Support the Station and Your Business!

Do you love VFR? Do you have a business or service that you’d like our listeners to learn about?

Please take a moment and consider underwriting with Valley Free Radio. Our underwriting package is an excellent value and enables your business or service to reach a wide listening area.

As your community radio station, we offer wonderful live and recorded music: jazz, reggae, classical, blue grass, tango, indie, rock, punk and folk music, along with highly regarded, insightful and informative local and syndicated programming from Pacifica and other reputable sources.

As an underwriter you can join businesses like River Valley Co-op, Cotton Tree Service, and Collective Copies in supporting us, while communicating your message to the thousands of people in our community.

To arrange underwriting with Valley Free Radio visit our underwriting page to learn about our different packages, or email us at underwriting@valleyfreeradio.org.

Thank you for your support of Northampton’s own community radio station, Valley Free Radio!

The David S. Dow Recording Studio is Back In Business!

Through donations from our listeners and NCTV, a grant from the Northampton Arts Council, and a generous donation from the estate of listener David S. Dow, Valley Free Radio is proud to reopen the studio for local artists.

The David S. Dow Community Studio at Valley Free Radio offers basic recording services to local talent free of charge.

We can help produce:

+ Acoustic Acts

+ Electronic-based Acts

+ Acapella Groups

+ Podcasters

+ Storytellers

+ Vocalists with Pre-recorded Music

+ Voiceover Actors

Go to www.valleyfreeradio.org/recording to find out more!

Studio Improvements Are Coming!!

We are upgrading the David Dow Recording Studio like nobody’s business! We are looking to improve sound quality, have better equipment for everyone to use, and more!

Thanks to everyone for your patience while we bring you a better space for our community musicians to use.

 

Studio paint

Get Your Irish Up!!

 

This Saturday from 11am to 3pm Valley Free Radio continues its tradition of a block of Irish music hosted by Brian Grady!

Enjoy the parade listening to the some of the best Irish Music around!

Listen on 103.3fm in the valley or worldwide at valleyfreeradio.org!!

Ugly Sweater Karaoke Party!

Wednesday, December 23rd at 9:30pm, Fitzwilly’s Restaurant with support from Valley Free Radio will be putting on our second annual Ugly Sweater Karaoke Party!! Come pick a song, grab the mic, and sing your heart out before your long holiday weekend! Remember to wear your best (or worst!!!) holiday sweater!

Food and drinks will be available at the bar, so come hungry and be ready for some awesome karaoke run by Cloud 9 Productions. We love bringing all of our listeners together, and what could be better than music, drink, food, and wearing silly fashion.

Don’t forget to go to the Facebook event page and tell us that you’re coming! Fitzwilly’s is located at 23 Main St in Northampton.

We can’t wait to see everyone there!!

Pledge Drive November 8-14 with Matching Grant of up to $10,000!

We have an amazing opportunity this November to really boost support for the station. Due to a generous matching grant of up to $10,000 from the estate of David S. Dow, we have an opportunity to raise the entire year’s operating budget for the station with this one pledge drive! If you’ve ever wanted to donate to Valley Free Radio, next week is the time to do so! David Dow was a wonderful person and brother to local programmer Michael Dow of Civil Politics. Sadly, he recently passed away from stomach cancer. But we have a great opportunity to honor his legacy and his enthusiasm for local radio by making this the best pledge drive ever! Remember, this is a matching grant, so any money that is not matched will *not* be given to the station. If you value a station that brings you local programming, with both local talk shows and unique music shows as well as nationally syndicated shows like Democracy Now, this pledge drive is the time to show that support. Every dollar will be important. AND, if we raise $10,000 before the week ends, we’ll end the pledge drive early!

VFR Building Production Room and Recording Studio

Our Studio is nearly complete! Visit www.Valleyfreeradio.com/recording for more details

 

Free Recording Studio Time for Musicians

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We have a small production studio at the station that has been used by programmers when the main studio isn’t available. People use the space for recording and editing their shows for air, and to record station IDs, public service announcements, and underwriting announcements. The setup in the production studio is currently very simple and not suitable for all of our needs. Our goal is to upgrade this studio so that it has all the capabilities of our live studio.

At the same time, as a supporter of local and independent music, we decided to open up our upgraded space for artists and musicians to record their work at no cost. There are a lot of talented musicians out there, sitting at home recording their music on their laptops and phones. We want to help them get their music heard by providing a free space for them to record and experiment.

What features will the studio have? Our goal is to create a quality space with as many of the capabilities and features of a full scale recording studio as possible. We will offer quality microphones, recording equipment, and software necessary to create a quality recording. The more we raise, the more we will be able to offer. With your help, we can provide different microphones, better editing software, and improve the acoustics of the room.

Who can use the studio? Anyone! We want to give musicians the space they need to succeed. Artists will need to be sponsored by a current VFR programmer. That programmer will have to accompany anyone using the space. The space will need to be reserved in advance of any recording time.

Why don’t you charge to use the space? It is hard to make a living as a musician, and part of VFR’s mission is to support local and independent arts and culture. VFR will gladly accept donations from anyone wanting to record, but we want the space to be open and available for the community regardless of their financial situation.

What has already been done? VFR has already begun working on the project. We already own some of the equipment we need to upgrade the space. We have secured grants and donations of cash, expertise, volunteer labor, and equipment from local businesses and nonprofits totaling over $2000. The studio has already been rewired by a professional recording engineer to prepare for upgraded equipment and better use of our existing equipment.

What’s next? We need a little more help to finish this project! We need to buy some new microphones, monitors, sound dampening and sound proofing materials, and audio recording software.

Goal Levels: When we raise six hundred dollars, we will be able to buy all the recording equipment we need, such as microphones and monitors.

If we raise eight hundred dollars, we will be able to buy the materials to build sound panels to diffuse sound and improve the acoustics of the room. For another hundred dollars, we will put down wall to wall carpeting to further dampen sound.

Once we raise a thousand dollars, we will be able to rebuild the storage and table space, further improving the acoustics of the room and making the work area more efficient.

If this project is fully funded, we will be able to sound proof the room, allowing musicians to use the room any time, even while there is a live show in the next room.

What will you do if you raise more than your goal? Great question, thanks for asking! Any extra money raised will go towards improving the capabilities of the studio with some extra microphones, cables, or a new mixing board. Currently the production studio is not capable of going live on air. We could use some of the funds to give us this capability, making the production studio a backup for our live studio in case of technical issues or to ease show transitions. We could also set up a special fund for future repairs and improvements.

Are there any prizes or premiums for my donation? Yes! We have got some small gifts as a thank you for helping us. If you are a business owner, we can offer on air mentions to promote your business and thank you for your support.

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Valley Free Radio Pledge Drive April 12-18

It’s the time of year when we at VFR ask for support from you, friends and listeners of our station. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization run entirely by volunteers and we depend 100% on support from the community to keep the lights on and keep our signal going out!

For our listeners in the Pioneer Valley and beyond, VFR strives to be a source of news, insights, commentary and music that you won’t hear anywhere else. If you value the unique, community-created programs on our station, and the high quality syndicated programs like Democracy Now and The David Pakman show that we broadcast, please consider supporting our work financially.

Click here to donate online, mail your donations to Valley Free Radio, 140 Pine St, Florence MA 01062, or listen to VFR all this week for the chance to support your favorite shows and pick up some really cool thank you gifts! All donations are tax deductible. No donation is too small, and please consider becoming a sustaining donor with a recurring monthly gift of as little as $2 a month.

This year marks Valley Free Radio’s 10th year on the air, and we would like to sincerely thank our listeners and our community for keeping us broadcasting with your generous support.