Brass Mash Member Deep Dive: Tim Crooks
Tim in his happy place :)
“He already stole your heart, now he’s about to steal your wallet…” Today we’ll hear from Brass Mash’s tenor sax player, Tim Crooks! On top of keeping us on our toes with the full emotional gamut of saxy solos, Tim also does something with rockets as his side hustle (I think he presses the button to make them go).
He can also be found, on occasion, improvising raps in our closing song of the show. (In fact, that’s why everyone should always stay for the entire performance - Tim might do a rap!) Seriously, they never disappoint. And Tim, as a human, never disappoints. Please enjoy our conversation about his journey with Brass Mash.
Year joined Brass Mash: That is a good question…whatever year Anthony joined, I think I joined that year or the year after. (2017?) We were both kind of vying for the tenor sax chair. We went down to one tenor, and when our previous tenor Brad left town to start his recording business and be a musician full-time, Anthony and I had dual tenors and he had the tenor chair. When Laura finally left town, Anthony moved to alto and I was permanently on tenor.
Current favorite mashup: I like Paper Sun Thunder. [Ooh, we haven’t done that one in awhile!] It’s really hip, mellow, groovy, and has a nice slow burn on it.
How did you come to join Brass Mash?
I was sitting next to Anthony in the San Luis Obispo Wind Orchestra. I was complaining about playing restrained, classical saxophone, that I was missing just blowing. I didn’t want something too organized, but I wanted something challenging. I didn’t want to join big band jazz again. Anthony said, “I have this group you should sit in with.” So he dropped my name to Colin.
My first gig was at Central Coast Brewing, a big warehouse building in San Luis Obispo by the cemetery. I must have rehearsed a little bit before my first gig…it would be crazy for me to just play it cold. But I was crazy like that.
I remember having the book, and I was supposed to prep, but I think I just showed up and read it without quite sight-reading it all.
Share one core Brass Mash experience.
Internally…not wanting to play with the click track. [Gasp!] Wanting to play everything live and free, tempos undulating, and we would just kind of wing it. That’s what I initially thought was my ultimate Brass Mash - playing solos, being free with tempos. But that can be a little messy, and not as danceable. Hitting the modern era with our band, playing with cues and having really good monitors in our ears - I think it helps us all play much better.
That was a big transitional phase in Brass Mash. We were really starting to dial in our shows, and all of a sudden we had lights synced up to the cues in our ears. Suddenly it felt like we were an amazing, professional group - we had groupies and people showing up, and we had lights going and we were playing this crazy show, not having very many pauses between some charts, we were ready to go. Other times we do banter. That was something that blew my mind and something that stands out the most for me.
I love the group, I love the people I play with. I love playing solos, I love soulfully sending people to tears or to dancing their asses off or watching crowd surfing. I think that tied it all in for me. This is an amazing group - we’re all nailing it, we’re playing with cues and the light show, everything sounds great.
I love the way we hurt people’s brains - where the mashups are 3 decades apart or more. You get everyone excited about shaking something…just being happy!
