Tonic Ball #9: All You Need Is Love

Indy music and art fans lined the four corners at the intersection of Virginia and Woodlawn in Fountain Square last Friday, necks craning northward, following the sounds of "Get Back", which blasted from the rooftop of the Murphy Art Center.  A faux British bobby, in full regalia, paced through the collected crowd, while fans waved placards emboldened with the Fab Four's philosophic proclamation: "The love you make is equal to the love you take."

Performing under the "You Are Beautiful" sign was Beatles cover band, #9, an ensemble of local musicians  featuring Matt Mays, Scott Woolgar, Brian Deer, Bill Mallers and Andy Teipen, who formed especially for the event.

The street theater was all part of a guerrilla marketing effort announcing this year's Tonic Ball, at which local bands will perform their favorite Beatles' songs to help fight hunger in Indianapolis. The rooftop concert, an obvious nod to the notorious scene from Let it Be, was the brainchild of Ken Honeywell, creative director at Well Done Marketing and founder of Tonic Ball, an event that over the past nine years has become one of Indy's most popular nights of music and art -- benefiting one of the city's best charitable causes, Second Helpings.

"We started Tonic because we wanted to do something that would start to cross-pollinate the local music scene and give back to the community -- and hunger was the most important issue we could think of." Honeywell told Indy Social Media. "We took the idea to Second Helpings, they loved it, and here we are -- year nine."

Every year the city's best musicians and artists donate their time and work to the community kitchen which converts surplus food from local restaurants and groceries into nutritious meals for thousands of hungry children and adults every day.

"Hunger isn't going away," Honeywell noted. "Sadly, the need for Second Helpings' services continues to grow.  Second Helpings still does amazing work: feeding our hungriest neighbors and training underprivileged people for jobs in food service, all with food that was going to be thrown away."

Over the past decade, Tonic Ball has grown dramatically -- with some 40 local bands expected to take their turns on the stages of the Fountain Square Theater and popular nightclub Radio Radio on November 19th.

"Every year, the event becomes becomes more popular. More bands want to play, more artists want to donate, more people show up to be part of it all. We always want to make sure the show lives up to the hype," Honeywell said. "It always has. It's the one show of the year that, were I not involved, I'd still tell everyone they had to see."