Inside Living Room by Hailes, where a Kansas City-born performer, an immersive West Bottoms lounge, and the five visionaries behind it draw artist and audience into one soulful, shared experience.

Words
Savannah Rieke Newson
@sociablysavvy

Event Photos
Amina Shaw and Mark Serrano
@aminaeffinshaw
@markserranopro

Hailes
@hailes.wav
@livingroombyhailes

NOMADA
@nomada_us

In The Lowest Ferns (ITLF)
@inthelowestferns

thereal amber light catches in the haze above the warm buzz of friends gathering—some meeting for the first time, others slipping easily into familiar rhythms. Candle flames flicker among lush greenery, vintage finds, and worldly wares arranged with a sensibility that feels at once beautifully curated and entirely casual, as though each object had simply settled into place over time.

The otherworldly surroundings bring a comforting wave of nostalgia, though its origin is difficult to place. Perhaps it is connected to a childhood room filled with collected bits and bobs. Maybe it is the dreamy reverie of late-night MTV music videos, when discovering a song—or an artist—for the first time felt like entering a world known only to you and those beside you. It is not one memory so much as many, woven together by the room.

Then Hailes begins to sing.

Her soulful, enrapturing voice moves through the space alongside the pulse of a live band. Personal anecdotes reveal a poignant storyteller, each song somehow reflecting pieces of those listening. Sound, candlelight, movement, memory, artistry, and audience begin resonating in near-perfect harmony.

Such was the experience of Session One of Living Room by Hailes, the inaugural evening of the Broadway alum and Kansas City native’s artist-led residency at NOMADA’s In the Lowest Ferns (ITLF). Described as “an invitation, not a show,” the intimate evening began and ended with Hailes performing alongside a live band of Kansas City musicians, welcoming special guest Yana Perrault into its center before DJ Dom Chronicles carried its energy into the after-hours.

Within the moody depths of the enigmatic, enchanting West Bottoms lounge, the aptly named Living Room found its natural home: a sumptuous yet cozy temple of sound and vision. Its lingering hold is difficult to define—perhaps born from a rare convergence of nostalgia, communal connection, and a deeply human intimacy that sets it apart from the typical concert experience.

Whatever draws you in, one taste is all it takes to want another.

Within the moody depths of In the Lowest Ferns, artist and setting found an almost uncanny harmony—creating an experience that was, in Hailes’ words, “intimate, immersive, and alive.”

ITLF’s custom Danley Sound Labs HIFI system was selected to handle everything from classic vinyl and electronic music to live vocals, drawing out the natural warmth of the room’s brick walls and wood ceilings while delivering immersive, full-body clarity. The Ferns reaches beyond its DJ roots while remaining true to its purpose: to lead with music, encourage intentional listening, and grow community.

Seated on carpets, ottomans, and vintage chairs, the audience didn’t even pull out their phones in a rare experience that was lived before it was documented.

“A word I use is ‘speechless,’” co-founder J Eubanks says of Session One. The clarity of Hailes’ voice, the movement of the performance, and the realization that she had written the music herself converged in an extraordinary exchange between artist, sound system, and audience.

Bringing multi-talented actor and musician—and her good friend—Yana Perrault into the first session gave the evening a history stretching far beyond its opening notes. Hailes was able to share the Kansas City realization of an idea first imagined in Brooklyn with someone who had witnessed its beginnings. “It just felt like a really beautiful full-circle moment,” she says.

Every Living Room session begins with a blank communal canvas that guests are encouraged to alter without expectation or judgment. The finished piece will return as part of the setting for the following event, creating an expanding visual archive shaped by everyone who has entered the room.

A Welcome Homecoming

For Hailes, Living Room marks more than a new chapter—it is a homecoming.

Born and raised in Overland Park, she found performance almost by accident—first through choir and church, then school theater. By 19, she was working professionally. Nine years in New York followed, along with Broadway and touring productions of Hadestown, Dirty Dancing, and The Wizard of Oz, and Off-Broadway’s The Lucky Ones. Eventually, she channeled that foundation into her own music—a blend of soul, R&B, live instrumentation, and cinematic songwriting.

Her sold-out 2025 performance at the American Jazz Museum marked the first time she brought that music home. After years of navigating the instability and inevitable “no’s” of an artistic career, seeing her hometown show up with open arms—and a line stretched around the door—was a powerful reaffirmation.

“It just reminded me that … what I’m doing has value,” Hailes says. “And every show that I’ve done in Kansas City since then has just strengthened my feeling about that.”

Six months into her return, the city began to feel like the right place to “lay down roots” and create something that could grow with both her and the community.

“Kansas City is home,” she says, “and really, just the comfort and the ease that I feel being there is unmatched.”

The setting for that next chapter arrived almost by chance. While home for the holidays, a friend brought Hailes to In the Lowest Ferns, a place she had never heard of. She walked inside wondering how something like it could exist in KC without her knowing.

Returning by day—without a DJ, dramatic lighting, or a crowd—sealed it. “The space still felt alive,” she recalls. With an eye for interiors, Hailes saw how its layered furnishings, skylights, and eclectic curiosities created the “incredibly disarming and welcoming” setting she had imagined for her music.

At ITLF—affectionately nicknamed “The Ferns”—community was built into the venue itself.

Behind it is NOMADA’s self-described “five-headed monster”: co-founders J Eubanks and Dante Walton, alongside Caleb Zaroor, Will Funk, and JC Franco. Their combined expertise spans music, production, technology, marketing, operations, art, illustration, and brand design. Each is “very good at very specific things,” Eubanks says, and together they “complement each other and collaborate very well”—especially when there is something new and cool to build.

Many elements within the Ferns were sourced from the surrounding West Bottoms, incorporating the character of the neighborhood into the finished environment. Industrial remnants and everyday materials were reconsidered not as leftovers, but as opportunities to create texture, history, and character without making the room feel newly manufactured. Photo by Jose Antonio Ubeda.

In the Lowest Ferns was created by a team determined to build a world-class experience without relying on an unlimited design budget. “We’re a self-funded, bootstraps team that took on a big adventure,” co-founder J Eubanks says. Rather than view that reality as a limitation, NOMADA made resourcefulness part of the room’s creative language.

The open kitchen offers an uncommon perspective on the performance area, with clear sightlines to the DJ from other parts of the room. When the disco ball begins to move, reflected light and shifting shadows animate the surrounding industrial surfaces in a spectacular display. Photo by Maddie Stringfellow.

The Ferns’ elongated footprint naturally lent itself to what the NOMADA team calls a “shotgun dance floor,” creating a direct line of energy through the center of the room. Lounge seating and tucked-away corners remain close to the action, allowing guests to move easily between conversation, observation, and the occasional dance move. Photo by Maddie Stringfellow.

That collective spirit has always served a deeper purpose for the team. NOMADA was “created to bring people together and create safe spaces” for expression across music, art, fashion, identity, and culture. Within the Ferns, music is what Walton calls “the common denominator—the through line that connects us all and transcends us all.”

Long before ITLF embodied that philosophy, NOMADA produced experimental events through styling, sourcing, props, artwork, and performances. Each began not with aesthetics, but emotion. “We don’t start with the space, we start with the feeling,” Eubanks explains.

The historic 5,000-square-foot annex of the Crane Co. building gave the team a perfectly imperfect canvas. On his first visit, Walton saw aged brick and heavy wood beams lit against the darkness and imagined the space as a mystical dock within a jungle—something raw, spiritual, and ancient. The railroad-adjacent building’s industrial bones offered a natural counterpoint. Patinated metal and mechanical elements echo the annex’s past, while organic greenery and “found” pieces give the room a mysterious, temple-like presence.

Throughout the Ferns, a curated mix of repurposed metal screens, storied furnishings, and laser-cut remnants reveals what Walton calls “beauty in the scrap.” The histories and energies they carry give the space its worldly, well-traveled character.

Lighting, meanwhile, provides its soul. Under Funk’s direction, layered illumination traces the original beams and settles into sunken corners alongside real candle flames. The effect is moody and intimate, yet the room never feels fixed. Zaroor describes a “modular mindset”: core furnishings and lighting remain while the layout and atmosphere shift, keeping the room “eclectic and ever-changing.”

Like a living entity, the Ferns morphs with each gathering—from live music and DJ sets to movement and ceramics classes—without losing its transportive allure. At once a cocktail lounge, listening room, dance club, date-night retreat, and creative gathering place, it balances cozy corners for conversation with an open floor ready for whatever the moment demands.

For all its fluidity, much of the Ferns was built by the team and its community. Walton remembers cutting metal on weekends and painting late into the night. “We are the architects, we are the interior designers, we are the sourcing companies—we built it with our own hands,” Eubanks says.

For a team that calls itself “a nesting ground for a lot of cool and unique ideas,” Living Room represents both realization and possibility—a collaboration in which artist and space transform one another. Yet its deepest impact lies in what remains after the experience ends. Long after the amber haze clears and the final notes fade, a taste of the Ferns lingers in memory, beckoning all it has welcomed back into its beautifully elusive world.