The Kansas City Show Report: A Call to Arms
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Kevin Godbee - Jun 27, 2013
- 7 min read
E. Roberts
I have been agonizing over how to start this article for days. What was there to say about the Kansas City pipe show that hadn’t already been said, or would be found in other outlets? Following closely after the Chicago show, one may think it possible for the KC show to be overshadowed by the windy city—this is not the case, not by a long shot. Sure there are fewer tables, and slightly fewer pipes, but certainly the enthusiasm and camaraderie suffered none for it. The Greater Kansas City Pipe Club really knows how to put on a show, and it’s getting better every year. The members of the GKCPC have brought a lot of professionalism to their passion, and it really makes the presentation shine. Guests were treated to a clockwork schedule of events, excellent accommodation at the Doubletree hotel, and the warm welcome extended by the club’s members.
The vintage tobacco sharing table Friday night.
While at the Chicago show, I attended the annual meeting of the United Pipe Clubs of America. There to give a small presentation on the GKCPC were Vice President Carl Staudenmyer and Treasurer Dan Coomer. If you’re within earshot of Carl, you’ll certainly remember him—he’s got a booming voice that befits his presence. Dan is a bit more reserved, but then so is everybody when compared to Carl. The theme of their presentation was how to put together a pipe club, and they certainly have done it. From a low membership of five just a few years ago, they’ve turned it into one of the premier clubs in the country, with membership in excess of 120, regular and varied events including the annual show, and perhaps their greatest contribution to the hobby, the American Carvers Competition. In only its fourth year, the contest has firmly cemented the validity of American carvers in the pantheon of pipe schools, taking a rightly deserved place alongside the English, Danes and Russians. As usual, the photos of the winning pipes that made up the 7-day set were promised exclusively to Pipes & Tobacco Magazine for their print edition coming out in a few months.
You’ll have to check them out at P&T!
We can report which pipe makers won the judging. The judges were the same distinguished pipe experts from last year; G. L. Pease, Tad Gage and George Dibos. The seven selected pipe makers are:
- Matt Brannon
- Premal Chheda
- Jerry Crawford
- Micah Cryder
- Adam Davidson
- David Huber
- Maigurs Knets
The judges awarded two honorable mentions this year:
- Thomas James Richards
- Wayne Teipen
Saturday evening’s banquet featured a guest speaker some of you may have heard of: Greg Pease. He told quite an interesting and at times entertaining story about his humble beginnings, blending tobaccos in his kitchen, hand-sealing tins with a hand-cranked machine, and then meeting Craig Tarler of Cornell & Diehl.
Gregory L. Pease was the Featured Speaker for the Saturday Dinner
While the full content of his speech is far too long to enumerate here, the most salient point he made was that of active participation and stewardship. We who attend pipe shows, participate in forums, and buy out entire shipments of imported tobaccos are but a tiny fraction of a miniscule percentage of the tobacco industry.
Michael Sull, Master Penman (L) created a beautiful Spencerian Script plaque that he presented to Greg. John Cermack, Club President is in the center.
Without going into the entire story of how we arrived where we are today because of Big Tobacco and the Master Settlement Agreement, suffice it to say that our niche of tobacco enthusiasts are at a precarious crossroads: while we’re experiencing a renewed interest in the hobby and huge growth in blends and pipes, the industry is also under intense scrutiny and persecution from lawmakers and the corporate media. It was the announcement on Tuesday that the FDA had exercised, with debilitating sloth and oblique criteria, its newest purview governing the sale and marketing of tobacco, which firmed my decision to foray into a topic I am loathe to address; namely, politics.
So THAT’s the guy with all the Penzance …
I spent quite a bit of time talking with Mark Ryan at the show, mainly because he’s an easy going fellow and a great storyteller. Mark is someone we all owe a debt of gratitude to, being the guy who saved Perique from its near demise. As a small business tobacco manufacturer, Mark is under the gun constantly, and a capricious gun it is. It was actually painful to hear how many times he’s had to reset his business to zero because of the vagaries of legislative updates. The FDA stepping in to pass sentence on what we are allowed is only the latest roadblock to face, which he admittedly is becoming more savvy at dealing with. Mark wasn’t the only one, though—every conversation at the show, and I do mean every single one, turned to politics as it relates to our hobby at some point. The fact that a legislative body which allows (and encourages) Big Pharma to load arsenic into animal feed is now holding court over tobacco is disconcerting; while we can all plainly admit that ingestion of burning plant matter may be detrimental to our health, the subject of industry pandering leaves a bad taste in our collective mouth that may be the worst case of tongue bite we’ll ever experience.
There are no easy answers to this very complex issue. As a society, we do benefit from industry oversight in the interest of public health and safety. The fact that the MSA opened up the Pandora’s box of liability for tobacco companies is, unfortunately, a double-edged sword. Yes, the advertising lied to us, for generations. Yes, smoking can be addictive and detrimental. Many behaviors can fall into this category, of course, but let’s stick to tobacco for now. The greatest damage done by the current attitude toward smoking, which is incidentally mainly focused on cigarette use, is that there hasn’t been a lot of legitimate science supported in several decades concerning the effects of different forms of tobacco use. Electronic cigarettes are a new development, and may be beneficial to the pipe tobacco industry because they have forced people to re-examine the varying levels of risk associated with our preferred method of nicotine delivery. Unfortunately it’s a daunting task to wade through all the spurious pseudo-science and outright propaganda proffered by agendists like the EPA and the WHO, who would have us believe that our genteel clouds of smoke are a death sentence for anyone within twenty paces.
So where am I going with all of this? Bear with me. In summation, the Kansas City show was a call to arms. Again, I want to echo Greg’s words to us at the banquet—that we, as pipe club members, tobacconists, or producers, owe a responsibility of participation and stewardship to ourselves and to initiates to the hobby. As he observed, the growing influx of new pipesters is by and large more educated about tobacco, about taste and terroir, and about the experience. The onus is on us to encourage, guide, and provide that camaraderie and brotherhood which we often refer to. The good news is, it’s happening already. I met Lyle Erickson at the KC show, an unassuming guy in his thirties who came to pipe smoking via a passion for wine and coffee. Not knowing any other pipe smokers in his area, he found community on the PipesMagazine.com forums. With his feet firmly wetted by the participation he found there, he then decided to create his own community, the Des Moines Pipe Club. This is exactly the sort of participation and activism that is a major step in ensuring that we’ll all be able to enjoy the tobaccos we love for years to come.
Steve Stein, proving that old dogs occasionally learn new tricks during his “Clinic on Enhancing Your Pipe Smoking Techniques”.
Restoration seminar with George Dibos & Tim West
The Kansas City Show was a great time. It was well organized, filled with events, raffles and prizes, but at the same time it was a relaxed atmosphere. As is usual with all pipe shows, there’s was great camaraderie, excellent tobaccos, beautiful pipes, food, drink … and a trend from recent years continues – we are continuing to see more of the younger generation, and even more of the fairer sex. If you haven’t attended a pipe show, you are missing out.
Sam, the new face of pipe smoking
Written by Kevin Godbee
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 635. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with James Ravenwood. James is the boutique tobacco blender of Ravenwood Blends. His blending started out as a fun hobby, and he now has professionally packaged commercially available products with some great tin art. Part of his interest in pipe smoking goes back to fond memories of a retired Navy Veteran that lived on his street while he was growing up that would sit in his driveway smoking a pipe all day. Later, in 2011 he began smoking pipes and soon after started experimenting with mixing different tobaccos. His other hobby, that he has been doing for 30 years, is photography. He takes wonderful photos of outdoor spaces, and still life pictures of pipes and tobacco. You can see them on his Instagram @thebriarfellowship. At the top of the show we’ll have an Ask the Pipemaker segment with renowned pipe artisan Jeff Gracik.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 634! Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Warren Ertle. Warren is an extremely accomplished musician with a PhD in music. He started early as a percussionist in sixth grade. Later his grandmother got him a cheap Casio keyboard which he taught himself to play. He started playing in blues bands in high school, and has been a pianist with jazz big bands for years. Even though he was already a professional musician, he took his first real piano lesson when he enrolled in college with his studies in classical music. He is of course a pipe smoker. At the top of the show we will have an Ask the Tobacco Blender segment with Jeremy Reeves. Jeremy is the Head Blender at Cornell & Diehl, which is one of the most popular boutique pipe tobacco companies in the USA.
Soon now, supposedly, our neighborhoods will shift from grinning pumpkins, skeletons in various assortments, and zombies dashing about to pretty reindeer, angels, and flashing lights illuminating homes with sparkling stars and laughing, scurrying Santas. But, lest we forget, there is the turkey season, fancy pie aromas wafting from kitchens, and a national pardon of a big Tom Turkey. Remember, now, that only one of these holiday personalities is a pipe smoker. And that is the hefty, bearded fellow in a bright red suit sitting in a sleigh with a herd of deer hitched up and ready to streak across the globe, bringing tidings of joy and many presents. Ok, the scene is set for the next couple of months, right? So, before we get too far off the beaten path, let’s just take a deep breath of fresh autumn air, shall we? Ahh. That’s better, isn’t it? What’s got the Pundit in a snit is not all the Halloween spooks who came a-jostling for candy. Or the wild turkeys gobbling in the backwoods or all the fuss and feathers over the big one—Christmas. No, it is that we might need to take note of all the little things that mean so much to us. Like a good sunrise (seriously, Pundit has not gone all Pollyanna.) Mayhaps we need to appreciate more of what we have than what we have not. Or something like that. Like, a good pipe in the morning with coffee as the dawn brings us coolish weather now that we have flipped the calendar to autumn. But it also brings beautiful leaves that have become a spectacle of technicolor in the wind. It is the little things. The rereading of an enjoyable book and finding something you did not see or learn in the first go-round. Or a stunning phrase you commit to memory with the re-read, while smoking that favorite pipe. And you notice a superior puff that just seems to be different. It’s in the air and the seasons of meaningful little things. It’s aromatic! Or perhaps it is that sense of satisfaction knowing and appreciating you made it to another day. With the world in a kind of rinse-and-repeat history, reminiscent of a Shakespearean play, it is perhaps a good moment to remember some of Pipedom’s philosophers whose cogent thoughts brought light to clear a path in the mists of confusion and confounding opinions. Ok. No gloom and doom. Just some down-home thoughts. Think of times in the past when history was running off the rails. It took our pipe-smoking thinkers (the mind workers of the world) to speak of better pathways to more light. Think for a moment, with a pipe in hand, these wizards of the world and word: Albert Einstein, J. R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edwin Hubble, Bertrand Russell, C. S. Lewis, and Jean-Paul Sartre. All learned and enlightened. They offered wisdom instead of storms of meaningless roads to nowhere. All while smoking their pipes! Maybe especially with the help of their pipes in the art of thinking and philosophy. Recall the words of Mr. E=MC2 when he said, “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.” Amen and amen! Dealing with world-rattling events takes a calm and objective view of things, to the Pundit’s way of summing it up. You just don’t go messing around with quantum physics without a calm and objective approach, methinks. Or as the extraordinary physicist Robert Oppenheimer said after he and a team in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Labs developed a way to split atoms into bombs during World War II. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” said Oppenheimer referring to the development of the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. It must be pointed out that Oppenheimer was more of a cigarette smoker than a pipe smoker. Nonetheless, pipes were part of his personality. Now, if you have read some of the great authors of the past and present, their pipes were always nearby. Reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can be a three-pipe problem at times. S. Lewis and Jean-Paul Sartre require time with your pipes to reflect on the existential problems and solutions these authors provide in learned novels and other narratives. Or take Edwin Hubble and Bertrand Russell, philosophers of another world. Pipes are required for reading. The quantum lode of ideas Pundit is attempting to sort out is that our pipes are relaxing and stimulate our thoughts and creativity. Especially in these last months of the year. Many times Pundit has had that light bulb flick on while smoking my beloved pipes. And friends in Pipedom, it ain’t easy to turn on the lights in Pundit’s rock pit head. Now it’s time for a quote from a Pipe Smoker of the Past. Shelby Foote was born Nov. 17, 1916, in Greenville, Miss., and died June 27, 2005, in Memphis, Tenn. A fact is not a truth until you love it—Shelby Foote. A parting thought: It is said that famed Southern author William Faulkner carried a packed pipe in a coat pocket wherever he went. That’s one effective way to deal with workday conflicts and confusion. A calm and objective judgment in our everyday human affairs, as the quantum man said.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 633. Our featured guest tonight is Jon David Cole. JD is the Owner/Tobacconist at The Country Squire in Jackson, MS, and the accompanying online store. We’ll have JD and Brian talking about what’s new at the store and in the business in general. At the top of the show, Brian will discuss tobacco growing, what happens to the leaf, and provide updated information on where tobacco is being gown today. Tobacco production originated in the United States and we were once the #1 producer. It’s quite different now.
Well there’s nothing like a touch of the plague to usher in the changing season. Leaving the airport just when the first advertisements for all things pumpkin spice began to appear—lattes, muffins, shampoos, trash bags, and myriad other concoctions—so, too, my ability to breathe freely disappeared. The unfortunate side effect of losing one’s sense of taste and smell for weeks is the utter inability to enjoy tobacco. Not that I consider myself an expert on anything but my own tastes, but be forewarned that this review was made with mildly impugned sensory equipment. Just when a comforting pipe was most needed, its comfort was denied. Be that as it may, the road to recovery found me limping along on one lung this past month, trying to wrest the particulars of two blends on offer from Sutliff: the latest 175th Anniversary blend, Silver Quarter, as well as their spooky seasonal Maple Shadows II. Silver Quarter is a new style on offer from Sutliff, their first coin-cut blend. Naturally a Virginia-Perique, it is enhanced with a traditional core of black Cavendish. In the tin it holds much promise, with a lightly bready and very woody, if ever-so-slightly sour, aroma. After some time acclimating to air, the bouquet softens further and offers hints of the burley with some chocolaty notes wafting through the more dominant dry grassy aspect. The tin art is of a coin-style bas-relief bust, presumably of a founding Sutliff brother, à la The Old Boss On the reverse of the tin we find the blend’s description: Reflecting on Sutliffs 175 years of tobacco excellence, we came across a brand that embodies true value, SILVER QUARTER. This name pays homage to Sutliffs roots, the legacy of two brothers who popularized pipe smoking in the burgeoning mining society of San Francisco. We celebrate this heritage with a coin cut composed of the finest African Virginias, complemented by a core of Perique and Black Cavendish. The tin notes are, forgive the pun, on the nose for a good VaPer blend: mild tart sweetness peeking out from behind dried hay and slight chocolate undertones, with a lightly tannic finish of weathered oak. It is always a joy to prepare a coin cut, my preference being to put a few in my palm and vigorously warm my hands together to fully break them apart. These well-formed discs pack and light easily, and smoke with little prodding to the end of the bowl. For technical points it scores well—it smokes light, and it’s easy to tend the ember. While it gets sharp after a few quick bowls, pacing should be heeded to easily smoke down to the heel without inviting bite. Of the flavor, though, I am left a bit wanting. There are tart and high notes aplenty, but very little of the lemony citrus I would anticipate, as well as scant midtones; they tend more toward the red wine-vinegary and sour. The flavors are muted, also, lacking the sweetness and piquancy of other marques—the small measure of Perique tickles the nose now and again with peppery hints, and there is a smidge of a deeper sweetness to be found in the Cavendish from puff to puff, but overall it lacks some dynamism. The Virginias, to my palate, come off a bit on the dry side, and here they dominate the blend. The aftertaste and mouthfeel are neutral, again evincing more of the dry, woody, tartly tannic end of the spectrum. The blend has plenty of polish, but not enough depth or richness (*yet) to make it a standout. Here, comparisons are inevitable: Luxury Bullseye Flake has more sweetness, both from its Virginia as well as its Cavendish, and a better finish; Davidoff is similar but with a pronounced umami that is absent here; as for Escudo, I haven’t had any fresh tins lately so it would be unfair to compare. While it rates as a solid, fairly mild smoke, particularly to lovers of the genre, it does not surprise with any exceptional flavors. To be fair, all the boxes have been checked for the blend to benefit from some real aging, and it would be worth checking in on this after a couple of years sealed away. I’ve set half my tin aside to sample again in a month or two, in case I’m merely suffering from the lingering effects of parosmia, and will amend this review in that case. Maple Shadows II, on the other hand, made up for the weeks of sniffling and sneezing I’d endured. Offered in a full 8 ounce tin with delightfully spooky Halloween art, it’s (hopefully) enough to last through the season. Somehow I had missed this last year, so it’s a real pleasure to get some in my candy bucket this year. As the chilling winds of autumn draw eerie prattle from contorted, deciduous limbs, we find ourselves possessed by the spirit of the season. Bewitched by a dissonant charm, we’ve created Maple Shadows. In a season that is defined by the unlikely harmony of treats and frights, we’ve joined the enchanting sweetness of maple with the earthy spice of Dark Fired Kentucky for a smoking experience that captures the senses with an otherworldly fusion of flavor. This may be the best aromatic blend Sutliff’s ever made—and they make a ton of them. First off, it’s not overbearing in the least—quite the opposite, it is also one of the more restrained aromatics they’ve ever made, with a clear but very light topping that melds oh-so-well with their choice Kentucky added to the mix. Opening the tin, the sweet maple is up front and center, but so too is the must of fallen leaves, bready pie crusts, and a crackling fire in the hearth—a perfect invocation of Herbstdüfte in a can. Packing best in an open and capacious bowl, the flavoring is subtle, and recedes to the background while puffing. With a sweet coffee or tea to accompany, the aftertaste of the maple is reinvigorated on the palate […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 632. Our featured guest on tonight’s show is the host of the Pipe & Tamper Podcast, Mike Murphy. Brian and Mike will have an extended chat revolving around the days before, during and after the Las Vegas International Pipe Show. We will hear about their travels to the show and the anxiety of Hurricane Milton bearing down on Florida at the same time while running a show and not knowing if your house is going to be there when you get home. In the end, the show went great and our homes survived, although many others in Florida were not so lucky. We’ll have clips from the show, and shoutouts to other podcasts and vlogs that were broadcasting from the pipe show.
Kansas City, as always, was a WONDERFUL show and Cyndi and I had a marvelous time. The educational demos from Anthony Hopkins and George Dibos/Tim West were informative. I picked up some excellent tips.
The camaraderie was awesome, as long as you didn’t mind getting 4 hours of sleep because you found yourself in the tent having a lively discussion at 3 a.m., and getting up to have breakfast with your buddies at 7:30 the next morning! It was exciting to once again be a judge in the American pipe maker’s contest, and to have first look at the wonderful entries. It was great to spend some time “younger” guys like Drew from Dead Pipes, Dustin from briarportraitgallery.com, Lyle Erickson (mentioned in the article), pipemakers Nate King and Adam Davidson. Cyndi and I also found a few moments to watch at least parts of the Blackhawks’ march to the Stanley Cup while enjoying fine libations at the Doubletree bar. The good times were rolling 24/7!
I may be “Mr. Barling” and most of my pipes predate 1960, but I purchased a couple of beautiful pipes made by young North American carvers, and I love them.
Only downsides? We got in Wednesday and with the high winds on the hotel’s lovely outdoor patio, it was virtually impossible to light a pipe on Wednesday or Thursday. We managed. I doff my cap to Chuck Stanion of P&T, who defied the tornadic odds and managed to light a couple bowls between 50 mph gusts! We’re really glad we stayed all day Sunday, with many interesting afternoon conversations and a delightful Italian meal with pal and food maven Kevin Godbee. Driving home to Chicago on Monday, however, was interesting, as we chugged through Iowa in a blinding thunderstorm, 70 mph winds, with tornados all around us that drove most traffic to the shoulder. Ah, no biggie — I was still on my KC Pipe Show adrenaline high. I figured if traffic was coming from the east, Armageddon was not ahead, and many of the big rigs just kept pushing east so I stuck with them.
The KC club members were fantastic hosts, and made all of us out-of-towners who went to the Thursday GKCPC club meeting feel like honored guests. I strongly recommend you attend any pipe show you can. Because RT trumps anything online, anytime! — Tad Gage
Fantastic review of the show Bill, Thanks so much. It’s the next best thing to being there when it’s impossible to attend a show.
I’d be willing to bet that show attendance in KC will be on the increase every year, the positive comments from everyone is pleasing to hear. I’m looking forward to seeing the winning pipe entries, they are always amazing.
Andy
As a first-time attendee, I can only echo the final sentence of this report: if you are not attending pipe shows (as I did not for years), you are indeed missing out. My sincere thanks and congratulations to the GKPC for such a great event. It won’t be my last!
As always it was great to see all the friendly faces there, from the industry and the forums. I do think we’ll be seeing an increase in attendance at shows in the coming years as more people find the pleasure of the pipe, and the community that is part and parcel of it. PipesMagazine.com really is the next-best thing to being there!
Great article Bill! I was sad not to be able to make it to KC this year, but I’m looking forward to Columbus and possibly Richmond too.