Brass Mash Member Deep Dive: Stephanie Douglass

Stephanie Douglass is usually the host of this Blog but we’ve turned the tables! Now I, Bandleader Colin Dean, get to ask the hard hitting questions! Stephanie has been an amazing addition to the Brass Mash family in the last three years. Since having joined in 2020 or maybe 2021 she has become an audience favorite!

Stephanie hiding in the foliage at Whalerock Music Festival

Current favorite mashup

Enter DJ lives rent free in my mind fom months at a time! The fact that it goes from Locrian to Major (Musical Terms) is just so silly!

How did you come to join Brass Mash?

I hadn’t really seen Brass Mash until Anthony posted the video of “Hit My War Pigs” in the studio. I was so jealous and I saw Bree (Chambers)  in there and thought awe man “she’s gets to play in that cool band.” Then some random named Colin friended me on Facebook, and I thought I don’t know who this person is but they have a trombone in their profile picture and I’m always trying to make brass player friends! Then Colin sent me a DM asking if I was interested in playing with Brass Mash, and of course I was “yes” as I was looking to play more. I played in my first rehearsal in December of 2020.

Tell us about your first Brass Mash gig.

It was at Opolo winery, in May of 2021. The event was a crab feed,  it was just really fun to play with Ben (Kerr) for the first time (he wasn’t at the rehearsal). I thought we had great chemistry as players. Of course discovering the Mashups in real time was really fun. I didn’t have access to the book beforehand so I sightread the whole show from the binder. That was fun!  I actually enjoy doing that on the spot! I was struck by how welcoming the band was and how good it felt to play in this situation for the first time and how comfortable it felt. It’s striking how it’s not that way in other situations. I also ran into coworkers from one of the schools I working at at the time!

Share one core Brass Mash experience.

This is really silly and really subjective core experience! When we played at [Redacted] winery in 2021. We were playing acoustic and Brian Lanzone had started playing with us. The winery was just so “extra” and strange. People were just sitting there while we were playing. We (the band) were tapped out from the previous evening (a First Friday). The fact that we were playing acoustically while everyone was eating and then we played above the tanks. It was extra silly. We played like three songs while people were eating and mostly ignoring us. There were *some* people dancing but some people were moving further away from us too! It goes to show we’re not for every situation and that’s ok! I liked that. It was a core memory because it (the performance) was really just for us!