Salvo, formerly known as Pain, returns to their old stomping ground this weekend for the first time in decades.

Formed by Mobile-based high school students, Pain flourished in Tuscaloosa as one of the Druid City’s most celebrated local acts, one that transcended the college town to grow a national audience. Nearly two decades after disbanding, they reunited and rebranded to quench that creative thirst that brings them back home on Saturday.

Salvo will perform in the Moon Room at Druid City Brewing Company at 8 p.m. Saturday, April 1. Pain last performed in the city in 1999 — this marks Salvo’s Tuscaloosa debut. Tickets cost $10. You can purchase online. The band has embarked on an acoustic tour (dubbed “Songs and Storytelling: Salvo FKA Pain Acoustic Tour”), including the pre- and after-parties for They Might Be Giants at Iron City in Birmingham in March. The full band will perform April 7 at The Merry Widow in Mobile and May 13 at Saturn in Birmingham. Learn more about their touring schedule.

READ: Not the same old Pain: ‘90s Alabama rock band gets second life as Salvo

Pain formed in Tuscaloosa in 1994, led by singer-songwriter Dan Lord and guitarist-songwriter Adam Guthrie. As AL.com’s Lawrence Specker wrote, the basic format was a pop-punk four-piece rock band with a three-piece horn section and keyboards, but there were always plenty of add-ons in the mix, particularly in the studio.

In Rebecca Pugh’s documentary about Salvo, “Anthem For a Middle Aged Band,” members explain that no one really knew what to make of the concept, until they focused on the fun of making music together. “It was this kind of happy, poppy, almost ska but not really ska band,” said drummer George Kennedy. “There was nothing else like it.”

A high school classmate of Lord’s at McGill-Toolen Catholic High School, Kennedy joined in 1998, as Pain hit their stride recording four albums, growing a large following in the Southeast and on the West Coast, touring regularly and attracting national interest from the likes of Cartoon Network, who used their song “Jabberjaw.” (Watch a full Pain concert from the Varsity Music Hall on the Strip in 1998.)

Dubbed “one of the most unique pop-punk bands to come out of the post-grunge era,” they disbanded in 2000 when Lord answered a religious calling. “Dan just decided he was going to become a monk,” said Kennedy. But they reformed and rebranded as Salvo with Lord, Guthrie to rekindle their chemistry and make new music together. “Salvo’s music has the kind of melodic style, catchy beats, dynamic instrumentation, and evocative lyrics that Pain always delivered, but with a new maturity and mastery that is leaving listeners delighted,” their website says.

While in high school, Bo Hicks would park at a certain spot in his hometown Brookwood where University of Alabama student-run radio station WVUA-FM would come in loud and clear on his car stereo. He said he heard the Pain song “Milk,” which he called “the coolest thing ever.” He would ask his mom to drive him to Strip record store Vinyl Solution to buy their album. “It blew my mind that they were local,” Hicks said. “Their shows were so energetic.”

He was young enough to see Pain at various Alabama festivals like X Fest, City Stages and Kentuck. A local music stalwart, Hicks eventually befriended band members, confessing his unabashed fandom for the group that set itself apart in Tuscaloosa during the mid-90s. “I didn’t know of another local band that had that level of popularity,” Hicks said. “I could name bands around that time, but they were the biggest deal in town. They were about the biggest thing I knew of at that time.”

Hicks would even join the Pain/Salvo mythology when he played percussion in the Tuscaloosa band Chinese Dentist, which also featured saxophonist and Pain alumnus Chris Johnson. “I tried to really hide my glee,” Hicks said. “The musicianship he brought to us was amazing. It was completely dumbfounding that somebody in this band I aspired to would want to play music. It fried my 22-year-old brain at the time.

It all comes full circle on Saturday as Johnson and some of his Salvo bandmates will perform at Hicks’ Druid City Brewing Company, which just opened a new location at 700 14th Street, just across the parking lot from its previous building in Parkview Center. Salvo will play the venue’s Moon Room, Hicks’ favorite feature in the new space. In the previous building, musicians and patrons would cram into the actual brewing room or line up on the patio. Now, they have the space to accommodate the crowds and sounds.

Hicks is pleased “To have an actual music venue room for poetry readings, singer/songwriter things, rock bands.” In fact, that music room — which he has dubbed “The Moon Room” — has a concrete floor and black cinderblock walls plastered with a trippy mural (from local artists Graham Townsend and Rachel Wakefield) featuring a crescent moon engulfed in pillowy purple clouds. “It’s all black light-active,” Hicks said. “It’s like you’ve been transported back to Super Skate in 1988 playing ‘Galaga.’ It’s a good listening room. It’s not going to be a bunch of people goofing and yelling when there’s a beautiful songwriter that’s playing.”

Scattered throughout the Southeast, a portion of Salvo will converge on the city whose local scene they once (and still, to loyal fans) owned. They told AL.com that when they reunite, they practice six to eight hours at a time ahead of gigs. They sound tight as ever, and their shows will no doubt delight longtime fans like Hicks. As Lawrence Specker wrote in 2019: “The mix of horns and guitars edges close to ska territory at times, as Kennedy said; that and the persistent humor in the subject matter can call to mind the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. But there’s an incisive yet playful intelligence in the lyrics, more akin to Barenaked Ladies or They Might be Giants, that lends a gentler, more uplifting spirit to things.”

With tickets dwindling, fans still have time to secure a spot where, like the brewery’s owner, their brains might fry — the best kind of pain.

Salvo will perform in the Moon Room at Druid City Brewing Company at 8 p.m. Saturday, April 1. Tickets cost $10. You can purchase online. Watch the documentary “Anthem for the Middle-Aged Band,” directed by Rebecca Pugh, below.

Lawrence Specker contributed to this story.