Remembering the Eagles Club, a 'bygone relic' where punk bands, the bingo board and a blue-collar bar all mixed
GREEN BAY – It wasn’t sexy by any stretch, but for a place that hosted a monthly all-you-can-eat liver fry for $7, the Eagles Club got the job done as an unlikely punk rock venue, too.
No-frills might be the kindest way to describe it.
There was no stage. Bands played on the floor by the bingo board and most times brought their own PA system. If there was a crowd, it could get hot in there. The smell of grease from the Friday fish fry had a way of hanging around through the night’s gig.
For all it lacked in amenities and all-around coolness, the Eagles Club, 1035 Vanderbraak St., made up for it as a welcoming space for punk and garage rock shows when the scene needed it most.
Concert Café and then renamed Rock & Roll High School had been Green Bay’s home for all-ages shows for six years on Main Street, but when it closed in 2001, the Eagles Club — a 1963 building known for regular pancake and porkie breakfasts and bingo games — helped fill the void as a place for both national touring acts and local bands to play and kids to come listen.
Its demolition earlier this month to make way for affordable housing was bittersweet for the musicians and promoters who did countless shows there through the years.
Ian Olvera played his first shows there in 2004 and 2005. Matty Day performed with the Foamers?, Pushing Clovers and others in the hall, but it was at a gig in 2007 with the Muddy Udders where he met his wife. Well-known local promoter Tom Smith had booked that show and would later officiate the couple’s wedding.
“Pour one out for a bygone relic. There were a lot of memories made in that place,” Day wrote in a June Facebook post about the Eagles Club being torn down. “Keep supporting live music however you can, and giving the next generation their chance.”
Jordan Davis remembered it as an important “satellite club” his Green Bay-based band the Mystery Girls could play until other clubs eventually opened up to them. Not all venues were welcoming to all types of music, but Davis said the Eagles Club accepted everyone. Because of its friendliness to the punk and indie community, the Mystery Girls booked many shows there and often brought in other bands as well.
“I always loved going there, and I actually really liked the bar that was connected to it, too,” said Davis, who also played there with his Milwaukee band Space Raft and on organ for Tim Schweiger and the Middle Men. “It was just a really low-key, working-class club, where you could play the jukebox and play some pool, and honestly, places like that in Green Bay just seem to be disappearing.”
It was $50 to rent the hall for rock shows, and the bar was cheap, too
Smith has been setting up shows in Green Bay since 1986, and while he wasn’t the only promoter who did shows at the Eagles Club, he did a bunch of them. He has Liz Van Pay to thank for getting the wheels turning.
As a regular patron at Concert Café, she was the one who first suggested the venue to Smith as a possible site after Rock & Roll High School closed. Her dad was a member of the Fraternal Order of Eagles, and if he pledged Smith and he became a member, Smith could rent the hall for half the regular price — a dirt cheap $50.
It allowed him to bring in such touring bands as The Groovie Ghoulies, The Fleshtones, The Figgs, The Cherry Valence and The Briefs.
“Being a member made a lot of those shows possible. Honestly, I don’t remember usually making any money on any of those shows,” Smith said. “What I liked best about the Eagles Club is we helped out a lot of local bands.”
He saw Holly Trasti go from The Vertebreakers to The Art Table to a solo artist and then on to Holly and the Non-Italians to her current band, Holly and the Nice Lions.
Longtime Green Bay band Beach Patrol was a fixture there, even playing the release party for its fifth album, “Levity,” at the building in 2019, the year after it became a barbecue joint called ZoZo’s Kitchen. Smith calls them "unsung heroes” of the joint for so often bringing the PA system.
“It was always kind of a struggle there, so the rent being so cheap and usually bands would just bring their own PA is how we were able to survive with shows with like 30 or 40 people,” Smith said.
“It was kind of just like any other house party show except it was in an official place with a flyer,” said Davis, who recalled the personality of the show as dependent on who was organizing it and who was bringing the PA.
Smith tipped off touring bands ahead of time that the venue was far from a palace. They came anyway. Though he couldn't recall the year, one of his favorite shows was a Saturday afternoon gig by the Memphis, Tennessee-based garage rock band Reigning Sound, who played that night in Door County for the wedding of one of the members of Hue Blanc’s Joyless Ones.
The Fleshtones landed there after the Main Stage bar abruptly closed and the show needed a new home.
The craziest show Smith ever booked there? He and fellow promoter Rich Winker brought in punk group The Meatmen for a bill that also included Green Bay's Boris the Sprinkler and Chicago’s Wicker Man.
They had more than 350 people in a room with a capacity for 75, and on top of that, there was a wedding going on in the Eagle Club’s larger hall next door. When the purse of a local TV anchor went missing, he remembers Meatmen's lead singer Tesco Vee making a plea to the crowd to give it back, but he can't recall if it was returned.
If the shows themselves weren’t moneymakers, patrons who were 21 and older did their part by going next door to help support the mom-and-pop bar connected to the hall.
“Everybody loved it, because it was the cheapest place to drink in town for sure,” Smith said. “It had this weird kind of small-town vibe to it. They would do their fish fries and their bingo. It was pretty old-school Americana or Wisconsin. Our worlds kind of merged there. Some of the regulars were like, ‘Who are these weirdos?’ But everyone was friendly and there were never problems.”
It wasn’t the first time the Green Bay punk scene has lost a venue. It has persevered for decades in no small part to Smith and others always finding the next place to plug in and rock out, from Kutska’s Hall to Concert Café to Crunchy Frog to the Lyric Room, which now has a new owner with a new vision.
“It’s always been a community first and the venue has always been kind of secondary to the human connection in that scene,” said Davis, who lives in Milwaukee but will be back in Green Bay July 22 for a Mystery Girls reunion show at Badger State Brewing Co. “In my day, it was more like we would find roadhouses and just book shows there and invade them with our community. The more of our friends we could get to show up, the more comfortable the show would be for us.”
“It was a big part of Green Bay’s history," Smith said of the Eagles Club. "Unfortunately, Buddy Holly didn’t play there (as he did at the Riverside Ballroom), but it was still a pretty cool place.”
Green Bay UFO Museum Gift Shop and Records Festival is July 21-23
Inspired by his visit last fall to Gonerfest, the annual multi-day garage rock fest in Memphis staged by Goner Records, Smith is hoping the inaugural Green Bay UFO Museum Gift Shop and Records Festival will bring some of that same flavor to Green Bay. There will be six shows at five venues over three days July 21-23. Here’s the rundown:
2-9 p.m. July 21 at Green Bay Action Sports Organization skatepark, 2351 Holmgren Way: The Crosses (Milwaukee), Proud Parents (Madison), Zissous (Salt Lake City; Smith’s daughter's band), Retox A.D. (Appleton), Beach Patrol (Green Bay), S***hole (Green Bay), Impetuous Riff-Raft (Green Bay) and The French-Irish Coalition (Green Bay). Free.
10 p.m. July 21 at Frets & Friends, 2105 University Ave.: Strong Come Ons (Algoma; first show in 15 years), Wesley & The Boys (Nashville), Baby Tyler (Madison) and George's Bush (Green Bay). Free.
Noon-1 a.m. July 22 at Badger State Brewing Co., 990 Tony Canadeo Run: Total Hell (New Orleans), Holy S***! (Milwaukee), Fret Rattles (Minneapolis), Trash Pandas (Green Bay), Sick Thoughts (New Orleans), Mystery Girls (Green Bay; for a reunion show), Guerrilla Teens (Portland, Oregon), Tyler Keith & The Revelations (Memphis), Jeremy & The Drip Edges (Memphis), Zissous, Tim Schweiger and the Middle Men (Milwaukee), Bruiser Queen (St. Louis) and Florida Brothers Band (Milwaukee). $19.99 in advance at Green Bay UFO Museum Gift Shop and Records and online through Badger State; $25 day of show.
1 p.m. July 23 at Green Bay UFO Museum Gift Shop and Records, 2248 University Ave.: The Stinkeyes (Midwest), Holly and the Nice Lions (Green Bay), Zissous and Robits (Milwaukee). All-ages show. Free; donations will go to Planned Parenthood.
6:30 p.m. July 23 at Smashed on the Rocks Saloon, 70 Church St., Algoma: Jinksie (Milwaukee), Hue Blanc’s Joyless Ones (Algoma), Zissous and The Onions (Manitowoc). Free; donations will be accepted to help pay the bands.
Kendra Meinert is an entertainment and feature writer at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Contact her at 920-431-8347 or kmeinert@greenbay.gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @KendraMeinert.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Remembering the Eagles Club as chapter in Green Bay punk rock history
