Street Eaters are accustomed to unconventional concert spaces.
The Berkeley, California, punk band once played a show in a medieval catacomb filled with centuries-old human bones beneath a Parisian apartment complex. So although Street Eaters’ concert in Eugene on August 4 is at Moon Rock Records, rather than a typical music venue, they aren’t worried about it.
“We’ve played abandoned factories in Hungary,” Street Eaters drummer and vocalist Megan March tells Eugene Weekly. “We’ve played in the middle of a redwood forest in Santa Cruz.”
Record stores like Moon Rock are great places for punk shows, she says, because they’re “already a hub for the community,” and, she says, since they’re all ages, “Parents can feel comfortable bringing their kids.”
Street Eaters come to Eugene behind a few new singles, “Cuts,” “The Point” and “Expensive Dog: Total Control,” available now on streaming platforms. March says the new songs will end up on an album one day, but that’s still in the planning stages.
The band’s Pacific Northwest tour is their first since the pandemic. It’s also their first run of dates as a trio, with Joan De Toro on guitar.
March and bassist John No, from Oakland punk band Fleshies, formed Street Eaters in 2008. The band plays a punk rock style they call “true wave,” a self-coined term capturing their classic ’70s punk energy, similar to Wipers and X — hard-charging anthems with March’s raw yet tuneful singing voice, alongside aggressive, minimal guitar playing.
As a teenager in the ’90s, March says her “cool” older sister introduced her to queercore, a punk subgenre with bands like Babes in Toyland and 7 Year Bitch. March met No while doing sound at 924 Gilman Street, a Berkeley all-ages music venue.
March’s first instruments were bass and guitar. “I was always in love with the drums, though,” she says. So much so, in middle school, she snuck into the band room and made such a racket her music teacher told her they needed to find a time for her to play and not bother other people.
But March was hooked, and she went on to study music at Mills College in Oakland. While there, she was mentored by now-retired Mills music professor and acclaimed experimental composer Fred Frith. Early Street Eaters’ music followed Frith’s influence as a duo, playing Sonic Youth-style avant-garde noise rock.
March says Mills taught her to listen and be present with your band. “John and I have toured all over the world multiple times and played in front of all different types of audiences.” At Mills, she learned to be “in the room and feel the energy that you’re creating, making something bigger than yourself,” March says.
One of the tours mentioned was with Screaming Females, whose lead singer, Marissa Paternoster, suggested they might consider adding a third member, March says.
Now, De Toro is like family. “John and I still do most of the songwriting,” March says, but De Toro adds another element. “We feed off of each other,” she says. “There’s a lot of mind reading involved.” Those in the Pacific Northwest familiar with Street Eaters as a duo, she adds, are “holding their breath, looking forward to seeing three of us on stage.”
Street Eaters and Portland’s arty dance-punk band Love in Hell perform 8 pm Sunday, August 4, at Moon Rock Records, 443 West 11th Avenue; $6, all-ages.