Opinion: This coming spring weather will make Eugene a breeding ground for house shows, new bands and music. Eugene’s music history combined with COVID-19’s impact on the scene has made the past few years full of creativity.
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Spring is bound to wake up all the house show venues by bringing blooming flowers, warm weather and late sunsets. With the new temperatures and sunshine, bands are expected to pop up alongside them, boosting the spring wave of Eugene’s music scene. Recognized bands around the University of Oregon campus are starting to come out of winter with new material, such as Mommy with its debut album “Villard Street.”
As just another person lost in a house show crowd, it seems like everywhere I go there’s a new group in Eugene. It almost feels like I stumble upon new songs and bands every week, especially in the last month as the cold and rain have eased up. With spring term coming up, there will be lots more happening in the music scene on campus and around Eugene.
Even though I, along with many other UO students, have been in Eugene for around four years, the music scene goes back so much further than I ever knew. Since the 1850s, Eugene has hosted band after band and has thrived as a hot spot in the northwest for people to come and make music together.
“I always kind of heard stories and legends of the Eugene music scene,” Kayla Krueger, a guitarist in the band GrrlBand, said. Krueger, originally from Portland, heard from former co-workers about which bands to look out for in Eugene once she moved here. The recommendations included the bands Novacane and Laundry.
After the COVID-19 pandemic shut live music down, artists came together in Eugene again and house show attendees got drawn back to their beloved shows. The scene, especially large and popular due to UO’s presence in the city, often feels like a collective of friends and familiar faces. According to Krueger, the music scene and community are “one giant group of people that all have similar interests.”
“When you put people like that together in the same environment consistently, something’s gonna happen and people are gonna start breaking off and doing their own projects,” she said.
The current wave of Eugene music takes on a more dreamy sound compared to music in Portland. The unique styles in Eugene come from the various bands and their approaches to producing and performing.
“It feels like the past four years have been building up to where we are now as a band, but also where all of our friends are now as bands, and what new bands are emerging,” Krueger said.
With spring weather, house shows can be held outside, and new bands will start emerging. Krueger says that the warmer, sunnier weather will encourage people to host more shows and give people more reason to celebrate and enjoy music together.
Although the pandemic was a large setback for people everywhere to make or listen to music outside their own homes, the Eugene scene was able to bounce back with its own unique styles and friendships among musicians.
“Eugene has a really strong music legacy, the hippie culture is really strong here,” Krueger said. “I think that weird hippie counterculture is definitely still alive and well in Eugene. [It] creates the perfect foundation for music to succeed and for music to be born.”