On Sunday, Sept. 13 at 3:30 p.m. at the Hotchkiss Library of Sharon, 10 Upper Main St., author Annik LaFarge will explore the layers of history hidden within Frederic Church’s Olana. From Ice Age geology and Indigenous history to the Hudson River School and Church’s vision for his “greatest work of art,” LaFarge will trace the forces that shaped the celebrated Hudson Valley landscape. Using historic and contemporary photographs and maps, she will discuss her book, “Composing Olana,” and the artist, explorer and visionary behind Olana. Register at hotchkisslibraryofsharon.org
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A dinosaur is coming to Cornwall
D.H. Callahan
Nov 10, 2026
Lou Barlow performing with Dinosaur Jr.
Photo by Roberta Osmers of illuminated scene
On Saturday, Nov. 14, Cornwall Town Hall will be the coolest place in the county. Lou Barlow, of the rock bands Dinosaur Jr., the Folk Implosion and Sebadoh, will be joined by Attawalpa’s Luis Felber and hauntingly raw singer-songwriter Amelia Jackie as they transform the official administrative building into a rockin’ music venue.
Lou Barlow rarely gets the credit he deserves. As bassist for 1980s pre-grunge indie sensation Dinosaur Jr., he influenced a whole generation of bass players. Barlow started his music career by playing guitar in a hardcore punk band called Deep Wound out of Central Massachusetts.
When Barlow and the band’s drummer, J Mascis, left to form their own band, Dinosaur, Mascis took over on guitar and asked Barlow to join him on bass. As this was long before widespread public access to the internet, there was no easy way to find out that there was already a band called Dinosaur. Like the Warlocks before them, who eventually changed their name to the Grateful Dead, Dinosaur needed its own identity. Their solution? Simply add a Jr.
Barlow took his hard-playing guitar method and transferred it to the electric bass. By playing chords and using a guitar pick instead of the standard bare fingers, he gave his bass a richer, fuller sound, allowing Mascis to play with his guitar and litany of pedals. Along with their drummer, Murph, the band was rising to uncharted levels of popularity.
This was all happening in the late 1980s, when MTV was starting to take over the airwaves and commanded an outsized influence on the music industry as a whole. Eventually, the pressures of the road and the band’s creative struggles led to a famously fractured relationship between Mascis and Barlow. In 1989, Barlow was kicked out of Dinosaur Jr.
Because Mascis didn’t like sharing the band’s creative direction, Barlow had already been writing his own material. On a four-track cassette recorder, he cobbled together songs in bedrooms and living rooms while still touring with Dinosaur Jr. Many of those songs were about the tensions between Barlow and Mascis and the way he had been treated in the later days of his tenure with the band.
Barlow teamed up with Northampton-based musicians Eric Gaffney and Jason Loewenstein to form Sebadoh. Together with bands like Pavement and Guided by Voices, Sebadoh was instrumental in pioneering the lo-fi sound that would eventually be inextricable from shoegaze and other forms of indie rock in the late 1990s and early 2000s. While Sebadoh’s albums rarely garnered the kind of popularity they deserved upon release, music critics and record collectors would eventually look back and lavish praise on the band for setting trends that the industry couldn’t see as they were happening.
Popular success finally came for Barlow with another project, the Folk Imposition. Formed with multi-instrumentalist John Davis, the band was heavily featured on the soundtrack to Harmony Korine and Larry Clark’s independent blockbuster “Kids.” The movie became a generational touchstone, due in no small part to its use of music.
Barlow, Mascis and Murph seemed to use the 1990s as a way to grow up and work out their creative demons. In 2005, Dinosaur Jr. reunited with a lot less baggage and a greater willingness to work together as a band. Since the reunion, the band has released several new albums and achieved egendary status, with a new generation of music fans obsessing over the ahead-of-its-time albums released 30 to 40 years ago.
At Cornwall Town Hall, Barlow will perform solo. The show offers a series of ticket tiers, from general admission to a post-show wine-and-cheese soirée.
Tickets are available at dice.fm.
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Jaimoe keeps the Allman Brother’s sound alive at Infinity Hall
D.H. Callahan
Nov 10, 2026
Jaimoe performs with Friends of the Brothers.
Derek McCabe
The Allman Brothers Band has a wild history that involves more than its share of death, drugs, booze and blues. The band played through several iterations from 1969 until 2014. For most of that time, it was powered by the rhythm and texture of its two drummers, Butch Trucks and the enigmatic Jaimoe. On Thursday, Nov. 12, Jaimoe will get back behind the drums to bring the music of the Allman Brothers to life with Friends of the Brothers at Norfolk’s Infinity Hall.
Jaimoe, born in 1944 as John Lee Johnson and also performed under the name Jai Johanny Johanson, was already an accomplished drummer before he met guitarist Duane Allman in 1967. Trained as a soul and jazz drummer, he started playing R&B at a young age and eventually made his way to Otis Redding’s band before Redding died in a plane crash at age 26. Jaimoe had an effortless texture to his drumming that set him apart from most drummers of the day, who were frequently enlisted to hold the beat rather than contribute to a bands’ musicality.
Though the Grateful Dead had already been playing with two drummers for a couple of years, it was still a highly unusual arrangement. When Duane Allman put his band together, he was looking for something similarly unconventional. The harmonizing guitars that the Allman Brothers Band would eventually be known for demanded another layer of sound to really set it apart from traditional blues. To give it that undefined X factor, the band paired the straight-ahead rock and blues drumming of Butch Trucks with Jaimoe’s more rhythmically intricate jazz and R&B style. The result was an unmitigated success. Jaimoe provided that intangible texture for that classic Allman Brothers Band sound.
While his contribution was integral to the music, his presence was not always welcome at Southern venues. As a Black man playing in a band with a bunch of long-haired white boys, the group was forced to sign “race waivers” stating that it had a black man in the band and that the white members would take responsibility for his actions. When told Jaimoe wouldn’t be permitted onstage in Florida, the band famously responded, “if he doesn’t play, we ain’t gonna play.” It’s partly due to the racist attitudes in the south that Gregg Allman rejected the term “Southern rock” for the more appropriate “progressive blues.”
Throughout the Allman Brothers Band’s 45-year history, Jaimoe played with the band for extended periods but was absent for most of the 1980s. He rejoined the band in 1989 and remained through its final performance in 2014. That break in the 1980s gave him time to develop Jaimoe’s Jasssz Band, which takes a more R&B-influenced approach to the progressive blues sound of the Allman Brothers Band.
In 2017, Jaimoe’s Allman Brothers Band drummer, Butch Trucks, died. To commemorate Trucks’ life, friend, writer and musician Alan Paul, who wrote a best-selling book about the Allman Brothers Band, gathered a group of musicians with deep connections to the band for a tribute concert. These were musicians who’d played with original members of the band in their many side projects. Among them were Junior Mack from Jaimoe’s Jasssz Band; guitarist Andy Aledort, who played with Allman Brothers Band guitarist Dickey Betts for 12 years; and keyboardist Peter Levin, who had played with Gregg Allman’s solo band.
The shows were so successful that Paul knew he had to keep it going, and formed Friends of the Brothers. More than a tribute band, Paul sees the act as a way to preserve the music of the historic band. With a lineup of seasoned musicians steeped in the Allman Brothers tradition, they have mastered that progressive blues sound.
Paul had spent countless hours talking to and playing with Jaimoe before asking if he’d like to join the project. For the past two years, Jaimoe, now in his 80s, has been adding the signature texture that helped set the Allman Brothers Band apart from everyone else who simply played Southern rock.
For tickets, visit www.
infinityhall.com.
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Is it a concert or a play? “Yes, Darling.” It is.
D.H. Callahan
Nov 10, 2026
Ryan Montbleau and Hayley Jane bring “Yes, Darling” to the Berkshire Theatre Group’s Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield on Nov. 13.
Provided
On Friday, Nov. 13, a truly unique performance will hit the stage of the Berkshire Theatre Group’s Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. “Yes, Darling” is the musical culmination of a longtime collaboration between musicians Hayley Jane and Ryan Montbleau. What sets this performance apart from a traditional musical or a regular concert is that the writers of the songs are the actors and performers themselves.
Though “Yes, Darling” is their first official album and subsequent show together, Jane and Montbleau share a number of compatible traits that work together marvelously in this project.
First, both musicians are leaders of their own bands with their own names on the marquee. The Hayley Jane Band out of Vermont feels like a jam band fronted by a Broadway performer. Live audiences dance along to her original tunes as Jane’s backing band noodles away behind her expressive vocals that seem ripped out of a smokey nightclub from the 1930s. The Ryan Montbleau Band leans a little more on the jazz-influenced side of the singer-songwriter spectrum. Like Jane, Montbleau develops intimate connections with his audience, matching and elevating the energy of any room he plays.
Next, both artists write very narrative songs, where the lyrics are just as important as the notes played. Their songs often feel like vehicles used to drive a story right into the hearts of their listeners.
Finally, both Montbleau and Jane are just about as funny as they are talented.
Mix it all together, and you’ve got a recipe for something toe-tappingly different that can make you think, make you laugh and have you swelling with emotion.
When the duo decided to dedicate some writing time together, they didn’t know just what the project would evolve into. As their songs took shape, each one seemed to deal with similar topics involving the often funny and frequently combative intricacies of romantic relationships. The songs feel both nostalgic and new as the “couple” explores the familiar nuances of vulnerability, infatuation and past baggage through a series of folk, jazz, pop and even ska sounds.
Montbleau reflected, “It was immediately apparent that we had two strong ‘sides of a relationship’ points of view going on. It naturally lent itself to writing these kind of timeless love songs with classic style but where we could also fight and drop f-bombs and bring modern situations into the songs.”
During the process, the pair focused on those notions and ended up with a series of songs that worked as a cohesive album. But Jane, who has a background in drama, had some bigger ideas. The pair connected with Chicago-based director Dorian Weinzimmer, who had a distinct vision of bringing the songs to life through a series of music videos. Once they saw how naturally it all lent itself to a visual format, they knew they had to keep going and bring the stories from the songs and videos to live audiences.
The “Yes, Darling” stage show is a real playhouse production. The musicians play versions of themselves, and their chemistry feels so natural that you’ll question whether or not they’re a real-life couple. They have set pieces, use props and costumes and explore the stage like it’s their own little world. Unlike a traditional play, however, the members of the band are right up there with them, as though they were playing a regular old-fashioned concert.
For tickets to “Yes, Darling” visit berkshiretheatregroup.org.
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Local favorites among Destination Dutchess tourism award finalists
Natalia Zukerman
Nov 10, 2026
Tenmile Distillery in Wassaic is a finalist for a Destination Dutchess 2026 Tourism Award of Distinction for its Revolutionary Whisky.
D.H. Callahn
Three familiar names from eastern Dutchess County are among the finalists for Destination Dutchess’ 2026 Tourism Awards of Distinction, recognizing the people, businesses and organizations that make the county a vibrant destination for visitors.
House of Stefas in Millbrook is a finalist for the Newcomer Award of Distinction, which celebrates tourism-related businesses that opened in 2025 and have already made an impression on visitors and residents alike.
Tenmile Distillery in Wassaic is nominated for the Storytelling Award of Distinction for its Revolutionary Whisky, recognizing creative efforts to bring Dutchess County’s history, heritage and culture to life.
And in Pine Plains, Marie Stewart of The Stissing Center for Arts and Culture is a finalist for the Hospitality Service Award of Distinction, honoring front-line staff members who go above and beyond to create exceptional experiences for visitors.
The three are among 21 finalists across seven categories in the 13th annual awards, which celebrate everything from cultural attractions and special events to hospitality and community collaboration.
Winners were scheduled to be announced Tuesday, Nov. 10, at a breakfast ceremony at the Henry A. Wallace Center at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Home in Hyde Park. Elaine Hayes, longtime executive director of Mount Gulian Historic Site in Beacon, will also receive the Mary Kay Vrba Spirit Award for her decades of leadership and dedication to preserving local history.
For more information and a complete list of finalists, visit destinationdutchess.com/awards.
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William C. Palmer
Lakeville Journal
Nov 10, 2026
EAST CANAAN — William C. Palmer, lovingly known as Bill, passed away suddenly on November 1, 2026, in his home in Louisa, Virginia, at the age of 61. Bill was born on March 6,1965 at Camp Zama military base in Kanagawa-Ken, Japan, where his father was stationed. Bill graduated from Oliver Wolcott Technical High School, practicing his love of trade in machine tool and die. Bill is survived by his loving wife of 39 years, Diane Palmer, who was his devoted partner in life. He leaves behind his daughter, Nicky, who was truly his pride and joy. He is also survived by his pups, Luna and Jasper, as well as his grand-pup, Mason, and grand-kitty, Chance. In addition, Bill is survived by his mother, Hazel Williams; his sister, Sherrie Palmer; his brothers, Doug Palmer, Larry Zani and his wife Ashley; Almo Zani and his wife Ginger; and several cherished nieces and nephews. He was predeceased by his father, Fred Palmer.
Bill’s sudden passing leaves a deep sadness in those he left behind. The memories he created and the love he gave will continue to live on in the hearts of those who knew and loved him. Bill’s life was one of tenderness, loyalty, authenticity and a quiet strength that defined him. Bill was a father not only to his beloved daughter, but also a father figure to many of his fellow firefighters, masonic brothers, coworkers and friends. He met the world with a gentle heart and a thoughtful manner, and in doing so, he created a legacy of love that will not be forgotten.
Bill lived in East Canaan, Connecticut for 35 years after marrying Diane, which is where they raised their daughter, Nicky. Because of his love of trains, Bill worked at Housatonic Railroad in Canaan for many years. Looking forward to retirement, Bill and Diane moved to Louisa, Virginia where he continued to work in railroad services with Amtrak. Bill and Diane were discussing retirement and had many dreams and plans about their life together in the future.
His life was all about service to the communities he lived in. There was never a question that he would follow in his father’s footsteps and join the Fire Service. He joined the Juniors in the Falls Village Volunteer Fire Department as a young teenager. Over the years, he rose through the ranks to First Lieutenant. Once he moved to East Canaan, he joined the Canaan Fire Department, contributing another 13 years of service. Altogether, he dedicated over 20 years to the fire service in various roles, including firefighter, fire police, and pump operator on the water tankers.
He was introduced to the Masons by his father-in-law, Paul Johnson. He joined Housatonic Lodge #61 in Canaan in 1998, where he became a Master Mason that same year. Later, he joined Montgomery Lodge #13 in Lakeville. He held several offices in both lodges, ultimately serving as Master of Montgomery Lodge #13 for 2 years. After moving from Connecticut to Louisa Virginia, he joined Day Lodge #58 and was still a member of this Lodge at the time of his passing. Bill was also a member of Scottish Rite, serving in the Valley of Norwich in Norwich Connecticut for many years. He became a 32nd degree Mason during this time.
Both Bill and Diane’s families have strong ties to Sharon Mountain, and they joined the Taghhannuck Grange #100 together in Ellsworth, Connecticut in 2019. He was happy to become a 5th Degree member the same year. He was involved with community service and held the office of Assistant Steward during this time with Grange. He remained a member of this Grange until his passing. Bill and Diane were also members of Eastern Star in Litchfield Connecticut where he held an office in Ephraim Kirby Chapter #75 for several years.
Bill had several hobbies which included blacksmithing, ham radio, trains, and gardening, which proved challenging in Virginia clay, but being as stubborn as he was, he eventually conquered it. He was involved with various fund-raising events for the communities he served in both Connecticut and Virginia. These included annual lobster sales, the Connecticut Wine Festival, Chicken Barbeque Sales, and Roast Beef Sandwich Sales for Canaan Railroad Days to name a few. His hands were rarely still, and his heart was always in his work, and it is in that same spirit of community that his family invites you to join them for his services.
Funeral services will be held on Sunday, November 22, 2026, at 11:00 AM at Newkirk-Palmer Funeral Home, 118 Main Street, Canaan, CT 06018. During the service, friends and family will be encouraged and invited to share their favorite memories, stories, and reflections. We welcome you to speak and help us celebrate the moments that made him so special to us all. A burial will immediately follow at Ellsworth Cemetery at 11 Cemetery Road, Sharon, CT 06069. Once services conclude, a Celebration of Life, including a meal, will be held at the Falls Village Fire Department 188 Route 7 South, Falls Village, CT 06031.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the following organizations. Falls Village Fire Department - 188 US-7 South Falls Village, CT 06031; Montgomery Lodge #13 - PO Box 222 Cornwall, CT 06753; Taghhannuck Grange #100 Care of: Deb Hanlon 12A Williams Road, Sharon, CT 06069.
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Raymond C. Sprague
Lakeville Journal
Nov 10, 2026
MILLERTON — Raymond C. Sprague Jr., 70, of Millerton, New York, passed away Nov. 1, 2026, under the loving care of East Mountain House in Lakeville, with his long time companion, Nila Flint by his side.
Born on July 6, 1956, in Sharon, Connecticut, Butch was the son of the late Raymond C. Sprague Sr. and Emma (Konlechner) Sprague of Falls Village.
He enjoyed cooking at home, fishing, hunting, games of chance and vacationing in Maine and Pennsylvania in recent years. He retired in 2013 from Taconic DDSO with 30 years of service as a cook.
Butch was the life of the party. He had a huge heart, the quickest wit, and the greatest sense of humor ever. If you were lucky enough to know him and he let you into his life, you truly had a gem!
He is survived by his longtime loving companion, Nila Flint, wife of many years Brenda L. Sprague, daughter Carrie S. Stenger of Colorado, sons Raymond C. Sprague III of Lakeville, Matthew J. Sprague of Colorado, grandchildren, Jacob Stenger and Ella Stenger of Colorado, siblings Barbara Sprague of Norfolk, Robert C. Sprague, Brian L. Sprague, Brenda E. Sprague of Canaan, and several nieces, nephews, and long time friends.
Calling hours were held Saturday, Nov. 7, from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. at The Kenny Funeral Home in Sharon and a service followed.
Memorial contributions may be made to the Visiting Nurse and Hospice of Litchfield County, 32 Union Street, Winsted, CT 06098 or to the East Mountain House, 14 Bostwick Street, Lakeville, CT 06039.
The Kenny Funeral Home has care of arrangements.
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