Bonerama shakes the Players Pub with loud brass funk rock

Blue Christmas lights crisscrossed above the dance floor, casting a mellow glow on the Players Pub. Tarnished trumpets, a sax and an accordion older than many college students flank a sign dead center above the stage. \n“Playground,” it proclaims, which the stage certainly was when Bonerama took to it. The New Orleans brass funk rock band performed at the Players Pub on South Walnut Street Wednesday night to an enthusiastic crowd. \nBonerama started off with an April Fools’ joke, playing inharmonious, ear-rattling notes on four trombones, off-beat with the drums. Lead singer Mark Mullins grinned into the microphone and said “April Fools’, sorry y’all,” before launching into a brass ensemble version of Edgar Winter’s “Frankenstein.” After working up the crowd, the band walked off stage shouting “Goodnight y’all!” \nThirty seconds later they were back, and by the second song people were dancing.\n“I think the band is great,” said Ransom Haioe, a Bloomington resident. “They’re all astute musicians and they all have great attitudes.”\nHaioe said this is the second time he came to the pub to see Bonerama.\n“A large horn ensemble is powerful,” he said. “The fact that they’ll take James Brown and Led Zeppelin and blow the fuck out of it is awesome!”\nFour trombones led by Mullins and cofounder Craig Klein and backed by Steve Suter and Greg Hicks pumped out funk. Matt Perrine, New Orleans’ top sousaphone player, kept up with bass while drummer Eric Bolivar and guitarist Bert Cotton brought a rock edge and rhythm to the music. \nThe band has recently played on the Late Show with David Letterman and teamed up with OK Go to release a five-song EP. \n“We did a show together, had never seen each other until we got on stage and (Damian Kulash of OK Go) really liked it,” Cotton said. “So we did a little five-song release on iTunes, and the money went to this musician (Al “Carnival Time” Johnson) and local musicians in the New Orleans area.”\nThe release is only on iTunes, and all of the proceeds benefit displaced artists from New Orleans, most notably Al “Carnival Time” Johnson, Klein said.\n“Al, he’s such a nice man, he’s so humble, and he got screwed around for most of his life,” Klein said. “He wrote ‘Carnival Time’ and when it’s Mardi Gras time the song is played over every radio station.”\nThe proceeds also benefit Sweet Home New Orleans, a not-for-profit group dedicated to revitalizing “the music and cultural community within the neighborhoods of New Orleans by helping our tradition bearers access resources and secure stable, affordable housing,” according to its Web site.\n“The scene came back, but not all of the players came back,” Millins said. “They needed some normalcy after rebuilding their homes, so the first thing they did was open the clubs back up. All the clubs were open again but not all of the players were back. You could feel that it wasn’t back to normal. It was changed forever, really.”\nAfter playing with OK Go, Bonerama landed a spot on Letterman.\n“Me and Craig had been on there before with Harry Connick Jr., but with our own band like this it was awesome, especially because of the cause,” Mullins said. “We knew it would be a lot of exposure and a lot of publicity.”