Hum is coming back to Kansas City, and the Life and Times are coming with them

The band's first Kansas City show since a 2011 night at recordBar lands at The Midland Theatre on April 24, 2027, with KC's own the Life and Times opening.

Fifteen years is a long time to wait for a band. The last time Hum played Kansas City was Nov. 4, 2011, at recordBar. The next time is Saturday, April 24, 2027, at The Midland Theatre, with doors at 7 p.m. and the show at 8. Tickets are through AXS.

That's a jump from a bar room to a 3,000-capacity theater, and it says something about how this band's reputation has held up during the long stretches when it wasn't around to tend it.

The Kansas City date is part of a spring 2027 North American tour the band announced in late October. As Stereogum reported, it's Hum's first proper run of live dates since 2015. The tour opens March 3 in Atlanta, works through Houston, Dallas and Austin early, and later hits Washington, D.C., New York, Boston, Seattle and San Francisco, with the first set of dates running into July.

The local hook is built right into the bill. The Life and Times, the Kansas City indie rock veterans, open every show on the tour, according to Stereogum, with Pelican and Spotlights joining on some dates. So on April 24 the opener is playing for a hometown crowd while the headliner closes a fifteen-year gap. It's a good night to show up early.

What's changed since 2011 is mostly the catalog. In June 2020, Hum surprise-released Inlet digitally on Bandcamp, their first album in 22 years and the follow-up to 1998's Downward Is Heavenward. Talk of a new record had been around since 2018, but the band never announced anything before it simply appeared, as Wikipedia's entry on the album) recounts. Inlet came out on Earth Analog Records with distribution through Polyvinyl, featured the longtime lineup of Matt Talbott, Tim Lash, Jeff Dimpsey and Bryan St. Pere, and reached No. 111 on the Billboard 200. Bandcamp Daily made it an album of the day and called it possibly the band's most compelling record ever.

Do the math and it means Kansas City has never heard those songs from this band in person. Inlet arrived nine years after the recordBar show, in a summer when nobody was touring anything, and the band never took it on a full run of its own.

There's a lineup note too. Stereogum reports that Shiner's Jason Gerken will be back behind the kit. He drummed with Hum on the 2015 tour and at the band's Slide Away festival appearances.

None of this is a band that operates on anyone else's schedule. Years ago The Pitch ran a piece headlined "Hum would prefer to play wherever and whenever it damn well pleases", and the gaps since then have proved the point. When Hum does decide to play, people tend to clear the night. The listing is on JamBase.

The Midland holds 3,000. Kansas City has had fifteen years to decide whether to be one of them. April 24 is a Saturday, so there's no excuse.

Sources: Stereogum: Hum announce 2027 tour (stereogum.com); Inlet (album) - Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org); Bandcamp Daily: Hum, Inlet (daily.bandcamp.com); BrooklynVegan: Hum surprise release first new album in 22 years (brooklynvegan.com); The Pitch: Hum would prefer to play wherever and whenever it damn well pleases (thepitchkc.com); AXS tickets (axs.com); JamBase listing (jambase.com)