The meals are free. Steve Gibson’s music is, too 

When Steve Gibson retired in 2011, he wanted to start volunteering, or, as he jokingly put it, “buy my soul back” after decades of working at corporations.

He and his wife, Debbie Gibson, found an opportunity at a downtown Eugene restaurant with a specific clientele: residents who are unhoused or otherwise struggling to feed themselves and their families.

The Dining Room shows up as a soup kitchen on Google, but it doesn’t operate like one, and you wouldn’t know it was one walking in. The full-service restaurant has cooks, vegetarian options, dessert, servers and — because of Steve Gibson — live music each of the four days it’s open each week. The meal, the service and the entertainment are free for anyone. 

Gibson started volunteering in 2011, mostly serving food to guests and busing tables. He loved the restaurant’s concept of “dining with dignity” but quickly noticed something missing: live music. So one day, he brought in his guitar. 

When he first started, Gibson said some of the diners “didn’t know what to think.”

“They were probably used to people showing up and then disappearing,” the Eugene resident said. “It’s when we just keep showing up, when we show that we’re there, that makes a difference.”

As the Dining Room’s first musician volunteer, Gibson has shown up for the past 15 years — sometimes with another person or his band, Cross Currents, and other times by himself. His style is a mix of Americana and folk.

He played occasionally at first, but diners enjoyed it so much he made music a permanent fixture at the restaurant, soon inviting other musician friends to the stage. Now, people he’s never met regularly sign up, wanting to be part of the lineup.

While servers let diners know what the chef prepared that day, musicians such as Gibson are already plugged in and jamming. 

“I feel like I get more out of it than they do,” Gibson said of the diners. “I could be not feeling good and go in there and play music for a while. It’s inspiring to see people, who are in such a struggle, show up with a smile. And a little bit of music, they appreciate that.”

Music every day

Gibson plays less now, about once a month, but he coordinates one of the most vital tasks around live music: the calendar. 

Each month, he books about 20 volunteer musicians, ensuring the 1,000 people who come through The Dining Room every week have live entertainment with their meal. 

Gibson knows his crowd. Back in late May, when he saw a regular come in, he started strumming a song by American singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt. The guy was impressed.

“Well,” Gibson responded. “I knew you were going to ask for it anyways.”

He’s written original songs, too, many of which explore social issues such as homelessness. The lyrics for his song, “Poverty State”, were painted on The Dining Room’s walls for several years until the restaurant underwent renovations:

Now I sleep by the river
Under a bridge
It’s a cold, hard reality
And ain’t no way to live

This is my home 
This is my town
This is my country 
Even if I’m way down

Outside of The Dining Room, Gibson stays busy. Every Tuesday for the past nine months, he heads to the federal building in downtown Eugene as part of the “Singing for Our Lives” interfaith vigil, honoring migrants and protesting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions.

On World Refugee Day, June 20, he’ll play at the First United Methodist Church in Eugene to honor people forced to flee their home country to escape violence, conflict or persecution. 

And July 4, he’ll perform under the bridge at Washington Jefferson Park for unhoused residents in line to get food.

“These days, there are a lot of things to do,” he said.

Gibson credits his mentors with helping to drive his activism: Dan Bryant and Brent Was taught him that everybody deserves a home. He called Marion Malcolm and Peg Morton “two little ladies from Eugene who are warriors for justice.” Scott Miksch, Sue Barnhart and Michael Carrigan are three friends who worked tirelessly for peace.

And he talked about Josie McCarthy, The Dining Room’s program manager. 

“Josie showed us all how dining with dignity can heal,” Gibson said. 

‘Better days’

The Dining Room didn’t always have a dining room. Food for Lane County opened the space in 2004 as a soup kitchen.

At the time, McCarthy’s daughter, Sadie Clements, worked at the soup kitchen in 2004 through AmeriCorps. She would update her mom, who was a psychiatric social worker and homeopath, about the “chaos,” mainly, constant long lines stretching outside, all the way to the alley.

After volunteering, McCarthy was determined to run it like a restaurant, similarly to Sisters of the Road Cafe in Portland. Despite some apprehension, she was given the green light. Within two years, she started welcoming diners. 

“This is a unique model on the West Coast,” McCarthy said. “It changed food distribution into something more humanistic. There aren’t lines, which can remind many people of prisons and institutions. The Dining Room reminds people of better days, when they could go to restaurants.”

A little while after Steve and Debbie Gibson joined as volunteers, Steve pitched playing music. McCarthy gave him the green light.

“It’s really great,” McCarthy said of the music program. “We wouldn’t have had the money to do it otherwise.”

McCarthy said the Gibsons’ community work goes beyond the restaurant. 

“Steve and Debbie used to make sandwiches for Thanksgiving,” she said. “They rode around on the bike trail giving them out. It was my lucky day when those two walked in to volunteer.”

Their own story

As someone who hadn’t interacted often with unhoused residents before volunteering at The Dining Room, Steve Gibson called the past 15 years “a revelation.”

“Everyone’s story is different,” he said. “If you try and paint that population with a broad brush, then you’re really missing the point, because everybody’s got their own story as to why they’re where they are.”

There was the guy with the guitar who used to play with Gibson all the time. Because of privacy concerns, Gibson requested that his name be withheld.  

“He wasn’t really good,” Gibson said about the man’s playing, musing, “but we’d hang out and talk and stuff.”

One day, he came to The Dining Room and saw his music buddy in the parking lot, surrounded by police. Apparently, he had an offense in Portland, so the police were taking him there. 

Gibson looked at the man’s guitar, which he always had with him. It was his “most cherished thing,” he said.

The police offered to stick it in a closet at the station. Gibson offered to keep it for when he got back to Eugene.

About three or four days later, the man limped into The Dining Room. Turns out, his trial wasn’t set for another two weeks, so he walked the more than 100 miles back to Eugene. 

“I’ve got your guitar,” Gibson told him.

He has had a lot of those stories over the years.

In late May, a man walked into The Dining Room with his young daughter. They sat at a booth next to the stage as Gibson played Stevie Nicks’ “Landslide.”

The girl, who Gibson guessed was about 3 or 4, bounced back and forth while he sang. 

“Can I sail through the changin’ ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?”

The father’s back was to the stage until Gibson finished. 

“At the end of it, he, you know, he just turned around and you know, his eyes were …,” Gibson trailed off, trying to describe the expression of a dad watching his kid dance. 

“It was a little bit of nothing big,” Gibson said. “Just little connections that happen all the time.”