Rock city

The assignment: Pick and profile a hip, rocking city or area in New England, one that falls outside the realm of the Globe's usual coverage. We think for a moment. We ponder.

And pretty quickly we find ourselves in the heart of the Pioneer Valley in western Massachusetts, specifically downtown Northampton. It's a Saturday, and the first day in April that feels like spring. The locals and tourists are out in full force during the day, and the people parade continues deep into the night as the clubs overflow with good music and good vibes. It's a small town with big-city rock shows.

Some snapshots from that night:

Folksinger Kris Delmhorst is finishing up her early set at the Iron Horse with a sweet song about the limits of pleasure and the onset of excess. "Nothing wrong with a little whiskey," she coos, drolly. "Too much whiskey, (mess) you up." She has similar notions about candy and honey. "Lately," she sings, to close the song, "I'm just honeyed out." She ends her set with a gospel song. Delmhorst gets an ovation from the attentive, packed house. Following her set, a couple of dozen people, mostly women, come up to talk, hug, and have their CDs autographed.

Not far away, downstairs at Pearl Street, a big two-floor club near the center of town, three young women in the New York-by-way-of-San Francisco band BoySkout are churning through a terse, angular rock 'n' roll set - snarling, but melodious, with all three musicians taking vocal turns. It's part of a multiband package tour called Queercore Blitz. "I threw my love away," bemoans bassist Hannah Reiff in one song, "Small Town." In another, the jazzy "Addendum to That Winter," drummer Caroline Mills sings, "Before we get to drinkin', making love till 2, I just want for you to know that I never wrote a song about you." Members cite influences such as Syd Barrett, Joy Division, early Cure, and the Kinks.

Upstairs at the same club, a New York quintet, the Bravery, is playing a stirring set of swirling, semidark and bracing rock reminiscent of Echo & the Bunnymen or early U2. They're virtual unknowns here, but they have the dance floor activated. Their music carries a palpable passion. Not only that, band members report later that while onstage, they were tossed the first set of undergarments in five months of performing. More seriously, Endicott says, "What's really cool is it seems like there's a scene here that's its own thing. I live in New York, but people don't dance in New York."

After the Bravery, two DJs take the stage and something called "Burn Down the Disco" kicks in. More dancing follows, to vintage punk from the Ramones, Blondie, Tom Tom Club, and others. Fans flow freely from the upstairs to down and back again. Hedonism rules as the midnight hour passes.

Back at the Iron Horse, a cafe and music club near the Smith College campus, a new audience is listening to an exceptional, relatively unknown singer-guitarist, Tobin Sprout. (It's a smaller crowd than Delmhorst's but no less enthusiastic.) Sprout, who used to play in Guided by Voices, has a band that plays gorgeous, smart pop-rock with a mid-'60s sensibility.

And at the 11s, a box of a club with a small stage and bar, Old Money, a local band that includes two members of the now-defunct Unband, plays a set of snotty hard rock, which includes a cover of the Cars' "Good Times Roll." It's a release party for a CD that, alas, and not uncommonly in the rock world, hasn't quite been released yet.

This is 413 country

"I think that Northampton is an extremely cool place to be and to do music," says John Sanders, who books bands for the Iron Horse. "I don't think for a town its size anything else comes close," he says. "We have things that other, bigger cities don't. The number of galleries and artists and bookstores in the community is amazing for its size, and the music is part of the arts community.

"We had a renaissance in the early '80s. The five colleges [Smith College, the University of Massachusetts, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Amherst colleges] bring in an intelligent audience, and that in turn leads to intelligent programming in music, and people like to go out and have fun.

"It's different in the summer, because the 50,000 that go to the five colleges are gone, but we draw from Hartford, Brattleboro, and the Berkshires, too, so the summer scene still happens. It's just a little more laid back, with something not happening every night at all venues."

When school is in session, Northampton boasts a lineup of music not far removed from the kinds of bands that play Boston and Cambridge. Many of the groups make Northampton their stop between gigs in New York and Boston and will play Northampton for fewer bucks for two reasons: They're working on what might normally be a down night, and they love the place.

So does Neal Robinson, manager and bartender at the Iron Horse for the past seven years. "The best thing about it is I can have a different experience every night," he says. "I have the opportunity to fall in love with things I never would have even seen, like Josh Rouse and Pete Yorn."

The rock star next door

Northampton's most famous rock couple, guitarist Thurston Moore and bassist, Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, moved up from Manhattan with their daughter into a Georgian-style house in 1998. They were happy to escape New York's high rents, get some space and quality schooling for their daughter. They thought they'd quietly slip into the community, but shortly after they arrived, a local paper wrote a piece headlined: "Avant-garde duo buys house."

Nevertheless, Gordon says, it's laid-back. "We're able to run around without being hovered over all the time like in the city. We'd always liked it up here when we played.

"Thurston is probably more visible than I am; he's able to go out to more gigs, and he does more improv stuff and plays more. He and Byron Coley have a space, a kind of record-bookstore by appointment called Ecstatic Yod, where they hold poetry readings and small gigs."

Sonic Youth, about to release the DVD "Corporate Ghost," just played a benefit gig at Smith for Community Resources for People with Autism, with J. Mascis, a longtime member of the area music community, and Sebadoh, whose members used to live in these parts.

"It's an amazing community," says Hannah Reiff, bassist-singer for the New York-based BoySkout. "The audience is really supportive and receptive." She was born nearby, and her parents, who attended the BoySkout gig, still live in the area. Adds guitarist Leslie Sattenfield, "I love the fact that you can walk anywhere and see a lot of interesting people. It's a small town, but not without intellectual stimuli."

BoySkout, which, curiously, broke up not long after its gig, was part of Queercore Blitz, mostly lesbian (and one gay male) groups that put on an evening's worth of music. "We always wanted to play Northampton but never had," says Tif, drummer for Triple Creme. "I love the venues, and I always love to play in a college town. There's a little more energy."

Kris Delmhorst, a longtime member of the Boston-Cambridge folk scene, moved out here primarily for cost of living reasons. A fan comes up to her and gushes to her, "I'm so glad you're local now!" "Yeah, me too," says Delmhorst. Later, she says, "I wanted to be somewhere where I was out of Boston enough, but I'm not a suburbs type. I wanted to be somewhere that had some scene for me to touch base with when I'm here. And it's closer to New York, a little more central. I'm also really interested in what's going on out here. It's like Cambridge on a little scale."

Lloyd Cole, the Scottish singer-guitarist-songwriter and former leader of the Commotions, moved from New York to the Northampton area in 1999 for the schools and more space. "It was certainly nothing to do with the music scene," he says. "If I'd known about the music scene. I probably wouldn't have come here, which is not to demean the music scene. I was trying to go to a place that didn't have a music scene."

Otherwise, he says, "It would be like taking coal to Newcastle. There isn't a single bar you can go into that doesn't have live music. I don't want to be working when I go out for a drink. I can't ignore music. I can't talk through it. I know what it's like to hear people talking when you play. In New York, I liked to go to old men's bars where they don't have music."

Cole, who has just launched a tour that takes him to the Paradise in Boston May 14 and 15, plays the Iron Horse and has played an unadvertised gig at the Basement, a tiny, 50-capacity basement club in Northampton, to work out the kinks in songs. And there's another advantage, says Cole: "I was able to make an office and studio (in Easthampton) for what I would pay for a closet in New York. That enables us to work at a pace more conducive to making good work, being able to make a record and not be in a rush." Cole has just released the CD "Music in a Foreign Language."

Bringing live music back

Eric Suher is to Northampton as Patrick Lyons is to Boston. Suher's rock clubs, many busy seven nights a week, rule the scene. He's got the Iron Horse, Pearl Street (with separate gigs upstairs and down), Calvin (with accompanying Bar 19) and the newly opened Basement. He also owns a seasonal venue, PinesTheatre in Look Park. Suher employs about 140 people.

One music veteran in Northampton estimates that Suher (pronounced Shure) controls 90 percent of the market. Suher, 38, says that's probably true, up to a point: "It's 90 percent of what's visible. Other live music goes on."

The word "monopoly" is bandied about, Suher says. "We hear this all the time," he says. "It's hard to respond to it as I'm not sure what anyone else would have wanted. We brought live music back to Northampton. The Iron Horse was closed in 1995, and I was the last guy to step in - I said if no one is going to save it, I decided to. Pearl Street had closed. We opened it in 1998. The Calvin Theatre had been shuttered and had no live entertainment for years."

Suher worked for the band NRBQ for 15 years, several as their manager. Last week, he rounded up the 20 or so musicians who have been in the band throughout the years and put on two gigs at Calvin and one private show at the Iron Horse. The business he first developed during the 'Q years, the Holyoke-based ES Sports, was a t-shirt company formed to make shirts for the group. It expanded and made the money Suher needed to invest in the rock venues. He also credits "a really good partner and the banks. I've plowed everything back in."

Suher just opened up the no-cover charge music room the Basement, below the Table 9 restaurant. Wednesday and Friday nights are for jazz; Celtic music is on Thursday. "It helps develop a good local scene," Suher says.

He may walk a couple of miles a night walking between venues, he says, "'cause I want to catch the show." He may work the box office for awhile. "I love music, and I love the day-to-day business," he says. "I physically work as much as I can - behind the bar, selling tickets, wherever I'm needed. It's really a 24/7 job." It's not unusual for Suher to pull all-nighters, and he says he's fine on five hours of sleep.

"This city has always been a great spot for live music, and it's become more of a destination spot. Artists are settling in because they want the feel of a city atmosphere and a small town."

Austin without armadillos

Sanders and his other booking agent, Brendan Leith, have been luring more national talent over the past year. Suher says "the rooms are filling up and headlined by people you hadn't heard of a year ago."

Don Rooke, who manages the band Fancy Trash and books the 11s, sees the competition between his and Suher's venues as minimal. The 250-capacity 11s never does all-ages shows and focuses more on local talent. Rooke, who has been part of the Northampton scene for 15 years, says the scene continuously resuscitates itself. One good band breaks up; another forms or comes to town.

Now, he says, is "a good time" for bands, and there are about a hundred in Northampton by his estimate. "But if people ask if we're the next Seattle, well, we don't really care. We're not trying to be the next Seattle. This is a town of 30,000; we might fancy ourselves as a mini-Austin. What other town of 30,000 has about 15 venues to play in?"

The lure of the Valley

Among the other music-business people in the area: Cheri Knight, Erin McKeown, Ray Mason, Martin Sexton, Greg "Skeggy" Kendall and his wife, Connie White (artistic director at the Coolidge Theatre and the Provincetown International Film Festival and film programmer for the Pleasant Street Theatre), and Chris Collingwood from Fountains of Wayne.

Bob Lawton, former agent for Sonic Youth and Sleater-Kinney among many others, runs a two-screen art cinema called the Pleasant Street Theatre. Jim Olson's Signature Sounds record label - backer of Josh Ritter, Lori McKenna, and Peter Mulvey - is based there. There's Spirit House Records, co-owned by Paul McNamara and Danny Bernini, who have got Ware River Club, King Radio, Lonesome Brothers and Andrew Jones. "It's songwriter heavy," says Bernini. "It's a hotbed of people that push the envelope."

Fort Apache, the studio formerly in Cambridge run by Gary Smith, has relocated to Bellows Falls, Vt., 45 minutes away. The publicity company, Public Enemy, which represents Ani DiFranco among others, is owned by Emily Lichter, who moved from New York two and a half years ago.

Ben Sterling, who also plays in the Mobius Band, says, "Scrounging around for rent and the financial aspect is easier here, especially if you're a touring band and don't have a normal day job income.

"Northampton has something about it that keeps people here in the same way a city can lure people in and not let them go; the Valley has that."

Lawton says, "The benefits are so much greater for a lot of musicians, artists, and writers, non-9-to-5ers. A lot work in my theater." The downside is that too many New Yorkers, like himself, are moving in and driving housing prices up.

"It's very welcoming, it feels less cynical," Kendall says. "People get excited about things. It reminds you of Harvard Square in 1977: very green, very organic, diverse in fun way."