Original image by There Stands the Glass.
A comedic magician drew a capacity audience to the Uptown Theater on Wednesday, June 3. A different form of conjuring took place the same evening at the Encore Room, the Kansas City venue’s secondary stage.
By Storm, the duo of RiTchie and Parker Corey, performed for 150 obsessive fans. I paid $33 to catch the post-Kanye noise-rap duo. The format was tragically different than RiTchie and Corey’s 2018 appearance in the same room.
Operating as Injury Reserve, RiTchie, Corey and Stepa J. Groggs were so fashionable that JPEGMAFIA was the trio’s opening act. Groggs died in 2020. Now working as By Storm, the survivors repeatedly paid tribute to Groggs on Wednesday..
Renditions of melancholy songs from By Storm’s affecting new album My Ghosts Go Ghost paid homage to Groggs. And when RiTchie and Corey left the stage for Groggs’ hauntingly tragic verse on "Knees", my favorite song of 2021, members of the audience respectfully hung their heads in mourning.
The eighty-minute outing wasn’t entirely grim. A party segment anchored by the celebratory "And I Dance" provided a bit of solace. Yet the grim spell cast by the duo felt as morbid as a sawing-a-person-in-half trick gone wrong. Two days later, the gloom continues to haunt me.
