Photo by Joanna Chattman
Western Massachusetts is having another moment. Long known in indie circles as the birthplace of Dinosaur Jr., where Black Francis met Joey Santiago before starting the Pixies, and the post-New York, pre-divorce home of Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, the Pioneer Valley 100 miles west of Boston has more recently launched bands including Speedy Ortiz, Potty Mouth, and California X. And now, there’s an even newer wave of bands rolling up behind them.
"It’s such a good, nurturing place for musicians," says Hannah Mohan of Northampton, a focal point of the Western Mass scene, along with Amherst and other nearby towns. The guitarist’s indie-pop trio And the Kids (pictured) are among the scene’s brightest creative lights, and their trajectory is indicative Western Mass’ community-oriented support system. Mohan and bandmate Rebecca Lasaponaro met Megan Miller in 2012, when all three were summer interns at the nearby Institute for the Musical Arts, which hosts rock camps for girls and women interested in music and the music business. They’ve since signed with Northampton-based Signature Sounds for their upcoming debut album, Turn to Each Other, due out next month.
The area boasts a self-sustaining network that includes performance venues ranging in size from pizza-joint open-mics and ad-hoc basement spots to clubs and theaters, along with a commercial radio station that plays local bands, and a supportive, music-savvy audience of concert-goers. Finding all of these building blocks concentrated someplace smaller, more affordable, and less competitive than a big city like New York or Boston is a significant attraction, Pioneer Valley musicians say.
"It’s a super-organic, low-key, laid-back area, but also very social, so you can go do your project and, when you’re finished, you have a platform for it," says Brian Frenette, singer for a lacerating hardcore band Blessed State. The quartet recorded its debut album, Head Space, at Sonelab Recording in neighboring Easthampton with Justin Pizzoferrato, who has worked on albums by And the Kids, California X, and Speedy Ortiz (as well as Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth, and Black Francis). And though Frenette moved from Northampton to Connecticut for work, he still regularly drives back for band practice.
Another big factor in Western Mass’ creative sustainability is its colleges. Northampton, a city of about 28,000 people, is home to Smith College, and Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst are all nearby. Higher education is what attracted Speedy Ortiz leader Sadie Dupuis to move from Brooklyn to teach writing and pursue an MFA in poetry at UMass before breaking away to concentrate full-time on music. "It’s a small, super-liberal college town that has a history of spawning a bunch of artistic endeavors," Dupuis says of Northampton.
This creative history dates back to before the dawn of indie rock. Way before. The 18th-century theologian Jonathan Edwards first delivered his "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" sermon in 1741 in a Northampton church, leading to the enduring consternation of high school English students in the northeast who have been assigned to parse it ever since. In the less distant past, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came to life in Northampton in the early '80s, too.
And now it continues with the likes of Northampton quintet Lux Deluxe, which makes catchy, straight-ahead rock'n'roll influenced by the likes of Wilco and the cult-favorite band NRBQ. The group of three cousins and two friends released their second album, It’s a Girl, last year and joined Deer Tick onstage in New York after Christmas to cover all of NRBQ’s 1980 album Tiddly Winks before playing to a hometown New Year’s Eve show in which former NRBQ guitarist Big Al Anderson joined them onstage. "I might as well have been playing with Paul McCartney," bassist Jacob Rosazza says. Other young local acts include self-described "junkyard-rocker" Wishbone Zoë, psychedelic folk-rock band the Sun Parade, noise-rockers Psychic Blood, and power-pop act Bunk.
"One of the strong suits of western Mass is that it’s very independent of its neighboring cities," Sonelab engineer Pizzoferrato says. "There’s Boston and New York pretty close by, but I feel like western Mass has its own niche and has for quite a long time." It’s a niche that local musicians are proud of. "We’ve been put on a lot of bills as a Boston band, but our scene is not the same," Rosazza says. "Western Mass is the underdog, so bands here have to work harder to get noticed, and that has produced some really unique music."