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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...
by Hunter Styles | Sep 6, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter
Full of Heart, Proud of Place The Connecticut Latino-American rights group CLARO and Hartford Capital City Pride celebrate their second annual PrideFest this weekend, which includes events in locations throughout Hartford. Although the main shindig is on Saturday...
by Will Meyer | Sep 6, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music, Newsletter
Spotty Results I learned some shocking things about Spotify recently. The average employee rakes in $166,000 a year, and the highest executive compensation has increased over 300 percent since 2014, reaching as much as $18.9 million. Despite that, Spotify has never...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Sep 6, 2016 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Newsletter, The V-Spot
Thankfully, consent is becoming a big topic on college campuses. However, most conversations about consent overfocus on the damaging outcomes of the failure to ask for consent rather than engaging students in learning the benefits of ongoing conversations about...
by Hunter Styles | Sep 6, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Between the Lines, Featured, News, Newsletter
On Aug. 21, before a month-long hiatus for HBO’s Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver spent five minutes highlighting the similarities between Donald Trump, a “racist voodoo doll made of discarded cat hair,” and the protagonist of a 1996 children’s book called The Kid...
by Kristin Palpini | Sep 6, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, News, Newsletter, Scene Here
From six directions, cars attempt to drive through the intersection at Conz and Pleasant streets in Northampton. It’s 88 degrees and the dirt kicked up by heavy machinery sticks to sweat, giving everyone a dirty looking tan. The Route 5 entryway to Paradise City is...
by Chuck Shepherd | Sep 6, 2016 | Articles, Featured, News, News of the Weird, Newsletter
The recently concluded Olympics included a few of the more obscure athletic endeavors — such as dressage for horses and steeplechase for humans — but U.S. colleges compete in even less-heralded “sports,” such as wood chopping, rock climbing, fishing, and broomball....
by Hunter Styles | Aug 22, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
Out Standing in Their Fields For 26 years now, the Advocate has awarded high marks to all of those Valley musicians willing to pack their muscle, humor, skill, and silly costume pieces out into the beautiful, grassy Look Park every year for Transperformance, the...
by Jack Brown | Aug 22, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Cinemadope, Columns, Featured, Film, Newsletter
No Kidding One of the great myths of cinema is that kids movies are for kids. Sure, they might be a bit more brightly colored than most, or hit most of their punch lines a little more on the nose, but never forget that these films are made by grown-ups. Peel back that...
by Will Meyer | Aug 22, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music, Newsletter
We Buffer, We Suffer Candace Clement has been a been a member of the Northampton band Bunny’s A Swine for eight years. On songs like “Greetings from the Bottom,” her Strat intertwines with Emerson Stevens’ 3-string guitar contraption like a ball of twine, which gets...
by Yana Tallon-Hicks | Aug 22, 2016 | Articles, Columns, Featured, Leisure, Newsletter, The V-Spot, Wellness
Dear Yana,I was recently discussing your column with some new friends I met through Pioneer Valley Aces, a local group of individuals who identify as aromantic and/or asexual. I wasn’t the only one of us who appreciated your witty way of reassuring those who...
by Hunter Styles | Aug 22, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
The Valley’s cheeriest new festival doubles in size for its second year The hip cats that comprise Lake Street Dive must be halfway through their nine lives by now. Since the four members met at Boston’s New England Conservatory of Music in 2004, their sound has...
by Hunter Styles and Peter Vancini | Aug 22, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
CHRISTINA COURTIN Saturday, 3:00 – 3:40 The Brooklyn-based Courtin may not be the only Juilliard-trained classical violinist and composer on hand this weekend, but she is definitely the most colorful, bending genres as exuberantly as she can switch between...
by Hunter Styles | Aug 22, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
Shake the Trees The woods of Western Mass promise to be rather loud this weekend for RPM Fest, which brings three days of rock, punk, and metal to Greenfield. As usual, this will be a totally awesome time: vendors, games, raffles, BYOB camping, and live sets by Lich...
by Amanda Drane | Aug 22, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, News, Newsletter
It was so hot and humid inside Pearl Street Nightclub during a metal show earlier this month that the ceiling was beading up with condensation and raining sweat onto the crowd.The sweltering experience spurred nearly 200 people to voice outrage on social media, and...
by Kristin Palpini | Aug 22, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, News, Newsletter, Scene Here
The old familiar smell of hundreds of people’s body odors mingles with the dust kicking up under our feet and the marijuana smoke hanging low in the air to form that perfect outdoor concert aroma at Mountain Park in Holyoke Saturday.Turkuaz, each member head to toe in...
by Kristin Palpini | Aug 22, 2016 | Articles, Columns, Featured, News, Newsletter, O Cannabis!
At a concert — years ago — I was dancing in the front row when the familiar aroma of bright piney buds wafted by. It didn’t take long to find the source; a friendly gorilla finger was passing down the line. A sweaty dude in the neon pink knit cap exhaled a big...
by Chuck Shepherd | Aug 22, 2016 | Articles, Featured, News, News of the Weird, Newsletter
India has supposedly outlawed the “baby-tossing” religious test popular among Hindus and Muslims in rural villages in Maharashtra and Karnataka states, but a July New York Times report suggested that parents were still allowing surrogates to drop their...
by Hunter Styles | Aug 15, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
FRIDAY: Hello, Westfield! The sign FREE MUSIC doesn’t always promise a good time, but trust us, we vetted this one for you. Shenanigans hosts Easthampton’s James Alan Barry Jr., Haverhill alt-rockers Analog Heart, acoustic soul rocker Kelsey Veillette with a full...
by Hunter Styles | Aug 18, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
Around the World in 60 Minutes It’s fitting that the choral group Roomful of Teeth is on tour during the 2016 Olympic Games. For one thing, the eight-person ensemble — founded by Williams College professor Brad Wells in 2009 — has set out to “mine the expressive...
by Hunter Styles | Aug 15, 2016 | Articles, Featured, Newsletter
Fair Play Family farms are as American as baseball, or a hot apple pie cooling on a breezy windowsill. And just like bases, or pies, farms get stolen. Large-scale agribusiness has helped to precipitate a decline in traditional and small-scale farming in this country...
by Hunter Styles | Aug 15, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Newsletter, Stage
Damn, Pam Choreographer Pam Tanowitz been garnering ever more attention over the past 15 years for creating new dance techniques and styles that spring from classical dance vocabulary but glitter with abstract shapes and postmodern ideas. Her show at Jacob’s Pillow...
by Peter Vancini | Aug 8, 2016 | Articles, Featured, News
Vermont’s experiment with GMO labeling was brief, but memorable. In July, the single month that House Act 120 was in effect, consumers saw new signs popping up at grocery stores — just not the type many were envisioning. “We apologize that we can no longer offer this...
by Chris Rohmann | Aug 11, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Stage, Stagestruck
So often, music makes all the difference. It not only has those famous savage-breast-soothing charms, it can turn a so-so script into a winner. Take Unexpected Joy, playing through August 20th at the Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater (WHAT). This world-premiere musical...
by Hunter Styles | Aug 8, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Music, Newsletter
Exile on High Street Young rockers Paper City Exile play Holyoke Musicians, like all of us, hold a few personal details close to the chest. For local rockers Paper City Exile, the little secret is hardly a secret: the three of them are still in high school. That’s...
by Will Meyer | Aug 8, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Basemental, Columns, Featured, Music, Newsletter
One of the pitfalls of writing a bi-monthly column is the fact that I can barely scratch the surface of all of the cool stuff that’s happening around the Pioneer Valley. There is so much! This week’s column will serve as an informal catch-up on some new(ish) releases....
by Michael Cimaomo | Aug 5, 2016 | Articles, Featured, Northeast Underground
Dinosaur Jr. Give A Glimpse Of What Yer Not (Jagjaguwar) Release date: 8/5/16 Break out the ear plugs. Western Massachusetts’ own alt-rock power trio, Dinosaur Jr., is back. New album Give A Glimpse Of What Yer Not marks the fourth release by the band since the...
by Kristin Palpini, Hunter Styles, and Peter Vancini | Aug 1, 2016 | Articles, Featured, News
Co-ops and granola go together like seitan and soy sauce — but what if there is no granola?We love our local grocers, and we’re psyched that the food co-op movement is growing, but working cooperatives aren’t just for breakfast anymore. Almost any kind of business can...
by Kristin Palpini | Aug 1, 2016 | Articles, Featured, News
An Advocate analysis of U.S. Census occupation data allowed us to pinpoint where like-minded career folk are congregating in the Valley. By comparing residents employed in each sector to the overall number of people working in each town, we found pockets of job...
by Chris Rohmann | Jul 30, 2016 | Articles, Arts, Featured, Stage, Stagestruck
Two contradictory things are going on at Pittsfield’s Barrington Stage Company. On the mainstage, the fearsome title characters in The Pirates of Penzance never kill anyone because they can’t bear to harm an orphan and all the captives they seize claim to be orphans....
by Kristin Palpini | Jul 25, 2016 | Articles, Featured, News
In the Pioneer Valley, recycling feels like a given, but that’s a false sense of environmental do-gooding.There are multiple bins for your paper, plastics, and trash — and in some communities, for compost — in just about every public outdoor and indoor space. But...
by Hunter Styles | Jul 25, 2016 | Articles, Featured, Newsletter, Uncategorized
My gut told me that I should tune in to the Republican Convention last Thursday night for Donald Trump’s acceptance speech. So I tried, but I just couldn’t hack it. Every time the Donald opens his mouth for another ramped-up round of free-associative shouting, my...
by Rob Breszney | Jul 19, 2016 | Articles, Astrology, Featured, Wellness
ARIES (March 21-April 19): You now have more luxuriant access to divine luck than you’ve had in a long time. For the foreseeable future, you could be able to induce semi-miraculous twists of fate that might normally be beyond your capacities. But here’s a...
by Hunter Styles | Jul 19, 2016 | Articles, Featured, Uncategorized
Taylor Made It’s just a hop, skip, and a flying leap from Manhattan to the Berkshires, at least for the Paul Taylor Dance Company. The group has been trucking up shows to the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center for nine years running now, but the good thing about a...
by Advocate Staff | Jul 19, 2016 | Articles, Featured, Newsletter, Uncategorized
SUNDAY: Build it YourselfSunday is for relaxing — and that includes a day of rest for the bartenders at Arkham at Harmony Place in Brattleboro. The quintessential hipster dive bar, complete with air hockey and arcade games, has a Build Your Own Bloody Mary party. It’s...
by Hunter Styles | Jul 19, 2016 | Articles, Featured, Uncategorized
The Doctor Is Out and AboutAnd to think that he grew up on Fairfield Street! Theodor Seuss Geisel — a.k.a. Dr. Seuss — was born in Springfield to German immigrants in 1904, and although he moved to California for much of his adult life, it is on these local blocks...
