Online Open Mic

Richie Davis

Richie Davis retired in February 2019 from The Recorder, where he’d been a staff writer and editor since 1976. His new book, Inner Landscapes, is a collection of people stories from The Recorder that he had planned to present readings of at area libraries and other live venues. Instead, he’s offering a reading at the LAVA Center’s open mic. He blogs at RichieDavis.net.

Tony Silva

Tony Silva is a Spanish Guitar player. He plays traditional music from Music from Spain, Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Venezuela, Argentina, the Andes Mts, and of course lots of Gipsy Kings! He is available for parties, weddings and special events (when we can do those things again).
www.tonysilva.com/guitar
www.facebook.com/tonysilvaspanishguitar
www.instagram.com/tony_silva_spanish_guitar/
Tip Links:
Patreon www.patreon.com/tonysilvaspanishguitar
Venmo Tip Jar https://venmo.com/Tony-Silva-30
PayPal https://paypal.me/tsspanishguitar?locale.x=en_US

One Word Story Project

One Word Story Project Stories, read by one of the collaborators (Adriana Piantedosi, Ellen Morbyrne). Each one featured here was created by over 30 people from all over the country, led by Trenda Loftin.

Tina Louise

Tina Louise is a singer-songwriter, singing “Georgia” to her audience, The Quilt.

Jan Maher

Jan Maher is a Greenfield-based writer, a co-founder of Local Access to Valley Arts, and a co-coordinator of The LAVA Center. You can support local businesses by buying her books from Federal Street Books, federalstreetbooks.com. They deliver locally and ship to points further afield.

Larry Marshall and Jeannine Otis

From Larry: “Here’s an inspirational song from Agape in LA that I love! Jeannine and I did it for St Mark’s website that’s using music to, hopefully, help lift people’s spirits during these trying times.”
Larry Marshall and Jeannine Otis are veteran musicians and actors based in New York City. Larry is perhaps best known for his role as Simon Zealotes in the 1973 movie, ‘Jesus Christ Superstar,’ and was most recently in the musical ‘Waitress,’ both on Broadway and its natural tour. Jeannine is currently a Warner European recording artist and has been music director for St. Marks Church-in-the-Bowery for 25 years. https://larrymarshall.net/ https://jeannineotis.com/

Nina Gross

Nina Gross is one of our local poets and sometimes host of our open mic nights. She wants to shout out to all the regulars and newcomers. Let’s hold up the sky! Love is love!

Richard Wayne Horton

Richard Wayne Horton lives in Springfield, MA with his wife, kids & cat, but has roots in TX where he grew up & went to college. Richard has gotten 2 Pushcart noms and is the current MA Beat Poet Laureate. He has published 2 books of short fiction and has had stories in Meat For Tea, Danse Macabre, Literary Heist, Lonesome October, Scryptic, The Dead Mule and others.

Patrice Metcalf

Patrice Metcalf is the Music Director at St. Anne St. Patrick Parish in Fiskdale, MA, and is a private voice teacher. She has her Bachelor’s degree in Music Performance from Westfield State University (’16). She performs in various venues throughout the year, from community theater to Christmas caroling with The Fort Singers (Springfield). You can find more of her music and other creative endeavors on her YouTube channel, and on her Instagram: @patricemetcalfmusart

Storm

“My name’s STORM. I AM a metaphysical minister, a poet, a  performer, and an activist. I live in Greenfield, Massachusetts.  All of the poems I AM reading are originals and copyrighted by STORM.”

Richard Wayne Horton

Richard Wayne Horton lives in Springfield, MA with his wife, kids & cat, but has roots in TX where he grew up & went to college. “Cheater Lounge” is a beer & guitar lyric soaked piece set in an Austin bar in 1977.  Richard has gotten 2 Pushcart noms and is the current MA Beat Poet Laureate.  He has published 2 books of short fiction and has had stories in Meat For Tea, Danse Macabre, Literary Heist, Lonesome October, Scryptic, The Dead Mule and others.

Tina Louise

Tina Louise is a singer-songwriter. This is her original song, Paper Thin. https://www.tinalouiseart.com/

One Word Story Project

Trenda Loftin has been organizing the One Word Story Project for this past week or so. These stories here are being reading by some of the collaborators. Each of these stories was created by over 30 people from all over the country.

Jim Merlin

Jim Merlin from Deerfield, performing a song by Paul Simon called American Tune. He says, the lyrics are as fresh today as they were many years ago.

Marlon Carey aka Inphynit DaGhost

Marlon Carey is a Poet Educator Actor Communicator Entertainer. He has a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) degree in Creative Writing, from St. Andrews College. Named “Best Hip Hop Poet” by the Cambridge Poetry Awards two years in a row, he has also been the Boston Cantab Lounge’s “Grand Slam Champion” and the Lizard Lounge Boston’s “King.” Marlon is a proud member of Providence-based poetry theatre ensemble, Brother’s Keeper. Marlon has published three chapbooks, and has released several EPs of music, which include poetry and hip hop tracks. http://www.shakespearetohiphop.com/ https://youtu.be/sc7iROGlK4Y

Mark Greenfield

Mark Greenfield is a Brooklyn based, Actor and Writer and the Founding Artistic Director of the Faux-Real Theatre. He currently teaches theatre at Fordham University in the Bronx. http://www.fauxreal.org/

Jinx Lennon

Jinx Lennon is an antifolk musician and friend of LAVA from Dundalk, in the northeast corner of Ireland. “[H]e’s a singer-songwriter, earning his musical pittance performing his own songs over acoustic guitar. But that not only undersells his hyperactive show and ignores his live beat gear and studio horns, it misrepresents the aggressiveness of half-rapped, power-strummed rants…” —Bob Christgau, Village Voice http://jinxlennon.com/

Edite Cunhā

Edite Cunhā is a writer, artist, teacher and activist. Her fiction has been published both locally and nationally and won awards and fellowships including Smith’s Spencer Prize for Excellence in Writing, AWP’s Intro Writing Award and the Tara Fellowship for short fiction. She has been a fellow at the Vermont Studio Center, A Room of Her Own and the Disquiet Literary Program. She believes that creativity can transform the individual as well as society, and leads creative writing and multi-media art workshops for people of all ages. She is a founding member of the Exploded View performance group. Cunhā has a BA from Smith College and an MFA from Warren Wilson College. She lives in Turners Falls, MA.

Jan Maher

Jan Maher is a Greenfield-based writer, a co-founder of Local Access to Valley Arts, and a co-coordinator of The LAVA Center. You can support local businesses by buying her books from Federal Street Books, federalstreetbooks.com. They deliver locally and ship to points further afield.

Don Ogden aka d.o.

Don Ogden, known by many simply as d.o., has been active in environmental issues for most of his life. His poetry and commentaries have appeared in a wide variety of publications and on national and local radio. He is the producer and co-host of The Enviro Show on Valley Free Radio in Western Massachusetts. His book, “Bad Atmosphere – A Collection of Poetry & Prose on the Climate Crisis” published by Levellers Press in Amherst, MA contains decades of writing on climate issues and more.
LINDY WHITON Lindy Whiton has been sharing her poetry in Western Mass since 1997.

Leo Hwang

Leo Hwang received his Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts in Geosciences with a focus on the diverse community economies of artists and artisans in Franklin County, an M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his B.A. in English and Fine Arts from the University of the South. He has taught at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Mount Holyoke College; Greenfield Community College; and Westfield State University. Mr. Hwang is currently the Dean of Humanities, Engineering, Math, and Science at Greenfield Community College. He also plays guitar in two bands, The Warblers and Vimana, and bass in the Original Cowards and The Big Why. http://leohwang.com/

Paul Richmond

Named Beat Poet Laureate twice, once for Massachusetts for 2017–2019, second time for U S National Beat Poet Laureate for 2019–2020. Paul is best described as political, deadpan and wryly humorous delivered in his own style. He hosts monthly and annual spoken-word poetry events: the Great Falls Word Festival, the Word Stage, at the North Quabbin Garlic & Arts Festival, and Greenfield Third Tuesday. He has performed nationally and internationally. His work has been published in five books, in journals, magazines, anthologies and poetry collections.

Nina Gross

Nina Gross is one of our local poets and sometimes host of our open mic nights. She wants to shout out to all the regulars and newcomers. Let’s hold up the sky! Love is love!

Lindy Whiton

Lindy Whiton has been sharing her poetry in Western Mass since 1997.

The John Lentz Trio

The John Lentz Trio is Bill Winslow, piano; Michael Suter, double bass; and John Lentz, vocals. They play jazz standards and our own arrangements of contemporary music. They’ve been playing regularly at The Rendezvous in Turners Falls and Luthier’s Coop in Easthampton. Shout out to Ben Goldsher for the video.

Jan Maher

Jan Maher is a Greenfield-based writer, a co-founder of Local Access to Valley Arts, and a co-coordinator of The LAVA Center. You can support local businesses by buying her books from Federal Street Books, federalstreetbooks.com. They deliver locally and ship to points further afield.

Michael Nix

Michael Nix performs on classical guitar, banjo, and mandolin throughout the United States and Asia, and he has recorded for the PBS series “American Experience”, independent documentaries, and numerous CD projects. His compositions are performed internationally.

Trenda Loftin

Playwright | Director | Actor | Art-Integrated Equity Consultant Trenda Loftin integrates artistic expression with nuanced identity exploration. Body-centered and collaborative, she works to create performances that anchor in connection and the (re)memory of collective power. trendaloftin.com

Tina Louise

www.tinalouiseart.com

Samantha Wood

Samantha Wood is an artist and journalist living in western Massachusetts. She is a member of Exploded View, an arts collective, and has worked in local journalism for most of the last two decades. She has an MFA in poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Joshua Daniel Hershfield

Joshua Daniel Hershfield is an Actor, Guitarist, Singer, and Songwriter. His work has been nominated for Best Pop Song in the Hollywood Music Awards, and for the Song Of The Year Competition. He has performed internationally including as a guest performer on the French TV show U-Live.

Amie Hyson

Amie Hyson has been writing poetry & reading out locally since 2015. She lives in Greenfield where, since 2017, her love of writing has led her to facilitate workshops through Voices From Inside, an organization that provides writing workshops for incarcerated, previously incarcerated & women in recovery. She is working on her first book of poetry, hopefully to be published later in the year.

Vanessa Query

Vanessa Query is a writer, director, performer, and organizer who lives in Greenfield. She has a theater degree from Antioch College and has also trained in circus sideshow and stunt work, improv comedy, guerrilla theater, melodrama, and commedia dell’arte. vanessaquery.com

One-Word Story Project

Trenda Loftin has been organizing the One-Word Story Project for this past week or so. These stories here are being reading by some of the collaborators. Each of these stories was created by over 30 people from all over the country.

Zoe Lemos

Zoe Rinchen Lemos a 16-year-old singer-songwriter-guitarist who has played in bands since she was ten years old is now branching out as a solo artist. Her lyrics tell stories of political oppression and hope, the love and struggles through the eyes of a young queer Tibetan Greek. Her band ZoKi Band (@ZokiBand) has opened for Antigone Rising, June Millington, NRBQ and more.

Jessica Beck

Instagram: @jessica_bikes and @jessica_aart

Phil Ragland

Phil Ragland, aka Nick Bluenotes, is an independent artist originally from Springfield, now living in Greenfield. He has been creating music for 20 years with a well rounded body of work consisting of real life content from the street and working class point of view. open.spotify.com/artist/0SWJDX2P3pVOxngafp5UXv

s g collins

Friend-of-LAVA s g collins is a writer and director from Boston who now lives in Amsterdam. www.postwar.nl/