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I played a couple of sets at the Ship in Kansas City...

Welp, I got a bee in me bonnet to go check out the Black Crack Review at the Ship in Kansas City. That’s Kansas City, Missouri, BTW. It’s located down in a formerly industrial section, and it’s just a few blocks South of the Missouri River, which writhes like a snake as it contorts its way through downtowns KC, both of MO and KS. The bluffs that the river has thrown up make the terrain quite interesting and hilly. Maybe not San Francisco hilly, but good and contorted for roads and bridges. There are an abundance of these; I was in a hotel on the other side of the river, but still in MO, and as the crow flew (or rats crawled) it was not far from ‘the gig.’ Driving it seemed a bit convoluted. But nowadays, with Google Maps, we get directions right over top of our playlist. Hallelujah.

The date of the gig was Friday, December 26th, 2025. Doors were advertised as opening at 6:00 PM, and the ‘trouble,’ as Twain once put it, started at 6:30.

To do this, I got up that Friday morning at 3:00 AM. I’d already packed. Traveled light. I didn’t really intend to sit in, so I didn’t take a keyboard. But I thought I might get invited up, so I had boned up on my tune “Kimota,” which BCR has been playing on and off, and recorded not too far back in time. I sort of assumed the band had a keyboardist. (They don’t…)

I was on the road by 4:45 AM, and made it to KC and the hotel way before check in, at 12:30 PM. Google thinks the drive time is about 6 hours. Google does not have a stomach, a bladder, nor cramping legs. Still… I made pretty good time.

I bopped over to DeWalt’s up on 99th Street (a twenty minute bop) and delivered the record players I’ve been working on since my last visit to KC this past August/September. Phil and his wife were invited as my guests to attend the gig, so with a ‘see ya there,’ I went back down and checked in. Took a bath and had a bite to eat. I was down at the club by 5:30. I got in with the old “I’m with the band” line. Can’t believe it worked. Dwight Frizzell, the father of the Black Crack, was visible by the stage as was Allaudin Ottinger and Thomas Aber. Dwight had brought a keyboard, and we got it from his SUV and together we set it up on a stand. Tested, it made sound through the monitors as the sound system came together and got tweaked. A hale and hearty hello to all! I was not going to do this gig from the audience. I was going to take my spot as an alum onstage. OK then.

I clambered up onto the stage after the processional. I should have brought my doumbek. That would‘ve been WAY more useful than a keyboard.

From my perch at the Casio keyboard, I could see the charts Dwight and Tom were reading from on their shared music stand. They looked very much like the same 40 year old charts in Dwight’s handwriting, but perhaps they were copies of copies by now. I dunno. They were not quite legible from where I sat, and the rest of the band was behind me. Allaudin’s drumming was as ever; rock solid, tasty, perfect. I felt right at home in it. But as for the heads of the tunes, all I could really do was try to discover the tonality in the sound from the monitor. This took about one half the duration of the pieces I joined in on: all of them. The half after that, I played stuff, minding Dwights arm gesture cues. At one point, I ended on a note about a half step shy of the final tone. For that, I got Aber’s classic raised eye and smirk. And I’m not sure my soloing really hit home. The vibraphone (or marimba) … mallet percussion… going on behind me was the clearest clue available as to what sitting in on top of the BCR could be like. I fell a bit short. But, despite all these critical notes to self, I had a bunch of fun. The one exception was good old “Mokele Mbembe Special.” I’ve never forgotten that and have actually played it in dance classes when ever an eleven count groove is called for. — More often than you’d think! So I was at least solid on that, playing the riff in tenths just happy as a clam.

The dance floor stayed packed.

In the break between sets, I was approached by a fan regarding my sweatshirt: I was wearing the one that has a picture off the young Stravinsky, with the caption “Don’t trust and old man that listens to Stravinsky.”

For the second set, I persuaded Phil to join me. He took the ‘primo,’ — the right side of the Casio, and I did the ‘secondo,’ doing together the exact same hunting and jamming that I’d done in the first set. It was, however, a little more than double the fun. At least, that was my take on it.

Afterwards, I hung around to help pack up. That’s the pull of the band ethos. I miss it, I have to say. Particularly the ethos of the Black Crack Review. There is a pace to packing up. Connections must be made, and the take must be counted up. That’s the stuff that Dwight occupied himself with, leaving for the very end the clearing of his stuff from the stage floor. Another act was setting up. A clean-cut disco or techno thing, apparently. But the drums were being packed, so I slowed things down and chatted with Mr. Ottinger a bit. Eventually, the cases went out to the van. In the end, I helped carry that Casio out to the SUV, making the retrograde of the earlier task. Dwight gave me a fresh vinyl copy of his LP: “Beyond the Black Crack.” Though the cover features a bare female buttocks, the idea is about black holes. The perforations in the timespace have always been a topic for BCR riffing. The liner notes of the 40th anniversary edition of Dwight’s youthful project give me some dates: made in 1976, just as Dwight was getting started as a student at the Kansas City Art Institute, it captures performances at a Chili Supper, jams around town in various resonant environments, and contributions by the predecessors I never really knew, or even ever met. My time began some six years after the LP came out. But that’s why it’s called the ‘black crack REVIEW.’ It’s both a revisiting of the ideas and sonic landscapes and attitudes of the originating project, but it’s also a review in the theatrical sense. It’s always been a mash up of science and theater. Is it a mystery? Like Sun Ra’s ‘Arkestra,’ BCR is ‘his story.’

I’ll forever be kicking myself for walking away from it in ‘85. I hated touring, and I was missing the old hometown, which I’d left unexplored. Washington DC turned out to be not all that worthwhile as a town hospitable to my art. I left it again for good in 1997. But BCR lives and breathes still. I vow to sit in with the band again. Dwight tells me their next gig is in April… Stay tuned to the Black Crackers!