This Weekend at the Blue Room
September 18–21, 2026
Three of this weekend’s bandleaders grew up in families that already played. J Love’s grandfather sang lead for the Soul Stirrers; Friday at Indigo Hour she sings her first Blue Room set billed as jazz. Eboni Fondren’s father and aunts sang in the house in Chicago, though she found jazz later, on Everette DeVan’s bandstand in college. She sings two sets Friday night. Monday’s jam host, Jaylen Ward, took his uncle’s chair in his parents’ band. The fourth bandleader, Dan Sturdevant, has been playing Kansas City since 1969 and brings a quartet Saturday.
One note about Monday: the museum’s galleries are closed on Mondays, but the Blue Room isn’t. The jam hits the stage at 7.
This Weekend’s Lineup
Friday, September 18
Indigo Hour — A Jazz Set with J Love · 5:30 pm · $5; AJM members complimentary
Eboni Fondren · 8:30 pm & 10 pm · $10 per show
Saturday, September 19
Dan Sturdevant · 8:30 pm & 10 pm · $10 per show
Monday, September 21
Monday Night Jam Session — Jaylen Ward · 7 pm · $10; members, musicians, and students complimentary
J Love — Friday’s Indigo Hour
J Love’s grandfather, Lelon Pulliam, sang lead and played guitar for the Soul Stirrers, and her cousin Veda Brown recorded for Stax. She grew up in Kennett, Missouri, moved to Kansas City at nineteen to sing, and put out her debut, Life’s Side Effects, in 2008. Kansas City knows her from soul and R&B, and she’s sung Indigo Hour here more than a dozen times since 2024. Friday is the first one billed as a jazz set, and it isn’t a stretch: when KC Studio profiled the band in 2018, the drummer was already nudging the book toward jazz and the bassist kept “God Bless the Child” on his must-play list. Admission is $5; AJM members get in complimentary.
Eboni Fondren — Friday Night
Eboni Fondren won Favorite Jazz Vocalist at the first JAM Musician Awards the KC Jazz Ambassadors ever gave, in December 2021, and Everette DeVan, the Hammond B-3 organist she’d apprenticed under in college, won Favorite Jazz Organist the same year. She won again in 2022 and 2023, and in 2023 she was invited to represent America as a jazz ambassador at the G20 Summit in India. Both of her records came in 2024: The Journey: To Kansas City with Love, recorded live at the Uptown Lounge, and An American in Paris, cut in a day in France with a jazz quintet and a string quartet. This March her one-woman show, Jazz: The Women Who Shaped Me, ran two weeks at Quality Hill Playhouse. Friday she sings two sets, $10 per show.
Dan Sturdevant — Saturday Night
Sunday mornings at the Phoenix, Dan Sturdevant sings and plays piano with Millie Edwards Nottingham; they’ve passed 450 performances there, and Kansas City Magazine called it “the velvet voice and piano accompaniment of Dan Sturdevant.” He’s been performing in Kansas City since 1969, in rooms from the American Restaurant and the InterContinental to eight years on the Alameda Plaza rooftop, and he’s sung the national anthem at Kauffman Stadium four times. The book runs from standards to “Lovely Day,” “Raspberry Beret,” and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” Saturday he brings a quartet to the Blue Room: Clayton DeLong, Chase McCroy, and Ray DeMarchi. The shows are at 8:30 and 10 pm, $10 per show.
Jaylen Ward — Monday Night Jam
The James Ward Band’s first drummer was Jaylen Ward’s uncle, and when he retired from the chair, the nephew took it. He’d been sitting in with his parents, James Ward on bass and Angela Ward on keys, since elementary school, in a band that has played the Blue Room since 1998. He’s 23. His trio was a DownBeat Student Music Award winner in 2025, he’s the drummer on every track of Eddie Moore’s What Makes Us, and he’s played with Bobby Watson, Logan Richardson, Tia Fuller, and Sean Jones. Monday he plays the featured set at 7, and then the bandstand opens; sign up at the door to sit in. Admission is $10; AJM members, musicians, and students get in complimentary.
The museum’s galleries are closed on Mondays, but the Blue Room is open for the jam.
See You at 18th & Vine
The Blue Room is at 1600 E 18th St, Kansas City, MO 64108.
Explore the Blue Room and its upcoming shows
The museum’s galleries are closed on Mondays, but the Blue Room is open for the jam.
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