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by Kristin Palpini | Jan 9, 2017 | Featured, News
If you’ve never checked out Craigslist’s Missed Connections section, you really should. Like all geographic designations on the forum, the Western Mass list is full of wistful near-meets and longing. Below is a compilation of “missed connection” items from...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Jan 9, 2017 | Columns, Featured, Newsletter, The V-Spot, Wellness
Hi Yana, I’m in a relationship with someone who I really love and we’ve been together for three-ish months. Before we started dating he knew I wasn’t a huge fan of monogamy, but I agreed I would try and now I’m feeling trapped. He’s so important to me and I don’t want...
by Kristin Palpini | Jan 3, 2017 | Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter, Stage
Blue-eyed Rock ’n’ Soul The higher the hair, the closer to God, honey. So you know Christine Ohlman, the Beehive Queen, is tight with The Man Upstairs — and you can hear it in her soulful rock. Ohlman, whom you may recognize from her years as a vocalist in the...
by Hunter Styles | Jan 3, 2017 | Arts, Featured, Newsletter
The weird and wonderful artwork of Julian Janowitz only starts to reveal itself once visitors pull onto the long driveway of his Shutesbury home. That bumpy, meandering dirt road leads through a small clearing, then along twists and turns through a tall forest of...
by Kristin Palpini | Jan 3, 2017 | Featured, Food Booze and Beyond, Missed Connections, Newsletter
If you’ve never checked out Craigslist’s Missed Connections section, you really should. Like all geographic designations on the forum, the Western Mass list is full of wistful near-meets and longing. Below is a compilation of “missed connection” items from...
by Kristin Palpini | Jan 3, 2017 | Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
Take the Stage Now that all the big holiday celebrations and events are in the past, it’s time to get back to regular old life. Do it in style by hitting a karaoke night somewhere in the Valley. There are plenty of bars known for their customer caterwauling:...
by Advocate Staff | Dec 27, 2016 | Featured, Newsletter
If you’ve never checked out Craigslist’s Missed Connections section, you really should. Like all geographic designations on the forum, the Western Mass list is full of wistful near-meets and longing. Below is a compilation of “missed connection” items from...
by Hunter Styles | Dec 27, 2016 | Arts, Featured, Newsletter
Zoinks! In an era before we burrowed into our choice cable channels, American kids grew up watching cartoons on one of three network TV stations. From 1958 through the 1980s, most options on Saturday mornings were products of the Hanna-Barbera company — the creator of...
by From Our Readers | Dec 19, 2016 | Articles, Featured, Letters from our Readers, News, Newsletter
Hey, Trump: Labor Secretary Should Champion Workers President-elect Trump just selected Andrew Puzder as his nominee for Secretary of Labor. Unfortunately, as the CEO of Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., Puzder holds a record of opposing the economic agenda demanded by the...
by Kristin Palpini | Dec 19, 2016 | Articles, Featured, Food + Booze, News, Newsletter, Taste-Off!
The winter holiday season is the best time for fudge. It’s a season of indulgence and sharing and sweets and fun — that’s what fudge is all about. Stock up on some now and hand out pounds of rich, creamy, gooey goodness as presents or keep it home and eat it sliver by...
by Hunter Styles | Dec 12, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
A Songbird’s Soul Singer and songwriter Arleigh Kinchelo’s hard soul collective, Sister Sparrow and The Dirty Birds, plays guitar, bass, trumpet, saxophone, and drums — plus harmonica, thanks to her brother Jackson. They’ve released three full-length studio albums,...
by Hunter Styles | Dec 12, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter, Stage
Company Time Before her days as the head of Northampton’s School for Contemporary Dance and Thought, Jen Polins directed the Catalyst dancers at South Hadley’s Pioneer Valley Performing Arts charter school for 17 years. In September, craving a return to that rewarding...
by Hunter Styles | Dec 12, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter
In “The Chemical Wedding,” local talent melds 400-year-old text with modern illustrations If the long book title, inked in faux-medieval Blackletter, didn’t give it away — let alone the robotic sheep on the back cover — The Chemical Wedding is one of the...
by Gary Carra | Dec 5, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter, Nightcrawler
Longtime radio personality Mike “Haze” DeJesus’s tale of his first meeting with Springfield-area rockers Hypnotic Kick smacks of a tacky joke set up. “Eighteen years ago, three Puerto Rican gents and an Irish lad walked into the radio station,” he recalled. “I was a...
by Hunter Styles | Dec 5, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Food + Booze, Newsletter, The Beerhunter
Filling a glass where Connecticut meets Mass Most night owls are easy when it comes to shifts in ambience, but I can’t say that many of us thrive under fluorescent light. That might have been why, on Wednesday afternoon, my editor found me sighing heavily at my desk....
by Advocate Staff | Nov 28, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Film, Food + Booze, Leisure, Music, Newsletter, Stage
A Spirited DebateOne of two things will happen to you when confronted with the bold and brassy acts of clairvoyance that Rebecca Anne LoCicero whips up onstage. One will be a sense of reluctant amazement. The other will be a deep, head-shaking skepticism. LoCicero has...
by Laura Holland | Nov 28, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter
They form an army you might meet in a nightmare. Nearly one thousand glazed white figurines dressed in symbols of hatred — such as swastikas or the hooded robes of the infamous Ku Klux Klan — mass together and press close. With the installation of “The Hate Project”...
by Hunter Styles | Nov 28, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
After kids, cancer, and commercial success, the band strips their tour down to two The Weepies: Completely Acoustic and Alone Thursday, Dec. 8 at 8 p.m. Calvin Theatre, Northampton $25-$35 Do you know the feeling of coming in from the cold, kicking off your snow-caked...
by Will Meyer | Nov 28, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music, Newsletter
We must harness the power of DIY to resist Influential music writer Jessica Hopper penned a piece earlier this month on MTV.com that sought to dispel “the silver-lining myth” that a Trump presidency would produce great art, specifically music.She argued that great...
by Gary Carra | Nov 21, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Music, Newsletter, Nightcrawler
Thanksgiving Eve is roundly considered one of the busiest bar days of the year. True to form, this Wednesday, Nov. 23, finds the Valley circuit smattered with live entertainment offerings.Country rockers Trailer Trash will be holding court at Chicopee’s Maximum...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 21, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Stage, Stagestruck
Every year I take note of the plays I’ve seen that are written and/or directed by women, and those that revolve around a woman (or women). For me, these are key indicators of progress in achieving gender equality in theater. To be sure, there are plenty of women...
by Hunter Styles | Nov 21, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
Power to the Panther Hartford-born emcee and musician Afropanther is, in her words, “a Space Jungle Club DJ, producer, and lyrical assassin.” She’s been building communities in New York, Montreal, and Boston, soaking up influences (Fast Eddie, Masters at Work, MK,...
by Jack Brown | Nov 21, 2016 | Articles, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured, Newsletter
With Black Friday upon us this week, the maelstrom of the holiday shopping season has officially begun. Weekends will find increasingly desperate hordes descending on anything that looks like it might hold toys or electronics, toddlers will go into full meltdown mode...
by Hunter Styles | Nov 21, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured
Nature, From Scratch Joe Smith has a common name but a not-too-common job: forester, slash artist. By day, he’s working out in the woods, putting in hours of hard labor off the beaten track. But wherever he goes, he carries his sketchbook with him. “I find a sense of...
by Hunter Styles | Nov 21, 2016 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News, Newsletter
Every morning at Buckingham Palace, Queen Elizabeth II’s first order of business is to meet with her hairdresser. She drinks from bone china, eats breakfast served by footmen in tailcoats, wanders the grounds, and reads fan mail. Throughout the day, people bow. People...
by Kristin Palpini | Nov 21, 2016 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Leisure, News, Newsletter, O Cannabis!
If you get up real close to the New England Treatment Access medical marijuana dispensary in Northampton, you can smell the earthy aroma of cannabis through the brick walls. Established in 2015, NETA’s Conz Street dispensary is, so far, the only medical Mary Jane shop...
by Chuck Shepherd | Nov 21, 2016 | Articles, Featured, News, News of the Weird, Newsletter
While “democracy” in most of America means electing representatives to run government, on Nov. 8 in San Francisco it also expected voters to decide 43 often vague, densely worded “issues” that, according to critics, could better be handled by the professionals who...
by Peter Vancini | Nov 21, 2016 | Articles, Featured, News
Decades later and General Electric still hasn’t remedied its contamination of the Housatonic. Woods Pond in Lenox is the picture of quaint backwoods New England: the kind of place leaf-peepers flock annually to the Berkshires to behold. The golden yellows and...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 16, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter, Stage, Stagestruck
In this time of national division and upheaval, we can be forgiven for craving a little feelgood. And what feels better than a good musical? As if on cue, two good’uns are coming to this area, both of them stage versions of beloved movies. This week through Sunday, An...
by Hunter Styles | Nov 14, 2016 | Articles, Featured, Food + Booze, Newsletter, The Beerhunter
When I think back to last fall, and the dozen taste tests I did of pumpkin-flavored beers, my tongue conjures flashbacks of bad and bewildering brews. What can I say? I’m a glutton for punishment. Or maybe I’m an optimist, holding onto a hope that there are pumpkin...
by Hunter Styles | Nov 14, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter
A Piece of Resistance When things fall apart, civility snaps, and a huffing, puffing bully blows our brick houses down, we have to do what our children know to do: wipe our tears, gather it all up block by block, and come to the table to rebuild. That’s the art of...
by Hunter Styles | Nov 14, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
Alt-Indie’s Pole Star We probably shouldn’t bandy around phrases like “one of America’s greatest living songwriters,” given the prolific grassroots music scene these days. But Stephin Merritt pretty much ran away with the title when he penned the three-volume concept...
by Tom Relihan | Nov 14, 2016 | Articles, Featured, News, Newsletter
The deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl has largely outstripped heroin as the leading cause of opioid-related deaths in Massachusetts, according to state data. Experts say the powerful drug, considered to be up to 50 times as potent as regular heroin, has been has been...
by Kristin Palpini | Nov 9, 2016 | Articles, Between the Lines, Featured, News, Newsletter
Editor’s Note: As an American woman who believes that words matter, I feel like I matter a little less today. Below is the editorial I was planning to run to applaud the first female president of the U.S., Hillary Clinton. It seems poignant to publish it, still. To...
by Hunter Styles | Nov 7, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter
Tahirah Amatul-Wadud This story is part of a new project by writer Jenny Bender and artist Amanda Herman, who have teamed up to interview and photograph Muslims in the Valley. The full exhibition, which features 10-15 photographs and interviews, opens Nov. 11 at...
by Chris Rohmann | Nov 7, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter, Stage, Stagestruck
New York has its Tonys and Obies, Boston its Nortons, and now the Berkshire region has its own rewards for outstanding work in theater — the Berkshire Theatre Awards. Twelve professional companies in the Berkshires, southern Vermont, and New York’s Capital District...
by Hunter Styles | Oct 31, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
Anyone who has seen Inside Llewyn Davis, the terrific 2013 dark comedy by the Coen Brothers, knows that many hard-working musicians walk a long, erratic path around fame without ever finding a way inside. Compared to poor Llewyn, Minnesota native John Gorka has been...
by Kristin Palpini | Nov 7, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter
Riffing on Identity Identities: we all have one, but how do we communicate them to others? How we choose to represent ourselves to the world is endlessly fascinating, but take it to the next level: What does it mean when we perform an identity? Get deep this weekend...
by Hunter Styles | Oct 31, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter, Stage
Shanghai Nights The Shanghai Acrobats of the People’s Republic of China don’t just have a long name — they’re one of the longest-running and most distinguished troupes in the world. Get out to see them, and you’ll understand why. Circus groups around the world bring...
by Chris Rohmann | Oct 31, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter, Stage, Stagestruck
Neither of the shows now playing in downtown Hartford are Halloween-themed, but both are thoroughly haunted by ghosts of the past, in one case literally. That one is The Piano Lesson, at Hartford Stage through November 13. It’s the 1930s segment of August Wilson’s...
by Will Meyer | Oct 31, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music, Newsletter
Honestly Weird “Hello everybody/ there’s a Nazi living in my head.” That’s the first line on Brattleboro musician Ruth Garbus’ new EP, Hello Everybody, and its overt shockingness lays the foundation for a departure from her previous handful of mostly solo...
by Hunter Styles | Nov 7, 2016 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Food + Booze, Leisure, Newsletter, The Beerhunter
In the two years since I took on the role of Valley beer reporter, I’ve tried to keep things local whenever possible. Aside from an international sojourn or two — like when I tried a mug of saliva-fermented ‘chicha’ corn beer in Peru last year — I’ve generally been...
by Hunter Styles | Oct 24, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter, Stage
The host/ess with the most/est turns the business of drag on its pretty little head If Drag Brunch strikes your fancy, don’t think twice — get yourself to Sláinte, the hilltop restaurant in Holyoke, as soon as possible. Just don’t do what I did last Sunday.I showed up...
by Hunter Styles | Oct 24, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Film, Get Out With Staff Picks, Leisure, Music, Newsletter, Stage
Calling All Hallows Admit it: we’re a happy Valley because we’re all a bunch of freaks. And Halloween seems to be the time of year we most like to let those flags fly. The night is a dark, blank canvas for creative expression and demonic possession. That’s why it...
by Advocate Staff | Oct 24, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
FRIENDS SHARE LOVERS And The Kids Signature Sounds Northampton-based indie pop heroes And the Kids released their sophomore album this past June. It’s the same kind of dreamy, melodic rock they delivered on their first album, but this time everything feels a little...
by Kristin Palpini | Oct 24, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Film, Leisure, Music, Newsletter, Stage
Day Screaming Ghosts are scary. Zombies are scary. Being surrounded by too many kids in Disney princess costumes is scary. If you’d rather run into any of these frightening folks in the daytime rather than in the late night hours, check out the Springfield...
by From Our Readers | Oct 24, 2016 | Articles, Featured, Letters from our Readers, News, Newsletter
Charter schools hurt larger society Certain institutions should always be public. Social Security, prisons and education are three of them. We dodged a bullet when Bush wanted to privatize Social Security. People realized that the financial industry would be taking 31...
by Chris Rohmann | Sep 21, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Newsletter, Stage, Stagestruck
I was intrigued by the description of The Water Project in the press release I received: “Live theater joins forces with the Pioneer Valley’s thriving independent music scene in this original immersive production. … Immerse yourself in the currents of time in this...
by Kristin Palpini | Sep 19, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Film, News, Newsletter
Northampton Film FestivalSept. 28 – Oct. 2For four days, at locations across Northampton, the modern film festival will be redefined with free public screenings of films, virtual reality experiences, games, and participatory film projects.Tickets are $10 for a...
by Hunter Styles | Sep 19, 2016 | Articles, Featured, News
When she was 37, Edie Daly came out as a lesbian. It was 1974, in the suburbs of New York City. Firmly ensconced in a 17-year marriage to a man, Daly had three children. The woman she fell in love with — a co-worker at a local school — also had a husband and four...
by Peter Vancini and Kyle Olsen | Sep 19, 2016 | Articles, Featured, Food + Booze, Leisure, Newsletter
September marks the end of the summer and evenings are starting to bring with them a subtle autumn chill. Chase it away with this month’s cocktail, a cranberry-cinnamon whiskey sour that’s sure to warm you up, brought to you by Josh Draghe, head bartender at Osteria...
by Hunter Styles | Sep 19, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
Canciones Criollas Thursday offers a festive evening of Latin food and music with Criollo Clasico Trio, one of the most eclectic Caribbean musical ensembles touring today. Sliding playfully between Latin, classical, Afro-Cuban, and jazz, the band — led by famed Puerto...
by Naila Moreira | Sep 19, 2016 | Articles, Columns, Down to Earth, Featured, News, Newsletter
I arrive at Book and Plow Farm to find production farmer Tobin Porter-Brown on a tractor, forking a pallet of canvas sacks off a pickup truck. He’s wearing a Book and Plow shirt, khaki shorts and thick boots that will later serve him in better stead than my sandals...
by Hunter Styles | Sep 12, 2016 | Articles, Featured, Food + Booze, Newsletter
Hot Diggity Could it be that the lingering heat wave of the past week was due to the potency of the peppers newly ripening at Kitchen Garden Farm in Sunderland? Probably not, but we hear these little devils are hotter than ever — and just in time for ChiliFest....
by Hunter Styles | Sep 12, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
Worm, Baby, Worm Smell that brisk fall air coming down from the mountains? It’s nearly fall, which marks the return of the Worm. Now in its 18th year, the Wormtown Music Festival hosts a weekend of music on the wooded grounds of Camp Kee-Wanee on the Green River....
by Peter Vancini | Sep 13, 2016 | Articles, Featured, Leisure, News, Newsletter
Call of the wild At the edge of a shady green grove in Hadley, light streams through the forest canopy in thin shafts. It speckles the grassy floor below, where three large birds of prey sit awkwardly, tethered with thin leather straps to their short wooden perches....
by Gary Carra | Sep 12, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Columns, Featured, Music, Newsletter, Nightcrawler
Could you be… won’t you be… my neighbor? It’s an indelible marriage of image and song performed daily by Fred Rogers on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood as he shed his business casual attire and slipped into his favorite sweater and sneaks. He was an...
by Jennifer Levesque and Peter Vancini | Sep 6, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
The Melvins occupy a strange space in the rock music landscape. They’re revered by fellow musicians and rock nerds as pioneers of the ’80s grunge rock scene, as original and weird today as they were 30 years ago, yet they fly largely under the radar of most...
by Hunter Styles | Sep 6, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter
We Kindly Stop For Emily If “poetry is everywhere; it just needs editing,” as the late, great James Tate once asserted, then we’ll never run low on good fodder for verse. What we do risk losing, from time to time, is our appreciation and respect for the eternal,...
by Hunter Styles | Sep 6, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
Give Us The Funk The New Orleans jazz scene didn’t see Benny Jones coming. Back in 1977, he and members of the Tornado Brass Band created a new ensemble, called the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, with an eye to revolutionize old sounds. The music they played combined funk...