25th anniversary of the Tonic Ball, with 60 local tribute acts playing 15-minute sets across five stages in Fountain Square, with all ticket dollars going to Second Helpings.
Tonic Ball returns to Fountain Square on Friday, November 20, marking the 25th anniversary of one of Indianapolis' longest-running music fundraisers. This year it's spread across five stages—Square Cat Vinyl, Radio Radio, Hi-Fi, Fountain Square Theatre, and White Rabbit Cabaret—with 60 local musicians returning to the lineup.
If you've never been, the format is what makes it. Local bands donate their time to play short, 15-minute sets built around two cover songs by an assigned tribute artist. Because there are no performance fees, the ticket money goes straight to charity. Since it started, the event has raised more than $1.5 million for Second Helpings, which runs food rescue, hunger relief, and culinary job training programs around the city.
The 25th anniversary edition is billed as the festival's biggest tribute yet. Fountain Square Theatre is serving as a hall-of-fame stage, and an anonymous donor is matching gifts up to $7,500, so any donations you make during the night go twice as far. With five stages scattered across the neighborhood, you can spend the day drifting between venues rather than sticking to one room.
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To get some perspective on how this grew: Tonic Ball began on November 22, 2002, at Radio Radio, where a dozen local bands covered Gram Parsons to raise money for Second Helpings. It stayed at a single venue for its first four years before expanding into a neighborhood-wide festival in 2006. Since then, it's drawn between 2,500 and 2,800 people every year, and it's sold out every single one since 2010. It all happens on Friday, November 20, across Fountain Square.
