Two Breweries, 4,000 Miles Apart, One Beer
Upstairs at the Ulster Sports Club on High Street in Belfast, there's a taproom called Out of Office. Their whole invitation fits in four words: clock off and join us. I love that. It's a brewery that understands what a room is for. On Friday, November 6, that room is where I release my new album, Double Conscious, and it's where a beer with the same name gets poured for the very first time.
The name comes from W.E.B. Du Bois. In 1903, in The Souls of Black Folk, he wrote about "this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others," a two-ness he carried as a Black man in America. He called the barrier the veil. He also said it came with a gift, a kind of second sight. I've lived some version of that two-ness my whole adult life. Artist and founder. The stage and the spreadsheet. The dance floor and the history lesson. For years I treated those like two different people. This record is me refusing to pick.
So it's a record with two sides. One is the Body: house music, the dance floor, the one place nobody asks for your ID. The other is the Mind: hip-hop, the words, being watched and labeled and deciding who you are anyway. The last song is where they merge. Two sides. One self.
Why a beer? Because that's how we tell stories here. At Vine Street, a beer is never just a style on a chalkboard. It's a neighborhood character, a memory, a moment with a name on it. A collaboration isn't a logo swap either. It's trust, handed back and forth between two crews who make things. Mick and the Out of Office team are brewing Double Conscious in Belfast this month. I'm not going to pretend I know exactly how it tastes yet. I'll tell you after the first pour, and I'll be honest about it.
Why Belfast? Because this is my fourth trip there, and it's become a second home. People in Belfast have seen me as myself, which is the whole point of this album. Kansas City and Belfast are both UNESCO Cities of Music, two music cities with an ocean between them. Belfast is also my base for taking the music further into Europe, and this trip is the first real step.
So the record takes the long way there. I land in Dublin, then spend two days in Paris to see Eboni, a Kansas City jazz icon, play on a Paris stage, and maybe sit in with some French musicians if they'll have me. Kansas City jazz, heard from the other side of the ocean. Then London, where I'm visiting breweries, linking with the hip-hop community, and sitting down with Nick Donnelly, a London filmmaker who emailed me out of nowhere, right as I was planning this trip, because he wants to bring his film Street Smart to Kansas City. Music going out, a film coming in. That's the kind of exchange I want to keep building.
That's the rollout, and it has three acts. If you were in the Dream Room on Thursday, you were Act I. You heard the songs before anybody. Act II is Europe, and it lands in Belfast: a listening party the night before release at Second Nature, then release night at Out of Office on November 6. Act III is The Homecoming, Saturday, November 14, right here at Vine Street, where Kansas City hears the whole thing live after the world has had a week with it.
Here's the part that still makes me laugh. This whole project is about being two things at once, and the rollout keeps doing it on its own. DJ Skeem opened the run on Thursday. DJ Skeme closes it at the Homecoming. Different people, same name, one at each end of the trip. Two breweries, about 4,000 miles apart, making one beer. One night in Kansas City before I go, one night in Kansas City when I'm back. I didn't plan that. The concept just keeps showing up.
The Homecoming is the one I want you at. Special Delivery is bringing the sound with DJ Skeme on the decks. I'll play both sides of the record live. And we'll premiere a short film from the trip, shot by BJ Sampson of Sensei Brands, so you can see what happened over there before I tell you about it. We're doing it outside, in the backyard, around a bonfire. Bring a jacket. Tickets start at $15, and there are bundles that add the album or a Vine Street 4-pack for the ride home.
One more thing. In January, I'm putting out a book called Sacred Ground. That story is for another post.
For now: the album is out November 6. Europe gets release night. Kansas City gets the last word, and the loudest one. Pull up.
Cheers,
Kemet Coleman
