Music
Pick of the Day 3/9: Ray Mason at The Fort Hill Brewery
Pioneer Valley sonic road warrior and Advocate Sessions alum Ray Mason takes the stage early this evening at the Fort Hill Brewery in Easthampton. The man who is frequently referred to as, “the Godfather of the local music scene,” will have a plethora of songs to...
The Wildcat O’Halloran Band on the Valley Advocate Sessions
Check out energetic blues and classic rock group, The Wildcat O’Halloran Band. Wildcat has been a Massachusetts staple in the local blues and rock scene for more than two decades and the band’s Sessions performance mixes original blues rock songs with classic rock...
Pick of the Day 3/8: Sunshine Brothers Inc. at the Iron Horse
What do you get when you take feel-good surfer boy vocal harmonies, Dick Dale-inspired guitar, some goodness and light, add a pinch of The Cure, fold in a lot of synth, and some bubble gum? You get the Sunshine Brothers Inc., an Amherst-grown trio of adorable young...
VIDEO: The Wildcat O’Halloran Band on Sessions Friday
Check out a teaser video for energetic blues and classic rock group, The Wildcat O’Halloran Band. Wildcat has been a Massachusetts staple in the local blues and rock scene for more than a decade and the band’s Sessions performance mixes original blues rock...
Valley Showgirl: Say Darling took me to Patsy-ville at Back Porch Festival
For over 25 years The Back Porch Radio Show has been airing Sunday mornings on The River 93.9 FM. Curated by radio host Jim Olsen, the selected sounds are a variation of American roots music including bluegrass, folk, classic country, blues, and more. Olsen is also...
Wishbone Zoe on the Valley Advocate Sessions Stage
Wishbone Zoe performs bass-driven experimental indie pop on Valley Advocate Sessions. Check out Wishbone Zoe’s full performance in the video below. Advocate Sessions is filmed by Northampton Community Television and recorded by Signature Sounds Recording.
Pick of the Day 3/2: The Brother Brothers at The Parlor Room
Fiddles, cellos and their stringed cousins, can make a most desolate and longing sound — a sound that is distinctly American. The Brother Brothers of Brooklyn really know how to make desolation sound lovely. Identical twins, Adam and David Moss create harmonies...
Valley Advocate Q&A with Deer Tick Guitarist Ian Patrick O’Neil
Alternative rock band Deer Tick, known for its blend of influences from grungy alternative rock, to folk, punk, blues, and country, is heading to the Academy of Music Theatre this Friday, March 2, at 7 p.m. as part of Signature Sounds’ Back Porch Festival. Ahead of...
VIDEO: Wishbone Zoe on Valley Advocate Sessions Friday
Wishbone Zoe performs bass-driven experimental indie pop with Advocate Sessions this week. Check out a teaser video of Wishbone Zoe’s full performance, which will be released this Friday.
Pick of the Day 2/27: Andrew Bird at the Calvin Theater
Indie rock and folk singer-songwriter Andrew Bird makes what he calls “three-dimensional music” – a mixture of violin, guitar, and virtuoso whistling, combined with intricate looping pedals. As a teen Bird became interested in a variety of styles including early jazz,...
Pick of the Day 2/26: The Jeff Holmes Big Band at the 121 Club
The big band sound never gets old, so if you’re free at 7:30 tonight, check out the stylings of the Jeff Holmes Big Band featuring composer/lyricist Dawning Holmes on vocals. They’re swinging at the 121 Club and it’s free. Holmes has performed with legendary stars...
Carolyn Walker on the Valley Advocate Sessions Stage
Carolyn Walker is a singer-songwriter with a penchant for bittersweet folk melodies with a dash of alternative rock. Check out Carolyn Walker’s full Valley Advocate Sessions performance in the link below. Advocate Sessions, which features sets and interviews by...
Pick of the Day 2/23: Flathead Rodeo Celebrates Johnny Cash’s Birthday
It’s Friday and who wouldn’t want to celebrate the legendary man in black: Johnny Cash. Flathead Rodeo plays an original blend of rockabilly and the music that influenced it. Flathead Radio is: Mistress Miriam on vocals, Theo Aronson on upright bass,...
VIDEO: Carolyn Walker on Valley Advocate Sessions Friday
Carolyn Walker is a singer-songwriter with a penchant for bittersweet folk melodies with a dash of alternative rock. Her full performance will be available this Friday. Check out our Sessions teaser video in the link below.
Pick of the Day 2/18: Liz Longley at Iron Horse
Liz Longley A subtle Sunday is in order. Go check out Berklee College of Music graduate and award-winning songwriter, Liz Longley. Longley performs at the Iron Horse Music Hall. Some think of Shawn Colvin or Paula Cole when they think of Langley, but recognize she...
Bunnies on the Valley Advocate Sessions Stage
Bunnies will take you on a psychedelic voyage of experimental rock with their recent performance on Valley Advocate Sessions. (Click on the video below) BONUS: Interview with Bunnies
Pick of the Day 2/15: Foghorn String Band at the Parlor Room
Foghorn String Band at the Parlor Room Listening to the Foghorn String Band is like pulling out your great grandma’s handmade heirloom quilt. It’s American roots music drawn from bluegrass, classic country, and Cajun musical traditions. The band has...
VIDEO: Bunnies on Valley Advocate Sessions Friday
Bunnies is a band that’ll take you on a psychedelic voyage of experimental rock. Check out a teaser for the band’s full Valley Advocate Sessions performance, which will be released this Friday.
Valley Advocate Q&A with indie folk violinist and virtuoso whistler Andrew Bird
Indie rock and folk singer-songwriter Andrew Bird makes what he calls “three-dimensional music” – a mixture of violin, guitar, and virtuoso whistling, combined with intricate looping pedals. Bird has released more than a dozen albums since starting his solo...
Kalliope Jones on the Valley Advocate Sessions Stage
Kalliope Jones is teenage post rock band with lush harmonies and an eclectic spirit. The band previously performed at Green River Festival in the summer of 2017 on the Next Wave Stage along with other past Sessions bands, including Parlicium, Paper City Exile, Nomad...
VIDEO: Kalliope Jones on Valley Advocate Sessions Friday
Kalliope Jones is teenaged post rock band with lush harmonies and an eclectic spirit. Check out a teaser video for the group’s upcoming Valley Advocate Session to be released this Friday.
The Screaming Hearts on the Valley Advocate Sessions Stage
The Screaming Hearts is edgy alternative rock with indie soul. The band performed a special acoustic set on Valley Advocate Sessions. Check it out in the video below. Interview with the Screaming Hearts
VIDEO: The Screaming Hearts on Valley Advocate Sessions Friday
The Screaming Hearts is edgy alternative rock with indie soul. Check out a teaser for the band’s acoustic set, which will be released in full this Friday.
Cost of Contentment: The Crossroads of Art, Addiction, Mental Illness
The nondescript building in which Anchor House of Artists is located is misleading. It’s exterior is plain and white, sitting on the very edge of Pleasant Street seconds from the highway. There is no extra signage to alert visitors that they have, indeed,...
Valley Advocate Q&A with legendary blues harpist and singer James Montgomery
Blues harmonica and singer James Montgomery is a blues legend. Growing up in Detroit, he learned the blues first-hands from blues harp virtuoso James Cotton, and has been a presence in blues music for decades with the James Montgomery Band. Valley Advocate Staff...
Darklight on the Valley Advocate Sessions Stage
Darklight creates dark ambient electronic meditations and is this week’s Valley Advocate Sessions performer. Darklight is also set to release a dual song recording via Bandcamp on Feb. 1 called “Dyadic.” Interview with Darklight:
Musical Fundraiser for Charles Neville unites Pioneer Valley and New Orleans communities
Charles Neville, Grammy award winning saxophonist and member of R&B, soul, and funk group, The Neville Brothers, has been battling pancreatic cancer for the past two months. He was born and raised in New Orleans, but has called the Pioneer Valley home for the past...
VIDEO: Darklight on Valley Advocate Sessions Friday
Darklight creates dark ambient electronic meditations and is this week’s Valley Advocate Sessions performer. You can check out a teaser for his performance set to be released this Friday. Darklight
Valley Show Girl: A Night of Funky R&B for Jane Doe Inc.
I love it when music collides with a charitable fundraiser event, especially when that event involves human rights. The happenings at The O’s Music Bar in Sunderland last week were just that. Rise Up Productions, a liberal activist group of musicians and actors based...
OroborO’s Laughing Death is an Impact Crater of Hardcore Punk and Math Rock
Amherst-based OroborO’s debut album, Laughing Death, is a furiously upbeat apocalyptic vision of doom metal, hardcore punk, math rock, and jazzy psychedelia with a wry dark sense of humor that’s like going for a quaint and pleasant stroll while sirens wail and...
Valley Show Girl: Guitars and Coffee
The smell of strong coffee warms me from the cold as I open the door to Iconica Social Club for the first time. From the outside, it looks like an odd brick building in the middle of a parking lot behind Haymarket in Northampton. But upon entering, you’re engulfed...
Review: Decades of Philip B. Price of Winterpills
This past year Winterpills member and Northampton-based singer-songwriter Phillip B. Price remastered a dozen of his past solo albums recorded from 1988 to 2004, which had never seen the light of day. With a back catalogue of more than a hundred songs to choose from,...
Behold! True Genre-Benders
Holyoke-based Behold! True Believers combines genres that you wouldn’t initially think would pair well together — pop punk, alternative rock, psychedelic pop, doo-wop, and experimental rock. This synthesis of influences works surprising well on the sextet’s recent...
Valley Show Girl: Party Time! Excellent!
I don’t know about any of you, but 2017 kicked my ass. But, as always, one of the things that keeps me sane, is music. So let’s bid a farewell to this year with some kick ass shows that are sprinkled throughout the Valley. There is literally something for everyone,...
Nate Martel on the Valley Advocate Sessions Stage
Singer-songwriter Nate Martel plays acoustic roots rock music that doesn’t skimp on soul. Martel is also a member of local psychedelic rock group, Outer Stylie, which previously performed on Valley Advocate Sessions. He recently released his first solo album, “Short...
‘There’s Only Two Kinds of Music: Good Music and Bad’
Joe Louis Walker has a voice out of classic soul and blues guitar chops that were inspired by some of the greats — B.B. King, Muddy Waters, the list goes on. Walker, a Blues Hall of Fame inductee, grew up in San Francisco playing blues before entering into the...
The Royal Frog Ballet: A Gathering of Grace
Celebrating 10 years of performance theater, The Royal Frog Ballet trades the wild outdoors for the pristine white walls of A.P.E. Gallery in downtown Northampton this month. Their retrospective, HINDSIGHT/FORESIGHT, is a thoughtful and vivid collection of paintings,...
VALLEY SHOW GIRL: ‘Short Stay’ Here For Long Haul
About a month ago, Valley musician Nate Martel came into the Advocate office to drop off his debut solo album “Short Stay.” Being a fan of his role in rock group, Outer Stylie, I was pumped to get the CD into my car as soon as I left work. And that I did. Recorded at...
Fat Bradley EP: A Funk Rock Voyage
Northampton-based funk sextet Fat Bradley’s new self-titled five-song extended play (EP) recording is an acid jazz fusion of instrumental kaleidoscopic funky rock that grooves along with frantic energy and a sense of reckless abandon that’s downright entertaining....
Hammydown’s “Pizzaface” a dose of slacker rock nostalgia
Northampton-based garage pop and indie rock trio Hammydown excels at tapping into youthful angst with charming, sarcastic glee on its debut five-song extended play recording, “Pizzaface,” released July 21. At its heart, Pizzaface is a record about dual identities and...
Valley Show Girl: Leave it to the Women
A couple weeks ago I wrote my column based on the fiasco that is Wikipedia Vs. Women, where locally and nationally non-male musicians are getting edited out of the popular DIY online encyclopedia due to male editors not accepting articles from certain publications...
Basemental: A Wikipedia Rant by Will
Last week my colleague Jennifer Levesque reported on musician and rock documentarian Tanya Pearson’s efforts to challenge Wikipedia edits. While trying to revise entries on the free encyclopedia, Pearson discovered that many edits and entries weren’t getting...
Ritmo Gitano on the Valley Advocate Sessions Stage
Ritmo Gitano is a local duo that plays traditional gitano and Romani music on fiddle (Zoe Darrow) and Spanish guitar (Tony Silva). Check out the group’s complete Valley Advocate Sessions performance in video below. Interview with Ritmo Gitano:
Valley Show Girl: The Case of the Missing Wiki Edits
Tanya Pearson has been accumulating a continuous list of female musicians for her Women in Rock Oral History Project which she started at Smith College in December 2014. Accompanied by 29 video interviews (so far!) with some of them available on www.womenofrock.org,...
Klar’s ‘Paradise’ is Poetic and Fiery
Northampton-based singer-songwriter Jake Klar has undergone a metamorphosis from an acoustic driven folk artist to an alternative rock-poet who fuses psychedelic instrumentation with his knack for lyrical storytelling on his newest record, Until the Wild Fire Become...
Literally, what would Jesus do? A chat with Jesus Christ Superstar’s Ted Neeley
Ted Neeley is not the second coming of Jesus Christ. But he does play one in the extremely popular show and accompanying 1973 movie Jesus Christ Superstar. The show went from being protested in the streets to one of the biggest Broadway sensations, touring around the...
Basemental: Landowner’s Edgy Riff on the ‘American Dream’
When I heard there was a local band called Landowner, I thought: “Surely, they’re joking. This is satirical, right?” But punk is weird these days — everyone is on Facebook hoping companies will sponsor them — so I wasn’t completely sure. I started asking friends,...
Lisa Martin on the Valley Advocate Sessions Stage
Lisa Martin writes original songs ranging from country to folk roots music, but with a dash of bluesy rock. Check out Lisa Martin’s complete Valley Advocate Sessions performance below. Interview with Lisa Martin:
VIDEO: Lisa Martin on Valley Advocate Sessions Friday
Check out a video teaser for Lisa Martin trio’s upcoming Valley Advocate Sessions performance, which will be released this Friday. Martin plays country, folk roots with a dash of bluesy rock.
Valley Show Girl: A Bloody Good Time
Later this month, Chicopee’s Maximum Capacity will close and open at some point in the future with new ownership. Will there still be shows? If so, will they include metal/rock shows? Only time will tell. But in the meantime, you still have a chance to get to “one...
Reverend Dan and the Dirty Catechism on Advocate Sessions Stage
Reverend Dan and the Dirty Catechism, Springfield-based preacher rock n’ roll with a side of post punk. BONUS: Reverend Dan and the Dirty Catechism interview: Check out our past Sessions performers, including Seth Newton, Old Flame, Shokazoba, and Tang...
VIDEO TEASER: Reverend Dan and the Dirty Catechism
This week’s Valley Advocate Sessions artist is Reverend Dan and the Dirty Catechism, preacher rock n’ roll with a side of post punk. RD&tDC’s full Sessions performance will be released this Friday. Until then, here’s a teaser video.
Basemental: New Tricks from the (not so) Young Tricksters
The Young Tricksters have returned. After what felt like forever, the Amherst quartet have broken their quiet to give the people what they want: a full-length album. After releasing a couple self-recorded demos back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth (March 2013 to...
Seth Glier on the Valley Advocate Sessions Stage
Seth Glier is an Easthampton-based multi-instrumentalist pop and folk singer-songwriter, who switches between guitar and keyboard. He’s been nominated for a Grammy and has released numerous past records, including his most recent album, “Birds,” released in 2017....
VIDEO: Seth Glier on Valley Advocate Sessions Friday
Check out a teaser video for multi-instrumentalist pop and folk songwriter, Seth Glier. His full Sessions performance will be released this Friday.
LuxDeluxe’s Let’s Do Lunch is a bite of pure nostalgia
Northampton-based indie rock band LuxDeluxe’s newest 12-track record, Let’s Do Lunch, is a meditation on crafting the perfect two to three minute pop song. The group draws its influence from classic bands like the Beatles, NRBQ, and the Rolling Stones, and excels at...
Valley Show Girl: Luthier’s Unplugged: Metal, Grunge, and Singer/Songwriter Action
After having a so-long get together at Galaxy in Easthampton with my coworkers to send off Kristin Palpini on her next adventure, I dragged my sad ass down the street to Luthier’s Coop. And I tell ya, there’s nothing like seeing Pee Wee Herman’s inviting...
Mark Schwaber on the Valley Advocate Sessions Stage
Mark Schwaber is an indie folk artist with punk rock influences from Easthampton, MA. Check out his complete Valley Advocate Sessions performance and interview in the videos below. Interview with Mark Schwaber:
VIDEO: Mark Schwaber on Sessions Friday
Check out a teaser indie folk rock artist Mark Schwaber on Valley Advocate Sessions. His full performance will be released this Friday. Can’t wait until Friday? Check out our Sessions page to watch past performers such as Tundra Toddler, Lonely Whale, and Court...E-Edition
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