When Eric Wiegman travels the 7,000 miles from Moriguchi-shi, Osaka, Japan to Baltimore, the one thing he doesn’t have to worry about is whether or not his drum set will get lost or damaged along the way. He doesn’t worry because he isn’t traveling with it. He doesn’t worry because there’s another one just like it waiting for him in Baltimore.

He started keeping a drum set in Baltimore two years ago when his old punk band, Grey March, reunited after a twenty-year hiatus. The band played two gigs during their reunion: a private show at The Hour Haus on North Avenue and a Saturday night blowout at Frazier’s in Hampden. The overwhelmingly positive response from their fans that night energized the group, and by last call, the debate on whether or not to record another album swayed from likely to definite.

Fast forward to this spring.

It’s 6:30pm on a Friday in Remington. The sun is hanging low in the sky and its rays are beating hard on the front façade of the Ottobar.  Local actor Johnny Alonso stands by the front door as members of Grey March begin to pull up in their cars and on their mopeds. Alonso was a huge fan of Grey March in the early 80’s and 90’s when the band members were only teenagers. Tonight, however, he’ll be taking on the charge of being their lead singer. The opportunity presented itself a few days earlier when Grey March front man Trip Burch had to pull out of the gig unexpectedly. The band was hard up to find someone who could learn the lyrics to all of their songs. Fortunately for Grey March, Alonso knew the words to almost every song they had ever written, putting him in a unique position to help out some old friends and relive his youth.

Completing the line up, are Lisa Doll & The Rock n Roll Romance (Baltimore) and History Repeated (DC). 

Kicking off the show, Lisa Doll & The Rock n Roll Romance make short work of getting the audience amped for the night to come. The band’s over driven, lo-fi, pop punk riffs woke the otherwise idle crowd and the open space that separates the bar in the back of the house from the stage begins to fill in. The dancing, jumping and thrashing from the band makes it appear as if the musicians are at war with their instruments, fighting to pull the desired sounds from their strings and skins.

A few people nestle closely to the stage. A man suddenly pulls out a pad of paper and pencil and begins to feverishly produce gesture drawings of the band members. And the chill in the venue air begins to dissipate as the collective warmth of the crowd heats the room.

Lisa Doll & The Rock n Roll Romantics finish their set with the floor beneath the stage about three quarters full.  Not because of low attendance, but out of what appears to be a general apprehension within the audience to move closer toward the action. Most people came to see Grey March because they had grown up with them, and the potential for recapturing feelings of punk rock nostalgia were too strong to ignore. But with that nostalgia comes memories of the torn clothing, broken noses and other small injuries often accrued in the mosh pits of yore. The result: a roughly 10-foot diameter empty space in the middle of the room that would later tempt the sheepish crowd to the point of breaking.

In the green room, on the side of the stage, History Repeated is getting ready for their set. Guitarist Derrick Baranowsky has just finished restringing his red vintage Gibson, Les Paul and is running through solos while front man John Stabb changes into a lime green button-up shirt and a green and blue, pinstriped blazer. Stabb has been on lineups with Grey March before back in the late 80’s. At the time he was singing lead vocals in the legendary DC punk band, Government Issue. Back then; it was Grey March who was opening for his band. Tonight, he’s happy to return the favor.

The members of History Repeated take their places on stage to the sound of a cheering crowd. Stabb quite literally jumps into the set like a wide-eyed wild man. CF Best delivers driving bass lines while drummer Mike Diana hammers away on drums. To the left of the stage, Derrick Baranowsky jumps and flails around as if he were possessed. The band’s fast rhythm, guitar squealing, vocal screaming songs are short sweet and filled with hooks. Two thirds of the way through their set, Stabb jumps off the stage with his microphone and begins singing straight into the faces of the audience. The crowd responds by screaming right back and pumping their fists.

The audience is alive. People are buying shots for the band and shouting out drunken requests. What was once a 10-foot diameter no-mans-land in the middle of the floor has all but disappeared after Stabb’s up close and personal tour through the crowd.

Just off stage, Eric Wiegman is pacing back and forth while running through songs in his head. Wiegman is a professional drummer back in Japan. There, he’s performed with countless musicians at every level, but those gigs can’t compare to the feeling he gets when he performs on stage with Grey March. The music he is about to play is the music he cut his teeth on. It’s the music that first got him excited about drumming and ultimately pointed him on his path in life. The songs represent an incalculable part of who he is as a person, and just like Wiegman, they have matured over the years. Wiegman believes that the time he has spent developing as a drummer has given him the ability to polish the songs he helped to write 25 years prior.

History Repeated closes their set knowing they’ve made good work of warming the crowd up for Grey March.

Grey March Guitarist Paul T. Anderson and Bassist Stuart Berlinicke walk back stage and start to help switch out equipment. Fill in singer Johnnhy Alonso breaks away from a redheaded twenty-something he had been flirting with all night.  Back in the green room, Ron Weldon stamps out a half smoked clove he had been smoking, then walks away to take his place behind the keyboard.

The band is set up in about 10 minutes. You can tell they’ve done this before.

The crowd pushes even closer to the stage.

When the music starts, the entire audience erupts. The green button has been pushed on the rollercoaster and everyone’s along for the ride.

Alonso grabs the microphone stand and starts rocking it back and forth. Paul Anderson begins to play the opening notes to the song “Everlasting”. Like a bomb going off, the stage explodes with the sound of heavy drums, deep bass lines, and textural synth from the keyboards that tie the whole thing together.

The band members often talk about how, even though they sometimes go years without playing together, it doesn’t feel like it. And it shows. When they play “Shark”, a bass heavy standard of theirs, the audience falls into what appears to be a trance like state. The room has achieved osmosis.

All of the bands preparations have led them to this moment of oneness. The middle age crowd’s earlier composure has disappeared entirely and, for the night, everyone gets to feel like they’re 16 again.

Song after song hits the room’s collective eardrums, further electrifying it. This is the big show and there is no holding back.

The band pulls off their set without incident. The audience is satisfied.

As smokers congregate out front, you can hear talk of people already excited for the next show. They don’t know when it will happen, but they know it’s a certainty.

Fortunately for those too impatient to wait, they can buy the new self-titled Grey March CD loaded with many of the old songs and even a couple new ones. For now, they will have to subsist on the record until the next yet to be determined show.

Two days later Eric Wiegman boards a plane back to Japan, once again leaving his Baltimore drum set for an unknown amount of time. But no matter how much time passes before he gets to play them again, he finds comfort knowing that they are here, waiting.