Western Massachusetts has many lovely little cities. We’re lucky enough to call the Paradise City our hometown, but we love to explore the other offerings nearby when such opportunities present themselves. We had an eventful Friday of exploration (and otherwise… more on that later!) a week ago, traveling from Hadley (the Asparagus Capital of the World) down to The Paper City (Holyoke) for a photoshoot in an old mill, aptly-named Paper City Studios. We’ll keep you waiting a little longer before we unveil the fruits of that project, but early results are encouraging. The next stop on our little _____ City tour brought us up to the Silk City (Florence) for a show at an also aptly-named bar, the Silk City Taproom, just hours later.

Unfortunately, our little tour ended there, because Brattleboro, VT, doesn’t enjoy a similarly-formatted nickname, despite being a lovely little mill town itself. It is, however, the only Brattleboro in the US, and probably the only one in the world.  Wow.  We are honored that they asked us to play in their town.  To be honest, it’s probably because we’re the only band named Darlingside in the world.*  We played the Hooker-Dunham Theater with the lovely Anais Mitchell, who put on a truly outstanding performance for a sold out crowd.

Live performances aside, Darlingside had an exciting end-of-week, as many of you know already!  On Friday, we were humbled and honored to be chosen (with a little help from our fans) as the winners of the final round of Sennheiser’s Hear.I.Am campaign, which gives us an additional high-profile showcase down in Austin, TX during the South By Southwest festival, a bunch of sweet Sennheiser gear, and plenty of other great opportunities and prizes.  We’ve said it before, but we really mean it, so I’ll say it again: we couldn’t have done it without the support of all of our amazing fans, without whom we could not do what we do.  So again, thank you!

In still other news, we’re featured on this month’s OurStage Editor’s Picks with lots of other outstanding artists.  We’re grateful to our friends over at OurStage, who have been consistently supportive of our efforts.  If you don’t already have Good Man, you can grab a download from their page, and pass it along to your friends to enjoy!

These past few days have been full of writing and some personal traveling as we prepare for next week’s departure on our SXSW tour.  We’re currently hanging out at Clem’s Cafe in Rutland, VT, getting a little bit of work done after an outstanding show in nearby Proctor last night with our good friend Caitlin Canty.  We’re heading up to The Monkey House in Winooski, VT (just a few blocks from downtown Burlington!) for a headlining show tonight, and then back home for final tour preparations this weekend.   Wish us luck… when next you read a Week In Review, we’ll be somewhere between Toronto and Ann Arbor, MI… we hope to see you out on the road!

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*Unfortunately, there is another Darlingside, though.  Darlingside, ON is (to our limited knowledge) the only town named Darlingside in the world, and used to be the only Darlingside, before we came along.  We are not named for or affiliated with the town.

On the Website This Week!

Monday Mixtape Don takes an alternative look at the band’s identity.
Tuesday Comic We introduce Phthalo, our friend, our bird-of-few-vowels.
Wednesday Open Mic We’ll make the introduction: Reader, Anais Mitchell, Anais Mitchell, reader.
Thursday Song Lab A live-in-studio take of The Catbird Seat, courtesy of our friends at WRUV, UVM’s college radio station.