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Bang on a Can! at MASS MoCA
In With a Bang Just in time for MASS MoCA’s welcome shift to summer hours, we’re jazzed to spread news of the return of the museum’s annual Bang on a Can festival, which ushers in three weeks of music all day, every day. Museum-goers and the general public can choose...
Starting Friday: Ko Festival in Amherst
Evening Becomes Eclectic The 25th annual Ko Fest at Amherst College welcomes back many of its most treasured artists from previous years. This Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, July 8-10, three evenings of special guests — from as far away as New Orleans and as close as...
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Screwballs You never know what the world will throw at you. It’s one of the hardest lessons to learn, but at least there’s occasion in Conway to practice swinging at life’s surprises. On Saturday, the Hilltown hosts its fourth annual Chesbro Challenge, a very silly...
Acoustic Open Mic at the Waterfront
Testing the WatersSince it re-opened in March under new ownership, the Waterfront Tavern has been looking for ways to let the Valley know that it’s an up-and-coming nightspot all over again. One appealing addition to the music venue’s regular lineup: Wednesday...
Nightcrawler: Happy Campers
This weekend, July 8-10, marks the 30th year of Greenfield’s Green River Festival. The much-ballyhooed hullabaloo has been feted by the likes of Rolling Stone and USA Today as one of the nation’s must-catch summer festivals in recent years, with its...
A Concerted Effort
When I was a younger man, I looked at my father’s record collection as if it were a collection of lost gospels. He was a Dylan nut who branched out to collect lesser-known folk types, and while my friends were keeping up with what was happening in our own time, I...
Home Coming
Gene Brienre, makes his way to the opening celebration for the 44-unit Gordon H. Mansfield Veterans Community building — his new home.Select Soldier On military veterans were given the opportunity to purchase an equity stake in their homes. The idea is for veterans to...va27-astro-2016
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Events in the coming week may trick your mind and tweak your heart. They might mess with your messiah complex and wreak havoc on your habits. But I bet they will also energize your muses and add melodic magic to your mysteries. They will...
Greenfield Gallery Exhibiting Artist: Sarah Adam
How did you get connected with Greenfield Gallery?I was just looking for my own art space and I was kind of shopping around the area. I think that was the second place I looked at and I was just completely enchanted. It’s such a great space. I love how the owner lives...
Club Picks: June 30 to July 6
SUNDAY: High Water MarkIt’s been one year since the relaunch of the Ashfield Lake House, which means a funkadelic anniversary show with music inside and outside, featuring the return of What Cheer? Brigade, Providence’s best 18-member brass band, plus performances by...
The Ultimate Valley Picnic Basket
Picnic Perfect Fourth of July is the most picnic-iest holiday of the year, and we’re here to help you pack the most delicious, envy-inspiring, locally-sourced picnic basket of your life. You’ll notice that we didn’t make any of the food ourselves; that’s because this...
Vodkamelons: Fact or Fiction?
The staff at the Valley Advocate have been to many picnics, parties, hootenannies, hoe downs, shindigs, and festivals, but only one of us has ever tasted the infamous vodkamelon.Amanda Drane, our Third Eye Roaming yogi, claims to have made a vodka infused melon with...
60 Days of Summer at the Basketball Hall of Fame
Hoop DreamsThis summer is pretty much guaranteed to be a scorcher. The Valley’s best way to scratch that b-ball itch while enjoying some air conditioning is probably the Basketball Hall of Fame’s annual 60 Days of Summer, which provides 60 consecutive days of...
A Twist on “The Taming” at Shakespeare & Co.
Shrew(d) ObserversIn a presidential election cycle as bizarre and theatrical as this one, it’s fitting that some of our weirdest art would start to imitate political life. Lauren Gunderson’s play The Taming — inspired in part by Shakespeare’s comedy The Taming of the...
At the Clark: Old Masters in the New World
It was the era that became known as the Spanish Golden Age, when Spain was arguably the most powerful nation in western Europe, with a burgeoning colonial empire in the Americas and considerable territorial holdings in Europe, including modern-day Belgium, the...
Nightcrawler: FAT of the Land
The Springfield Business Improvement District isn’t trimming any fat with its 16th installment this year. Rather, they’re leading off with it. Or, more specifically, the locally notable band of same name.”FAT’s annual concert at Cityblock has always...
Greenfield Gallery Exhibiting Artist: Paul Hoffman
Paul Hoffman may be Greenfield Gallery’s most exhibited artist.The longtime illustrator, turned painter, has shown his work there three times, most recently his one-man show running through June 30. “What’s wonderful about the Greenfield Gallery is they’re dedicated...
Art Show: Big Brothers Big Sisters
Sibling RevelryThe Springfield-based Center for Human Development has been matching kids with mentors through its program Big Brothers Big Sisters of Hampshire County since 1975. Over the past four decades, more than 2,000 “littles” between the ages of 6 and 16 have...
Micah Scott plays the Bookmill on Friday
Visit from a Dark Horse As a teenager, Micah Scott was lost in a musical fugue, shuffling his tastes from Creedence Clearwater Revival to The Beatles to Pantera and Alice in Chains and back again. It wasn’t until his guitar teacher turned him on to Blind Lemon...
Frendly Gathering Festival in Southern Vermont
The Friend Zone Dip your hippie head into a cool sonic pool this weekend by day-tripping up (or, hey, camping out) for the sixth annual Frendly Gathering, a three-day grassroots music festival in the Green Mountains of Southern Vermont. Vibe-wise, this fest is heavy...
Punk Local
It is worth noting the congruity between the Western Mass underground 30 years ago and the scene now. Take the power duo Wydyde. In the Bandcamp tags for their recently released debut EP Hadley Fire, Wydyde claim Dinosaur Jr. as a reference point. And there are...
Nightcrawler: ‘Kids’ Stuff
And The Kids share the ‘Love’ & some seed-y characters in West Whately Paul Newlin is going to party like it’s 1999 this week. No, it’s not another homage to his royal purpleness and his recent passing. Rather, it was this fateful year...
How’s the Air (and water, soil, animals, and plants) Down There? The state of the Valley’s environment
With winter gone and Earth Day a recent memory, it seems like a good time to check in on the local environment before we all head outside to play in the sun again. Area environmental specialists say the Valley is full of environmentally conscious folks, which is...
Nightcrawler: Vampire Diaries
An interview with Joe Perry, Aerosmith vet and member of the Johnny Depp-led band Hollywood Vampires Gary Carra: Joe – big fan. I’ve been kicking around Western Mass for a quarter-century now, either playing music or writing music, so of course I’ve come across...
Your Friendly Guide to Pride
It was Northampton that held the first Pride march in the area, and those who participated walked down the Main Street of a very different America. The year was 1981. Non-heterosexual citizens held virtually no legal protections as employees, as tenants, as...
Calendar Spotlight: Sandaraa at The Parlor Room
Trance Dance EvolutionIt takes an uncommon blend of bravado and skill to play “imagined hybrids from lost empires,” but that’s what Pakistani pop star Zeb Bangash and Brooklyn-based klezmer clarinetist Michael Winograd have set out to do. The dynamic musical duo has...va18-letters-2016
Letter from the Editor: New columnsThis week’s Advocate marks the second column in a new series we’re calling Basemental. The column will focus on the local DIY music scene, artists who play and record in alternative spaces, like basements and barns, old churches and...
Fiction’s Fertile Ground: Novelist Christopher Boucher makes hay of his Pioneer Valley childhood
By Hunter Styles Welcome, reader, to Appleseed, Massachusetts. Never heard of it? On page one of his newly-released second novel Golden Delicious, Longmeadow native Christopher Boucher provides an off-kilter lay of this fictional land:“That afternoon I took the...
This Week’s Club Picks
Turbine at Bishop’s LoungeNYC-based quintet band Turbine is one funky, rough, finely-tuned act. Full of big, brash rock lines and upbeat, soulful vocals, Turbine’s music is also surprisingly inventive, marked by shaken-up time signatures and unusual song structures....
Springfield rock band Opel’s new album Towers of Secrecy, reviewed
For ten years now, Opel has demonstrated the importance of being earnest. In the face of a modern music industry too often pockmarked by pretension, the seven-piece Springfield band’s hearty, fun-loving approach to making songs remains reassuringly down-to-earth.The...
Stagestruck: Loud Ladies
The subtitle of the best-selling book and its 1995 Broadway adaptation — The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years — is no exaggeration. Both the memoir and the play cover more than a century of African-American history, seen from the centenary vantage point of two...
Crepes Tea House
Traveling down Union Street, through the heart of the sprawling industrial section of West Springfield, an oasis appears on the horizon. Amid the landscape of parking lots and deteriorating buildings, Crepes Tea House is a spot of color: a small, unassuming building...
Scene Here: #DivestTheRest
Divest UMass supporters hold hands before leaving the Whitmore Administration Building after staging a sit-in for the fifth consecutive day Friday, April 15, demanding that UMass officials divest from fossil fuel companies. Though UMass has divested from coal and less...BO16-GetOut-2016
Place to see local bands Iron Horse Music Hall 20 Center St., Northampton (413) 586-8686 www.iheg.com Since 1979 the Iron Horse has hosted a wide variety of music and entertainment acts both local and far-flung, under the slogan, “Music alone shall live.” During the...
Show Us Your Tattoos – Zelda
I’m a wicked Zelda geek. I grew up playing the Nintendo series on every console it came out on. When my friend Doug Poole started apprenticing at Shark Tank Tattoo in Easthampton, I asked him to do Link’s life hearts and the Hylian Shield. He’s done...
Artist to re-create Amherst History Mural
Three-hour trip ‘round the world For the second year in a row, the Five Colleges are throwing an international festival on the Amherst Common. Organized by the UMass International Students Club, the free event features cultural displays — such as dancing, singing, and...
Ten Thousand Villages, Doing Fair Trade Before it Was Cool
A walk through Ten Thousand Villages on Main Street in Northampton is a stroll through a rich international bazaar. The store’s warm, earthy interior is a respite from the stark dreariness on the sidewalk. Gentle jazz and the smell of spices and herbal tea waft...
Staff Changes at the Advocate
Good news, everyone! The Advocate has made some staff changes that we think will create a more balanced and exciting paper. First up, staff writer Hunter Styles has been promoted to arts editor. Styles will be drawing on his background in theater and his deep love of...
Scene Here: Dirty Soul Revival
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Groan, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Some things endure because of their worn familiarity.Take the iconic Waterfront Tavern in Holyoke for instance, which is undergoing a revitalization. Don’t worry. It’s...
Get Out with Staff Picks
Shokazoba featuring DJ Megha • Friday Friday nights were made for chill reggae and funky beats, especially Fridays that cap the first full post-holiday week. Breathe deep, relax, and shake that thang with Northampton-based Afrofunk band Shokazaba. DJ Megha Amira will...
Staff Picks: An evening with Johnny Cash, Internet Cat Festival and more
Mass Appeal 2 • Saturday At this 413 Battle League event, it’s every Massachusetts man for himself — the event’s headline rap battles, Massachusetts vs. Everyone, pit Mass MCs against out-of-state rivals. As if watching these lyrical engineers fight to outwit and...
War Stories
Military veterans aren’t always open to sharing their war stories with a public that can’t possibly comprehend what it’s like to be in a foreign land, with a gun, an enemy, and a mission. So when people who have given a portion of their lives to protecting the nation...MGM Mixtape: Communication Breakdown, Closing Time, and No Guarantees
Hooh, boy. It’s been a roller coaster ride for MGM Springfield over the past few weeks, replete with rejiggered construction timelines, changed plans, and urgent backroom meetings with the mayor’s office. Here are our greatest hits on the casino playlist this week:...
Ramen: It’s Not Just for College Anymore
The Valley is full of good Asian noodle soups, so we tried three. I’m a child of chilly New England, where steaming cups of soup are most often consumed under blankets while the snow flurries outside. But last year, in Thailand, I tried a piping hot bowl of rice soup...
Recent Releases
Oxen The Vanishing, LP Oxen is a heavy rock band that forgoes a front man and introduce multi-member vocals that run the gamut from soaring melodies to gruff intensity, over heavy riff driven music. Tom Newton No Bones About It, LP Newton is a multi-instrumentalist...
Astonishing Inspirations
Through November 28th, the Forest Park Gallery is showing an exhibit by Dr. Gloria Caballer-Arce, a local artist and retired educator. The exhibit, Astonishing Inspirations, features work defined by geometric shapes, lines, and intense colors. The opening reception,...Halloween Haunts
This Halloween, get your costumes ready and head over to the Iron Horse for the Annual Halloween Bones Shakedown with DJs LeFox (Sugar Biscuit) & Hip Sockit (Pollinate). It’s a dance party with prizes, so to win, you gotta DANCE! A night of costumed attendees and...
Guerrilla Feminism
On Thursday, the anonymous feminist activist group Guerrilla Girls will be holding a public talk at Smith College, including a live performance conveying the story of the group’s activism and creative work, in order to discuss sexism and racism in the arts. The talk...
Life is Beautiful
On Friday, UMass Amherst Fine Arts Center welcomes five-time Grammy winner Dianne Reeves. The jazz singer, accompanied by an award-winning quintet, is on tour performing work from her first new album in five years, “Life is Beautiful,” including covers of Bob Marley,...
Everyday Vamps
Friday, the Bing Arts Center will host a costume party to accompany a screening of the vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows (rated R). The film, which stars Jemaine Clement, Taika Waititi, and Jonathan Brugh, follows the adventures of four vampires who live...
Flying Colors: Northampton trio Colorway paints a winning pop-rock portrait
Where on the spectrum does Colorway play? I might say these musicians are best at capturing the light, bright tones of late morning or mid-afternoon, given their talent for writing sunny and engaging pop songs. But band leader F. Alex Johnson, one of the founders of...
Spirits Stirring
On Halloween, Carl and Martin Bridge — the brothers behind Janus Arts — will transform Gateway City Arts into a kaleidoscopic wonderland for the third year running. Swirling specters and luminous skeletons will abound as a host of musicians and DJs drop bone-rattling...
Scene Here: Laughs and Lingerie
AMANDA DRANE PHOTO The Mary Jane Jones kicks off the night of comedy and lingerie at One Bar and Grill in Northampton with several soulful love songs. Eyes closed, lead singer Mandy Pachios growls a velvet reverie. A shot girl in a form-fitting, black nightgown with a...
Better Education for Some, II: How to fix charters
For as long as they’ve been around, charter schools have been a controversial topic in education. But the federal government has the power to settle this beef once and for all: Stop pitting schools against each other for funding and provide all schools with adequate...
Mind the Bollocks
In Western Mass, we like our Irish music year-round and the Big Bad Bollocks brings it. Screenwriter William Monahan describes the group succinctly as the “Pogues fused with the Sex Pistols.” Big Bad Bollocks: Friday, 7 p.m. to midnight, VFW Florence, 18 Meadow St.,...
The Uncanny Valley: Do Ghosts Haunt Spoleto?
by Hunter Styles Staff writer Amanda Drane has worked in the local food industry for 10 years, and she’s shared with us some truly great stories of her time in the kitchen, including a couple about the haunted room at Spoleto, an Italian restaurant in Northampton. One...
Play it Again, Sam: MGM pitches a major redesign
If there is a silver lining to MGM Springfield’s construction delays, it may be that casino execs have had some extra time to check the books on this $800+ million project. And it’s a good thing they did. Due to budgetary concerns, the company has just announced that...
Rallying Resilience: disaster-wrought Springfield springs into climate action
About a quarter of Springfield’s population has asthma — 21 percent of children and 18 percent of adults — and that’s nearly double the statewide average. As if that weren’t bad enough, those with asthma stand to suffer the most as climate change worsens, according to...
CD Short: Mikey Sweet, The North King
Mikey Sweet The North King (Independent) Mikey Sweet may have grown up in the Valley, but his debut album, The North King, tells us he’s been places. Songs like “Driftwood” illicit images of a boy and his guitar and the road, and song titles like “Oklahoma Wind” show...E-Edition
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