BEN FAUSCH

Photo by Drew Carlson Photography

Founder of Brass And Gold Society...

When did you first get you into music?

I don’t know if I know of a “first”, it’s always been there.

My ma is a singer and retired music teacher. Her dad was a concert violinist and violist that played in the symphonies in Milwaukee and Minneapolis, and also played with the Oxford string quartet on the BBC a lot during WWII. His ma was a ragtime pianist that played piano in a ton of Midwestern silent theaters. You could say music is literally in my blood.

The first thing I did musically as far as I can remember: I took piano lessons at 6, and do remember the first song I wrote actually. It was called “thunderstorm” and it was just me mashing the low keys on the piano. Foreshadowing for my propensity for low instruments I think!

What instruments do you play? Which do you prefer most?

I play tuba first. It’s my 10,000 hour instrument. Got me a full ride in college, and is what I try to get gigs with these days. I also play bari sax, piano, bass, trumpet, guitar, ukulele, bass clarinet, and can rock a Hammond B3 or Rhodes if I have to!

Who inspired you to pursue a career in music?

Most likely my high school band director Mike Smith. He was a local jazz drummer originally from south side Chicago who’s now teaching one of the best marching bands in the country out in Ohio. He’s a seriously talented musician and teacher. We got a lot of musician’s “real talk” about the life, and he opened up a world of music; introducing me to Mingus, Dirty Dozen, Rebirth, and about 1000 other groups that high school band directors didn’t really show their kids at the time. Especially tubists.

Hearing bands do awesome nola covers of hip hop charts, hearing that sousa WOOF from rebirth, those bands showed me the tuba had more to offer than I had ever been shown before. All I wanted to be was a tuba rock star after that.

How would you describe the music that you create?

I’ll steal a term my bandleader Tung Pham used for the music we created in his band Gora Gora Orkestar for our collaboration with the Flobots for its NOENEMIES movement.

“Brass Hop”

That wasn’t the first time I wanted to play the music I write, but the musicians I met through Gora and the music I wrote for them fueled my desire to write stripped down, gutsy, raw hip hop that could be played anywhere. It’s the feeling of grooving with a live marching band, surrounded by people as an MC gets the crowd going, all for a noble cause for the people.

In the words of my MC, Illse7en: “It’s magic.”

How has your music evolved since you first began playing music?

So much. Honestly I would say the thing I do the most now, compared to my early days gigging, is take risks.

When I play with good musicians I try to push myself, play out of my abilities, write lines leading into corners, play until I have nothing left and I’m bleeding (literally and figuratively). That’s where the creativity and new ideas come from. Think bigger and weirder and see where it takes you.

If you were forced to choose only one, which emotion, more than any other drives you to stay in this tough business? Is it joy, anger, desire, passion or pride and why?

Joy by way of community. I don’t practice religion, and can be pretty introverted on my own, but music allows me to bond with the world in a deeper manner than I could ever do as a person.

The feeling of getting a whole room of people connecting on a deep groove or their favorite song is one of the few pure things to me.

Which ingredient do you think makes you special and unique as a performing artist in a genre overflowing with new faces and ideas?

To be honest. I’m weird as hell, and like to take things apart and put them back together with things that don’t make sense.

I try to take one feel of one style of music, and see how I can get a completely unrelated and disparate piece of music to work with it. It challenges the musicians I work with to get creative, and their abilities make a truly unique experience on the spot.

What has been your biggest challenge as a musician? Have you been able to overcome that challenge? If so, how?

Being a tuba player has a wide range of challenges 8 play. This was last week! I get lots of “hurr hurr” jokes about being slow, or not a “real musician” from all angles, but my favorite comment I get is “do you have a bass player” when I’m at sound check.

These jokes usually fade when people see me play, but even after 15 years of gigging, I was just asked at my own show if I had a bass player coming to play. This was last week! Definitely an uphill battle to prove myself as a musician to other musicians and the community, but all worth it to make jaws and pants drop, haha!

Really the best advice I can give younger musicians fighting for legitimacy is to do two things: Be nice. Always. Take no shit.

A common phrase in the industry is, “you must suffer for your art”. Do you agree with this statement? And if so, how have you suffered for your art?

Well I’m classically trained, so yes I’ve suffered haha. Seriously though, I think that there’s always a level of suffering because you have to always push to be a better musician. Always practicing, always listening, always experimenting. There’s always work to be done, and sometimes it can make you suffer a bit, but like so much in life it’s there to make you better.

Suffering can also be a huge source of inspiration, historically you could argue that some of the best art has come out of times when a society was suffering. I think suffering can open you up to pathways of intimacy as an artist, it can make you find creative ways to express the pain, and sometimes will give you new agency to explore those paths.

Which artists are you currently listening to? And is there anyone of these that you’d like to collaborate with?

I’m so inspired by hip hop and how it crosses over with so many different genres these days. Artists like Masego are creating beautiful cinematic landscapes, brass bands like Galactic are bringing in all kinds of MCs and soul groups to make deep south bangers, and electronic groups like EMEFE are using brass almost as an electronic instrument to add hardness to their grooves. I’m all about deep grooves and heavy production, and there’s so much creativity there in the industry these days, now that people don’t need 6 weeks in a studio to create music.

How do you feel the Internet has impacted the music business?

Musicians like to dog on the pay they get from services like Spotify, but honestly it’s an amazing tool.

The hard truth is, musicians have almost never made any money from album sales. Artists like Prince and Radiohead figured that out a long time ago. This is why they’ve released music by themselves or for free. They realized that albums are closer to advertising than product, that they were making albums to support fans coming to their shows where there is a lot more control over the finances. I encourage all musicians to learn about what Prince has done for the internet music industry.

Overall the internet has given musicians so many tools and outlets to share their music, find inspiration, learn how to record and produce their art, and find new musicians to work with. Sure there’s a bigger pool, but you’d be surprised how local the internet still is sometimes. I regularly connect with the Denver scene through social, and have found some amazing people that way.

If you could change anything about the music industry, what would it be?

Honestly for the working musician, better unions and more of them. I think artists are tired of working for exposure, and even beginners should get a rate.

Doing things like buying tickets for your own show, or slowly watching your pay get cut after gig by the venue, or getting kicked off a show over small potato issues just makes it harder to keep good musicians playing at a venue.

The good venues, even the small ones, pay musicians well and on time, because they understand a good band that keeps people in the venue can be hard to come by. Musicians in Denver don’t have anyone protecting them, and we all suffer because of it.

Tell us about your current project, Brass and Gold Society.

This has been cooking in my brain since 2004 when my first college tuba teacher Carson McTeer showed me Nat McIntosh’s group YoungBlood brass band.

These guys are famous in the brass band scene for pushing the definition of what a brass band is. They regularly collaborated with Talib Kweli, and Nat is a motherfucker on the tuba. First beat boxing on the tuba I ever heard. I would say every brass band has covered their song Brooklyn at least a few times.

Since then, I have done a lot of playing on the street with the Gora Gora Orkestar for so many activist causes. Fight for 15, Black Lives Matter, refugee support, Women’s March. The leader Tung lead us into all those events, such a great guy. That band gave me a lot of license to create deep grooves and learn how to get a big outdoor crowd going. A few experiences with MCs and collabs with buskers and street players and all I wanted to do was make hip hop you could play anywhere.

One day I was talking with my trumpet friend Randy Runyan, and we both expressed mutual love for a lot of these ideas. Randy has spent a lot of time in the Denver music scene playing with local MC legend Molina Speaks, and has met a ton of a-list jazz musicians and Denver MCs. A few phone calls between the two of us and we assembled some of the baddest motherfuckers in Denver to create a different flavor of hip hop.

We have horn players Randy Runyan, Ryan Sargent, and Michael Windham from Leon and the Revival, and local jazz greats Tenia Nelson, Aaron Summerfield and Alex Tripp holding down rhythm.

One part brass band, one part jazz combo, an amazing legendary MC named Illse7en up front, and we have a band that constructs vibes on the fly that gets everyone dancing to something between Robert Glasper, J Dilla, and the Roots.

What’s next for you?

I have about 3-5 other types of bands I want to create in the next 5-10 years, but I want to develop Brass and Gold as far as it can. I’m not looking to take over the world, I want to create something truly unique and artistically relevant to the world, leave the mark, and create something else.

Who knows? I have an idea for a dirty polka band, and maybe something with some hair metal guys, we’ll have to see.

1. Rage against the Machine - Battle of Los Angeles. Was the perfect answer to my teenage anger and my first true CD I ever bought. When I play tuba I’d rather sound like Tom Morello over anyone.

2. Boom Boom Satellites - Out Loud. Bought at a head shop that sold used cd’s and drugs in the back. This album had a dirty, grungy approach to big beat that took in a lot of jazz musicians. First time I had ever heard horn players on something besides jazz or classical music, or a pop solo. They were introduced as textures and influences to the sound rather than just ‘soloing’, especially on ‘Batter the Jam no.3’. Very Miles Davis for sure. Definitely spawned an early desire to do something different with band instruments.

3. Stanton Moore – III. First time I ever heard Stanton Moore(Galactic) or Robert Walter(Greyboy Allstars) on. Tuba players need to listen to funky organ players more. I learn to play solos from noise artists, and funky ass basslines from organists.

4. Lianne La Havas - Is Your Love Big Enough? Truly one of the best songwriters I’ve ever heard. Complex haunting chords and a beautiful voice. This album along with The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Badu’s Worldwide Underground, and Theophilius Londons’ Timez Are Weird These Days were the soundtrack of New York to me when I was working there. Her approach to music really opens up your ear and soul.

5. Masego - Lady Lady. This is the best recent album I’ve heard. I love cinematic hip hop that blends in jazz and soul, and the environments this album creates are works of art to me. Hugely inspiring. Shout out to Daymé Arocena’s album Nueva Era which almost replaced Masego. Best groove I’ve ever heard was on Madres.

How can fans-to-be gain access to your music?

We’re right in the middle of finishing our first ep, and I can guarantee its not what you expect out of a band with a tuba in it. That and a few singles will be dropping over the next few months. Follow us on instagram at @bandgsoc for the most up to date info on those releases.