Thumping drums and electrifying guitars pierce the night air in the neighborhoods of Eugene.
The songs of local artists draw crowds down alleyways toward a front door or back gate. With IDs and vaccine cards in hand, concert-goers electronically pay the $5-$10 fee and step into the bright lights of the makeshift venue. Thus begins the beloved tradition of a house show. Until 10 p.m., a stranger’s backyard becomes a place for dancing, moshing and energetic conversations.
“It’s hard to even fathom how cool the Eugene house show scene seems as a college freshman,” Cal Fenner, bassist for the band Laundry, says. “It just seems straight out of ‘80s New York. It feels like the most undeniably hip, creative place you could possibly hang out.”
House shows, as they are colloquially called, are a DIY style of concerts in which traditionally local bands perform for an audience of 200-500 people in a backyard, basement or living room instead of a professional music hall. In Eugene, a majority of those involved in producing house shows double as college students. Due to the small-scale nature of these events, there is a symbiotic relationship that forms between the musicians, attendees and hosts.
“I really enjoy how it’s a more intimate and smaller concert experience but more casual to go with your friends and meet new people,” says Anna Crump, a junior at the University of Oregon who frequently attends house shows. “Everyone’s really open-minded there.”
For Crump, house shows are a staple of every weekend. The ritualistic screenshotting of event posters and DMing accounts for an address is one of the easiest and most affordable ways to experience live music in a smaller city.
“I realized how much more accessible it is here in Eugene,” says Kellie, a house show organizer and host from Portland.
The ease in experience for attendees is not shared by those who host. A night of dancing and socializing for the people filling the backyard is a night of constant motion for those on duty. Capacity, property damage, theft, personal safety and complaints from neighbors are all looming threats that need to be handled with precision and care. While this may feel like a nightmare scenario for some, for the people who host house shows, it’s a dream come true.
The Alder House – a venue that started hosting shows this past summer – is run by the seven people who live there. This year, they are one of the few locations to host multiple shows and have built up a following under the Instagram handle @thealderhouse. Due to safety concerns, all of the residents of the Alder House will be referred to only by their first names.
Kellie and Sigi fell in love with the house show scene their freshman year. Experiencing live music with a community they loved quickly became their favorite weekend activity. When they moved off-campus, Sigi and Kellie knew they wanted to host house shows the second they saw their backyard. With their five roommates on board, the plan was to transform the space outside their house into a fully-functioning concert venue.
The Alder House’s first show took place on Sept. 24, 2021, and hosted local bands Common Koi, Broth and The Deans. After reaching out to the artists over the summer and settling on a date, Sigi and Kellie’s freshman year pipe dream was set into motion.
“We had no idea how it would go. It was perfect. It went so well, and everyone was so excited,” Kellie says. Despite it being their first show, “it really came together. It was one of our best shows yet.”
As the venue grew and word spread, however, a new set of issues began to arise. For the Alder House’s second show, fears of an empty backyard were quickly replaced with the increasing danger of overcrowding. As the night continued and floods of people followed the promise of live music from the night’s lineup – Candy Picnic, Pillowspiders and Laundry – the household scrambled.
“It was the first show we had experienced that rush of people,” Sigi says. “I didn’t think we were ever going to reach that level with that many people wanting to come to our place. I had never seen that many people in such an angry mood.”
Through multiple miscommunications between the Alder House residents, security and those waiting at the door to get in, the tone of the crowd quickly became hostile once doors were closed.
“We were all spread out across our house and the yard, trying to ping-pong around trying to communicate,” Sigi says. As crowds grew in the alleyway between their house and Sundance, a small grocery store that borders the alley, Kellie struggled to give a direct answer to the people demanding entrance.
“I should have just been straight up and said no,” Kellie says. “But it’s hard because of course I want people to be able to come and listen to the music. I wished that I was over there listening to the music too, but I was telling people not to break our fence.”
Frustrations about the limited capacity caused some members of the crowd to try to take matters into their own hands.
“There were people coming from all corners of our backyard,” Lina, a resident of the Alder House who was working security that night, says. Even in their living room, she could hear the front door jiggling as people desperately looked for another way in.
Gabe, a resident of the Alder House who was running his hot dog stand near the edge of the yard, remembers seeing people enter through the front gate, which was broken and out of use at the time. Despite his efforts to redirect stragglers through the main entrance, Gabe says his requests were often met with blank stares. Immediately after telling them to leave, infiltrators would run into the backyard and try to blend into the crowd.
“They did a killer job,” Fenner, who was performing that night, says. “They had to kick people out for sneaking in with no vax card, and we were way over capacity out there. It was brutal. It was like war out there for them.”
In the aftermath of the night, a section of their neighbor’s fence had been torn down, their own fence had been damaged and one of their friends guarding the door sustained a minor facial injury from a wannabe-attendee flailing their arm in exasperation.
Neither Sigi nor Kellie believe anyone’s intentions were malicious, but Kellie says the disrespect was disheartening. The household spent the following day digging holes, pouring cement and building a new fence from scratch. Despite everything, they also remember the kind-hearted response that came from the community. Multiple people offered their assistance in making repairs or offered their condolences for what happened.
In response, the household got to work finding new solutions to the capacity problem. What they arrived on: selling free EventBrite tickets the week before the show so attendees could reserve their spot in the backyard beforehand. While they reminisce on the days when house shows were first come, first serve and a spur of the moment decision for attendees, Kellie says this was needed — safety, above all else, has continued to be the Alder House’s main concern.
But after the same show, they received an Instagram message saying someone went to their show while exhibiting symptoms of COVID-19. Although the individual had not yet tested positive, health officials had asked them to quarantine. The morning after the show, the results came back positive.
The Alder House posted a statement on social media and urged people who went to the show to get tested as soon as possible, even though they had to show proof of vaccination at the door. After the scare, they decided they could never be too careful and started taking people’s temperatures at the door on top of the vaccine card and ID requirements.
“As the band who gets to play at the house, we’re so grateful when someone is willing to let a million people into their house and just let us do our thing,” Fenner says. “That's why it’s so important to have a place we trust, like the Alder House, because, while we’re onstage, we have no idea what the fuck is going on out there.”
The music scene in Eugene has been vibrant for years, but Crump says she’s noticed bigger crowds post-quarantine. Yet the number of venues has been stagnant, if not lower than in previous years, because fewer people are willing to host.
Fenner has been an active member of Eugene’s house show scene since coming to the UO in 2017. His freshman year, venues like the Lorax Manner and the Campbell Club – two co-ops bordering the UO campus – dominated the scene, though neither have returned to hosting shows after the start of the pandemic. Both Fenner and Crump say they have noticed a decrease in venues since March of 2020.
In the past, Fenner remembers two to three house shows taking place every weekend. Now, he says, the community is lucky to have even one. The lack of shows combined with the growing crowds mean limiting attendance is a relatively new concern venues are facing. While it makes the show every weekend “pretty crazy and fun,” as Fenner says, the responsibility falls on the venues’ shoulders.
Fenner’s own band, Laundry, has to deal with the ramifications of these changes. Over the past five years they have been together, Laundry has slowly become one of the most popular and sought-after bands performing in Eugene, with over 4,100 followers on Instagram. The residents of the Alder House speculate the capacity concerns from the show were partially due to the hype that had been drummed up around the headlining act.
“We have to close doors at a certain point, otherwise the house is going to die,” Fenner says. “We used to advertise our shows for weeks in advance. Now it’s almost to the point where we don’t want to post about a show because it’s just going to be too big regardless.”
Fenner used to live in the Alder House in 2018 and hosted a “glorious four shows” in the same backyard. He eventually stopped due to complaints from both neighbors and police. House shows are naturally ephemeral, he says.
Nearly every aspect of house shows are impermanent, and yet the marks left behind remained scarred into the venues of the past. In the Alder House’s backyard, a deep divot in the grass holds the memories of an energetic mosh pit on a rainy day years prior.
“That was from a show we had. That was a mud pit for years,” Fenner says. “It never healed. We had our kitchen open to use the bathroom, and the next morning, the floor was just brown.”
The energy of a mosh pit can be even worse for indoor venues, and Fenner reflects on a show that his bandmate hosted in 2018. With hundreds of people jumping up and down, a splintering crack sound filled the room. After the music stopped, there was “about a four inch gap between the floor and the wall.” Fenner says the rest of the set had to be cancelled because of concerns for the structural integrity of the house, but the story is still passed around years later.
Despite the hardships endured, venues like the Alder House continue to host shows because they love to do it.
Lina, another Alder House resident, says house shows were never something she was interested in prior. Now, she says she much prefers hosting over attending shows. In her own backyard, she’s much more comfortable walking around and talking to people. She says it’s nice to be able to go inside the house when she’s not working.
“It’s a lot more work, and you don't get to be in the mosh pit,” Sigi says. “It starts, and then you literally race to the finish line, and then it’s done. It’s like a whirlwind. I love it. I have always wanted to be a part of something like this.” She joked with Kellie that, after the first show, they were both ready to change their majors to event planning.
Though few venues remain, Eugene’s house show scene can’t function without those willing to take on the workload for the community. Kellie says, when she’s hosting, the show is no longer for her; it’s for the guests. Despite comparing the experience of hosting to a “full-time job for the night,” Fenner looks back fondly on the days when his band was able to throw shows in the same backyard.
“I’d be hard-pressed to have a better couple years than living at Alder House, being in Laundry and hosting shows,” Fenner says. “It was really special, and it really felt like you were in the middle of something happening –– and we kind of were.”
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