Name: Christa Joy and The Honeybees at The Parlor Room
Start: 2024-12-05T19:30:00-05:00
Location: 32 Masonic St, Northampton, MA, United States, Massachusetts 01060

Christa Joy and The Honeybees
at The Parlor Room
Thursday, December 5th
SHOW: 7:30pm / DOORS: 7:00pm
ADV TIX:
$20 GA / $18 MEMBERS
Americana with a classic country flair, Christa Joy and the Honeybees are a local favorite here in the valley. The band includes Lisa Marie Ellingsen (lead guitar), Tim Bowles (pedal steel), Jason Smith (drums) and Tom LeBeau (bass). The songwriter’s fourth full length collection was released in August 2024 at CitySpace in Easthampton, MA. The self-titled project, Christa Joy and the Honeybees, paints a versatile picture of the group’s talents—ranging from kitschy humorous gems like “God Gave Me Two Babies” and “Omens,” to emotional ballads like “Time and Luck” and the sparser indie flavor of “Again and Again.”
Joy is known for her strong sense of melody, resonant storytelling, and charming sincerity. She has played at many notable New England venues, including the Parlor Room, the Iron Horse and Club Passim. She has opened for some of her heroines, including Lucy Wainwright Roche, Meg Hutchinson, The Sweetback Sisters, Loudon Wainwright III, and Antje Duvekot. Perhaps more importantly, she is a Mom of three and a Forest Kindergarten Teacher in Western Massachusetts. You can follow her more closely on Substack and IG as Momsongwriter.
Originally from rural Massachusetts, Christa grew up in a teacher preacher truck-driving kind of family. Joy spent the earliest years of her songwriting telling stories of her rural upbringing, the illness and death of her mother, and the brokenhearted years that followed this loss. Impermanence, separation, and the fragility of human life were themes that figured prominently in her early collections of songs, Ready or Not (2012) and Daughter of Your Lost Art (2014). Then she became a Mom in 2015. That new little being demanded her presence and Joy turned her attention back toward this most precious world. She saw it all again for the first time and experienced it all through the soft constant awareness of her first child. In becoming a parent, Joy rediscovered her own inner magic. She began to lighten up, to laugh again, and took notes for the whole ride. These are the moments that brought together her third collection of songs, Get On, Heart! (2019) This album was highlighted by No Depression's "Crowdfunding Campaigns of the Week," and later released to a sold out Parlor Room in Northampton, MA. Most notably played on Signature Sounds Jim Olsen's "The Back Porch" radio show, Jim Neill's Jukebox, Texas Highway Radio Show, Blue Moon Kentucky, Keepin' It True Country, Nine Volt Heart, Vizaural Music, Country Routes News, and others.