Freak Scene #82: Flywheel Arts Collective Ramps Up for Fall
Plus, Izzy Hagerup, a.k.a. Prewn, recently moved to L.A., but there's plenty of Western Mass. in her video for 'Dirty Dog'
A Guide to Music in Western Mass. (and sometimes Connecticut)
This week in Freak Scene, we catch up with the Flywheel Arts Collective somewhere in the midst of its 26th year, and Northampton’s Prewn recently released a video for the song “Dirty Dog.”
Though the official opening of the new Hess Performance Stage at Forbes Library happens Sept. 13, the Flywheel Arts Collective slipped in yesterday afternoon with a soft launch.
Who better? Now in its 26th year as Flywheel, and its fourth incarnation as a volunteer-run organization promoting live music, art exhibitions, zines and more in Western Mass., Flywheel is thriving since leaving its longtime home in Easthampton at the end of 2020. In addition to yesterday’s show at Forbes with the local bands Ex-Temper and the Classicals — the latest in an ongoing string of shows Flywheel has done on the library’s lawn — the collective presents the Montreal indie-rock musician Ada Lea with Northampton “handsewn hardwired folksong” singer Norma Dream and the Holyoke improvisational violinist Jenifer Gelineau Sept. 13 at Brick House Community Center in Turners Falls. (More info here, along with a standard disclaimer that Facebook is awful.)
Turns out not having a permanent space hasn’t been much of an impediment to booking concerts for Flywheel, which has also frequently been hosting shows at Holyoke Media, a community TV station.
“Doing it this way is a little more manageable,” says Jeremy Smith, who joined Flywheel in the winter of 1999, around the time cooperative moved into its first space, at 2 Holyoke St. in Easthampton. The local musicians Cindy Bow and Helen Harrison had started the collective in 1998 as the Valley Arts and Music Alliance, with the intention of booking DIY concerts featuring bands that weren’t getting gigs at the more established venues in the area. They hosted shows in makeshift spots including an art gallery in Amherst, VFW halls and, before long, what Smith describes as a “weird storefront” in Easthampton that soon became VAMA’s headquarters. Having a dedicated space called for a new name, and VAMA became Flywheel.
In 2007, Flywheel moved to a new space in the old town hall building on Main Street, where it played host to a sprawling variety of bands, both local and national touring acts that preferred to play a DIY space. Bands that have played Flywheel over the years have included groups you’ve never heard of — Fudge Gun from Detroit, for example — along with acts like Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, Titus Andronicus (on the same bill!), Dan Deacon, Thurston Moore, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Julian Koster of Neutral Milk Hotel, the Gossip and plenty more, plus local groups of pretty much every flavor. Getting gigs — or booking bands they want to see — is one of the reasons that many people volunteer with Flywheel in the first place.
“That’s basically how I got involved with Flywheel,” says Joe Pater, who first linked up with the collective in the early 2000s. “Years ago, I had just moved here, didn't know how to make my way into the music scene, and then went to Flywheel and they said, ‘You can volunteer here, yeah, you can book shows.’”
Though having a dedicated space for concerts and other events was a draw for audiences and volunteers, it also meant that Flywheel had to pay rent, which wasn’t always an easy prospect, given that the collective’s income fluctuated based on the number of shows it promoted. When the pandemic hit in 2020, that number was zero, and moving out of the old town hall meant ditching the group’s primary fixed expense.
Since then, Flywheel has been booking shows on the lawn at Forbes, at Holyoke Media and a few other spots. Though locations (and members) have changed, the cooperative’s stylistic sensibility has remained wide-ranging.
“Every kind of music has happened there at some point,” says Smith, who oversees the Flywheel archive as part of his day job as an library archivist at the University of Massachusetts (he also plays with Pater in the Northampton group Les Dérailleurs). “It developed its own aesthetic, just by the nature of the shows. But we never sat down and thought about the kind of music to program. It’s been sort of an eclectic aesthetic, I guess, an underground aesthetic: non-mainstream bands that couldn’t or didn’t want to get booked at other more traditional venues, up-and-coming bands, local bands.”
Prewn Previews New Album with ‘Dirty Dog’ Video
Northampton’s Izzy Hagerup doesn’t make it easy on System, her upcoming album as Prewn, but then what else would you expect from a collection of songs she describes as “a private journal made public?” The album is out Oct. 3, but Prewn has released a handful of videos, including one for the song “Dirty Dog.”
Keen observers will recognize Florence Fields in Northampton and what looks like the pathway alongside the Mill River, along with shaky, discomfiting cinema verité scenes of Hagerup flipping food on a grill, submersing herself in the water and dancing under a fluorescent bulb on a narrow porch at night. The images match the music, which pairs Hagerup’s distorted vocals with a gnashing, lo-fi arrangement of guitars, drums and eerie synths for a sound that is rugged, and a little hypnotic.
Upcoming Concerts
The Back Porch Songwriter series continues Oct. 23 with a tribute to the music of Tracy Chapman, featuring Kimaya Diggs, Kaliis Smith, Kris Delmhorst, Pamela Means and Evelyn Harris, with house band the Deep River Ramblers (tickets). The Iron Horse also hosts the Friendship Band with Soul Magnets Nov. 3 (tickets) in a fundraiser for the performing arts at Whole Children and Milestones, which provides afterschool and weekend programs for people with disabilities. Husband-wife bluegrass team Tim O’Brien and Jan Fabricius are there March 5 (tickets).
The Drake in Amherst hosts the wonderful indie-rock singer Hannah Mohan (as seen in Freak Scene #23) Nov. 8 for a full-band show with Hammydown (tickets) and the Ryan Montbleau Band Nov. 12 (tickets). I know I can’t shut up about art-punk trio Perennial, but they’re now on the bill with Weakened Friends Nov. 16 (tickets), and the sound system at the Drake is a great way to experience them.
Ben Gundersheimer, the Latin Grammy-winning Whately musician and children’s author who performs as MISTER G, will perform and read from Baby Ballena, his new book with Marcos Almada Rivero, Sept. 27 at the Eric Carle Museum in Amherst (tickets). MISTER G also revives his Halloween Fiesta with a free show the morning of Oct. 26 at the Academy of Music in Northampton (info).
Infinity Music Hall in Hartford presents Macy Gray Nov. 20 (tickets) and, on Dec. 9, the Wood Brothers (tickets), whom we just heard from in Freak Scene #77.
The post-rock band Earth performs Nov. 6 the Space Ballroom in Hamden (tickets).
That’s it for this week, but Freak Scene is always seeking submissions. You can send music for coverage consideration to erdanton at gmail or reply to this email. Check out these guidelines first.
If you like what you’ve seen here, please share! Freak Scene is free, but donations help make this happen, and are gratefully accepted. All 81 previous issues are available in the online archive.