‘My heart requires it’: Pioneer lesbian singer-songwriter Linda Shear will perform benefit show in Northampton, May 31
By CAROLYN BROWN Staff Writer Celebrated lesbian singer-songwriter Linda Shear will play a benefit show for Straw Dog Writers Guild on Saturday, May 31, at 4 p.m. at Northampton Center for the Arts. Shear founded the band Family of Woman, the first openly lesbian band...
Monte Belmonte Wines: Wine Snob Glossary, Part 1
By Monte Belmonte For the Valley Advocate While dining out with my lovely wife the other day, it occurred to me that I use a lot of extraordinarily snobby adjectives that are incomprehensible to the lay drinker. Then it occurred to me: maybe a wine glossary would be...
Theater Matters with Jarice Hanson: Exploring gender and body positivity on stage
By Jarice Hanson For the Valley Advocate This summer three outstanding shows in the Berkshires demonstrate that the performativity of gender has broken free from traditional gender-based casting in some places. In this edition of Theater Matters, we explore how some...
Messages from beyond?: Local psychics ‘channeling the truth’ and spirits of the dead
By ELISE LINSCOTT For the Advocate ‘The first thing I felt was cancer … she said ‘I was tired and there was no way back,’ which is pretty common for cancer,” South Hadley-based psychic medium and fiction writer Lisa Lanno said to a room of about 50 people one recent...
Curated for your viewing and listening pleasure: Amherst Cinema presents Sound & Vision series through Sept. 18
By SCOTT MERZBACH Staff Writer A documentary profiling Swing-era clarinetist Artie Shaw, a musical comedy featuring 1960s-pop band The Monkees and one of African cinema’s first musicals are among this year’s selections in an annual summer celebration of music culture...
The Gem from Easthampton: Gigantic bar manager’s recipe makes it across the pond to a speakeasy in Scotland
By CHRIS LARABEE Staff Writer With 3,100 miles and the Atlantic Ocean between them, what could Easthampton and Dundee, a city of approximately 148,000 people in Scotland, possibly have in common? Well, if you really do some digging, you might unearth a Gem of a...
Something for everyone: UMass Fine Arts Center announces robust 2024-2025 season lineup
By PAIGE HANSON For the Advocate Earlier this week, the University of Massachusetts Amherst Fine Arts Center announced its lineup of performances for its 2024-2025 season, which includes quite a few notable offerings, including “a one-time Grateful Dead keyboardist,...
Food, friends, music and beer: Food Truck Fridays is the place to be in Easthampton this summer
By ALEXA LEWIS Staff Writer Going out with friends can be challenging when clashing tastes in food make it impossible to choose a restaurant. But for Abandoned Building Brewery in Easthampton, the solution to this predicament is simple, and it comes rolling in on four...
Knitters’ paradise: Webs, ‘America’s Yarn Store’ and a mainstay for Valley crafters for generations, turns 50
By EMILEE KLEIN Staff Writer When Webs opened their doors on May 16, the first day of the store’s annual tent sale, store manager Angela Cheek watched as a rush of people flowed through the doors for three whole continuous minutes on a Thursday morning. Within an...
This hiking club’s first rule? No diet talk: The Body Liberation Outdoor Club is coming to the Valley
By MELISSA KAREN SANCES For the Advocate The founder of the Body Liberation Outdoor Club saw “The Fat Babe Pool Party” in “Shrill,” the Hulu series about a heavy woman’s journey to embracing her body, and felt like she was in a dream. In the fourth episode of Season...
Music in the sky: Summit House Sunset Concert Series returns to its 173-year-old home
By PAIGE HANSON For the Advocate For the first time in two years, The Friends of Mount Holyoke Range have returned the Summit House Sunset Concert Series to its namesake, Skinner State Park’s historic Summit House. The Summit House, which sits at a 935-foot elevation...
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End of summer mixtape: A selection of some of my favorite recent releases from Oozie, VIDEORENTAL and Pamela Means
By JENNIFER LEVESQUE For the Advocate Years ago, the late musician Ted Pratt made a Facebook post stating he wanted to start a thrash band and call it “Uzi Jacuzzi.” Intrigued, vocalist and guitarist Tristan Jorud reached out to Pratt and the two got together that...
V-Spot: Has Sobriety Killed My Sex Drive?
Is it my nature to be less sexually charged when I’m not masking insecurity with alcohol?
Staff Picks: Global Groove Fest, Dissident Voices concert, Bee Fest
Things to do this week.
Madame Barfly: Mixing Beer? Have Fear
Naturally, I was really excited about the whole beer cocktail thing. Beer is good, and cocktails are good, so how can we go wrong, right? As it turns out, some beer cocktails are good and others are downright disgusting. The Beerhunter and I put our booze brains...
Stagestruck with Chris Rohmann: Curtain (or tent pole) Up! as summer theaters reopen
Sometimes in the course of the past year I despaired of ever again hearing that mantra of curtain speeches in the cyber-era: “Please silence your cellphones.” But in late June it happened, as three western Mass companies greeted live audiences with live performances,...
