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This interview has been edited for clarity

On a bright and sunny afternoon, I sat with Beeef’s lead singer and guitarist, Perry Eaton at Pavement Coffeehouse (415 Western Avenue) in Brighton. Eaton, coming back from his duties as an English teacher, he quickly ordered a drink before we proceeded through the interview.

The band consists of Perry Eaton (vocals and guitarist), Neil Patch (drums), Josh Bolduc (lead guitarist), Daniel Schiffer (bass), and Mike Moschetto (guitar)

How did the band Beeef form?

I first met Dan. We were roommates in college, we went to BU together and we used to go to shows all the time together and play guitars in our dorm room. And by our junior year, we actually started writing about bands more. And it led us to, with a couple other friends, we started up a blog called Allston Pudding. We were going to a ton of shows and meeting a bunch of local bands and Allston Pudding is still going today. We don’t run it anymore, but it kind of introduced us into the local music scene a little bit more. Progressively, that introduced us to Neil, who’s our drummer and then Neil brought along Josh and we started writing songs of our own. At that point we were living in an apartment on Easton Street in Lower Allston. We started playing in our basement and practicing and writing songs. Around 2015, we had enough to start putting out an EP and playing shows, and it kind of grew from there. In the time since, we’ve put out three records. We’ve played all over New England. It’s been a lot of fun.

Where did the band name Beeef originate from? Is there a specific reason why you added the additional E to the name?

It’s one of those things where I think there’s a lot of bands that say this, like, when you name the band, you don’t expect that you’ll still be a band 10 years from now. So, that’s how we got stuck with a really dumb name. Originally when we were brainstorming, I remember I had proposed the name, the Burgers and that one just didn’t really stick, but for some reason that transformed to Beeef. This was around an era in music where there were a lot of bands that took all the vowels out of their names, like it was the fashionable thing to do to have zero vowels. And so I guess as a reactionary to that, we just added an extra vowel and became Beeef with 3 E’s. It’s fun to hear people chanted it at shows.

What about the Allston music scene attracted you and the members of Beeef? 

I think Allston has had a really great DIY scene for a long time. There are so many young people in Boston, and so many talented young people that were never at a shortage of great music. The only thing is there are so many good bands that people have to find their own way to play and share their music. So that’s where it’s fun to see the people who are in so many different bands. After a while you see the same faces and stuff like that, it becomes this little community which is great. I think having been surrounded by that. Been seeing so many people be in their first band, it becomes something that felt more realistic, like this is something that isn’t terribly out of our reach. I think we could do this if we tried it. And I think it encouraged us to get together and start trying. And before long, those songs turned into albums and those albums turned into shows. It just all accumulated from there. I don’t think we would have ever had the presence of mind to play music if we didn’t see our peers and our friends doing it and kind of leading by example.

What was the inspiration for your sound? And what artists are you guys most inspired by?

In some ways, the four of us are like all over the map and in different directions. For example, Dan and I are big Grateful Dead fans, but our band sounds nothing like Grateful Dead. But there are like a handful of bands that we really do bond over. Early on, a band called Real Estate, a band that we were all collectively really into. The band pavement is the one that’s not fun because every band in the world compares themselves to pavement. I think that’s expanded over time. We were really lucky in our first few years, we got to open for a band called Alvvays. They were a band that we were all geeking out over and it was cool to play with them. Every so often we’ll be able to share the stage with a band that we are really into. A band called Sheer Mag, we played with at one point and we were super into them at the time. We’ve been lucky we’ve been able to actually play with some of our heroes along the way.

As a founding member of Allston Pudding, how has the publication shaped the development of Beeef?

I feel like we had a little bit of a head start and we just knew some of the people in the music community before we even were picking up our instruments. We had been doing Allston Pudding, some of us for, like four or five years before we even started Beeef. Not only were we hugely shaped by all of these different diverse pockets of music that we were seeing around Boston, but we were able to meet people who were working as bartenders at venues and booking shows around town or like they had basements where they were throwing shows. In that way we immediately felt like we could reach out to these people and tell them about Beeef and they were helpful and giving us opportunities along the way. Maybe not as much as shaping the sound, but at least giving us an opportunity to cut our teeth in front of an audience. 

In your article with WGBH in 2020, you described the band’s music as “jangly nostalgic basement-rock.” Can you go more into depth with this description? 

We’re really proud of the music we make, but in terms of genre, I don’t think it’s anything that’s like, we’re not out to rewrite the book, we’re taking the bits and pieces of music that we really like and bits of rock and roll and indie rock that we really like and creating our own take on it. I think that description was more of a way of, let’s try and make what we’re doing sound more exciting than it really is. Because I think what we make is a good version of what we do, but it’s more of carrying the torch of people who have shaped an indie rock or basement rock sound before us, and trying to evolve it in our own way. 

How has the music scene in Allston evolved since the forming of the band?

Some things about it have stayed the same in a really great way. I think the spirit of Allston, and the people of Allston will always keep music alive, and threaded within its identity, even if venues have come and gone, or bands have come and gone. So I think it’s great to see how some things, the more they change, the more they stay the same. I also think Boston is inherently a transient place, with all the college students. People will kind of be visitor of this city for four, five, six years, start a band, and then use it as kind of a farm system to go either elsewhere or to break up their band. One thing I think that we’re particularly proud of is, it’s hard to have abandoned Allston for more than a few years, and we’ve been able to stick around and keep going and growing for 10 or so years. But within that, I think we’re able to keep learning things and discovering great new talent, great new bands and creative people, as more kids move into the city and people younger than us kind of carry the torch. We’re lucky to have learned from those before and continue learning from those who are younger and cooler, and hipper than we are. 

You recently released your solo project, Ivy Boy. Can you tell me the process of that and how it worked with being the lead singer of Beeef?

Definitely different. Over the pandemic is when we started putting our Beeef’s third album together, and just because of the struggles of the pandemic, that one took a really long time to actually make happen. And in that time, I just kept writing stuff. I was also playing a lot of acoustic guitar because that felt more appropriate given the constraints of COVID too,  I wasn’t really playing on stage. So, that yielded a whole different batch of songs where I was like, why don’t I just work to put these out sooner rather than waiting to see if this will become a Beeef project. In some ways, the writing of it was, I guess, easier in that, I was doing it on my own. But there was no band to do it with, and that, at first, was a struggle until I found some really great collaborators. Some guys who run a studio called Hot Take Studios, which was originally in Brighton, they moved down to Brooklyn, but they worked with me on the album, played as the band on the album and then they recorded it and mixed it as well. It became a cool separate thing. At first when I started playing Ivy Boy shows, I was playing a mix of solo Beeef songs, but then as I wrote more stuff, it took on a life of its own. It’s cool, they’re able to work in tandem, but also separately too. It’s cool to have different speeds with different projects.

Can you describe your relationship with creating music? Has it always been a goal of yours?  

In fact, I was such a fan of music that it was for most of my life a bucket list, I mean it would be so cool to be in a band and record something that will outlive me someday, regardless if people actually listened to it or not. I feel so lucky that I was able to do that more than once. I put out a few albums, and it’s almost like I can die happy type of thing. I guess the goal for me now is to keep seeing where I can keep growing in my songwriting and it’s really hard. There are periods where I’ll just get super stuck at like a creative block. I’m slowly truly figuring out the things that work for me, the things that don’t and one of the cool parts of it is I feel like I’m still just learning about the process and I have so much left to learn in it. I think that’s more encouraging than discouraging.

What was the inspiration behind Beeef’s latest release of Somebody’s Favorite in 2024? What was the inspiration behind the title and album cover? 

The album cover is done by an artist named Bailey Elder and we worked with them. Just was a fan of some of the work that they had done with some bands  and we were just like, do what calls to you, and that was the ending result, but it fit in well with some of the other single art that led up to it. Like, we knew pretty immediately, like, yep, that looks great. As far as the album itself, the title, it’s one of the lyrics from one of the songs, “Something in the River” which is the second to last track on the album. It’s a love letter to Boston and Boston music scene, which we have a few of those songs like that, but this one in particular, there’s a lyric, “you don’t have to be the best to be somebody’s favorite and I think that speaks directly to what it’s like to be a local band, we’re three records in and we’re not a professional rock band. We’re not going on massive tours. We’re not really making any money but what keeps us going is the feeling that we do have some fans who really care about us and if you’re a local band, not just us, but any local band, you mean a lot to somebody. I’ve been on the other end of that where, local bands have been my obsession, and you know they might not last and they might not get famous, but they’ll be somebody’s favorite in history. It’s a cool little ode to not only our role as a local band, but all the local bands that came before us.

What is the writing and production process for making your music? 

Typically, I’be brought lyrics or a main idea, or a chord structure or most of the above to a band practice, and play it through, like, a rough version of what is in my head. From there, the band writes their parts around it, as we play through it and practice it and get a feel for the dynamics of the song. That’s how the song itself gets written and that’s usually the case for almost all of them. There’s a few cases where Josh has written some songs. Neil, had a cool instrumental song on the last record and then as far as the recording, this one was such a weird example because we did it in so many different places with different people, but that was cool because we got to work with a lot of our friends. We recorded the first batch up in Vermont, with an old friend Jeremy Mendicino, who was in a great old Boston band called Pretty and Nice back in the day and he now makes music on his own too. We did some more recording with our buddy, Elio DeLuca, who has a studio in Medford, called the Soul Shop. We work with a few different people who mixed different songs. Julian Fader, mixed a handful. He’s been in some bands that we really admire and just knows his stuff really well. And then our buddy, Mike Moschetto, who now actually plays guitar with us live. As you can tell, this one was like a community effort, it took place over a handful of years because it was a product of the pandemic but a lot of stuff was also just recorded in Josh’s apartment. He’ll just add overdubs and stuff too.

You mentioned that you are a teacher, what are the struggles of being a teacher and the lead singer of Beeef?

They’re more benefits than struggles, I would say. I guess the struggle is at any given moment, I can’t just drop everything and go on tour because I have obligations to a class and a job in a school. But, along with that, I often feel very inspired by the kids I work with. I just had a long chat with a ninth grader about the band Geese, which is like, that rules. There’s parts of student creativity that end up influencing me inevitably to which I think is great. I feel like I’m using my brain constantly, and I feel like it helps to keep me sharp when it comes time to write songs when I can find time to do it. I think the benefits outweigh, but I think if I were ever to get a huge, big record deal to send me on a world tour, I’d have to be like, sorry, school comes first.

What are some obstacles with living in different locations as band members?

It’s become increasingly harder because we are split between Brooklyn and Boston. It’s tough, I think it’s like we don’t gig as much, we definitely don’t practice as much, so we just have to plan much further in advance, which, unfortunately, we’re also bad at. But, I think the good parts of it is we can also keep a little bit of a community in both places. When we do play in Brooklyn, we’re able to bring fans and friends out, which is great. It’s cool to have two semi-home bases. I will say particularly for Dan, it often means a lot of time on the train coming back and forth. And we got to just squeeze last minute practices in. So, you make it work, you don’t do it unless you really love it, and I think we all really love it, so we try and make the time for it.

Beeef’s Josh Bolduc performing at Brighton Music Hall for Allston Pudding’s 15th Anniversary. By Belinda Afful.

Since your first project, has there been a change in the band’s musical direction?

The first album out, we never knew we were gonna make an album, let alone three, so we had no clue what we were doing. Because of it, it sounds a little bit more DIY because it was and a little bit more like lo-fi because it was. And I think for some people, that’s like, their favorite Beeef album because of that. It sounds more, like unedited and uncensored. There’s something about the rawness that people really like. And I really like that too. But I think over time, we’ve become a little bit more ambitious of the care that we put into it. For better or worse, sometimes that means we tamper too much with it and we become perfectionists and like it loses a little bit of its soul sometimes in that process. We’re learning about what that balance looks like and that poured with, like, we’re all listening to new and different things as time moves on too and sometimes our music’s a reflection of that. I think one really good example is there’s a song on the list record called Primrose Path, it’s like a funkier, synthier track, which is something we never would have done ten years ago. So, that comes from listening to different bands, and having different influences.

Your first gig was at O’Briens pub (3 Harvard Ave), how has your choice in venues changed over the years?

Even though we’ve been doing it for a while, we still maintain the beggars can’t be choosers type things, like a gig is a gig and any opportunity to play in front of people, we’re always grateful for that. And I think you want to mix it up too. I think if you shoot for the stars with everything that you play, there’s certain other things that you miss out in the process. So, we’ve been lucky that we’ve been able to play in a bunch of different rooms. 

We love playing O’Briens, but in fact, in the past few years, a room called Deep Cuts opened up in Medford. It’s run by some folk who we’ve known since before Beeef even started. What we know is that they take good care of the local music scenes, so we love playing there. Lilypad in Cambridge has been another one that’s been super kind to us over the years. We’ve had a chance to play some bigger rooms too, Brighton Music Hall, we played a couple times in the past couple years, and we played Paradise. We’re still in that stage of, if it’s the right gig, and it’s in any room, we’ll never say no just because of the room that it’s in. 

The band has worked with the likes of Sidney Gish, what are other artists that you would like to work with in the future?

I suppose I can only speak for myself here. I shared this with the band the other day, I brought up the band Geese earlier, who are way too big now, and we will never have the opportunity to play with them. I guess we can always wish, but it is funny in the days of the pandemic, I want to say 2021 or 2022, we had as a band been like this band Geese is pretty cool, this like this new band of like high school kids and I sent them a screenshot because I had sent them like an Instagram DM in like 2022 being like, hey, if you ever want to come to Boston, want a show, like hit us up. They never replied, unfortunately. So it never happened. But I guess that would be a really fun thing if something like that would ever happen. But that would be kind of more shooting for the stars. There’s some local bands that we still have never played with that we would love to play with again, or would love to play with for the first time. One of those bands is actually Winkler, who we got to play with on that show. But I just played a Ivy Boy gig with a band called Dino Gala, who I’d love for Beeef to play with at some point. There’s a great local band called Otis Shanty that I’d love to play with. It’s always tough listing local bands because there’s an infinite amount of them that I would love to play with, we’re always down to play with the bands.

Is there anything in the future that listeners should anticipate? 

We’re still kind of enjoying the fruits of our last record. But I’m sure we have more music coming in the future. No specific plans yet, but we’re always thinking about it and we’re always mulling it over. I think as long as we exist, we’ll always at least leave room for the opportunity of new music for a trip. 

The only thing on the radar right is we’re playing a really great show in June. This is a cool kind of full circle moment, ‘cause we’re playing with a band called Bent Shapes, who haven;’t played in probably the past seven or eight years, but were one of those bands that even before we existed, they were a local band that we really looked up to and loved their music and records, and it’s one of those kind of full circle. We get to play with a band that we really admire. Another person on that bill is Colleen Green, who is another person who we’ve been fans of for a long time. So it’s cool that, you know, we’re around ten years into being a band and we get to play with bands that we look up to and admire. So that’s on the radar and there’ll be more Beeef gigs, there’ll be more Ivy Boy gigs. I think we’re looking to have the first ten year anniversary of the first Beeef album, a Beeef CD, next winter. So long way out, but we’re hoping to do something fun to commemorate that.

Anything else you would like to add that wasn’t mentioned?

I guess my only thing I would add is just to encourage people to go see local music because it’s done so much for us collectively as music fans and click folks who play in a band. It can really add positive things to your life to go see local bands, especially in Boston where the bands are awesome. That’s my pitch to people.

This story is part of a partnership between the Allstonia and the Boston University Department of Journalism.