T he Indian Creek Trail is the longest bike and hike trail in the metro area, connecting Leawood, Olathe and Overland Park. We’re hoping it works and that it inspires many imitators. The name Flying Cow was chosen because it’s silly and Weedman wants people to not be intimidated by the perceived elegance of European ice cream. Sheri Weedman of Annedore’s Fine Chocolates recently opened Flying Cow Gelato next to her shop at 5000 State Line Road, selling gelato that’s made fresh every day and stored in a “very fancy Italian batch freezer.” We swung by a few minutes after they opened for a cup of pink grapefruit with a wonderful snap of citrus, which was probably the best scoop we’ve ever had in KC. They recently got a new neighbor that also makes gelato in downtown Shawnee-but sells it in Westwood Hills. In Shawnee, Aunt Jean’s Cup & Cone (11210 Johnson Drive, Shawnee) has been making small batches of seasonal gelato for fifteen years. The Italian form of ice cream-less fat and slower churning make for a treat that’s smoother, denser, creamier and typically served in smaller portions-is uncommon in these parts, which is a shame. When it comes to frozen milk fat, Kansas City’s got a little bit of everything, from drive-thru custard spots to small-batch artisan shops making creative flavors involving eclectic ingredients like smoked brisket or rosé wine.īut if you were going to point to a weak spot, it would be the very limited gelato offerings. History has a few fake endings, it turns out. It seems ridiculous now, but twenty years ago we weren’t far removed from a pop singer unironically declaring that we were “watching the world wake up from history.” But they still play the old stuff, and to crowds that seem to appreciate the patina that these songs have developed over the years. The concert experience is always a little weird when you’re diving deep into a band’s back catalog, spending time with songs recorded twenty years ago while they’re touring new material. Louis and Tulsa to see the Truckers in the past year. They’ve grappled publicly with changing their very nineties (admittedly, sorta cringey) name while telling opponents of gun control where to stick their “Thoughts and Prayers.” But they continue to talk about subjects like the “Lost Cause” myth in language that the people who need to hear it most understand in “Surrender Under Protest.” Like pretty much every one and thing else, the Truckers have become more direct and nakedly political in recent times. The people I talked to were of the opinion that the version in the song is closer to reality than the version on screen-the battle rages in the YouTube comments.) These songs humanize without offering excuses, providing context and nuance to society in short supply. (I was deep enough into Truckerland to have made a stop in McNairy County last summer. To and for them, the Truckers retell regional legends like the Sam Philips gifting of a Cadillac to Carl Perkins and the story of Buford Pusser, the probably corrupt sheriff of McNairy County, Tennessee, whose autobiography became Walking Tall. The early noughties Truckers’ records speak not only to NPR donor audiences who know the band as “the guys Jason Isbell used to play with” but also to the dudes who were across the parking lot at Coffee High School in 1978, blasting Skynyrd and tossing around footballs like Jeff Rutledge.
HEREFORD HOUSE ZONA ROSA DRIVERS
The Truckers tell stories of the South that dwell with the moonshiners and aspiring stock car drivers and the deacon down at the Salem Church of Christ. Like the rest of Southern Rock Opera, the double album that put the band on the map twenty-one years ago, the “Southern Thing/The Three Great Alabama Icons/Wallace” cycle is about less obvious but plenty insidious evil, and why the long life of his home state’s most infamous politician can’t be neatly summed up in a soundbite about segregation.Īt a time when the telling of history has become politicized, early Truckers’ albums like The Dirty South and Decoration Day feel freshly relevant-at least to me, someone who spent about the middle-third of the pandemic obsessed with the band. As Hood puts it in the opening of the suite, all of this “ain’t about excuses or alibis,” but speaks to the wider point that racism is a nationwide problem that’s ignored too many places because it’s “always a little more convenient to play it with a Southern accent.” The lyrics could be read as somewhat sympathetic, though it would be unfair to suggest the song’s author, bandleader Patterson Hood, is any kind of Wallace apologist. I only know that because of a Drive-By Truckers’ song, part of a suite that culminates with Wallace in hell, where he’s serenaded by a demon choir singing “Roll Alabama.”
When George Wallace ran for governor of Alabama for the last time in 1982, he got more than ninety percent of the Black vote.
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