female announcer: Production funding
for "Arts Upload" has been provided in part by:
- Hi, I'm Randy Mason.
- And I'm Vanessa Severo.
- We're here at the new midtown home
of Unruh Furniture,
and, yeah, it used to be a church.
- This week on "Arts Upload," we'll look around in here
and also share a story about folks
who make much softer goods.
- Plus, the making of a major production
at the Kauffman Center.
- An oft-forgotten Byrd man,
and chalk like you've never seen it before.
- All ahead on the "Upload."
[DJ Shadow's "Midnight in a Perfect World" playing]
# #
- # I don't love you #
- Given that you've traveled many a back road,
I'm guessing you've been to Hamilton, Missouri?
- Absolutely, Highway 36 just east of Cameron,
best known, probably, as the birthplace of JC Penney.
- But that isn't why downtown Hamilton
is such a busy place these days.
- No, it's almost like a vision quest
for quilters anymore
thanks to it being the headquarters
of Missouri Star Quilt Company.
- As producer Ashley Holcroft shows us,
family and fabric are coming together,
creating quite a quilting empire
in rural Missouri.
[soft music]
# #
- Like many of America's great small towns,
Hamilton, Missouri, has seen its glory days come and go.
# #
But that all began to change in 2008
when the fates of a family
and this town of less than 1,800
became entwined, turning something very bad
into something very good.
- In 2008, there was a major crash.
We lost all of our retirement, my husband and I.
And the children started thinking about what we could do
in our retirement
that would keep us out of their basement.
-The paths to their ultimate success
would be lit by a simple question.
- One day, I was going to pick up a quilt
that had been quilted, and my son said,
"Well, what quilt is this?"
And I said, "I don't even know."
And he says, "Are you--what do you mean, you don't know?"
And I said, "I can't remember what it was.
I took it there over a year ago."
And so he starts thinking about this,
and finally he says to me, "Is this a thing?
"I mean, this long-arm quilting,
is this something you could do?"
"Because if it's--if these people are backed up a year,
you know, there's a market for that."
And so they decided to buy me a quilt machine.
- A quilt machine that was too big for the house
and cost more than the building they bought to house it.
- You have this little thousand-square-foot shop,
and you could open the door and peek in
and, like, see nothing and be like, "Okay, I'm good."
We're like, "Oh, no!
We got to come in."
We decided that we should start doing YouTube videos
to tell people about quilting,
so we looked online, and there just wasn't a lot
of great video content there.
And I was like, "Hey, Mom, you want to do tutorials?"
- "Okay, I'm game, but what's a tutorial?"
- Let's just say that she got the gist of it quickly,
and soon they were racking up viewers on YouTube,
a growing group who not only wanted to quilt with Jenny
but quilt like Jenny quilted.
- People started calling us, and they would say,
"Hey, you know that fabric you used in that video?
I'd like to buy some of that."
And I was like, "Well, that's my fabric."
And they were like, "Well, I want some."
And I'm like, "But it's mine," you know?
And they'd be like, "Well, where did you get it?"
And I'd be like, "Oh."
I'd think back, and I'd think, "Oh, 1984, Ben Franklin."
You know, I had no idea where I got that fabric.
So I said, "Kids,
maybe we should think about selling fabric."
So we check into it. We couldn't afford it.
- But help was on the way.
Enter the newly minted Moda pre-cuts.
- So it was one square of every fabric in the line,
and they were in these little packets.
So I would make a project out of a packet,
and we'd buy one bolt.
So we started doing that, and that and YouTube
is what catapulted us into being a familiar to people.
People were looking online
for easy and quick ways to do things,
and then they're like,
"Well, I could just buy one of those packs," you know.
And so that's really kind of
when things start getting a little bigger for us.
-Being catapulted into familiarity
has its perks, but growth has its demands.
That's where the Doans
were uniquely positioned to succeed.
- Thankfully, we've got, you know,
seven kids in the family,
and we're all willing to work for free
for several years before we got a paycheck.
And by doing that, we were able to pivot and iterate
and iterate and try and do things.
And then we finally found stuff that stuck.
- We are a normal family.
We all are very strong, opinionated people.
We all don't have any problem sharing our opinion.
But the reason we have owners
is because the buck has to stop with someone.
Now, in the beginning, the kids said, you know,
"Mom, do you want to be one of the owners?"
And I don't. I don't.
I'm a really good worker.
I'm a really good face for the company.
But I don't own the company,
and there has to be somebody in charge.
-Of Jenny and Ron's seven children,
five work for MSQC, and two are owners.
Sarah is in charge
of the customers' experience in town.
- How we're decided to do it
is kind of get different styles of fabric per shop.
There was a bunch of buildings available
that were kind of just sitting,
that hadn't really been rented out.
And so we just kind of purchased one at a time,
and we've been able
to bring them back to life, essentially.
At first, we were worried.
Would people want to walk from store to store?
You know, it's outside.
We have-- I mean, it's Missouri,
so we have freezing weather,
and we have hot weather, you know?
And, really, I kind of-- I tease
that it cleanses your palate, right,
from each little walk.
You're like, "Okay, I'm ready to see more."
-One of Alan's long-time friends, Dave Mifsud,
tends the finances,
while Al oversees the customer experience online.
- Quilters are sort of this group that--
they don't get enough credit, right?
They're like the happiest, more cheerful,
most supportive, most loving people.
Like, I built the website, right?
I built it from scratch.
And then we launch it, and it breaks,
and you get these people that'll be like,
"Hey, just so you know,
"things aren't working so good on the webs--I'll hold my order.
"Don't worry about a thing. I'll be back.
"I know it's probably hard today.
It's a big day."
I'm like, "Really?
Oh, thanks, guys, 'cause it's really hard over here."
And I'm like, "I am stressing out."
And they're like, "Don't worry about a thing.
"It's quilting, right?
It's been around forever."
And it's like, "Yeah, but this isn't
your mom's quilt shop, right?"
This is a new way of doing it.
We're kind of reinvigorating this industry.
What we saw was that, like, moms and my grandma,
they love to quilt, but Sarah, my sister,
she doesn't have three months to put into making a quilt.
So we had to simplify it.
We had to make it easier.
And so we had to come up with these ideas
to be able to let people make a quilt in a day.
You know, we're just trying to figure out ways
of letting people experience success
and have a good interaction with the hobby
and the art of quilting and then circle back.
And, like, you'll do
your bigger, crazier, more intense stuff
as you get more and more confident.
- What started with a single long-arm quilting machine
has ballooned to 13 buildings, over 400 employees,
a national small business award,
a massive new warehouse.
The Missouri Star Quilt Company
is still steaming ahead.
But for this family, success has come
in both tangible and intangible forms.
- What I didn't realize in the beginning was--
for me, this was all about sewing,
and I really thought I was sewing.
Now these letters start coming,
and they come from women who are handicapped,
women who have MS,
a man with agoraphobia
who, he says, "I know I'm in a prison of my own making,
but for the first time in my life," he says,
"I feel like I am doing something that matters."
Who--who gets to have those kind of stories told to them?
Who gets to do that?
It's been more than anything I ever dreamt of.
- You know, there are some nice parallels
with Missouri Star here.
Unruh Furniture started in a garage in Grandview
and now employs over 20 people
who work in this 36,000-square-foot facility.
- Our next story is also about building,
just not using traditional materials.
- It's about putting together a really big show
that brings in really big bucks
for the UMKC Conservatory.
- It's called Crescendo, and back in November,
producer-videographer John McGrath
got to see the gala getting its act together.
[orchestra tuning]
["O Fortuna" playing]
# #
- We'll have them across the back
and intentionally up in the stairwells.
# #
Can I see a show of hands?
Anybody who's never done Crescendo before,
raise your hand.
Fantastic. That's quite a lot of you.
- Well, here at Crescendo,
we have numerous performances
by all the artists and students here at the Conservatory.
It's our fall fundraising gala,
so we try to showcase all of the talents
and things that we offer at the Conservatory.
- Crescendo performance is a seamless show.
We go from piece to piece without applause in between.
It takes about a year to plan Crescendo.
They've already got next year's date set,
and they're going to start working on the theme
and everything else.
And throughout that year, we talk about things
and plan things, and we put pencil to paper,
and we think, we dream,
and it can get kind of daunting after a while.
We've been doing Crescendo in this format
for about the last six years.
It's sometimes hard for us
to get music students and dance students
on the same stage at the same time.
This allows them an opportunity to do those things together.
[applause]
Thank you. Appreciate that.
So here's the rough order of the show.
You're going to see the orchestra, the wind symphony, the choir.
You'll see some jazz bands. You'll see dancers.
You'll see some of our professors
in brass and oboe and piano.
And you'll see everything we do together
at some points as well.
Thinking about getting from piece to piece to piece
happens instantly, automatically,
and we have to get the right people
in the right place at the right time.
So we're going to spend a little bit of time
practicing the transitions,
and then we're going to run it top to bottom.
- Okay, this is your cue to tune,
like cue to go.
- We will go through it cue to cue,
so we'll do lots of sitting and standing
and running through the light cues.
- As soon as you see lights hit you,
that's your cues to go.
- And then after that,
we'll do another run-through of the show
and fix any problem areas.
- Trying to fit all those bodies on there
with all the intricate moves-- and it is a ballet,
so it's very hard to fit them all there,
but we try to make it work the best we can.
- But the great part about it is, once we're all in the room
and the kids are making music,
everything that we've done to plan comes to fruition,
and it's always a feeling of joy.
[laughter]
- I think it's just most important
the students get a chance to get out into the community
and we get to play at Kauffman
in this awesome performance center
and we get to show the people here in Kansas City
what we're doing at the Conservatory
and the music we're making and the work we're doing.
- Oh, my gosh, Helzberg Hall of the Conference Center.
Amazing we get so many opportunities to perform here,
so when we are here, we cherish every moment.
[orchestra tuning]
- It is very cool.
The acoustics in this building were made very specifically
for this kind of performance.
And, actually, my father worked on this building,
so it's very cool for me to come back
to this place and hear what it's like,
this thing that he helped create.
- It's amazing to play here. I love playing here.
I've been playing here for a few years now.
The symphony, we played here.
And just getting to play here is an awesome opportunity
to give us just a chance to see what it can be like
once we get out into the world.
We're training to be the big shots,
and those big shots were in our shoes
when they started, and they did the same thing,
and now they're there,
and we're going to be there shortly, so...
- These are where the pros come from,
and this is what we're here to do.
These students will amaze you unbelievably
in how incredibly talented they are.
They don't look like students; they look like professionals.
It's a mix of our very best faculty and students on stage.
It's the best and brightest of what we do
all at one time.
- We are professionals in training,
so it's a good way
to encourage those people
so you have people to see in the future,
because if you don't encourage us now,
there may not be any professionals to see later on.
[music fades]
- From me to you, thank you.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you for your artistry.
Thank you for being here
and for making this a special place to be.
[soft piano music]
# #
- The 55th annual Grammy Awards
will be handed out in Los Angeles this weekend,
and, you know, some local folks might just walk away with one.
- Joyce DiDonato, the Kansas City Symphony,
the Kansas City Chorale, and Pat Metheny
all have nominations.
- But this next story is about someone
who never won one
and, except for the true aficionados,
has largely been forgotten.
- Gene Clark was a founding member of The Byrds
and so beloved
that a symposium about him and his music
drew fans from across the country in 2014.
- Here's a look back at a piece
that first aired on "Arts Upload"
two years ago.
- # Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man #
# Play a song for me #
# In the jingle jangle morning #
# I'll come following you #
- He was born in Tipton, Missouri,
and his family moved to Kansas City
when he was a baby a grew up here,
went to Raytown High
and then graduated from Bonner Springs High.
So he was an important part of Kansas City's music history.
- You know, Gene, he heard The Beatles,
and that kind of changed his mind
about wanting to stay just in the folk vein.
-It was folk music back in 1963
which first whisked Gene away from Kansas City.
It seemed several members of the New Christy Minstrels--
remember them?-- were in town,
performing at Starlight Theatre,
saw Gene's group, The Surf Riders,
playing at a club on the landing,
and pretty much offered him a job on the spot.
Just a year later, Gene Clark's storybook tale
took another amazing turn.
- He met Roger McGuinn at the Troubadour in Hollywood
after he left Christy Minstrels.
And David Crosby ambled over
and started singing some third-part harmonies.
And before you knew it, The Byrds were born.
- # And I'll probably feel a whole lot better #
# When you're gone #
# Ah, when you're gone #
# Ah, when you're gone #
- By the time Gene was 21 years old,
he had a number one hit.
Only about a year before that,
he was out driving a tractor in a field.
So it was kind of, you know, "Pssssw!"
You know, a sky rocket to the Moon kind of thing.
# #
- #Well, I've been running around #
- # Trying to prove I was a lover #
-But the man who took us eight miles high
couldn't maintain the orbit for long.
Just two years later,
ironically in part due to a fear of flying,
Gene left the group
to embark on a series of solo projects
and musical partnerships with some of the best
folk, rock, and country players around,
a 25-year musical odyssey detailed in a documentary
called "The Byrd Who Flew Alone."
- # And I laughed as the joker said, "Lean on" #
-And all along, he continued to make music
admired by his peers
but largely ignored by the record-buying public.
- # There's a train leaves here this morning #
# I don't know what I might be on #
-In 1991, burdened by problems with drugs and alcohol,
Gene Clark died at the age of only 46.
- # Have you seen the changing rivers? #
# Now they wait their turn to die #
- There's a handful of his songs
that people just go crazy over.
And once they hear those,
they want to go a little bit deeper.
And they get a little bit deeper into the catalog,
and they find another handful that they like just as well.
And then they'll go a little bit deeper.
And at that point, you're stuck, you know?
It's like the La Brea Tar Pits.
- # Have you seen #
- # Have you seen #
both: # The silver raven? #
- # She has wings #
both: # And she can fly #
- Cell phone? Thank you.
-Though it's mostly symbolic,
the "no cell phone" rule to prohibit bootlegging
is in effect here at the Phillips hotel
just three days after what would have been
Gene Clark's 70th birthday.
Like the first one three years earlier,
this symposium has drawn participants
from near and far--
the kind of writers, fans, and collectors
who just can't get enough of the music Gene Clark made.
- Some of them come from original tape reels
from 1966
that Gene actually made as five demo songs.
- # You said, "I love you #
# Wish you were here" #
- Gene Clark, in my opinion, will be seen in history
as the greatest combination singer-songwriter
who's ever lived.
- To me, he's up there with Neil Young and Bob Dylan
and at that level.
But people-- you know, "Gene who?"
- He had a great voice.
He had great lyrics, incredible music.
Just ethereal music,
almost like a Mozart or Puccini.
- #Just one more time #
- I'm a musician myself,
so I tend to hear the chord changes.
And one of the songs they just played,
I'm sitting there going, "Okay, that's C, E minor."
And then all of a sudden,
it's like, "What the heck was that?"
David Crosby said Gene Clark didn't know the rules
for writing music,
so he just wrote it however he wanted it to sound.
-#That could make you reel #
- What a prolific songwriter he was.
It never stopped.
Till the day he died, he was still producing music.
I'm fascinated by his creativity.
There's only a certain percentage
of all that stuff that he wrote
that ever made it to being released records,
and I want to hear it all.
- # Wish you were here #
- Deep discussions about deep cuts
dominate the proceedings.
But there's also time for symposium goers
to get out and see some of the places
that helped shape Gene Clark's art,
like this railroad trestle near the family's home
at the edge of Swope Park.
He later wrote a song called "Kansas City Southern."
Or the venerable old Dari Dine,
where Bonner Spring teens like Gene
spent lots of their leisure time.
And, of course, 100 miles to the east,
his first home and final resting place.
This year, Tipton, Missouri, and Los Angeles
also held Gene Clark tribute concerts.
[gentle music]
- There was just something about Gene
that people were drawn to
not in terms of his musical talent
and his songwriting ability
but just, you know, him as a person.
Despite, you know, whatever demons he might have had
and things he struggled with, he was still--
people still loved Gene a lot.
- I here set my hand
to be caused to be affixed this great seal
that proclaims November 17th to be Gene Clark Day
in Missouri.
[cheers and applause]
- # Baby, for a long time #
- #Baby, for a long time #
- To hear R.E.M.
and what they did in Athens, Georgia, you know,
or in the early '90s, country sound in Nashville,
it's a big Byrds influence.
It's, you know, a big Gene Clark influence all over.
Those songs have endured, you know,
some of them for 50 years,
and I think they'll continue to endure.
- # And I'll probably feel a whole lot better #
# When you're gone #
# Ah, when you're gone #
- Unruh Furniture
here at 36th and Walnut
sits in an imposing structure, to say the least.
Originally, this was Westminster Congregational Church,
built in 1904.
-Sam Unruh was looking for a place
where he could turn out custom-made desks
and cabinets and beds and tables
and people could actually watch as the stuff was being made.
[upbeat music]
# #
- The Unruh mission is about character and detail,
not mass production,
and it's really an experience in itself
to see what they've done with the place.
Nothing quite like it.
# #
- As hard as these guys work here,
everything stops at 10:00 on Wednesday mornings
so they can engage in a rousing game
of a kind of ping-pong called sprinkles
that keeps everybody on their toes.
- Yeah! - Whoa!
# #
- Not the camera.
- Run, run.
# #
- Well, as is often the case on "Arts Upload,"
we'll wrap up with a piece from one of our PBS peers.
- It comes from Boulder, Colorado,
where Bryce Widom has been leaving behind
a trail of masterworks in chalk
on the menu boards of restaurants and bars.
[upbeat music]
- One of the reasons I love working with chalk specifically
is that it's like painting while drawing.
Pretty much how I paint is whatever is most alive in me,
ends up going through me, sifting through,
and then it comes out like this.
# #
Me drawing these people, these characters
who had something to teach me
that I wanted to become in some way.
And that actually helps to lead me,
maybe parts of me that I'm a little leery
of fully stepping into.
I recently did a woman with a sword.
There's a parallel in drawing--
like, having a sword and making lines in space,
just like every time that I make a mark like this,
it's actually movement,
and it moves stagnancy that is in me.
# #
Painting helps in so many ways.
Where is the flow?
Where is the movement in this creative act,
this creative composition?
It releases the contraction in me
that has me so often getting headaches
so that if I keep the energy moving,
there's a freedom in that.
These chalkboards are all related
to the season that we're in.
Right here, there's going to be a lot of green coming up,
and this is spring and then flowers,
buds going into full blossom,
and then the phoenix in the fire
is like the peak of summer,
so that cycle of life, death, rebirth.
Because the artwork is happening
in accordance with this timing in nature and the seasons,
then maybe it'll help all of us
when we're on our phones and we're in this world
and we have this schedule
that is not exactly related to what's happening in nature.
But part of my aspiration is that this could pull people
into a different type of timing, nature timing.
# #
All these people who come and say that they, like,
experienced a really hard moment in their life
while they were sitting at a table, like in a pub,
and there's something about the artwork
that allowed them to be with their experience
in a more real way.
Other people who have gotten, like, engaged
while that artwork was there,
and it serves as a marker for them.
So just the excitement and the joy
and the inspiration that I hear
when people are like, "Oh, you're that guy,"
that spark of life
and that spark of a potential
that wasn't there that now is in them,
that's beautiful to me.
- Wow, what can you say?
We've had just a little bit of everything
in this week's show, from chalk to quilts,
with music theater
and even a little ping-pong thrown in.
- I can say we have to leave now
and leave the folks at Unruh Furniture
to keep working wood the way they do so well.
- But we'll be back next week at the Uptown Theater
looking at Folk Alliance International
and painter Delores Shipley.
- Till then, I'm Vanessa Severo in for Maris Aylward.
- And I'm Randy Mason. Thanks for watching.
[upbeat music]
# #
- # Now I gotta say #
-# Now I gotta say #
- # That it's not like before #
- #That it's not like before #
- # And I'm not going to play #
-# And I'm not going to play #
- # Your games anymore #
# After what you did #
-# After what you did #
- # I can't stay on #
# And I'll probably #
all:#Feel a whole lot better #
# When you're gone #
# Ah, when you're gone #
# Ah, when you're gone #
# Ah, when you're gone #
# #
[applause]
female announcer: Production funding
for "Arts Upload" has been provided in part by:
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