Step into Wesley’s Bar and Grill in downtown Toledo on a Friday night and you’ll find it packed with people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s moving to a soundtrack unlike anything else playing at surrounding establishments. Through the crowd, which reaches between 200 and 300 people most weeks, you’ll find Todd Perrine—AKA DJ Sandman—the proverbial man behind the curtain pulling the strings, crafting in real-time the musical mood that carries the night forward.
“Old School Fridays” at Wesley’s have become Toledo’s most popular dance night, going strong since 2005 when Perrine first pitched the idea.
“When I started the night, I didn’t think it was going to last six months,” Perrine said. “Here we are 18 years later, and every Friday night is just as busy as the next. It literally has never slowed down. It really is amazing because that kind of stuff just doesn’t happen here.”
The definition of “Old school” is broad—referring to anything from eighties rock, to nineties hip-hop, to seventies disco and funk. It’s a genre blend engineered to get people from multiple generations and many walks of life moving on the floor.
Perrine found his affinity for nightlife at fourteen, participating in the area’s punk and club scene. During one night in 1984, friends took him to Nectarine Ballroom, a dance club in Ann Arbor where the DJ played a mix of club music from the UK. Immediately inspired by sounds he’d never heard before, Perrine returned to a friend’s house and experimented with turntables for the first time that night.
At sixteen he landed a gig as a resident DJ spinning every Wednesday through Saturday at the storied Toledo music venue Frankie’s. Perrine and two other DJs spun blocks of hip-hop, big beat, disco, industrial, house, and reggae in the venue’s basement while bands like pre-fame Smashing Pumpkins, Sugar Ray and Alice In Chains played upstairs.
“It was for everybody,” Perrine remembered. “You had the jocks, burnouts, preps, goths—so many different classes of people all under one roof, all cohesively flowing along to the music no matter what it was,” including genres many people in the community had never experienced before.
After a total of 12 years, the residency at Frankie’s disbanded, but Perrine was hell-bent on keeping its spirit alive, especially since he considers Toledo to be a “heavily Top 40 city,” where “you can go into ten different bars and hear the same playlist.”
More importantly, “I wanted to bring that diversity of people back into an environment where everyone can flow to one rhythm all night.”
Todd Perrine“I’m trying to create a vibe for everyone. I want everyone under one roof vibing at the same time, whether you’re 20 years old or 80 years old. I want to reach everybody.”
Old School Fridays is now a platform for up-and-coming and established DJs from Toledo—and beyond—to hone their craft. Perrine hopes that the exposure gives DJs the chance to gain more opportunities and the confidence boost to “know your worth,” so that the entire DJ ecosystem benefits. “You start [asking for less compensation] and it hurts everybody,” he said.
As a welcoming platform for DJs, Old School Fridays have also become an antidote to the segregation that has historically plagued Toledo nightlife.
Roderick King, AKA DJ Lyte-N-Rod, remembered, “This town is so segregated when it comes to the nightlife. … Todd started reaching out to the DJs that normally wouldn’t get a chance to play downtown because that’s not their scene. He was bringing us all in [as] guest DJs [into] this predominantly white downtown crowd and it was crazy.”
In addition to Old School Fridays, Perrine has live streamed sets for audiences in Brazil, Ukraine, France and more, and has traveled the world playing festivals.
Consistently DJing in front of a live audience since he was 16 years old has taught Perrine a thing or two about how to keep a crowd happy, and mixing is only half of it. It’s also about empathy: the special ingredient in Old School Fridays.
“In the snap of a finger you can lose your crowd or you can grow your crowd,” he explained. “If even one person steps off that floor, I can read their facial expression and that resonates with me — I know I need to adjust.”
“I’m trying to create a vibe for everyone. I want everyone under one roof vibing at the same time, whether you’re 20 years old or 80 years old,” Perrine continued. “I want to reach everybody.”