When local bar Samurai Duck closed this past August, it left metalheads and punk rockers homeless and drifting. The bar, in downtown Eugene at 8th and Oak Streets, had been around since the early 1990s and had played host to an impressive score of metal and punk bands, DJs and culture enthusiasts throughout its lifespan. Although Samurai Duck wasn’t the most popular bar in Eugene, it left a legacy as the neighborhood bar for the local metal and punk cultures.
The Samurai Duck, owned and run by a kind Japanese woman named Misako, was initially established as a little sushi bar. For some unknown reason, it eventually evolved into a full-fledged metal bar, with heavy emphasis on the bar and little emphasis on the sushi. The Duck’s interior was covered with elaborate Japanese dragons and masks that had been painted by local tattoo artist Dr. Julien.
Kitte Knight, who occasionally DJed at the Duck under the name DJ KaatSkratch, originally started going to the bar because she met someone who frequently went there. Since Eugene isn’t big and the other local music venues don’t provide a constant stream of metal music, she says, Samurai Duck had a devoted following of metal-heads and punk-rockers.
“It was definitely the neighborhood bar for the local headbangers,” she says.
Teren Baker and Jameson and Taylor Cowman of the band Pirate Radio, and Jeff – last name unknown – from Scrapyard Swag, members of a local bands’ association known as the Pyrate Punx, all remember playing at Samurai Duck.
Pirate Radio lead singer John Cain.
“You’ll find that a lot of bands remember Samurai Duck,” Baker says. “Like, ‘Oh, Eugene – Samurai Duck!’”
The Pyrate Punx say the Duck was incredibly supportive of local bands and never denied them a spot on the stage. The bands in turn played for fun and drink tickets rather than money. Pirate Radio started playing gigs at the Duck when they were still in high school, noting that the Duck was the only bar that allowed underage musicians to play there.
Although Samurai Duck was known for being a metal and punk bar, it also accepted other musical genres. They even occasionally hosted hip-hop nights.
“They’d let anybody play there,” Jeff says. “Anybody.”
Abe Nobody, local tattoo artist and owner of Epic Tattoo and Epic Spaces on Van Buren Street, is a music aficionado and a Duck regular.
“[Samurai Duck] was a birth center for people’s ideas,” he says. “You could come in here and any kind of genre of music pretty much would be at least given an opportunity to either crash and burn, or soar.”
Samurai Duck was also the only place that offered the dirty, heavy subgenres of punk and metal that most other venues wouldn’t touch.
“Samurai Duck was really cool in that it was the one place where I could really, really play the grungy, heavy stuff,” Knight says.
Although grungy metal music full of hoarse-throated screaming and a bar full of wild, tattooed, and generally “scary” looking people would undoubtedly seem intimidating, Samurai Duck’s crowd of regulars was actually a pretty welcoming scene. Although there were “lots of leather jackets, and long hair and shaved hair,” as Knight, whose own hair is a shocking bright pink, describes, and “kind of menacing-looking people, once you get to know them are all just a bunch of teddy bears.”
After talking with metal-heads and punk-rockers about the Duck and its surrounding culture, it’s clear that the Eugene metal and punk cultures both heavily subscribe to the ideas of hospitality, family and home. And Samurai Duck was definitely their home.
“I’ve slept there before,” Jeff admits.
Samurai Duck wasn’t only a home — it was an epicenter of hospitality. If a band came to play at the Duck, it was taken care of: it was given a place to stay if its members didn’t already have a hotel booked or were given directions if they did.
“You care about the bands that come through, all the bands that would come through the Duck,” Jeff adds. “You know, they remember the place, they remember the bartenders, they remember meeting the owner because she fed them or gave them some shots at the end of the night.”
If a band was lucky enough, the shots would come from the special Habu sake bottle – complete with rattlesnake – kept behind the bar.
“You knew you were one of the family when you got a shot of the Habu Sake,” Knight says.
According to the Pyrate Punx, this hospitality is crucial.
“Especially in the metal world,” Jeff says. “It’s the only thing that’s going to keep people together.”
“You form these relationships with these people really quickly, but it’s easy to be like ‘I totally trust you, lock up when you leave,’” Nobody agrees.
However, as the axiom goes, good things hardly ever last. Samurai Duck was forced to close due to financial reasons. Knight attributes the majority of the problem to the city’s non-smoking ordinance. In an attempt to build – and rebuild – an outdoor smoking patio that fit within the city’s regulations, the Duck drained its finances.
Pirate Radio's Taylor Cowman rocks out at band practice.
In tribute to Samurai Duck, the Pyrate Punx, Nobody and Knight share anecdotes and memories of what they all considered a home. Baker recalls Pirate Radio’s first show at the Duck, of meeting Stephanie, who took care of the band bookings, and how nice she was.
“She watched us grow musically, which is cool,” he says. “I think a lot of people there did.”
Jeff remembers the night the pipes burst in the bar and how people stayed regardless, knee-deep in water, because they were having such a great time. Nobody recalls that it was also a place where musicians could open for and play with bands that inspired them.
“Also the only place I know where you could get deep-fried pizza,” Baker adds.
Knight remembers it as being dank and dirty with peeling paint and faded posters.
“It was a grungy, grimy place full of scary-looking people,” she says, “but it was a second home at the same time. A lot of people lived in there as their living room.”
So what now? Places like the WOW Hall, John Henry’s and the Black Forest Bar and Grill still host occasional metal and punk shows. But what is it that makes them so much less welcoming than Samurai Duck? What’s missing?
“The love,” Jeff says. “The feeling of home.”
Even musically, the other venues are lacking.
“I don’t think any other venue has been like that since,” Knight says. “I mean, not that I mind dance music, but it was really nice to have some place to go and just really get ugly.”
In an effort to recapture that sense of love, of home, and of an inclusive music scene, Nobody established Epic Spaces, a makeshift music venue that arose from the idea of “let’s do a show occasionally” and exploded into “Let’s Do Some Shows!”
Nobody also hopes to recreate that community of people that hung around the Duck — people who weren’t cliquey and rallied behind the music and the bands.
“The potential is through the roof here,” he says. “If the community wants to come in and support this place, it will grow even more than it’s grown in the last year.”
But he’s not looking for just the lost metalheads and punk rockers. Instead, he’s seeking a totally inclusive community, one that’s always trying to capture that feeling of connection with the music, a connection that they previously got from the Duck.
The most notable aspect of Epic Spaces is that there is no stage. “I want people to be on the same level as the artists,” Nobody says, “and then it’s intimate and they connect even more.”
“This is the only other place you feel that, though,” Jeff says about Epic Spaces, “like that feeling of welcoming and love, and not just like ‘we’re trying to get any band in here that’ll just make us money.’”
Epic Spaces is definitely not about the money, but about the music and the art. Although, enough money to pay a few bills, pay out the bands at the end of a show, invest in the community and maybe expand a little would be appreciated, Nobody notes.
Epic Spaces’ attempts to recapture the Duck’s sense of family isn’t in any way trying to serve as the Duck’s replacement.
“I’m never going to replace that club,” Nobody says, “and that’s not what I’m trying to do. It’s not what I’m ever going to do.”
Did the Who ever play there?