Trouble migrating custom post types from non-wordpress cms

I was able to come up with a solution according to advice from the comments. Working code:

function import_shows() {
  $olddb = new wpdb(constant("DB_USER"),constant("DB_PASSWORD"),"THE_DB",constant("DB_HOST"));

  $sql = "SELECT * FROM shows";
  $rows = $olddb->get_results($sql);

  foreach($rows as $obj) {
    error_log($obj->name);
  }

  return;
}