Meet Brass Mash, the brass-based cover band selling out SLO shows every month
On a brisk Friday night in San Luis Obispo, a line of people spills out the front doors of Liquid Gravity brewery, which hit its maximum capacity hours ago.
Fans of all ages and walks of life, from college students to families, flock to the beer garden on the first Friday of every month in hopes of seeing their favorite local band. The crowd that forms is consistent month after month, full of repeat attendees.
Those who did not purchase tickets ahead of time wait eagerly in the cold, overhearing the energetic tune of brass instrumentals that flood out from over the fence, anxious for their turn to join the party. Some have been standing there for over an hour.
The band that’s worth the wait? Brass Mash.
Aptly named, Brass Mash is a local SLO County brass-instrument-based mash-up band.
“It’s not a jazz band,” founder Colin Dean told The Tribune with a laugh. “It takes a lot of imagination to figure out what we’re doing.”
With two trumpeters, two trombone players, three different saxophonists, a drummer and a bassist, Brass Mash performs creative instrumental compositions of modern pop-songs mixed with rock-and-roll classics, all arranged by the members of the band.
Its rendition of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” suddenly switches to Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer” halfway through, while a popular mash-up “My Girl Killed the Radio” combines The B-52’s “Love Shack,” The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star,” The Temptations’ “My Girl” and Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train.”
In the near-decade since is founding, Brass Mash has developed somewhat of a cult following in SLO County.
“I moved here a couple years ago, and they were one of my first bands I ran into and I’ve been following them ever since,” Valerie Newmann, a resident of San Luis Obispo, told The Tribune at a Feb. 7 show.
The band holds a residency at Liquid Gravity — where it has performed the first Friday night of every month since 2021.
For Raleigh Elbert, a senior at Cal Poly, there is nowhere else she would rather be on a Friday night.
“1,000%, Liquid Gravity, first Friday of the month, we are here,” Elbert told The Tribune.
On top of its first Friday shows, Brass Mash plays other public gigs around the county, as well as the occasional wedding or private party.
“There have been a couple concerts in the plaza that have gone like, absolutely bananas,” Dean said. “We get like, 2,000 people screaming the songs with us.”
What gets people to return month after month, though, is the band’s insatiable energy.
Inside the concert space of Liquid Gravity on the night of Feb. 7, fans packed the space in front of the stage, dancing, singing and shouting in unison. A few fearless fans even braved a crowd surf, trusting the hands of hundreds of strangers to guide them to safety. Those feeling less rowdy enjoyed the music from around the warm fire pit or from their pre-reserved booths.
“Our best performances are ones where we see that people are having a really good time,” Stephanie Douglass, one of the band’s trumpeters, told The Tribune. “We love it when people interact with us and sing the songs and interact with the music. I think that feeds us.”
How did the brass band get its start?
Dean moved to SLO County from the Bay Area in 2015, where he had been playing in a similarly formatted brass mash-up band called the East Bay Brass Band.
“When I had the opportunity to move down here, I was like, ‘Where’s the brass band?’ And so I decided to start my own,” Dean said.
Brass Mash has seen many different phases over the years, with members of all ages and stages of life.
An eclectic group of 12 musicians ranging in age from 21 to 70, the group’s musical expertise goes far beyond your average high school marching band. Many members are classically and jazz trained and possess advanced music degrees.
“A lot of us have been, are, or were music educators,” Douglass said.
Currently, the band has Brian Lanzone on bass guitar and Sean Sullivan on the drums, while Anthony Yi, Tim Crooks and Sam Franklin play the alto, tenor and baritone saxophone, respectively. Douglass plays the trumpet with the band’s oldest member, 70-year-old Kevin Wilde, while Dean holds down the trombone alongside the band’s youngest member, 21-year-old Cal Poly student Kai Easley.
“He’s our charm,” Douglass said of Easley.
“Kai is still single,” Dean teased in the same tone he does at every Brass Mash show, a bit that has become somewhat of a running joke for the band, at the playful expense of their youngest member. “He’s open to musicians and non-musicians.”
All jokes aside, the band members’ bonds shine through clearly in the quality of their music and performances.
“We have so much love for each other in this band,“ Douglass said. “I feel like when we go and get to play a gig, it’s like, ‘We’re gonna go see our besties now! We’re gonna go have a great time and love each other and love each other’s music and love playing next to each other.’ It’s extremely fulfilling for us.”
Though Brass Mash does not compose original songs from scratch, the band still invents its own songs by combining pieces of already produced music. Every mash-up is arranged by the band members by finding musical commonalities — similar notes, beats or chord progressions — across songs, allowing them to be bridged together.
Sometimes, the songs come together quickly and in an obvious way, taking no more than a day’s work to get performance-ready, Dean said. Others — like “Enter DJ,” a mash-up of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” and Usher’s “DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love,” — took years to get right, he said.
Songs range from simple two-song mash-ups to massive mix-tapes, like “Boy Band Brass Mash,” which combined 18 songs by different boy band groups, Dean said.
No matter what musical masterpiece they are inventing, the band’s guiding philosophy is that the audience is their lead singer.
Because the band has no vocalists — aside from a few special vocal effects by Dean in Tupac Shakur’s “California Love”— the audience will take over, often continuing to sing the previous song’s lyrics while the band has switched to another during a mash-up.
“The audience themselves is actually doing the mash-up while the band is playing a different song,” Dean said. “Once I figured that out, I’m like, ‘Oh, the audience wants to sing along!’ And that was the thing that really cracked open.”
With a devious smile, Dean admitted he will purposely write abrupt transitions between songs “specifically just to mess with people.”
Even with its many fan favorites, Brass Mash is constantly looking to update its set list.
“Playing in a college town really keeps us honest and current about what we choose to arrange,” Douglass said. “We definitely hear people yelling Chappell Roan at us.”
Where can I see Brass Mash live?
Brass Mash frequents Liquid Gravity most often with its first Friday shows, but it makes other appearances across the county.
The band was set to take the stage at Liquid Gravity on May 2. General admission or reserved seating tickets are available online starting at $22 or at the door, where students can get in for a discounted $10 — but beware of the wait time. Its Liquid Gravity shows consistently sell out ahead of time.
Some of the band’s other upcoming gigs include a performance at the Atascadero Tamale Festival from 4:30 to 7 p.m. on May 3 and at Libertine Brewing Company in downtown San Luis Obispo on May 16.
The band is also already booked to play the SLO Concerts in the Plaza summer series on Sept. 12.
Dean said that Brass Mash plans to play “first Fridays forever, until the wheels fall off,” but hopes to expand the band’s reach and establish more residencies in all corners of the Central Coast, spreading to Orcutt and Santa Maria and also into North County.
“We really want to play regularly and more places so we can start to build more of a regular audience in multiple places,” Douglass said.
The band continues to push its limits, establishing a podcast and even a social media and marketing internship program, Dean said.
For Dean, Brass Mash has been a dream come true.
“I never thought I could support myself full-time as a trombone player,” he said. “I never thought I’d be able to do this.”
At the end of the day, it’s doing what he loves with the people he loves to do it with — playing good music, he said: “We just want to put on fantastic shows.”
This story was originally published May 1, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
