Earth Wind & Fire at Starlight Theatre, Kansas City MO (2025-07-18)

EARTH WIND & FIRE SETLIST

intro with video
Shining Star >
Let Your Feelings Show

System of Survival
Serpentine Fire
Raymond McKinley Bass Solo >
Jupiter
Sing a Song
Got to Get You Into My Life (The Beatles cover)
Kalimba Story
Departure > Keep Your Head to the Sky
Devotion
Can’t Hide Love
Reasons
Sun Goddess
After the Love Has Gone (David Foster cover)
That's the Way of the World
Fantasy
Boogie Wonderland
Let's Groove
September
(Mayor and Mayor Pro Tem declares "EWF Day")
In the Stone

EARTH WIND & FIRE TOUR DATES

The legendary funk/soul/jazz/R&B band Earth, Wind & Fire is back on the road on a 22-city summer tour which wraps in mid-August, but made a Midwest stop back in Kansas City at Starlight Theatre, to add some additional ‘heat’ to an already warm weekend.

We caught the band live last year in Kansas City, on a great bill with Lionel Richie and the band is familiar with this venue, having played it more than a half-dozen times in recent years, mostly recently to end their 2022 season.

The six-time Grammy Award winners solidified the growth of black album music in the 1970’s, scoring six consecutive double-platinum albums and became Columbia Records’ best-selling R&B band of all time.

They’ve received almost every award and accolade possible including four American Music Awards, were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Vocal Group Hall of Fame, and the NAACP Image Award Hall of Fame, have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, a BET Lifetime Achievement Award, a Soul Train Legend Award, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors, among numerous others.

In 1969, Maurice White was a former session drummer for Chess Records and member of the Ramsey Lewis Trio and in Chicago with two friends, to forge a songwriting team that would compose tunes and area commercial jingles and gained a record contract but not much success.

So, White re-located to LA and connected with singer and percussionist Yackov Ben Israel and asked his younger bass playing brother Verdine White to move west as well, beginning the history of this fabled band.

Verdine announced online in mid-April that he was recovering from a standard medical procedure, and we’d hoped to have him back by now; but unfortunately, he hasn’t rejoined the tour yet.

In the current Earth Wind & Fire lineup, if original percussionist Ralph Johnson represents the grounding and foundational “earth” and longtime vocalist Philip Bailey’s distinctive pipes are the ‘wind’, then the ever-animated and forever-funky bassist Verdine White is the ‘fire’; and so he was missed, but we hope he has a full and healthy recovery.

The night featured no opening act (when you’re legends, who needs a support act?!) and a capacity crowd, all united to sing along and groove together in a scene that was similar to a bigger version of the many families and friends grilling and hanging out together at the park, just outside the venue gates.

Their set started just after the stated 8pm time (great, as things were slow moving at the will-call window) and the following ninety-minutes became a musically unifying and joyous gathering- “There’s a party in Kansas City!”, Bailey exclaimed early-on, and no one would dispute that.  

Their genre-melding music also contains elements of African, Latin American, funk, soul, pop and rock music, as well as jazz and all twelve members (including the three-piece EWF Horns) dressed in various black, gold, and glittered outfits, with one mission of entertaining the jubilant crowd on their mind.

Bailey remains in good voice and can still hit those high and long falsetto notes, as he showed several times, drummer Johnson now takes on several roles, and B. David Whitworth and Bailey’s son, Philip Jr., (both who have been in the band for years) round out the vocal team. Even founder Maurice White received a vocal turn as vintage clips of the band were shown on-screen, as the band played to, and sang along.

Though Verdine was missed, bassist Raymond McKinley showed early in the set that he was more than up to the task, with a versatile and thumping bass solo, Bailey and Johnson both had visible fun playing at their respective percussion stations (Bailey also wowed with a mid-set kalimba solo), and the multiple guitarists were all musically, as well as physically in-sync, often playing in a line up front, to encourage even more crowd dancing.

The band peppered in their more popular hits as the hour-and-a-half set progressed, and even their familiar Beatles and David Foster covers were well-received and sung along with. The last third of set transformed into a total crowd party as the band’s biggest hits were all one after another, programmed like an ultimate 70s jukebox- “That's the Way of the World”; “Fantasy”; “Boogie Wonderland”; “Let's Groove” and “September.”

The latter song has crossed generations, not only from its commercial placement, but younger fans have used it in viral memes on TikTok and Instagram, resulting in more than two billion streams on Spotify, and counting.

Following that raucous “September” in July performance, Kansas City, MO Mayor Q(uinton Lucas) appeared with Councilwoman / Mayor Pro Tem Ryana Parks-Shaw and another council member to officially declare it “Earth, Wind & Fire Day” in Kansas City (what took them so long?!) and presented a proclamation, which made the night even more memorable. And it was not yet done, as the band played one more victory lap song, “In the Stone”, before a group bow and final wave good night.

Elementally fun and funky after over five decades, Earth Wind & Fire literally made the day their own, still winning hearts in Kansas City. 

(click on any image to enlarge and to see in full)

Earth Wind & Fire

Earth Wind & Fire

Earth Wind & Fire