Divas, Ingénues & Vixens Podcast

What happens when the opera singer you were at 22 grows into the blues artist you were always becoming?

Lauren Anderson has spent years finding out.

From classical voice training and a career in music therapy to Nashville, The Voice and Team Snoop, Lauren’s path has been anything but a straight line. Now she joins Amity for a candid—and often very funny—conversation about what happens when technique meets instinct, when “doing it right” gives way to making the sound you actually want to make, and why finding your voice doesn’t mean you’re finished discovering it.

They talk vocal grit, the mysterious “muddy mix,” lessons that take years to understand, caring for a working voice, learning to trust your own instrument—and eventually, letting go of the need to ask permission.

Because the goal isn’t to become a different singer.

It’s to become more and more yourself.

Featuring Lauren Anderson’s new release, “Got It All” and the growl that got Snoop to turn his chair during "Midnight Train to Memphis"

Seventy-five episodes.

You dream about the thing. You do the thing. And somewhere along the way, you realize the thing has become something bigger than you imagined.

For this milestone episode of Divas, Ingénues & Vixens®, Amity sits down with two artists who know something about doing the thing: Joy Donze and Deirdre Lovejoy.

This summer, Joy and Dede took two original plays to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival—one of the largest and most exhilarating gatherings of artists in the world. There were tiny theaters and international audiences, five-star reviews and two-star reviews, unexpected recognition, a broken leg, a pair of crutches, and plenty of moments when success looked nothing like they expected it to.

And through all of it, they were there doing it. Not thinking about it. Doing it.

But this conversation is about more than Edinburgh.

It’s about persistence. About making the art because something in you says you have to. About learning when to adapt, when to accept help, when to trust your own voice—and why sometimes the most important thing is simply showing up and finding a way.

S2 Ep 22 is the 75th episode of Divas, Ingénues & Vixens®.

And this one feels special.

We think we know Mimì and Musetta.

One is tender and quiet. The other enters a room determined to be seen. Ingénue and Vixen—easy.

Except these women have never been quite that simple.

In this season-opening collaboration with Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Amity sits down with sopranos Gabriella Reyes (Mimì) and Cadie J. Bryan (Musetta) for a conversation about the women at the heart of Puccini's La Bohème—and what happens when we look beyond the archetypes.

They talk about agency and female friendship, the tiny details Puccini leaves in the score, the vulnerability beneath Musetta's fire, and the strength inside Mimì's softness. Gabriella reflects on having inhabited both roles, while Cadie considers what it means to make an iconic character your own: “I don't think the goal can be to be iconic. I think the goal is to be true.”

And then three sopranos get talking about something even bigger: why artists keep choosing beauty when life offers no guarantees, why joy matters precisely when life is uncertain, and how new artists can step into music written more than a century ago and still find themselves waiting there.

La Bohème has survived changing centuries, changing settings, and generations of singers.

Maybe that's because we still recognize these women.

Always look closer.

What does it actually take to build a creative life—and keep choosing it before you know exactly where it will lead?

In While She’s Still Becoming, six Kansas City singer-songwriters get personal about the part of an artist’s life we don’t always see: the work behind the song, the people who help us believe, the patience to grow at our own pace, and the rest, space, support, and freedom that keep creativity alive.

Amity sits down with Brooke Mertz, Haley Burke, Miki P., Kristin Hamilton, Lucy Gray, and Emma Jo for a conversation about imposter syndrome, creative ownership, vulnerability, joy, ambition—and the dreams that are still getting bigger.

These are artists in different places, with different stories and different definitions of success. But each is still working. Still learning herself. Still making the music. Still dreaming.

And maybe we shouldn’t wait until someone becomes a “legend” to start paying attention.

All six artists take the stage Thursday, September 24, for Lyrical Belles: Legends at the Gospel Lounge at Knuckleheads Kansas City.

Divas, Ingénues & Vixens® — S2E19: A Room with an Open Door

Twenty-five years after September 11, Come From Away reminds us that sometimes the story we leave behind begins with the simplest question: What can I offer?

In A Room with an Open Door, Amity Bryson explores the extraordinary response of the people of Gander, Newfoundland—and the music, stories, and acts of ordinary kindness that continue to carry their legacy forward. Inspired by KC Rep’s exceptional production of Come From Away and Jim DeFede’s The Day the World Came to Town, this episode asks not only what happened on September 11, but what happened next.

Broadway actress and Newfoundlander Tina Maddigan Mayer, now playing Bonnie at KC Rep, shares what the musical gets right about home, what she hears in its distinctly Newfoundland score, and the deeply personal intersection of her own lives in Newfoundland and New York. Production stage manager Rachel Dyer takes us behind the scenes to reveal the invisible artistry—and extraordinary collaboration—required to make this story move night after night.

And through it all, music offers something history alone cannot: a place to laugh, to grieve, to remember, and perhaps to feel our way through the things that are hardest to hold.

A meal. A bed. A telephone. A song. A room with an open door.

Maybe legacy begins there.

The Song Is Never Finished

A songwriter creates it. A singer steps inside it. And somewhere between the first note and the last, a song can become something no one quite expected.

Inspired by R-E-S-P-E-C-T: A Celebration of the Music of Aretha Franklin at The Ruby Room in Kansas City, Amity follows a musical thread from Otis Redding to Aretha Franklin, from Dolly Parton to Whitney Houston, asking what happens when interpretation becomes discovery—and sometimes transformation.

But there’s one more person in that exchange: you.

Because music happens now. It changes with the voice, the moment, the room and the person listening. Perhaps that’s why the songs we love keep finding new lives—and why, when someone else takes a breath and makes the music live again, the song is never finished.

What happens when someone looks at a small Kansas town and thinks: Why not here?

In Humboldt, Kansas, singer-songwriter and community builder Damaris Kunkler dreamed up the Middle of Everywhere Music Festival—a gathering built not only around great music, but around extraordinary hospitality, creative possibility, and the belief that artists deserve to be valued.

Damaris knows both sides of that equation. A grant writer and community development manager who once wrote songs almost in secret, she eventually found the courage to claim her own voice as a singer-songwriter. Now, that experience shapes the way she welcomes artists—including Emily Hollingshed, Erica McKenzie, Flat Susan and a remarkable lineup of artists making music on this year's festival stages.

But this conversation asks a bigger question: Does music build community—or is the act of making and experiencing music together already an act of community?

It's a story about music, a festival, and one remarkable Kansas town. But it's also about dreaming big, doing the work, and choosing possibility in a world where cynicism can sometimes sound smarter than optimism.

Because sometimes the middle of everywhere isn't a place you find.

It's a place someone has the courage to build.

Nearly fifty years ago, two Kansas City women imagined a stage where women in jazz could be heard—and then they built it.

Author, educator, and musician Carolyn Glenn Brewer joins Amity to share the remarkable history behind her book: Changing the Tune: The Kansas City Women’s Jazz Festival, 1978–1985 and the vision of founders Carol Comer and Dianne Gregg. Then musicians Eboni Fondren and Alyssa Bell Jackson help bring that legacy into the present—and ask us to imagine what might be possible for the women who come next.

The road to the Women's Jazz Festival's 50th Anniversary Celebration in 2028 begins September 30 with the official launch party, 4:30–7:30 p.m. at Ted's Taproom in Kansas City. Admission is $5.

Honor the women who built the stage. Celebrate the women standing on it today. Imagine who she might become.

We know the green skin, the broom, and the songs. But what happens when you follow Wicked beyond the Broadway stage?

With Wicked returning to Kansas City, Amity revisits Gregory Maguire’s Wicked Years—four novels that transform a familiar Oz story into something much bigger: a journey through identity, legacy, courage, and grace. And throughout the journey, Stephen Schwartz’s unforgettable score becomes an emotional underscore, reminding us that sometimes a melody stays with us long after the story ends.

This isn’t a book report or a musical review. It’s about what happens when we allow a story to change us—and find ourselves eager to tell someone else why it mattered.

Sometimes we read a story. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, the story begins reading us.

Look to the western sky.

Every episode begins as an invitation.

This week, I invite you into one more conversation with my dear friends Lauren and Taylor of Apothogothic as we explore Mystic, a fragrance inspired by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. What begins with music and scent soon becomes a conversation about imagination, friendship, courage, and the hope that always waits on the other side of the forest.

Because sometimes the most important journeys don't happen on a map.

They happen within us.

Pull up a chair.

Let's wander together.