Hoodoo Celebrates Change at Rumba Cafe

BY BRAM FULK — U WEEKLY / JANUARY 14, 2009

Going on 14 years, the Hoodoo Soul Band has been serving up fresh Funk and righteous Rhythm and Blues to the Columbus music scene. Originally a side project of several local artists, the Hoodoo Soul Band has developed — through its weekly Sunday night gig at Oldfield's on High — quite a cult of followers. Mark Henderson is the percussionist for the band as well as one of its founding members. When Henderson opened The Rumba Cafe — a bar near the corner of Summit and Hudson with a stage shared by local players and national acts alike — the Hoodoo Soul Band became the spot's regular Sunday night featured act. Recently Henderson spoke with UWeekly about the band, the bar, the music and especially about their upcoming special appearance celebrating the inauguration of President Barack Obama.

UW: Which came first, the band or the cafe? MH: The band did. I formed the band back — actually it's been about fourteen years ago. We did our debut at the High-Beck Tavern and everybody was kind of in their other respective bands at the time and I wanted to put a group of guys together that could cover different tunes. With the instrumentation, it was pretty large. [We covered] everything from Earth, Wind, and Fire and Tower of Power to James Brown. All of those bands had multiple guitars and horns and percussion and drums and we kind of started out as a large band, not really expecting to make a whole lot of money at it, but we thought we could actually execute some tunes that most five or six piece bands avoided because of the instrumentation.

UW: And where did you go from there? MH: We were able to play a few Fridays and Saturday's here and there, but since everybody was booked up [with their other bands] we tried to find a night of the week we could all get together and not have conflicting gigs, we picked Sunday night as the night to try and do this and we started at Oldfield's on High. It kind of caught on and then developed into somewhat of a campus draw. Like I said, it's been about 14 years, we've been generational. We've actually played for students that were involved at OSU and then ended up playing at their wedding 10 years later.

UW: What's the bands repertoire like now? MH: Well, it's pretty diverse. Like I said, we do some James Brown and we actually had the thrill of opening for James when he was alive at the Promowest Pavilion. We opened the show for him there, which was kind of like meeting our hero. He actually came out and gave us a nod, you know. He had recognized one of our guitar players from being in Parliament-Funkadelic — Kevin Oliver, he used to play with George Clinton. Then we also had a chance to open up for Ray Charles at the Schottenstein Arena which — this all happened within a year of each other...in 2002. We do some Johnny Cash, Dwight Yokem — everything from that to The Stones...Steely Dan [and] we do a few originals, too. It crosses the spectrum. Everything from rock and soul to a little bit of country, too.

UW: Where did The Rumba Cafe come from? MH: I had always wanted to have my own bar. It was kind of one of my dreams to actually have my own space and play what I wanted to play when I wanted to play it and I was able to do that a couple years ago. At The Rumba Cafe, we're dedicated to music 7 nights a week and most of the bands we have here do original music and it's sort of a showcase spot. Since Little Brothers closed down, there hasn't really been that many venues showcasing original music. You go out and you hear cover bands all over town, but we're one of the very few clubs that try and help promote the local music scene and that's kind of what our dedication is.

UW: What's something that most people don't really realize about Rumba Cafe? MH: We actually have happy hour shows. [It's] kind of unusual and it isn't really a common-place thing that happens in Columbus too much. We were one of the first clubs around Columbus to start doing that and it's kind of caught on. Our Thursday Happy Hour shows have been really, really good. Sometimes we even do better business and have better crowds turn out for those shows than we do the evening shows. That's something that we're real happy about.

UW: This upcoming week, you have your regular gig on the 18th — on the Sunday at Rumba Cafe — then you're playing a special event on the 20th for the inauguration. MH: Yeah, we've been kind of politically motivated here over the last campaign — the last two years — and we've had our shows kind of try to spur people on to vote and we've kind of taken a stand on that. We figured, with the success we had as far as the voter turn out — not that the band had specifically, but we were trying to promote that at our shows — we felt, for our fans to have an inaugural party to bring something positive to what's going on within our lives and our fans lives, too. Along with the club, we thought it was a good idea to celebrate. It's going to be a 6 to 9 show on that Tuesday.

Originally Published: Issue 726 - January 14, 2009