Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 01:11:00

The stage is built on a vintage flatbed truck, and the venue exists because 2020 handed Kansas City lemons. Lemonade Park, at 1628 Wyoming Street in the West Bottoms stockyards district, is the outdoor music garden that restaurateurs Wes Gartner and Jill Myers of Voltaire and recordBar co-owner Steve Tulipana improvised in a parking lot during the pandemic - and never stopped running. The origin is in the name: with restaurants shuttered and stages silent in the summer of 2020, Gartner looked at the lot behind Voltaire - owned by Bill Haw Jr. - and pitched Tulipana and Shawn Sherrill of the recordBar on an outdoor concert series. Friends who happened to be contractors, stage builders and an architect turned the 12,000-square-foot lot into a venue in weeks: astroturf, string lights, picnic tables and that flatbed stage Tulipana joked was wired better than the recordBar's. The pandemic format was survival engineering - 100 capacity, tables 15 feet apart, masks and no-contact ordering - but the venue outlived the emergency: capacity grew to 200, then toward 700 for summer shows, and the series is now deep into its sixth season as a permanent fixture of Kansas City's live calendar. The programming stays local on purpose: Friday and Saturday evenings of Kansas City bands, with reserved table service pouring Voltaire's food and drinks alongside general-admission lawn-chair seating, movie nights with Screenland cinema, and the walk-up bar handling the rest - a deliberate complement to the recordBar's touring calendar rather than a competitor. The setting is Kansas City heritage: the West Bottoms' brick warehouse blocks below the Kemper Arena hulk carry the stockyards history that built the city, and the district's antique-store weekends and haunted-house season give the venue a neighbourhood rhythm most parking lots never earn. Practical notes: the season runs roughly May through October; tickets sell online through the recordBar's platform with reserved tables and GA options, lawn chairs are encouraged, and the smart order is whatever Voltaire's kitchen is running that night - the food is half the reason the venue works.