for Recruited Music dot org.
Now you're in this particular space, but I know you
have vision for the future because there's so much popularity
to what you're doing right now.
Speaker 4 (41:05):
Yeah, we really so.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
The one downside of the space is that we have
room for about in the main listening area that we
have in our space today, we have room for about
forty people.
Speaker 4 (41:16):
Well, you know our.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
Shows at Young KC we could see hundred and fifty people.
Now there's a benefit of that in that the experiences
that we have are definitely more intimate, they're more relaxing.
You know, a room with forty people and it does
not feel the same as a room with one hundred
and fifty. But we know we have enough demand for
larger spaces. We know we have we've already run into
(41:40):
situations where we have more than one group that wants
to do something on the same night.
Speaker 4 (41:46):
That we can.
Speaker 3 (41:46):
Accommodate a little bit of that, but we our vision
really is to have a space that's got more room
for events, more room for programming.
Speaker 4 (41:56):
Also, we currently have about only a out.
Speaker 3 (42:00):
One third or not maybe even one quarter of our
collection in the listening room. The rest of it is
stored off site, so we need more space.
Speaker 4 (42:09):
We need thousands of square feet.
Speaker 3 (42:10):
For storing our collections as well, and ultimately one of
our other ideas that we really want to take people
through the history of music with both the recordings and
the equipment that made the recordings and the equipment that's
been used to.
Speaker 4 (42:24):
Play it back.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
So our vision includes basically building a space where we
can take you into a room from the nineteen fifties
that has nineteen fifties furniture and equipment and the music
that you would have listened to, and really almost take
you on a time machine into the past, take you
into the nineteen seventies and the birth of transistor, you know,
(42:45):
solid state equipment. And we can't decide whether to have
shad carpeting in that room because in a public space
it's a little hard to keep clean.
Speaker 4 (42:54):
But you know, the idea of that of basically.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
Putting you in the position and to appreciate the technology,
the environment and the music from that time period. And
that's another thing that differentiates us from a lot of
other music, you know, museum or nonprofit concepts. Our focus
is to get you as close to the music as possible.
We love this other we love memorabilia and the camera,
(43:21):
and we've got posters on our.
Speaker 4 (43:22):
Walls and things like that.
Speaker 3 (43:23):
But a lot of music museums today when you go in,
that's all they're focused on, you know, they're focused on
the instruments and the outfits the people wore, and and
all sorts of concert memorabilia. But we're trying to actually
make it sound as close as possible to the artists.
Speaker 4 (43:44):
Being there with you, and.
Speaker 3 (43:46):
That focus on the music and the love of music
is really what differentiates us from a lot of other
concepts that are out there.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
And of course all this takes money. As you noted earlier,
there is a donate button on the website, but what,
what levels and what aspects of fundraising do you can
you explain to us?
Speaker 3 (44:07):
So we we really have always had a vision for
more fundraising opportunities, and having a dedicated space now kind
of gives us gives us an anchor around that. So fundamentally,
we do have recurring donors. We have some corporate donors
that have been very generous with either cash or in
(44:28):
kind donations. We definitely we can definitely benefit from end
kind donations. We've got companies that have provided stereo equipment.
We've got companies that have provided food, We've got companies
that have provided alcohol, which.
Speaker 4 (44:42):
We are in nonprofits.
Speaker 3 (44:43):
So we we when we do fundraising events, we you know,
we can't sell alcohol, but if you donate, we we
can give you alcohol. So that's a great I mean,
that's been a great opportunity for us to to help.
So it's not just about cash and cash down, but fundamentally,
you know, our biggest source of funds today are through
(45:05):
donations to it.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
You know, when people attend.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
Events and memberships, and we have in many of our fans. Basically,
a membership is just a way to kind of donate
in advance to go to a bunch of events. And
if you donate, you if you participate in that, you
also get some extra benefits. So for example, we allow
members to reserve the space for a couple hours a
(45:28):
month and basically host their own private listening events. We
also have a way you can as a member, you
can actually reserve the entire facility, all thirty five hundred
square feet for events as well. So those mechanisms have
been great. We have been the biggest challenge we've had
to date is we haven't figured out the best way
(45:50):
to really tie into any sort of foundational giving or grants.
It's just been we've been full I mean, it's been
a long year of trying to on delivering content. It's
you know, we've kind of focused on delivering content first
and hoping the money will follow. Well, we're going to
(46:10):
have to take a slightly different approach in twenty twenty five.
The content's happening, So now we're going to really put
our fundraising hat on and figure out how we can
move this to the next level.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Well, clearly this is a labor of love. Obviously you
have a real quote unquote job, but this is sounds
like for a guy who when he was growing up
had a tiny bit of resentment that he was lugging
boxes of records around for a family business. Seems like
you're pouring your heart and soul and sweat into this.
Speaker 4 (46:38):
Yeah. I've had a lot of a lot of things.
Speaker 3 (46:41):
I've been a part of startups in the past, and
I'm on the board of a couple of other organizations
here in Kansas City.
Speaker 4 (46:47):
I've had my own ideas that I've wanted to lunch.
This thing has taken over.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
My wife accuses my wife, Amy, accuses my dad of
pulling my strings from beyond the veil. She also accuses
me of trying to basically get all of his records.
Speaker 4 (47:03):
Back, one record at a time.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
That's not the goal actually, but but it is interesting.
I mean it, I can't explain it. I don't think
about this most of the time. I don't think about
it as work. I think about as something that I
really love to do. And and and it's not just me.
I mean, when with when this, When this program first started,
it was me doing the program, but it was also
(47:27):
still still born providing the venue for us to get
started and understanding the vision and being willing to invest
some time and money from their perspective. And since then
the rest of my board of directors came on board.
They're you know, they're all equally enthusiastic about our mission.
And then we've continue to build out a team and
(47:48):
a few of our younger people are you know, part
time paid employees, but everybody else on our team is
all volunteer. Our boards all volunteer. The majority of our
staff is volunteer, and they're all, you know, they're all
giving something incredibly valuable, which is their time and their
expertise to us.
Speaker 2 (48:08):
They are indeed, you are in the middle of a
journey with the listening room and the Center for Recorded Music,
and it's something that really is spectacular. I noted it
as soon as I don't even know how I found it.
I think I got a newsletter or something, and I
was intrigued immediately. But you must be proud of how
(48:29):
this is developed and where it can go.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
I'm incredibly proud of. I mean, more than anything this year.
If we just think back last year, we would do
maybe one or two programs a month in twenty twenty three,
you know, twenty in twenty twenty four, we have done
We have gone from that one to two a month to.
Speaker 4 (48:55):
Every well, one day.
Speaker 3 (48:56):
We had seven programs on the International Jazz Day this year,
we did seven in different presentations including out of town
experts and guests all around both uh in nineteen sixty
you know, nineteen fifty nine jazz albums, as well as
just certain people's favorites and things they're experts in. We
since we've launched the listening Room in you know, July twenty.
Speaker 4 (49:19):
Seventh, we have had.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
Well, we've had over a thousand people walk through the doors,
and we've had, like I said, an average of three
to four events per week. And that's a that's an
incredible accomplishment to be creating and delivering that much you know,
that much content, and it wouldn't. It's not just my
full time staff that you know, or volunteer staff that
helps with that. We have local Kansas City music radio people,
(49:48):
record store people that are hosting these programs, creating these
programs for consumption and giving of their time and sharing,
so you know, it's it's not just even our tea
on the website. There there are lots of other people
that donate and give up their time to make this
thing a reality.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
We hope you enjoyed the latest Danny Clinkscale Reasonably Irreverent podcast.
Come back soon for something fresh and new. This podcast
was made possible by our great sponsors like Advanced Sports
and Family Chiropractic and Acupuncture. With eight convenient locations in
the Kansas City metro, doctor Bradwoodle and his friendly team
(50:30):
will improve your health and outlook with every visit. Find
out more at ASFCA dot com slash Danny
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