11-16-2018 Tonic Ball

For several years now, a great organization named Second Helpings has had a music event fundraiser called Tonic Ball that is held in the Fountain Square area of Indianapolis. It has grown a lot in popularity, and now there are five stages that each feature the music of a different artist.

Cara was lucky and won two tickets to Tonic Ball, as well as a VIP pre-party - woohoo! Thanks Nuvo!

The VIP Party was held at the Fountain Square Theatre, which was also one of the music venues for the night.

 

There was free food from Liter House and free beer from Sun King Brewing Co.

It's a lovely venue that we hadn't been to in quite a while.

After the VIP Party, the theater became the venue for the Johnny Cash stage. We like his music, so we stayed here for a bit.

One of the things Second Helpings does is provide free meals to those who need them.

We decided we should try to check out all five venues. Just outside the theater, though, we encountered a roaming brass band
that reminded us of being in New Orleans.

 

Next door at Radio Radio was the Pearl Jam stage.

We had to wait in a short line to get in here because it was always at capacity.

Next we went over to Pioneer and the Beyonce stage. We didn't have to wait in line to get in, but there was no chance of
getting drinks here because the bar was packed.

By this time in the evening, most venues were at capacity. There were long lines at the last two venues, White Rabbit (the
ABBA stage) and The Hi-Fi (the Elton John stage), so we didn't even try to get in there.

We ended the evening at the Johnny Cash stage in Fountain Square Theatre - there was plenty of room there all night, and we found a nice spot in the balcony.

One of our favorite acts was the Skyfall Steel Orchestra - their instrumental, all-drum rendition of "Ring of Fire" was great!

We had a wonderful time. We did, however, wonder how much the event was oversold due to the long lines. We also thought that maybe they packed too many acts onto each stage.  Each performer only got to play about three songs, so there was almost as much time transitioning between acts as music itself.