'07 Live From Bloomington

It all started in 1986 with an idea between two very different IU students: one wanted an outlet for local music, the other wanted to raise money to fight world hunger. When the two combined ideas, Live from Bloomington's first Club Night emerged.

On the floor of Assembly Hall, about 10 local bands jumped at the chance to play their music for the community. Live From Bloomington reached its peak in the late 1990s, when the event raised more than 13,000 pounds of food and $6,000. All proceeds go to Hoosier Hills Food Bank. Since that time, volunteers have seen those numbers sharply decline, and last year the campaign barely made a profit. Now, local bands and volunteers are looking for any way possible to restore this long tradition back to its heightened status.

"If the focus is put back on the fact that this compilation is going to help feed hungry people ... then I think there will be more bands that are interested to be a part of that," said Brad Wilhelm, one of the event's creators.

Since its inception, the Live From Bloomington campaign has moved from more than just a concert to a chance for smaller groups to be heard -- all while embracing the community's poverty problem, said Live from Bloomington Director and junior Andy Goheen,. Now in its 22nd year, Club Night will feature 19 bands between Thursday and Friday night alone, playing at Jake's, the Bluebird, Max's Place and Uncle Fester's House of Blooze, as well as at Rhino's Youth Center and All-Ages Music Club and the WIUX station house. For $5 -- or $3 and two canned goods -- concert-goers are admitted to any of the venues for each night.

Wilhelm, who's also director of Rhino's, was concerts director for the Union Board when he and the leader of Students Against World Hunger came together with the idea for a concert in 1986.

Soon, the idea to record an album emerged from the concert, he said.

"I think it kind of reached its peak in the mid- to late-'90s as it kept growing," Wilhelm said. "The reason for that is more and more bands would be a part of the project because it became pretty high-profile."

"High-profile" turned all the way into a feature in Billboard magazine in 1996, Goheen said. Though the campaign puts on several small shows each year, the annual Club Night is what has brought the event to its acclaim. Both Wilhelm and Goheen called it one of the biggest local events of its time.

But with the rise of digital music, Goheen said it has become harder to get people interested in buying a CD.

"Being able to be on the CD at one time was a big deal and now it's not really as big of a deal," Wilhelm said.

Despite these challenges, Goheen said 150 CDs featuring this year's 19 artists have already been sold for $5 at small music stores throughout Bloomington, Indianapolis and Fort Wayne. While last year's CD was only sold at the event itself, this year's album has already been out a week and a half.

IU senior and art major David Woodruff has found more than one way to be a part of this year's concert events. He's the lead singer for The Delicious, plays in the band Kentucky Nightmare and also designed the cover for this year's compilation CD of all of the bands.

Kentucky Nightmare's music is more "straightforward rock," he says, but The Delicious is "indie-subruban-folk-quirk-pop." The other members of the band -- juniors Ben Fowler and Matt Romy and freshman Julian Bransby -- are all in the Jacobs School of Music, he said.

"I'm a musically ignorant dude that has the privilege of playing with all these jazz kids," Woodruff said.

Though he and the other group members have several projects going on at once, he said he's "pretty into the idea of pursuing the band."

Another band called Alexander the Great has members ranging from 22-year-old bass player Chris Stearly to 15- year-old drummer Ben Lumsdaine, a sophomore at Bloomington High School North. Stearly said the group has been together for 2 1/2 years and the music's genre is wide-ranging but mostly indie rock.

"It's more than just for fun," Stearly said. "For me at least, it's just been to get recognized and have our music appreciated … Have people like us continually support us even if we're not able to do it after a few years."

The group prides itself on focusing on the music and eliminating props and costumes from its performance, Stearly said.

"At least for me, my approach to music and performing music is that I would not want to be a part of something that I wouldn't want to go to myself," he said.

This year's Club Night will feature the best 19 bands chosen from more than 80 submissions by people in Bloomington area music, Goheen says. He praised the diverse blend of sounds -- everything from jazz to funk to indie rock and hip-hop.

Local musicians, concert promoters and others involved in the music business were all part of a committee that chose the bands, Goheen said.

"We're just looking for a variety of bands that would represent the diverse local music scene and diverse original music that comes out of Bloomington," he said.

In order to promote more bands and raise more money for Hoosier Hills Food Bank, the campaign has been recruiting bands since last summer, he said.

For Live from Bloomington's Club Night to "return to its former glory," Wilhelm said it needs to go back to its roots.

"There's no other local music event that celebrates local musicians," he said. "(We need) to realize it's a celebration of local musicians and a way to raise money for hunger."