Musician Spotlight: The Brain Trust

Josh Opp – Lead Guitar/Drums
Matt Stoebner – Bass/Guitar
Grant Burgeson – Drums/Guitar

What is your Band?

Josh: The Brain Trust

Grant: “The” is very important.

Matt: No one gets it except…No one puts “the” there except for us.

What kind of music do you play?

Josh: I guess a straight forward Rock.

Matt: Rock, with alternative influences.

Josh: Maybe a little punk thrown in.

How long has your band been together?

Matt: Officially we’ve been together for three years, but then (Josh) moved to Tennessee then we never did anything for two of them.

Josh: We’ve sorta played around but never really did anything in town till about four months ago.

Names and instruments?

Matt: We kinda switch instruments off and on, honestly.  Just to switch it, not be like everyone else.

Josh: Generally whoever has written the song is whoever plays the instruments. But mainly, I’m Josh and I play the instruments.

Matt: You do all of them?

Josh: I do guitar.

Matt: I’m Matt, I generally do bass.

Grant: I’m Grant and I generally do the drums.

What are your influences as a band?

Josh: Me and (Matt) have a pretty big Beatles influence.

Matt: Beatles, Radiohead.

Josh: I have more of a “poppy” sense.  Some of songs include more of John Mayer or Jack Johnson type stuff.

Matt: I have more a punk influence.  Not really straight up punk, more like Blink 182 punk.
Grant: I’m a lot of the Blink, and I’m the odd one with the country influence.

Matt: I generally write slower stuff. That’s just what I’m used to writing I guess.

Where did the band name come from?

Matt: Scrubs. Josh, I, and Grant too are all big Scrubs fans.

Josh: We sorta had a name before that. I don’t know if we want to talk about that.

Matt: No. Did we actually ever play a song as that?

Josh: No.  We’ll easter egg that later.  People can bug us about it all the time, but we won’t tell anyone.

Matt: Oh God…

Have you put out any albums?

Josh: No yet.  It’s going to be our goal this summer. We’ve just been focusing on doing more live shows now.

Matt: Working everything up so it sounds good.

Grant: Get our name out there.

What is your goals as a band?

Josh: We aren’t really shooting for the stars.  We just like to have fun playing. Just enjoy being out in the crowds and stuff.

Matt: Just take it for as long as we can and as far as we can.  Not actively look for opportunities and if one presents itself we’ll definitely take it.

What’s your favorite thing about playing music?

Matt: I just like the music energy, that you give off, that your receive while you are playing live.

Josh: Especially live shows.  The emotions that come with that.  Music in itself, like playing by yourself and writing songs, is stress realiving too.  You can write personally to talk about your stresses too.

Matt: Music is very personally. Especially for me.  All the stuff I write has a story behind.

Grant: I got nothing.

Matt: Grant’s got nothing.

Grant: I’m told to hit drums.  Without my sticks, I don’t know what to do.

Anything else you want people to know about The Brain Trust?

Matt: Hit us up on Facebook.  Just come to our shows.  Get to know us, we want to know you.

Josh: We’re definitely down for having some fun.