What's On
Displaying events between September 1, 2022 and September 30, 2022
BCT Comedy Festival Weekend 1
BCT Summer Comedy Festival Weekend 1
Dates: Thu 29, Fri 30
Booking and More Information
Bloomington Chefs’ Challenge
Based on televisions popular Iron Chef and other competitive cooking shows, the event is a competition where 3 local chefs have an hour to create a winning dish featuring a local secret ingredient announced at the start. The dishes are judged by a panel of 3 judges and the top chef is awarded the coveted “Golden Spatula”. The event also features a live auction of culinary items and dinner packages, local restaurant trivia with prizes, roving hors d’oeuvres from local chefs and businesses as well as a cash bar. It’s a power packed two hours of excitement highlighting Bloomington’s culinary talent with all proceeds benefitting Community Kitchen’s efforts to alleviate hunger in Monroe County.
Dates: Thu 01, Fri 02, Sat 03, Sun 04
Booking and More Information
Bloomington Comedy Festival Round 2
It's that time again, friends! 11 Weeks, 40 Comedians, 39 Frowny Emoticons, ONE Champion. With almost all sold out shows, the best audiences of the year, and the ability to decide the winner, The Bloomington Comedy Festival returns for its 14th year. Join us Wednesdays AND Thursdays ALL SUMMER LONG as we crown The Funniest Person in Bloomington!
Dates: Sat 03, Sun 04, Tue 06, Wed 07
Booking and More Information
Broken Robots
Broken Robots is an indie pop/rock/hip-hop group composed of three downtrodden antiheroes from the city of Chicago. The group was formed by Kat Baker and Tony Baker in December 2017, when the duo began writing music together in their Chicago apartment.
Kat and Tony Baker met off the highway exit at Lake Street and 355 in April 2015, at a time when both had decided to give up on their passion for music. Kat was a former folk singer-songwriter and Tony was a former audio engineer, musician, actor, and vocalist in a variety of projects spanning from 1996-2008. Kat was working a miserable sales job, and Tony was panhandling. Their relationship began after months of Kat driving by and giving Tony dollars and cigarettes, and eventually evolved into regular trips into Chicago’s west side together to buy drugs. By May of 2016, the couple had been arrested together numerous times and were being investigated by law enforcement in multiple counties.
Against all odds, they managed to turn themselves around, and in December of 2017, Broken Robots was born. They began by releasing single tracks on SoundCloud about their experiences with death, mental illness, addiction and redemption. They compiled these tracks into their debut album Home Is Not a Place, and released it on October 1st, 2018. In December 2018, they were joined by bass player and long time friend Lonnie Phillips. His soulful songwriting style quickly became featured in many of the songs on the band’s 2018 EP, The Escape Artist, which combines the band’s original glitch, folk, and indie rock elements with jazzier bass lines and an overall darker soundscape.
Their latest single, “Who Am I?” steps back from the post-grunge-influenced vibe encompassed by the rest of the band’s catalog. While the song still feels like it may have grown up in the ’90s, it taps a different vein of the era, swapping the band’s usual industrial growl for a heartfelt outpouring of honesty atop a gently strumming guitar. Less Shirley Manson and more Sheryl Crow. While the single sounds different from Broken Robots’ former releases, it’s a solid stand-alone piece as the former trio forges ahead into a new chapter, which includes an upcoming EP with the band’s new drummer Anthony Friedli.
Mike Adams At His Honest Weight is opening the show!
Dates: Thu 01, Fri 02, Sat 03, Sun 04
Booking and More Information
Dina Hashem
Dina Hashem first tried stand-up by auditioning for the 2010 New Jersey Comedy Festival at Rutgers University. After winning 1st place, she continued to pursue comedy and has been performing regularly in New York City. Dina's style involves a subdued delivery with dark observations about her life and Islamic upbringing. She was a competitor on Comedy Central's Roast Battle, and she has performed at the Bridgetown Comedy Festival, Boston Comedy Festival, and popular NYC shows including UCB's Whiplash and Wyatt Cenac's Night Train for Seeso. Her writing has been featured on Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, and TV Land websites.
Dates: Thu 01, Fri 02, Sat 03, Sun 04
Booking and More Information
Harlem Gospel Travelers
The Harlem Gospel Travelers are not from Harlem. They came to Harlem, however, from far-flung corners of the five boroughs of New York City, and it was in Harlem, that legendary center of African-American culture, that they found their voices.
“When everything was stripped away, all we had left was the music,” says singer Thomas Gatling. “Difficult as it was, we realized that God was opening a door, and it was up to us to walk on through to the other side.”
It’s on the other side that we meet a transformed Harlem Gospel Travelers, complete with a new album, a new lineup, and a new lease on life. Produced by Eli “Paperboy” Reed, “He’s On Time” marks the group’s first full-length release as a trio, as well as their first collection of totally original material, and it couldn’t have come at a more vital moment. The music still draws deeply on the gospel quartet tradition of the ’50s and ’60s, of course, but there’s a distinctly modern edge to the record, an unmistakable reflection of the tumultuous past few years of pandemic anxiety, political chaos, and social unrest. The songs here are bold and resilient, facing down doubt and despair with faith and perseverance, and the performances are explosive and ecstatic, fueled by dazzling vocal arrangements punctuated with gritty bursts of guitar and crunchy rhythm breaks. It’d be easy to classify the album as “retro” or “vintage,” but the truth is that the young men of The Harlem Gospel Travelers aren’t just reviving sounds from the past, they’re revitalizing them for the present and reminding us just how relevant this music is (and always has been) in times of hardship and uncertainty.
“These are soulful songs that aren’t afraid to rock out”
— PopMatters
“Gospel’s at the root of everything,” says Gatling. “Country, folk, rock, soul, blues; we love it all, and it’s all in there.”
That’s what The Harlem Gospel Travelers are all about. They’re here to move you, to lift you up, to free you from your burdens and take you someplace higher. Because even when the world seems its darkest and everything else gets stripped away, the music still remains. It always does.
Dates: Tue 27, Wed 28, Thu 29, Fri 30
Booking and More Information
Jenny Tolman
Sweet yet sassy, vintage yet fresh, an old soul with a new vision and some incredible comedic timing, country music songstress Jenny Tolman is the breath of fresh air that the genre needs now.
“There’s always been multiple sides to me,” giggles Tolman. “I really like to make people laugh and have a good time and be entertaining. But then, I also really love to use that personality to get people engaged to listen to the deep stuff.”
Having woven the incredible storyline of her life into her music thus far, Tolman has found a way to create albums which tie up all that life has handed her – both the good and the bad and the downright tragic – and makes it sound beautiful. On her new album Married in a Honky Tonk, Tolman brings a kaleidoscope of stories and emotions to the country music table with the swagger of a certified superstar.
“Especially after the pandemic and not being able to play as much as we would have liked to, we all realized how important live music truly is to all of us,” Tolman explains. “It was really important that we made this album with a good live show in mind. So, when you listen, you’ll definitely hear that captured.”
Whether it’s the underlying rage heard within the soul-bearing lyrics of “Sweetest Revenge” to the painfully honest “Afraid” to the completely relatable “I Know Some Cowboys,” Tolman finds herself following in the footsteps of country music legends such as Barbara Mandrell and Dolly Parton, harkening back to a time when singers weren’t just singers – they were entertainers and storytellers and the ultimate confidants.
“I want to be an entertainer…I don’t want to be just a singer. I know that I can communicate with my audience through the engaging storylines of the songs that I fill my shows with.”
Dates: Thu 01
Booking and More Information
