Summit’s Mardi Gras performers reflect on their New Orleans influences and inspirations as event draws nearer

Honour Lackey
Wed, 15 Feb 2023 01:28:49 +0000
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New Basics is determined to bring their own spin to lively New Orleans style music this festival season. Credit: Courtesy of Rob Maccabee

The Summit Music Hall’s Mardi Gras Fest is bringing Bourbon Street to Summit Street with bands? performing a New Orleans-style celebration in Columbus Feb. 21.?

?The 18 and older event at 2210 Summit St. includes local bands — MojoFlo as the headliner and New Basics Brass Band. Additional artists will be Ernie Johnson from Detroit and Myhouse, according to the website. With a long history of Mardi Gras-style sound, the local performers said they hope to excite the audience with their expertise.?

?“What attracted me to it was that groove, the way that beat feels,” Rob Maccabee, founder of New Basics Brass Band, said. “It’s unlike anything else that I’ve ever experienced. It makes me want to move.”

?Formed in the fall of 1995, New Basics was inspired by brass band legends The Dirty Dozen, who were integral to the transition of traditional New Orleans style to more modern influences, Maccabee said. New Basics came together as a group of Capital University classmates looking to imitate their inspirations.

?“There was something simmering around the time we started our band,” Maccabee said.? “Unbeknownst to us it was a sort of synergistic thing where a lot of white college kids like us all around the country that had the same idea and the same level of inspiration.”

?The inspiration has carried through to countless gigs over the past 20 years, Maccabee said. The band shared its modern twist on New Orleans classics at parties, festivals and concert events around the Midwest. Through the decades, New Basics’ thesis has stayed the same: feel-good music, according to its website.

?“We have our own unique version of a sound even within that New Orleans style,” Maccabee said. “We try to play music in a way that creates engagement. Something someone can participate in. It’s not ‘sit there with your hands in your lap’ kind of music.”

?MojoFlo is bringing its own taste of New Orleans to Summit Street Music Hall, complete with its notorious aerialist choreography and vivacious sound. Started by another group of Capital University alums, MojoFlo’s eight-piece band has been serving up neo-funk style to Columbus audiences since 2008, Amber Knicole, MojoFlo’s lead singer and a multi-talented performer as a singer and aeralist, said.

?Although MojoFlo has been bringing their groove to Summit since the venue opened, Knicole said this will be the band’s first time performing for Summit’s Mardi Gras Fest.

?“Every other Mardi Gras party we’ve been a part of we’ve actually been in New Orleans for,” Knicole said. “It’s going to be fun to bring it here and have that here in Columbus.”

?With a decade of experience playing Mardi Gras celebrations, Knicole said the most rewarding aspect was building its community in Columbus while getting to know the festival attendees in New Orleans each year. Not only have the band’s years performing allowed it to get to know everyone from audience members to bar staff, but Knicole said the experience allowed the performers to get to know themselves.?

?“I feel like we’ve kind of grown up in Mardi Gras — at Mardi Gras — as a band,” Knicole said. “We definitely cut our teeth playing those three-hour sets.”?

?MojoFlo’s saxophonist Walter K said the event will be a positive experience for the audience, saying that bringing a feel-good vibe is essential to the band’s blend of funk, rock, jazz and hip-hop influences.?

?“It’ll be a big old party,” K said. “We like to be inclusive of everyone and to bring everyone together to have a good time.”

?Tickets can be purchased online for $10-15. Doors open at 4 p.m. with food and beverages available and performances starting at 7 p.m.