Rogovoy Report 11/22/19

The highlights of the cultural weekend in our region include comedy, performance art, folk, blues … plus a whole lot more.

Boston-bred comedian Josh Gondelman brings his Emmy- and Peabody Award-winning standup comedy to Club B10 at MASS MoCA in North Adams on Saturday at 8 p.m. Josh Gondelman is a writer and producer for Desus & Mero on Showtime. He’s also the author of the essay collection “Nice Try: Stories of Best Intentions and Mixed Results.” In 2016, he made his late-night standup debut on Conan, and he has also performed on Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Late Late Show with James Corden. Josh’s writing has also appeared in publications including McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, New York Magazine, and The New Yorker. His Twitter feed was named the year’s best by Paste Magazine in 2015.

Artists and performers Alice Bag and Johanna Went, who are both featured in the exhibition "Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A.," are at the Williams College Museum of Art today at 3 p.m. Bag and Went will reflect on their relationship to the networks of artists in the exhibition, the evolution of the punk scene in Los Angeles, and the changing role and representation of female performers. Alice Bag was the lead singer and co-founder of The Bags, one of the first bands to form during the initial wave of punk in Los Angeles. She went on to perform in other groundbreaking bands, including Castration Squad, Cholita, and Las Tres.

Johanna Went is a Los Angeles-based performance artist. She has been collaborating with musicians since the early days of punk performance at clubs in the 1980s. The program will include a walk through the exhibition, followed by a moderated discussion.

Arlo Guthrie returns to the Mahaiwe in Great Barrington, Mass. on Saturday at 8 p.m. on the homestretch of his Alice’s Restaurant Back By Popular Demand Tour, which coincides with the 50th anniversary of the feature film “Alice’s Restaurant.” For this concert, Arlo will be joined by longtime local collaborators and members of his former backup band, Shenandoah, including Terry “A La Berry” Hall on drums, Steve Ide on guitar and vocals, and Carol Ide on vocals and percussion. Arlo’s daughter, singer-songwriter Sarah Lee Guthrie, will warm up the crowd for her dad.

Gangspil brings its traditional Danish folk sounds to Dewey Hall in Sheffield, Mass. tonight at 7:30. This lively trio performs old dance tunes and songs from every corner of their Scandinavian home country, from rural islands to metropolitan Copenhagen, including a few of their own compositions. You can expect to hear everything from wild polkas and jigs to lyrical waltzes, fiery reels, and happy hopsas, plus exotic dance tunes from the famous Island of Fanø, and long forgotten songs from all over the country of Denmark. The group will also be at the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy, NY next Tuesday, November 26 at 7 p.m.

And blues singer, saxophonist and bandleader Vanessa Collier brings her funky contemporary blues and R&B to the Stationery Factory in Dalton, Mass. on Saturday at 7 p.m.