Brian Grace Music

🎵  The Early Years: Bands & Beginnings

Before Slight Return became Brian’s longest-running non-military live band chapter, there was a run of shorter, stranger musical experiments from 1990 through 1995. While attending college between Army Band assignments, he formed Cosmic Fire and played alto sax with The Porcupines and The Marshall Brothers. The story then moved west, where he played bass with 11:11 and the Tim Dawe Band and stepped out alone at the Sweetwater Inn - several genres, several instruments, and one very memorable mullet.

Cosmic Fire 

Grantsville, MD · June 1990 · Originals + Covers 

Fresh off his first semester at Berklee College of Music in 1990, Brian formed Cosmic Fire. The name came from Todd Rundgren’s A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, the ambitious closing suite on Side 2 of his 1975 album Initiation. The band made its debut at Grantsville Days, a small-town summer celebration in Brian’s hometown of Grantsville, Maryland (official 1990 census population: 505 - not exactly an anonymous hometown debut), with a set that mixed Brian’s originals and Rundgren covers, including The Inside Looking Out, The End of Summer, Addicted to Love, and Couldn’t I Just Tell You.

For a June night in Western Maryland, it was remarkably cold - roughly 40 degrees. Cosmic Fire lasted only a handful of gigs that summer before Brian moved on to the Porcupines, trading his post-Berklee rock ambitions for some hippie sax work in the Maryland hills.

Cosmic Fire · Grantsville, MD · June 1990

Grantsville Days - Crowd View

                                             The audience at Grantsville Days - a hometown crowd turning out,                                                      with plenty of familiar faces and lots of large late-1980's hair within view.

Cosmic Fire · Grantsville, MD · June 1990

The Band

                                     The full Cosmic Fire lineup: a handful of summer gigs, one unexpectedly cold                                        hometown debut, and enough ambition to justify the name.

Cosmic Fire · Grantsville, MD · June 1990

Stage Moments

                                      Cosmic Fire in action - cover songs peppered with Brian Grace originals in a                                      small Maryland town on a cold June night. Post-Berklee energy at full burn.

Cosmic Fire · Grantsville, MD · June 1990

The Band

Brian singing Robert Palmer's “Addicted to Love.”

The Porcupines 

Frostburg, MD · 1991 · Grateful Dead/Allman Brothers Jam Band · Brian on Alto Sax

The Porcupines were a Maryland-based Grateful Dead and Allman Brothers cover band that gave Brian an after-hours outlet while he attended Frostburg State University. He played sax during his short tenure with the band in 1991, bringing some Deadhead energy to the Maryland hills. Tie-dye optional. Long jams, chops & never-ending solos? Mandatory.

The Marshall Brothers

Baltimore, MD · Spring-June 1992 · Acoustic R&B / Rock - More “Dirty Hippy” Acoustic Music · Brian on alto sax · Towson State University, MD

Between Army Band assignments at Fort Dix and the Presidio, Brian moved to Baltimore in January 1992 and attended Towson State University in Maryland. A few months later, around April, he joined Baltimore R&B/rock group The Marshall Brothers on alto sax, playing with them through his final gig in June.

The Marshall Brothers played mainly in Baltimore’s Fells Point area, plus a packed bar beside Camden Yards on the new stadium’s opening day. Free beer, pocket money, and a chance to play made the gigs a welcome interlude before Brian returned to the Army Band at the Presidio in July 1992. The group had no bassist and no actual Marshall brothers: the surname was adopted. Michael Beach, on vocals, guitar, and harmonica, became “Evan Marshall”; the drummer was “Clem Marshall.” Brian was “Masagro Marshall” - “orgasm” spelled backward. A few photographs and live recordings preserve the chapter.

The killer mullet dated back to late 1991 and came along for the ride in Brian’s January 1992 move to Baltimore - a few months ahead of his Marshall Brothers debut.

The surviving photographs begin with Brian’s offstage Baltimore life and bring him to June 1992, getting ready for his final Marshall Brothers gig. The musical excerpts that follow bring back the band’s sound.