The small, boxy house on North Jackson Street appears quiet from the outside. But on the inside, people mill around from room to room as they wait for Toyboat Toyboat Toyboat, a band from Portland, to finish setting up in the garage.
Toyboat Toyboat Toyboat is one of many bands who filter through Joe Guerra and Melissa Finley’s home that doubles as a concert venue called The Pizza Pit. The location is named not for the food, but after their cat, Pizza.
Despite the absence of pizza, The Pizza Pit attracts punk and metal bands from around the region and has developed a steady fan base in Moscow.
“This is our second time playing here,” said band member Travis Henderson. “Last time we played in the basement, [the audience] wouldn’t let us out. We had to do three encores.”
Though bands sometimes play in the garage, the basement is the room most often used for concerts. The venue is smaller than most would expect for a crowd of approximately 30 to 120 people. The basement has cracked walls, a low hanging ceiling and a drum set pinched in the corner.
Guerra said the band organizes themselves around the drum set and only a small portion of the audience manages to squeeze into the basement. The rest of the attendees mill freely about the house or smoke cigarettes outside.
“Not many people are comfortable with having that many strangers in their house,” Guerra said.
Finley agreed.
“I can be a little uncomfortable and have a music scene, or not have it at all,” she said.
Guerra shrugged. “We feel ethically compelled to do it.”
David Betts | Blot
The missing piece
When Guerra moved to Moscow and enrolled at the University of Idaho, he knew something was missing.
“When I was 14 or 15, I was really into live music. I was checking out punk and metal bands just around that time and I was really a part of the subculture there,” Guerra said. “And then I moved here, and I was like … none of that was there. It was really kind of shocking.”
Moscow, Guerra said, does not lack an arts movement or music scene. But, for Guerra, that aggressive subculture he had embedded himself in as a teenager was absent.
So, he chose to do something about it.
Like Guerra, Finley has a solid comprehension and passion for music. She and Guerra formed a band with a few other musicians and began organizing shows with local groups.
“It’s nice to have a local band so it draws people who know them, and then they’ll come and see the other bands,” Finley said.
After their band completed a 16-day tour last December, Wes Malvini, a Boise club owner, asked Guerra if he’d like to be the Moscow contact for emerging punk and metal bands.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, please!'” Guerra said.
In no time, bands were filtering in and out of their new home near Rosauers, where Guerra and Finley feed the band members dinner, provided their basement or garage as a concert venue and let them sleep there after the show.
The couple
Guerra and Finley met in 2011.
“It’s really an embarrassing story,” said Finley, dissolving into laughter.
Guerra arrived at his younger brother’s fraternity for a foam party. His objective: meet girls.
“My brother would introduce me to all these girls, but he’d introduce them as so-and-so’s girlfriend,” Guerra said. “I was like, ‘man, why are you wasting my time.'”
Guerra said he began to feel separated from the group when he spotted a girl with dreadlocks, standing in a corner.
“I thought, ‘She’s either a hippie, or she’s a cross punk from Portland or something. She’s going to be down with something I like, maybe,'” Guerra said.
“And then we got married a year later,” Finley said.
Guerra is 22, Finley 23. Any trace of the hippie Guerra saw in Finley has been replaced by tight black clothes, blunt bangs, dark eye makeup and a nose piercing.
Finley said she grew up in a small town near Corvallis, Oregon, where her father was a pastor, her mother a nurse. Guerra was the one who got her interested in metal and punk.
On top of hosting late-night punk and metal shows, Guerra is in his last leg at UI as an architecture student. Finley works as a laboratory technician in a plant pathology lab, where she researches microscopic roundworms called cyst nematodes. She plans on graduate school in the fall to start working on her master’s degree in plant pathology.
They also host a radio show and collect content for a zine, best described as a self-published magazine, called Ratbait.
Guerra and Finley have reached out to their friends and contacts for photos and articles regarding the aggressive music platform, and share the editing, graphic design and printing responsibilities. They distribute the magazine for free, but rely on advertisers to help cover some of the production fees.
“We are always looking for new advertisers,” Guerra said. “The demand is outstripping supplies.”
Soon, The Pizza Pit may be facing a similar issue. As whispers about the venue gain popularity among bands and locals alike, the basement can overflow with fans, Guerra said.
“It’s just been growing bigger and bigger,” Guerra said. ” … I’m surprised whenever I see our address on lists. My dream is that young kids come here, some high school kids come here, and they see all of this going on. They say, ‘This is so cool,’ and it inspires them. We’re at the front of a long movement of people who encourage behavior, and events.”