The Castle Theatre in Bloomington held the “Battle of the Bands: Next Gen” competition in mid-November, hosting seven bands. Out of the seven bands, there were two victors: "Blind Baby" and "From Within."
"Blind Baby" won the judges' vote and "From Within" won the crowd vote.
To participate in the event, the bands needed to have a catalog of original music from which two songs were performed along with one cover.
“From Within,” a four-piece group including Ian Hale, Jaxon Savage, Jonathan Manka and Reese Hooker, is an alternative rock band.
“I’ve known Ian and Reese for years; I met Reese and Ian in junior high," said drummer Jaxon Savage. "So, Ian and I [have] been playing together since we were thirteen. Then a couple years ago, we needed my man Reese, another guitar player...and then one day we were at school and I went up to John and was like, ‘Hey man, my band needs a bass player,’ and he was like, 'That’s crazy [because] I play.’”
The group said they were enthralled to have participated in the competition. Many of the members had grown up seeing their favorite artists perform at the Castle, so to be able to perform there themselves was very surreal for them.
“That’s a real stage - we hadn’t played in a real stage up to that point. I mean, a year ago we were playing in houses and garages,” Hooker said.
Savage and Manka shared the same sentiment, with Manka explaining that his dream had always been to perform at The Castle.
“The Castle is Bloomington’s most iconic venue. Performing at The castle is when you know you’re growing up,” Hale said.
"Blind Baby," the other winning band, is also a four-piece group.
The band consists of guitarists Eli Talbott and Adan Luciano, bassist Jack Green and drummer Logan Noble. All members are Illinois State University students.
According to the band, a big part of "Blind Baby’s" standard is their attention to detail.
“We wanted to pick our biggest and best songs for our heavy hitters," drummer Logan Noble said. "We spent a lot of time recording and fine-tuning what our set would be for the castle theater. We submitted [our songs] a day before the deadline, which was not what we wanted to do, but I am glad we did because we wouldn’t have been able to develop that find-tuned of a product that we wanted [if we didn’t take our time].”
The first phase of "Blind Baby's" journey as a band was to set the groundwork to come together and to work cohesively.
“I was just a guy trying to form a band and I hit these guys up. We didn’t have any idea what genre [we wanted to be]; we just wanted to make some noise," Luciano said.
In their early days, "Blind Baby" used the practice rooms in the Hewett-Manchester dormitory on ISU's campus.
The band also used Green’s family basement to practice at the start of their journey.
"Blind Baby" described their performance at The Castle Theatre as "phase three" of their evolution as a band with the first two phases being their formation and then their breaking-in of the local live music scene.
“We had a long summer break where we didn’t really cross paths until around late July to Early August," Talbott said. "Phase three was probably our most important because we were getting into the fall semester, and we had a lot of shows scheduled. We had one every weekend at this point, maybe even twice sometimes."
Both bands said that the performance had an emotional impact on them; all of the musicians have their own reasons for why music has had such a profound impact on their lives.
“Music has always played a really big part in my life since I was a child," Luciano said. "I looked up to my brothers [because] they’d do music, and it was always a really big deal to me. I can’t talk about music without getting emotional.”
Although both groups said nerves played a large role in their performances, they were able to put on a winning show.
“You just tell yourself, ‘Hey, you’ve been playing with the same dudes for years, for hours upon hours on end... You know what you’re going to do; you know what you are supposed to do, [so] you just plug in, and you go for it. You put everything you got into it,'” Savage said.
"Blind Baby" felt similar but said that seeing their friends in the front row cheering them on helped to calm their nerves, specifically during the performance of their song "Stationary Passenger."
Talbott said the win, to him, felt like winning an Oscar.
