Musician treks to Mormon fort

O.A.R. keyboardist MikelParis is in town with his bandmates to perform Saturday night at Mandalay Bay Events Center, accompanying Olympic champion skaters during “Pandora Unforgettable Moments of Love on Ice.”

That show will be taped for TV broadcast, but he has his own video to shoot Friday afternoon: the latest in an ongoing project he’s dubbed TuneTrek.

From about 12:30 to 4:30 p.m. Friday, he’ll be shooting a video to his song “Before I Go,” from his “HIHOWAREYA Vol. 1.”

But don’t look for him on the Strip — or on Fremont Street.

This video shoot takes the musician to an even more vintage downtown spot: the Old Las Vegas Mormon Fort State Historic Park.

It’s part of his ongoing “TuneTrek” series (he’s done more than two dozen), in which he visits a notable location at O.A.R.’s latest tour spot.

“I’m always excited to research sites when going to a new city or town,” he explains in an e-mail. “I have numerous online historical databases that I look through to see what catches my eye.”

And in this case, what caught his eye was the Mormon fort, built in 1855 — and the oldest European-American building in Nevada.

“I’m attracted to off-the-beaten path places. Unique locations,” he notes. “And old Mormon fort in the middle of Las Vegas seemed to fit those parameters.”

During the shoot, he plans to interview a historian and tour around, “learning and looking for a sweet performance spot.”

The TuneTrek series “was born out of my love of adventure, travel, history and of course music,” MikelParis explains. “I was craving for a way to combine these loves and also a way to motivate me to get off of the tour bus or out of the hotel and see and experience places that I’m in.”

Once he “started experimenting with this idea at home, in the park, at my parents’ place,” the musician “discovered that I was on to something.”