Eugene has a long history of house shows. In the 90s, punk music could be heard playing loudly in neighborhood homes, with basement shows for bands like Black Flag gathering crowds of hundreds. The local music scene has thrived over the years with a major boom happening around 2019. However, many artists and fans have noticed a change since the pandemic. As reported in the Eugene Weekly, some in the music community say recent police crackdowns are hurting local artists, house venues and local music as a whole. Data requested by EW shows that police response to “loud noise” and “loud party” complaints where many house shows are held is higher now than pre-pandemic levels. Krista Kroiss is a senior at the University of Oregon and wrote about this for Eugene Weekly. She joins us to share what artists are saying and how communities are reacting to law enforcement.
The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We end today with Eugene’s music scene. The college town’s history of house shows goes back decades, but a new cover story in Eugene Weekly found that artists and fans have noticed a change since the pandemic. Eugene police are responding to more noise complaints. Krista Kroiss is a senior at the University of Oregon, the Arts and Culture Editor of The Daily Emerald, and a part of Eugene’s DIY music scene herself. She wrote the article for Eugene Weekly and she joins me now. It’s good to have you on the show.
Krista Kroiss: Hi, it’s really good to be here.
Miller: Can you describe how house shows work for people who haven’t participated in them before?
Kroiss: House shows are a bit unique. It’s a great chance for newer bands, especially from college aged people and college students who found other musicians that they click with and they want to make a band. It’s an easy way to get involved in music and to be able to start building an audience. It kind of works, if you’re a new band, you reach out to another more established band. It’s a lot of communication via social media to make a show scheduled somewhere at a house.
Miller: And are these houses where people live or is their main life as venues?
Kroiss: No. A lot of the people that host house shows at their home, it’s where they live. A lot of them are college students, not necessarily all of them, but they live there. But a lot of the people I talk to, a lot of people in the scene, people that host house shows, it’s something that they’re passionate about. They want to host a thing, a music event for the music community in their home.
Miller: You approach this as a reporter, but I understand that you’re also a musician. What have these shows meant to you as either a performer or a member of an audience?
Kroiss: I’ve been a musician my whole life. I’m a rock musician specifically and these concerts, they’re what I enjoy doing. It’s a community I enjoy being a part of and it’s therapeutic for me. It’s something that I enjoy doing with my friends. I enjoy sharing music that makes me feel happy or sad or whatever emotions I’m feeling. I enjoy sharing that with the broader community.
Miller: So let’s turn to enforcement and the focus of your recent article. What’s been happening recently?
Kroiss: So before the pandemic there was a pretty big boom in the Eugene music scene. There were sources that told me that there were shows multiple times a weekend, on many weekends, and then when the pandemic shutdown happened, the music scene was one of those things that got shut down with it. Once it started coming back and shows started to happen again, the people in the scene have expressed views that the shows have been shut down more frequently than they were before the pandemic. There were houses that regularly hosted shows and had even dedicated venue names, before the pandemic happened. And as of the last couple of years, it’s been more like a one off house will host a show, because houses are afraid of hosting more than that at risk of being fined and shut down.
Miller: What are the potential repercussions for people who run these shows or live in these homes when police come?
Kroiss: Well, there’s a few different things. I think one of the risks that they run is being fined. That has been a bigger thing of late. There was one venue that I was at that the booker who used to work and live at this house venue told me that as a collective total, the house received $2100 in fines, because of a show they hosted. And so that is an obvious financial repercussion and that has been the biggest consequence of late. And also people hosting events in general is a risk to the house and the people as well. You risk your relationship with your neighbors, you risk people not being respectful to your house, which most of the scene condemns. In fact, I think all of the scene condemns that, but it happens sometimes, someone is disrespectful to the house. And so that is another risk you run when you host a house show like this.
Miller: You did note though, that it’s not uncommon for people who are hosting house shows to reach out to many of their neighbors, to basically get their blessing or at least alert them to what’s happening. What kinds of outreach have you heard about?
Kroiss: Absolutely, it is more common than not for house venues to reach out to their neighbors beforehand. And to, at the very least, notify them that this show is happening between this hour and this hour on this specific day. And [with] one of my sources that I talked to [who] used to run a house venue that got shut down in 2021, there was a point where she got up to 200 or 300 notes that she passed out within a five block radius of her house with her personal phone number as a primary contact. If there [was] a complaint, she could be a point of contact before calling the police and hopefully trying to negotiate that. That is a very common thing in the house show, the house people that run the house venue will leave notes like that for their neighbors or talk to their neighbors to try and be a point of contact to negotiate any issues before the police get involved.
Miller: You did a public records request to find out about noise complaints brought to the Eugene Police Department over the last few years. What did you find?
Kroiss: Yes, so I spoke with a police captain for the EPD and one of the things we discussed is the reasons that people call in noise complaints. Some of the reasons that people would call in complaints and have called in complaints relate to lots of noise, leading through your house, lots of parking on the street being taken up for the show and things like that, that [result in] having lots of people in the neighborhood. And one thing that we discussed, lots of people that call in with these noise complaints are fed up with repeated events. As he described, they become more sensitized to the noise and to the event when it happens more often.
Miller: Can neighbors or police tell the difference between a house show and just a house party?
Kroiss: The EPD lumps them together. And honestly most of the people that call in these noise complaints probably do not discern between a party and a house concert either. The reason that EPD does not discern between the two, as I was told, has to do with the fact that they see house venues as having the same effects as a house party: lots of noise, lots of people, money being charged at the door and things like that. Some of the people in the music scene disagree with that view. They believe that lumping house parties and house concerts together kind of takes away from the professionalism that goes into running a house venue, having to organize the event and have strict schedule times. Everyone that goes to the concert, that goes to the house show, is there for the music as opposed to being there to get drunk with your friends, kind of thing.
Miller: Are there other stand alone, say, all ages venues that could provide the kind of entree into the music scene if the crackdown on house shows continues?
Kroiss: Not particularly. There are places in Eugene that do host all ages shows such as WOW Hall and Slice Pizza, but for WOW Hall especially, it is that that is a bigger venue. It is not as easy to get into when you’re a brand new band, when you don’t have an audience yet. And Slice Pizza, in Eugene, is in the Whitaker area, which is a bit farther from campus, which makes it hard for audience members to get there. If you’re a college student, a lot of college students don’t have cars and that is about a 15 to 20 minute drive from campus. Another thing, in talking with the scene [and] doing my research, a lot of them are bars. And bars are great if you’re over 21, but it is difficult to play a bar if you’re under 2. Even more, you can’t get into the show as an audience member if you’re not 21. So that makes it hard, that kind of blocks out the underage part of the scene. And it is more difficult to get involved in the scene if you don’t already have an audience, which is where house shows start to come in.
Miller: So what would be lost if the house show culture were squeezed out or shrunken?
Kroiss: I was talking to one of my sources [who] described to me a common belief in the house show community that it is a community. It’s like what a sport is to an athlete or what academics is to a scholar. It is the thing that people do and so the people that are involved with the house show scene are very passionate about it. Often they actually host fundraisers too, for charity events. And it is a community that wants to support the community and wants to support other local musicians that are trying to get their star. Or even for people that don’t want to be professional musicians, it is a place to be able to be a musician and enjoy performing and sharing your music and getting to explore different genres among people that are essentially your peers.
Miller: Krista, thanks very much.
Kroiss: Thank you.
Miller: Krista Kroiss is a senior at the University of Oregon, where she is the editor for Arts and Culture at the Daily Emerald and a part of Eugene’s DIY music scene. She also wrote this new cover article for Eugene Weekly about the recent crackdown over the last year or two to house shows in the city.
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