Black-metal punks

Patrick Erhard is the lead singer/bassist of Ash Williams, the punk band that one reviewer said “wishes it was a black metal band.”

The SDSU grad started booking his own punk shows two years ago. “I’ve booked a ton of punk shows at Til Two and Tower Bar,” says Erhard. He didn’t do it for the money.

“In a perfect world, everyone would get paid,” he says about the commonly accepted one-for-all punk ethic. “It’s unfortunate, but a lot of the local bands play for free or for beer. All my shows are six dollars unless the headlining band demands more. The punk community accepts that the headlining band gets the door. When it’s just local bands, everyone shares.”

Erhard moved here from NorCal to get his SDSU econ degree. That’s when he met Scout Seshimo, a graphic design grad who is Ash Williams’ lead guitarist and officially “a transgender neutral.” Singer Laura Grace of Against Me is the much more famous trans rocker from Against Me. Erhard says that Ash Williams doesn’t have trans-directed lyrics as Against Me does.

“Scout never even knew about [Against Me] when he decided to declare he was trans. Scout shreds on guitar and it speaks for itself.”

Ash Williams promo boasts that they’ve played three countries.

“We just played the Moustache Bar [in Tijuana] a few weeks ago. It’s always super fun to play there. The pay isn’t always amazing but you get free drinks and the tacos are the best you will ever have in your life. It’s worth it. The last time we played Canada we played in an auto shop in Vancouver. The kids went insane.”

Ash Williams appears at Space February 18th at 8 p.m as part of Awesome Fest 11.