When hundreds of thousands of NFL fans from across the country converge in front of Union Station for the NFL Draft April 27-29, the Kansas City mashup party band, Lost Wax Band, will be front and center all weekend long.
“Every day we’ll be doing a ten-minute opener to hype up the crowd and get everybody excited, and then with every pick, we’ll do a voice mashup before the pick and an instrumental mashup after,” says Eboni Fondren, one of Lost Wax’s lead singers and a band leader. “The first day we have over a hundred songs prepared, and the next day has about 160.”
While this is the largest crowd Lost Wax Band will perform in front of—by at least a couple hundred thousand people—there’s good reason why the NFL selected the local party band to lead music and set the vibes throughout the draft.
For over a decade, Lost Wax Band has been curating playlists into specialized music mashups for events all over the Midwest.
The band will bring a 14-person ensemble to the NFL Draft, and Fondren says they’re choosing different songs and genres to put together mashups inspired by the cities highlighted during each draft pick.
“The last few weeks of organizing and planning and rehearsing, we’ve curated stuff that sports fans will be familiar with,” she says. “We like to take all genres and mash them together. We cover everyone from Bon Jovi to Journey to Bruno Mars, Lizzo, Taylor Swift, and everything in between from rock to country to hip hop to Motown.”
A big NFL fan herself, Fondren says the band is ready to geek out over their favorite NFL players. Pro tip: follow the band on Instagram @lostwaxband for live, behind-the-scenes updates through the NFL Draft.