Written By: Codi Farmer
There’s nothing quite like getting home on a Friday night with muddy shoes, a light ringing in your ears, and a catchy chorus stuck in your head that you heard that kid in your 10 AM class sing just a few hours before. This is the closing of another successful night as an attendee at a house show here in Eugene. It’s something I know and love dearly, but what often goes overlooked is everything that goes into making all that magic happen – the orchestration of a backyard gig here in the Dirty Eug.
It often starts on Instagram DM where local bands will often reach out to each other with a proposal to do a show together. These messages often consist of some pretty brief information – a weekend, a rough lineup of who they want on the bill, and if you’re lucky, a venue location that has already agreed to take on the liability of a couple hundred inebriated college students stomping in their yard. Once the show is in the books, it’s time to get to work.
It shouldn’t come as any surprise that being in a band truly is a labor of love. In my own experience, it takes many hours of rehearsals a week, some songwriting sessions, some rough voice memo recordings, and a whole lot of work with a metronome. My band usually will practice about three times a week leading up to a show, though this does vary depending on the people and every band’s own unique process. For us, we pick out a few covers of songs we all like and get to work on fine-tuning some original pieces that we hope will make a crowd want to dance. As we get closer to the day of the show, we plan out logistics, like who’s bringing what gear, who’s running doors, what are we wearing, and how can we make sure we don’t get the cops called on this show.
Fast-forward and it’s show day. We arrive a few hours before doors to check out the space, set up gear, and do a rough sound check (sometimes). We, young student musicians, have a silly tendency to loosely embody the ideals of classic rockstars. Many of us spend hours leading up to the performance smoking cigarettes, drinking cheap beer, and fretting over who will be in the crowd that night. We chat with the hosts and make sure we all understand the house rules. These rules are just a description of where to find the bathroom, a double check on gear and the lineup, and some discussion about limiting the people who come inside the house who aren’t in a band performing that evening.
Before waltzing up to the porch with our instruments, and being greeted by cheers from our peers– we always do a pre-show pep talk. I can’t discuss the specifics of what we say to one another, but I will say afterward we always walk up feeling ready to play
The experience of playing is something that’s hard to summarize in just a few quick lines, but it’s exhilarating. Looking out in the crowd to see if that person you hoped would come to see you really showed up. Having your friends, close and extended, cheering for you before, during, and after nearly everything that happens. Seeing the people you’ve worked so hard with for weeks and months on something you care deeply about and getting to watch them get lost in their love for the sound and for their instruments. All of this is so special and keeps me eternally grateful for every moment I get on our makeshift stages.
Following all of the mushy “I’m so in love with life right now” goodness that comes with performing then comes the end of a show, which often happens far too soon; We frantically try and unplug all of our instruments and get them off the stage before a wave of people come to congratulate us. We talk for as long as we can until the hosts want us all gone (who can blame them when their yard just got trashed as an offering to the live music gods), pack up our gear in the nearest car with a sober driver, and move on into the night. Sometimes we’re back home to our beloved beds; sometimes to a bar or a party, or maybe that person we wanted to see did show up. Oh, house shows, I do love you so.
Always remember to thank your hosts and follow @Grrlband on Instagram for information about our next show!