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by Advocate Staff | Feb 28, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Get Out With Staff Picks, Staff Picks
Talking Heads Film @ Amherst Cinema // Friday, MARCH 1 This Friday, March 1, Amherst Cinema brings Talking Heads’ fantastic and groundbreaking concert film “Stop Making Sense,” to the screen as part of its Late Nights series. The film was shot during the course of...
by Monte Belmonte | Feb 28, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food + Booze, Food Booze and Beyond, Monte Belmonte Wines
MNARK: I’m so proud of him. I actually have his bumper sticker on my car in San Francisco, which was interesting because we just had an election for mayor. DNARK: Did I get any votes? Northampton Mayor David Narkewicz may have made headlines when he was the first...
by Sarah Heinonen | Feb 27, 2019 | Articles, Featured, News
On a cold night in the middle of February, lights are glowing in the windows of Spring of Hope Church of God in Christ, a small brick church on Alden Street in Springfield. Inside, the pews are about three-quarters full, and the attendees are listening to a different...
by Dave Eisenstadter | Feb 27, 2019 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News
It was, to put it mildly, an act of moral turpitude and callous disregard for the suffering of separated families and victims of violence when President Donald Trump announced he would be circumventing Congress to declare a national emergency that, by his own...
by Chris Goudreau | Feb 26, 2019 | Articles, Bizarro Briefs, Featured, News
No bananas stolen Police in Sulphur, Louisiana, arrested a man wearing a gorilla suit, who allegedly broke into a home and hid underneath a mattress before his arrest. According to local news outlets in Louisiana, officers saw the costumed man walking through yards...
by From our Readers | Feb 26, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Letters from our Readers, News
Editor’s Note: Welcome to our letters to the editor page. Here you’ll find reader comments on Advocate articles and other news. We collect readers’ opinions from emails, letters, Facebook comments, and comments to valleyadvocate.com. Want to get in on this? Email...
by Dave Eisenstadter | Feb 26, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Review
“The coming months will be a more favorable time than usual to boost feminine authority and enhance women’s ability to shape our shared reality.” So says Rob Brezsny’s Free Will Astrology column this week under the entry for Taurus. Whether or not she believes in...
by Jack Brown | Feb 25, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
Art lovers in the Valley are never far from a good gallery. Between the extensive collections of local colleges, dedicated museums, and the smaller neighborhood salons that pepper our local downtowns, we are lucky to live in an area with such a vibrant artistic...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 24, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Two elder ensembles are this week’s headliners. The Berkshire-based WAM Theatre has just announced its plans for a troupe of women over 65, and the latest offering from the British stage in the popular National Theatre Live series features a cast of old folks....
by Advocate Staff | Feb 22, 2019 | Advocate Sessions, Articles, Featured, Music
Olivia Frances is a folk/pop singer-songwriter with environmentalist themes. Check out her Advocate Sessions performance in the video below. Interview with Olivia Frances:
by Chris Goudreau | Feb 21, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Music
It’s not often that you find a music festival during late winter, let alone a diverse collection of shows across four nights ranging from zydeco to bluegrass, country music, and folk. But Signature Sounds’ annual Back Porch Festival, now in its fifth year, is right at...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Feb 20, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, The V-Spot
Hello from Vienna, Austria, Yana! Over the years I’ve realized that I like being dominated in sex. I want strong men who play with my brain, mainly verbally. A year ago I met a guy on a kinky hookup app. We went out on a date and hit it off immediately. In the...
by Rob Brezsny | Feb 20, 2019 | Articles, Astrology, Featured
ARIES (March 21-April 19): South Koreans work too hard. Many are on the job for fourteen hours a day, six days a week. That’s why a new concept in vacations has emerged there. People take sabbaticals by checking into Prison Inside Me, a facility designed like a jail....
by Hunter Styles | Feb 19, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food + Booze, Food Booze and Beyond, The Beerhunter
It is right about now, during the shortest month of the year, that I have sat through some of the longest evenings of my life. Cabin fever is no joke, even if your cabin comes equipped with a fire, good books, and a stockpile of craft beer (plus some loved ones, I...
by Steve Pfarrer | Feb 19, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Review
ENCHANTÉE By Gita Trelease Flatiron Books gitatrelease.com In Paris in 1789, as poverty grips most of the populace, and the aristocrats’ indifference to people’s suffering breeds growing anger, 17-year-old Camille Durbonne is struggling to provide for herself and her...
by Jack Brown | Feb 19, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured, Film
The photography of Rosamond Purcell is work that often feels plucked from another period. Her artistic impulse — what filmmaker Errol Morris described as “the contemplation of things that other people would normally just ignore” — harkens back to a time when many...
by Andy Castillo | Feb 18, 2019 | Articles, Featured, News, Wellness
It’s a month and a half into 2019, and what may have seemed like an easily obtainable fitness resolution on New Year’s Day might not seem that way anymore. To encourage those who may need a boost, we asked readers and fitness experts to share their best fitness...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Feb 18, 2019 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
Dear Yana, I’m in my early 30s and have been faking orgasms for about a decade of a colorful, explorative — if not straight up hyphy — sex life. I had my first orgasm about 13 years ago with a partner, who helped me discover simultaneous clitoral stimulation during...
by From our Readers | Feb 18, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Letters from our Readers, News
Editor’s Note: Welcome to our letters to the editor page. Here you’ll find reader comments on Advocate articles and other news. We collect readers’ opinions from emails, letters, Facebook comments, and comments to valleyadvocate.com. Want to get in on this? Email...
by Dave Eisenstadter | Feb 15, 2019 | Articles, Bizarro Briefs, Featured, News
Nazi art not a winner Adolf Hitler can’t seem to catch a break. First, his quest for world domination hit a snag in the 1940s when the Allies defeated him in World War II, and now, no one wants watercolor paintings attributed to him. None of the five paintings...
by Advocate Staff | Feb 15, 2019 | Articles, Featured, Staff Picks
Ch’CHUNK! at Luthier’s Co-op // FRIDAY, Feb. 15 Ch’Chunk is self-described as “a modern take on classic swing.” The band plays great original songs as well as Tin Pan Alley classics that instantly transports your mind to a dimly lit speakeasy. So, with that in...
by Rob Brezsny | Feb 15, 2019 | Articles, Astrology, Featured
ARIES (March 21-April 19): When directors of movies say, “It’s a wrap,” they mean that the shooting of a scene has been finished. They may use the same expression when the shooting of the entire film is completed. That’s not the end of the creative process, of course....
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 15, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
At first glance, you’d think the two plays I saw in New York City last week have little in common. One is an international import from London to Broadway, the other an Off-Broadway transfer from a small regional theater in Vermont. One is twice as long as the other...
by Fran Ryan | Feb 14, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Featured, News
Eight billion metric tons. According to Industrial Ecologist Roland Geyer of the University of California, Santa Barbara, that is the amount of plastic that has been produced since the 1950s, and almost half of that, was created after the year 2000, causing plastic...
by Jennifer Levesque | Feb 14, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Music, Valley Show Girl
Signature Sounds recording artists And The Kids from Northampton have made a name for themselves throughout their active musician years in the Valley. They’ve been locally and nationally covered and very recently had a live set at Paste Magazine that was streamed...
by Dave Eisenstadter | Feb 14, 2019 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News
Excitement. Elation. Eagerness. Those were the emotions that bubbled up when I got the news that the Advocate would be returning to a weekly schedule, and that after six months performing other roles in the company I was being asked to return as its editor. What you...
by Jack Brown | Feb 14, 2019 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured, Film
Listen, I love my kids. I do. But it’s been a long winter around here. The holiday season was a terrible round-robin of stomach bugs, the heat went on the fritz in their bedroom, and a cold snap kept us cooped up in the house on days when their energy level could have...
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 11, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
How’s this for genre mashups: Brontë gothic in which two of the characters are animals. Wildean romcom in which all the actors are women. Golden Age Spain in which a woman lives as a man. Multidisciplinary invention in which diversity seeks community. Renaissance...
by Will Meyer | Feb 8, 2019 | Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music
Hadley’s Mike Parham, whose solo moniker is Mibble, recently released a new album, “Welcome the Earth Dog.” Parham’s superb home recordings sound like miniature musical collages, complete with sound effects, samples, and a lackadaisical posture towards the...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Feb 8, 2019 | Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
Hi Yana, I’m currently in a long-term monogamous relationship with my partner, and I am really interested in transitioning our relationship from monogamy to non-monogamy. At my request this past summer, we tried non-monogamy after identifying and agreeing to clear...
by Monte Belmonte | Feb 4, 2019 | Columns, Featured, Monte Belmonte Wines
In my last column, I gave you a brief how-to in regards to opening a bottle of wine. It’s a seemingly easy enterprise that is terrifying for far too many people. For some reason, wine and all that surrounds wine is just like that. Complicated. Confusing....
by Chris Rohmann | Feb 4, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
When Nora Helmer famously slammed the door on her empty marriage at the end of Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, she changed the course of theatrical history, and social history as well. But shutting the door on one story implicitly opened another, and thus left a...
by Jack Brown | Feb 1, 2019 | Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki has always kept a close tether to the world around him. In wonderfully thoughtful films like My Neighbor Totoro and Pom Poko, beloved by young and old (and crowds and critics) alike, he has eagerly yet tenderly explored our human...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 27, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Theater, Sheryl Stoodley firmly believes, “can be the starting point for conversations – much-needed at this point in our United States and in the world.” To that end, Serious Play, the theater Stoodley leads, “works toward reshaping society’s conversation on...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 22, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
In a program note for The Engagement Party, Samuel Baum says his play is “an exploration of secrets and lies.” Which puts it right in his wheelhouse, as his credits include the TV psycho-crime drama Lie to Me and the movie Wizard of Lies. He says he’s also interested...
by Monte Belmonte | Jan 21, 2019 | Columns, Featured, Monte Belmonte Wines
“How do I use this wine opening contraption?” “What if I get cork in the wine?” “What if the cork breaks in half?” “Why didn’t I just buy the one with the screw-cap?” “Can you please open this for me?” Being the closest thing my family has to a “wine expert,” it...
by Hunter Styles | Jan 18, 2019 | Columns, Featured, The Beerhunter
More than two dozen breweries opened in Massachusetts last year, and we should expect even more growth in 2019. If we see fewer brewery openings over time, it will be because craft beer fans have so many locally-loved businesses to buy from. More than ever, we’re...
by Jennifer Levesque | Jan 18, 2019 | Columns, Featured, Valley Show Girl
While exploring the rainforest and meeting up with friends in beach towns in Puerto Rico, Matthew King sipped on mojitos while chatting with me via email about his latest musical conquest, TapRoots. Since 2009, Matthew has been playing percussion with both The...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 20, 2018 | Featured
Best of the Valley Readers’ Poll The poll will be open from noon on December 20th through 5 p.m. on January 31st. For over thirty years, the people of Western Massachusetts have been making their voice heard by voting in the Valley Advocate’s Best of the...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 17, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stagestruck
Allyn Burrows, Shakespeare & Company’s artistic director, calls it “a great way to get out in the middle of winter … a great opportunity for the audience to let their imaginations just run wild.” It’s the theater’s annual Studio Festival, a weekend of...
by Chris Rohmann | Jan 13, 2019 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Barely two weeks into the new year and already my theatergoing calendar is crowded with upcoming shows. From an operatic Sweeney Todd to a historical fantasy to a “pseudo-historical psycho-romance,” to pick three for this month, 2019 is off to a promising start. The...
by Will Meyer | Jan 10, 2019 | Basemental, Columns, Featured
Earlier this month, the inconceivable happened. I got word that my friends were playing a punk show in the Hampshire Mall, in the sports bar arm of “PINZ”— a combination boutique bowling alley, arcade, and faux-industrial looking bar decorated with enough flat-screen...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 30, 2018 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Six theater companies form a kind of chain across the southern and western Berkshires. From the closest to the Valley to the farthest, they are the hilltowns’ Chester Theatre Company, then westward (passing dance mecca Jacob’s Pillow) to Shakespeare & Company in...
by Hunter Styles | Dec 24, 2018 | Columns, Featured, The Beerhunter
Delayed breweries in Buckland and West Springfield open their doors The craft beer tide is rising, and it is lifting many local brewers into the role of small business owners. But this work isn’t always smooth sailing. In recent weeks, I’ve been chatting with the...
by Monte Belmonte | Dec 24, 2018 | Columns, Featured, Monte Belmonte Wines
According to the Gospel of John, Jesus’ first miracle was turning water into wine. A miracle he performed at the request of his mother. His mother who, as the story goes, was subjected to the shame and embarrassment of being Jane The Virgin-ed at the hands (or perhaps...
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 19, 2018 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
I attended over 30 theater productions in the Valley this year, but that wasn’t half of what was on stage. What struck me most was the variety of fare – from the breadth of established companies’ seasons, to the ethnic and gender diversity on campus stages, to...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 14, 2018 | Advocate Sessions, Featured, Music
Ali Kat and the Revelators perform rocking funk and soul with sax, guitars, and high energy vocals. Check out the band’s Advocate Sessions performance in the video below. Interview with Ali Kat and the Revelators:
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 14, 2018 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
What is there to say that you don’t already know about Hamilton, the game-changing musical that costs a bank loan to see on Broadway and is now on tour, where this month it’s at the Bushnell in Hartford for only an ATM max-out? Playing through Dec. 30 (by far the...
by Will Meyer | Dec 14, 2018 | Basemental, Columns, Featured
November brought with it not one, not two, but three Mal Devisa releases. First, on November 9th, came a full-length titled Shade and the Little Creature and a complementary EP called Mystery Tsrain, presumably named for the Amherst record shop. And a few days later,...
by Monte Belmonte | Dec 11, 2018 | Columns, Featured, Monte Belmonte Wines
When I started pursuing wine snobbery, I would’ve identified myself as a “red wine drinker.” Now that I have academically pursued alcoholism for the better part of a decade, one should expect some hard-core side-eye from me if you deign to say something as audacious...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Dec 11, 2018 | Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
Hi Yana, I met a man on Tinder about a year ago, and we were unable to meet in person for over a month due to scheduling issues. In that time, we texted everyday for hours and when we were finally able to meet in person, I felt an intense connection with him. We met...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 8, 2018 | Advocate Sessions, Featured
Mtali Banda Oneness Project performs meditative jazz alongside R&B and gospel influences. Check out the group’s Valley Advocate Sessions performance in the video below. Interview with Mtali Banda Oneness Project:
by Chris Rohmann | Dec 2, 2018 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Harrison David Rivers specifies that his play When Last We Flew takes place in “a small town in Kansas (NOT Kansas City).” He also specifies that all eight characters are people of color. And that two of them are gay. As it opens, we find 17-year-old Paul in the...
by Monte Belmonte | Nov 27, 2018 | Columns, Featured, Monte Belmonte Wines
From a fermentation perspective, your traditional “hard” cider is basically apple wine. It certainly isn’t beer. No hops. No malts. Just apple juice and the magical yeast that turns sugar into alcohol. So, I hope you’ll indulge me in this, a wine column, as I write...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Nov 27, 2018 | Columns, Featured, The V-Spot
Hi Yana! When it comes to sex, I’ve never really cared for it to begin with. Then, five years ago, I found out I have genital herpes, and that put an even bigger damper on things. I’ve had sexual partners since then, but having to have “the talk” before getting...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 26, 2018 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
In a program note for his play The War and Walt Whipple, now running at the Majestic Theater, author/director Danny Eaton describes the play’s page-to-stage gestation. First, “a few friends” saw a draft and offered comments, leading to a staged reading with audience...
by Jack Brown | Nov 21, 2018 | Cinemadope, Columns, Featured
If you’ve ever been on a pair of skis, you know the feeling: a strange and exhilarating mixture of lightness and speed, freedom and danger, that feels a bit like a giddy dream of flight and a bit like you’re cheating death. And while today’s aerialists — particularly...
by Hunter Styles | Nov 21, 2018 | Articles, Columns, Featured, The Beerhunter
As a kid, I would sometimes wander the aisles of Don Gleason’s Camping Supply on Pearl Street in Northampton and daydream about living off the grid. In unchaperoned moments I’d climb in the tents, test flashlights, browse survival kits, and plan my inevitable,...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 19, 2018 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
Every couple of years, Danny Eaton premieres a new play of his at the Majestic Theater, which he founded and leads. They range through topics dear to him, often touching on military service and veterans (he’s one himself) and all of them, in one way or another,...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 9, 2018 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Review, Stage, Stagestruck
I’ll get right to the point. The King Lear I saw last weekend courtesy of NT Live is the most thoughtfully conceived, perceptively acted and richly achieved production of Shakespeare’s great tragedy I’ve ever seen. It stars Ian McKellen, and that in itself more...
