Private house shows are a lively and ever-changing part of the music landscape and an anchor for many in the music community, especially for punk music. In this series, we explore several Canadian house show venues and the people behind them: why they started, their setup, highlights and more.
House shows are just that: shows at someone’s house. You might think house parties are just for university students, but these do-it-yourself spaces have always been a part of the broader music community. They can be rough around the edges, a little chaotic, and a lot of fun. They’re places to meet people and see music in an intimate space, discover the latest local talent, and play music with your friends. They can also be an important place for people to support each other and make culture accessible as concerts continue to get more expensive and smaller venues struggle to stay afloat.
Grassroots punk lives and breathes at venues like these, and Ontario has a thriving punk scene. Punks show up for each other, as artists and people in the community, in a way that feels unique to that music scene. They might push you around a little on the dance floor, but they’ll help you up if you fall, too.
If you host house shows and are interested in being interviewed for the series, email us at elizabeth@thefuzzer.com. Note: To protect the house show community, only first names are used in this article.
Part 1: Probably House
City: London, Ontario
The Vibe: Late-night punk music and partying
How it Started
Joe’s former roommate Chris started Probably House – named after Probably, their band at the time – casually in 2016. “In the first couple years, I think we only did like three shows max, and they were just like parties,” says Joe. “There were maybe 20 people there, including the musicians… Chris had taken some inspiration from Dude Ranch,” he adds, referring to another former London house show venue. “I think talking to those guys, he kind of realized that we could turn it into something a little bigger.”
Link to interview with Dude Ranch, the former London house show venue that inspired Probably House: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGlzCWDmaCI
When Chris moved away for school, Joe took on a more active role in planning shows. With Chris as his guide, he continued to build on what they had started. “I kind of just took what he told me and started running with it,” he says. They had to pause activities during the pandemic but otherwise have remained active.
The goal is simple – have fun and support the bands, with all cover fees going to the artists. Joe acknowledges that the shows also act as a platform for their own work. For example, their current band Zemo Green did an album release show in July 2026.
The Space
Joe’s roommate, Tyler, can be seen coming in and out of Joe’s bedroom-turned-sound room wearing big headphones when the bands are playing.
Joe attributes the success of Probably House to Tyler’s planning and knowledge as their unofficial sound guy. “In my opinion, it’s one of the best places to see a band in London from strictly a sound perspective because he’s got that room dialed in so well. There are things that sound guys can’t control at other venues, like you have a really big room with lots of stuff there, you can get a lot of echoing that can cause less than ideal sound conditions, and he’s just used the room so well and created something really cool.”
When they host shows, the whole house is transformed. “We drilled a massive hole in my bedroom wall, and it’s hidden by a couch on one side and a bookshelf on the other side. We have a 16-channel snake that runs from where the bands play into my bedroom,” he explains. “What we do is, our house is long, and the drums sit right at the front door, and then the guitar amps and bass amps are all around the drums, and it all faces into the house so the sound can travel all the way through the house to the back door, and you can hear everything really clearly at the back door still. And we lock the front door, so everybody goes in through the side, and it gives it kind of a feel of like doors at a venue, right, because it’s a little bit separated. You’re not like walking into somebody’s living room right away.”
They have another room down the hall with couches and black lights for hanging out, affectionately called the Shroom Room.
In the crowd, they don’t have mosh pits, but it gets lively, with people dancing. If it gets too aggressive, which isn’t usually a problem, they shut it down.
They can accommodate around 30-40 people inside, and they have a big backyard. At their July 2026 show, local vendors were selling hand-made goods by the door, and there was water pong, and a bonfire. They had a claw bathtub in the yard for empties. “I swear some people just come to hang out in my backyard,” Joe jokes. They have had over 100 people show up on certain nights.
Highlights
They had a show scheduled this year on May 16, the unofficial holiday for fans of the band Lagwagon, aka Lagwagon Day. Their former roommate Chris was visiting for the long weekend. “We all happened to be in a band back in the day that we called Dragwagon. We used to call ourselves the world’s greatest cross-dressing Lagwagon tribute band,” Joe says. They ended up having an unplanned Dragwagon reunion.
“There have been a bunch of really epic performances,” he says, highlighting one with B.A. Johnston, another with a band from Shanghai called Round Eye. “They were one of the most incredible bands I’ve seen live. They were like a hardcore punk band, but then they would go into these like trippy interludes between every song that I don’t even know how to describe.”
“Last year we played pumpkin baseball. That was a fun innovation,” he adds. “Every year for the Halloween show, we carve pumpkins and we’ll carve one for each band… last year at the end of the night we played baseball with the pumpkins.”
A late-night afterparty with cover sets was another highlight, featuring Filthy Radicals and K-Man & The 45s, both with the Montreal-based label, Stomp Records, and Toronto-based Lime Ricky. The bands were all playing another gig in London, and one of the band members who knew Joe asked him if he could host the afterparty. Filthy Radicals played Operation Ivy, K-Man & The 45s played The Ramones, and Lime Ricky played Blink-182. The house was packed. All the way to the back, people were jumping with the songs. “I remember just standing there with Tyler and being like, this is crazy. Like it’s four in the morning and this is the sickest party I’ve ever been to,” he says. He had been a long-time fan of Filthy Radicals. “I saw them back in high school, like they played at the Embassy all the time back then. And you know, they were a band that, when I was a teenager, I’d be like, those guys are so cool.”
Lessons Learned
In line with the DIY punk ethos, Joe’s advice is to just start and learn as you go, particularly regarding the sound setup. “It’s really hard to stand in a room for a long time when the sound is just blasting off all of the walls. Like you’re in a small space and learning to dial in the sound is a way that is going to make the whole presentation way better,” Joe says.
As much as it is about having fun, he has also learned to be proactive and listen to feedback from the community about how to keep the space safe and fun for everyone. In some cases, this means drawing a line and asking people to leave due to negative or inappropriate behaviour.
“It seems a lot bigger than it is,” he says. “All you need is instruments. You don’t even need to have amps,” he adds, noting that they have also hosted acoustic folk-punk bands.
