Free, Feisty and Outdoors: NOTO's Redbud Park Fills Up July 17
The best live-music deal in Topeka this weekend costs exactly zero dollars, and it's an all-female bluegrass band that will not apologize for anything. On Friday, July 17, the NOTO Summer Concert Series returns to the Kaw Valley Bank Stage at Redbud Park with the Unfit Wives — a high-energy five-piece string band trading feisty harmonies, sharp original songwriting, and, per the series billing, an "unapologetic spirit." Local youth musician Ellie Oliva opens, which is the whole design of this series: a regional act up top, an emerging Topeka kid getting a real stage underneath.
That free-and-diverse formula is the point. NOTO runs these concerts on select Fridays from May into September, built around the intimacy of Redbud Park and an intentionally wide genre net — this season alone has spanned Latin dance band Selekto, progressive-Americana trio Pretend Friend, and, later on, KC cowpunk outfit Big Fat Cow and Topeka's own Velvet Blues Revue. For a city that fields constant complaints about cost and access keeping people home, a free outdoor concert with a built-in all-ages audience is close to a civic best practice.
If you want to make a night of it, NOTO cooperates. A few blocks over, Compass Point at Dirty Girl Adventures hosts singer Jake McVey the same Friday at 6 p.m., and on Saturday, July 18, the yard turns over to the "July Grown & Sexy Summer Nights" event at 8 p.m. The NOTO Arts District's whole proposition is that you can string together a gallery stroll, a bite, and two or three sets without moving your car, and mid-July is when that proposition actually delivers.
Here's the turn. Topeka spends a lot of energy debating whether it has a scene, usually in surveys and op-eds. Redbud Park on the third Friday is the un-sexy, un-debatable answer: a stage, a sound system, a bluegrass band nobody's mad at, and a kid from town getting to open for them. That's not a scene in theory. That's a scene doing the reps.
Bring a lawn chair, tip the opener, and don't leave before Ellie Oliva plays — that's the whole idea.
Sources: NOTO Summer Concert Series (Explore NOTO); Live Music Calendar Jul 17–19 (Dystopeka)