Mar
23
Sat
Randolph Lions Club Pancake Feed @ Randolph VFW
Mar 23 @ 5:00 pm – 7:30 pm

Join your friends and neighbors and enjoy some breakfast for dinner at the Randolph Lions Pancake Feed.  Pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage, and peaches will be served up for a free will donation, with proceeds benefitting the community and Blue Valley High School scholarships.  Lions International…serving more than just pancakes!

Apr
2
Tue
McCain Performance Series-MOMIX: Alice @ McCain Auditorium
Apr 2 @ 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm

Seamlessly blending illusion, acrobatics, magic, and whimsy, MOMIX sends audiences flying down the rabbit hole in Moses Pendleton’s newest creation, ALICE, inspired by Lewis Carroll’s classic Alice in Wonderland. “I don’t intend to retell the whole Alice story” Pendleton says, “but to use it as a taking off point for invention.” Join this dazzling company on a mind-bending adventure, as Alice encounters time-honored characters including the undulating Caterpillar, a lobster quadrille, frenzied White Rabbits, a mad Queen of Hearts, and a variety of other surprises. Filled with visual splendor and startling creative movement, Alice reveals that nothing in MOMIX’s world is as it seems!

Apr
6
Sat
McCain Performance Series-Step Afrika! @ McCain Auditorium
Apr 6 @ 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm

“This is movement as communal celebration”
-The New York Times

Step Afrika! blends percussive dance styles practiced by historically African American fraternities and sororities; traditional West and Southern African dances; and an array of contemporary dance and art forms into a cohesive, compelling artistic experience. Performances are much more than dance shows; they integrate songs, storytelling, humor and audience participation. The blend of technique, agility, and pure energy makes each performance unique and leaves the audience with their hearts pounding.

Apr
11
Thu
McCain Performance Series-Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain @ McCain Auditorium
Apr 11 @ 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm

The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain is a group of allsinging, all-strumming Ukulele players. A concert by the Ukulele Orchestra is a funny, virtuosic, twanging, awesome, foot-stomping obituary of rock-n-roll and melodious light entertainment featuring only the “bonsai guitar” and a menagerie of voices in a collision of post-punk performance and toe-tapping oldies. There are no drums, pianos, backing tracks or banjos, no pitch shifters or electronic trickery. Only an astonishing revelation of the rich palette of orchestration afforded by ukuleles and singing (and a bit of whistling). Audiences have a good time with the Ukulele Orchestra. Going from Tchaikovsky to Nirvana via Otis Redding and Spaghetti Western soundtracks, the Orchestra takes us on “a world tour with only hand luggage” and gives the listener “One Plucking Thing After Another”.

Using instruments small and large, in high and low registers, whether playing intricate melodies, simple tunes, or complex chords, and sitting in chamber group format dressed in formal evening wear, the Orchestra uses the limitations of the instrument to create a musical freedom as it reveals unsuspected musical insights. Both the beauty and vacuity of popular and highbrow music are highlighted, the pompous and the trivial, the moving and the amusing. Sometimes a foolish song can touch an audience more than high art; sometimes music which takes itself too seriously is revealed to be hilarious. You may never think about music in the same way once you’ve been exposed to the Ukes’ depraved musicology!

Apr
13
Sat
McCain Performance Series-The Midtown Men @ McCain Auditorium
Apr 13 @ 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm

The Midtown Men reunites stars from the Original Broadway Cast of the smash hit musical, “Jersey Boys.” Launched in 2010 from their three-year rocket ride together bringing to life the sound story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, Broadway’s breakout vocal sensation is widely celebrated for their signature renditions of the iconic hits of the 1960s. Together, they have played over 850 concerts across North America, Asia and Europe and have headlined over 35 major symphonies including The National Symphony and repeat engagements with The Boston Pops. Highlighted with their own high-octane arrangements, slick moves and one of a kind repartee, their all new concert features even more iconic ‘60s music from The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Chicago, Elvis, The Temptations, The 4 Seasons and more! Television audiences across the nation have caught The Midtown Men’s concert specials, appearances on “Good Morning America,” “The Today Show,” “The Chew,” “Katie,” and “Access Hollywood.” They have multiple musical releases: their debut “Sixties Hits” followed by “Live In Concert” and two holiday singles, the brand new “Little Saint Nick” and “All Alone On Christmas,” which they recorded with Stevie Van Zandt and Springsteen’s E Street Band. Thanks to 60s radio icon Cousin Brucie championing The Midtown Men sound, their relationship with SiriusXM listeners across the globe has cemented them alongside some of the original greats they emulate in the cornerstone of Iconic ‘60s pop music itself.

Apr
27
Sat
Run For The Roses 5K/1K @ K-State University Gardens
Apr 27 @ 9:00 am – 11:30 am

Join the fun at the Run for the Roses 5K run and 1K walk!  Runners will start and finish in the beautiful K-State Gardens, take a lap on the track inside historic Memorial Stadium, and cruise by Anderson Hall, the Student Union, and Ahearn Fieldhouse.  First, second, and third place winners will get a beautiful glazed purple pot with rose-shaped succulent plant!  T-shirts, snacks, and participant medals for all!  Enjoy face painters, balloon art, and 10,000 tulips in bloom by the visitor’s center.

Note: the 2024 course is NOT USATF certified due to construction.

May
7
Tue
McCain Performance Series-The Spinners @ McCain Auditorium
May 7 @ 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inductees!

Timeless in a way that few other acts today are, The Spinners are one of the most iconic and enduring groups in R&B history. With a towering legacy spanning over six decades, The Spinners have never lost their universal appeal. The band both created and came to define the singularly smooth sound of Philadelphia Soul, channeling the highs and lows of romance and heartbreak into a catalogue of classic hits, beloved across generations. Throughout the years the Spinners have topped both the Pop and R&B charts with smash singles like, “I’ll Be Around,” “Could It Be I’m Falling In Love,” “Then Came You,” “The Rubberband Man” and many more– earning six Grammy nominations, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, over 100 million YouTube views, and selling millions of records worldwide in the process. Their legendary repertoire has earned a permanent place in the American songbook.

Jun
24
Mon
McCain Performance Series-Buddy Guy (rescheduled) @ McCain Auditorium
Jun 24 @ 7:30 pm – 10:00 pm

At age 86, Buddy Guy is a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, a major influence on rock titans like Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, a pioneer of Chicago’s fabled West Side sound, and a living link to the city’s halcyon days of electric blues. Buddy Guy has received 8 GRAMMY Awards, a 2015 Lifetime Achievement GRAMMY Award, 38 Blues Music Awards (the most any artist has received), the Billboard Magazine Century Award for distinguished artistic achievement, a Kennedy Center Honor, and the Presidential National Medal of Arts. Rolling Stone Magazine ranked him #23 in its “100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.”

In 2019, Buddy Guy won his 8th and most recent GRAMMY Award for his 18th solo LP, “The Blues Is Alive And Well”.

In July of 2021, in honor of Buddy Guy’s 85th birthday, PBS American Masters released “Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase The Blues Away”, a new documentary following his rise from a childhood spent picking cotton in Louisiana to becoming one of the most influential guitar players of all time. The documentary features new interviews with Buddy Guy, Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton, John Mayer, Gary Clark Jr, and more. Watch the full documentary at PBS Online here.

Though Buddy Guy will forever be associated with Chicago, his story actually begins in Louisiana. One of five children, he was born in 1936 to a sharecropper’s family and raised on a plantation near the small town of Lettsworth, located some 140 miles northwest of New Orleans. Buddy was just seven years old when he fashioned his first makeshift “guitar”—a two-string contraption attached to a piece of wood and secured with his mother’s hairpins.

In 1957, he took his guitar to Chicago, where he would permanently alter the direction of the instrument, first on numerous sessions for Chess Records playing alongside Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and the rest of the label’s legendary roster, and then on recordings of his own. His incendiary style left its mark on guitarists from Jimmy Page to John Mayer. “He was for me what Elvis was probably like for other people,” said Eric Clapton at Guy’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2005. “My course was set, and he was my pilot.”

Seven years later, July 2012 proved to be one of Buddy Guy’s most remarkable years ever. He was

awarded the 2012 Kennedy Center Honor for his lifetime contribution to American culture; earlier in the year, at a performance at the White House, he even persuaded President Obama to join him on a chorus of “Sweet Home Chicago.” Also in 2012, he published his long-awaited memoir, When I Left Home.

These many years later, Buddy Guy remains a genuine American treasure and one of the final surviving connections to an historic era in the country’s musical evolution.