"There were the police with rubber bullets and pepper spray, and rioting at night," he recalls. "That kind of stopped when we started to guide the protest. Like, we literally took over the entire movement in downtown Denver for at least two weeks straight."
"We were actually kind of a powerful presence in the movement, because we were so loud and boisterous that everywhere we went, people tended to follow," adds saxophonist Armando Lopez. "So because of that, a lot of movement leaders were very invested in trying to tell us where to go. We ended up very much a part of it, and it was definitely a major milestone. We got messages online from people saying that they went to D.C. or they went to more marches and were just leveling up from being inspired by our music specifically, which is really special."
Just a few years earlier, members of Brothers of Brass had been busking the same streets where they would later lead protests, gaining fans as they played on the 16th Street Mall and around the Denver Performing Arts Complex. Today the band is an established, integral component of the local music scene, and it's paying homage to its home base with the new single "Mile High," which drops on Friday, March 3, aka 303 Day.
While the group is known for its classic New Orleans brass-band stylings, lately Simon has been melding that sound with other genres, such as hip-hop. Those influences are highlighted on "Mile High" as well as the band's upcoming album, Trapadelics, which Simon expects to release sometime in April. "There's a lot of bands out here, but there's not really any diversity out here — or at least not any that's represented well enough for Denver to be acknowledged for that," he says. "Denver is known for jam bands and EDM, and that's about it. There's not really a huge funk or jazz scene or hip-hop scene, or any of the things that I'm really used to, so that's why I'm trying to bring that element to the city with my brass band, and by releasing 'Mile High.'"
The band began composing the song in Simon's basement during the pandemic. "We just kind of got together and just thought of all of the things that make Denver Denver to us," he recalls. "In my verse in the beginning, I'm talking about everything from the fireworks coming out of Coors Field to getting a parking ticket, you know what I'm saying? ... We even talk about ourselves, the brass band, being a fixture in Denver, playing underneath the bridge at the Broncos stadium after a game. It's just about everything we consider Denver."
Simon first came to the city in April 2015 with the original edition of Brothers of Brass, which he'd created with college friends who are no longer with the band. They had been busking the streets of Atlanta, playing outside Braves games, when they decided to travel the country, hitting up more baseball games and busking other events. "We ended up playing outside of a Colorado Rockies game, and during that same trip, we met Armando," Simon says.
Lopez was busking at the corner of the 16th Street Mall and Curtis Street with his friend, Jake Herman, as the duo Nimbus. But they couldn't ignore the sound of Simon's tuba coming from a block away, at Champa Street. "I always wanted to play with a sousaphone player, and Khalil and his friend were both extremely loud brass players," Lopez recalls. "We could hear them very clearly from where we were. I remember telling Jake, 'Oh, no, I'm gonna go talk to the guy.'"
Sax in hand, Lopez approached Simon and his friend; he remembers that they seemed wary. "With street musicians, a lot of times people try to protect their turf, and there are these little music battles," Lopez explains. But instead of questioning the interlopers, he suggested that they play together sometime, and he and Simon exchanged numbers.
In the weeks that followed, Lopez and Herman joined Simon and his band as they busked at the Denver Performing Arts Complex as events were letting out. "During one of those initial trips, me and my friend David came back to visit Denver during our Christmas break while we were going to school in Alabama, and it was cold, and we were playing the 16th Street Mall," Simon recalls. "And my friend was like, 'Hey, let's go check out The Grinch.' And it was a musical play at the Buell Theatre in downtown Denver. So we went to go play that when it let out, and we probably made the most money that we had ever made just busking. We probably made, like, $1,000 in an hour; it was insane. So we stayed the rest of the Christmas season."
For the next year and a half, Simon wound up collaborating with Lopez every time he returned to Denver. But after his apartment in Louisiana flooded, he decided it was time to make a move. "I remembered how much money I was able to make and how welcoming people were out here to out-of-towners," Simon says. "So I hit up Armando, and at that point, I had showed them the way to busk to maximize the most money, so I guess they trusted me. So I was like, 'Hey, I'm thinking about moving out. Would you guys want to start busking in a band with me?'"
Simon moved here permanently in August 2016, and what he calls the "official Brothers of Brass" formed with him, Lopez, and Herman on snare drums. Since then, they have remained the core members, working with a rotating cast of bandmates. "In addition to being a band, I like to think of it as an enterprise. We just have a lot of different scenarios, different products, different ways that the band shows up, and those require different people," Lopez explains. "I think our call list is probably something like thirty people, and our full-timers are probably like a solid eight people."
That first summer, Brothers of Brass tried an unusual busking location, at least for a brass band: the Phish lot during the seminal jam band's annual Labor Day weekend run at Dick's Sporting Goods Park in Commerce City. The musicians had such a good time, they decided to follow Phish.
"There's definitely several milestones, I would say, and touring Phish was one of them," Lopez says. "We did that for a few summers in a row. And those were pretty huge; we learned a lot and really, really zoned in our sound."
When in town, Brothers of Brass was a regular attraction on the mall at lunch and at the Denver Performing Arts Complex around curtain call. And in late 2018, according to Lopez, the band became a "vanguard for First Amendment rights and busking rights" when it worked with the Denver City Attorney's Office to guarantee it could continue to play at the DPAC.
Today, though, the band is doing more paid gigs, as well as engaging with kids at local high schools. Later this month, Brothers of Brass will play the Frozen Dead Guy Days festival, which has relocated to Estes Park. But its focus remains in Denver.
"I started to feel like I had become a Denverite, or had been accepted into the community. ... When I would walk up and down the 16th Street Mall, people would say, 'Hey, you're the guys who play at the arts complex!'" Simon reflects. "We started to get recognition, and we started to get hired by people who had seen us there. And then I would say that a year after that, in 2018, it got to be a full-size brass band. And at that point, people expected us to be downtown playing, and they went downtown to look for it. So once I felt like we were that permanent fixture in downtown, that's when I kind of started to feel that Denver was home."
And that's the home that Brothers of Brass is celebrating with its new single. "We feel very much adopted by Denver as a city," Lopez says. "And we moved that into an accessible sound that people identify with as the sound of Denver. That's part of why we're doing the song 'Mile High,' you know — we recorded that to be the Denver city anthem, because we are in the streets so much, and we want to bring people a recognizable sound, something that gets stuck in their head, something they can associate with the city. Because when people think of music nationally, a lot of times Denver's not on the top of their minds. But this is quite a musical place and artistic place, and a very creative melting pot. And we want to just represent that and record it and put pen to paper and give people that."
As Simon shares what he loves most about the Mile High City, his mind goes to the essence of community. "I really love the people that I've met here, the relationships that I've been able to have, maintain and grow with and learn from out here. I really love being able to put my art on full display, and that people love it and accept it and accept me for who I am here," he says. "I love Denver, and I'm gonna keep making songs about it, for sure."
"Mile High" releases on all streaming platforms Friday, March 3; Brothers of Brass plays a free release party at 9 p.m. Saturday, March 4, at Ophelia's Electric Soapbox, 1215 20th Street.
