{"id":77185,"date":"2021-04-01T15:22:23","date_gmt":"2021-04-01T20:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/?p=77185"},"modified":"2021-04-02T11:28:27","modified_gmt":"2021-04-02T16:28:27","slug":"farmers-ball-2021-keep-it-locked-to-minecraft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/2021\/04\/01\/farmers-ball-2021-keep-it-locked-to-minecraft\/","title":{"rendered":"Farmer’s Ball 2021: Keep It Locked… to Minecraft?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ellynn Mayo<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farmer\u2019s Ball, the battle-of-the-bands held annually by KJHK, is what past KJ staff member Benji Bloom called the \u201cstaple of KJ.\u201d When he found out how this year\u2019s Farmer\u2019s Ball would be formatted, Bloom said his reaction was, \u201cI don’t fully understand what that means.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are three ways to \u201cattend\u201d the 2021 Farmer\u2019s Ball. One is through Minecraft, where the audio of the stream will be syncing in a Minecraft server. Cole Billings, who is in charge of setting up the server and leading the building crew, said he has been working with multimedia staff member Max Indiveri to create audio and video recordings of some of the Farmer\u2019s Ball bands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cWe kind of left it open to each of the bands, whether they make their own or if they come in, but most of them decided to just come in and let us do the work for them,\u201d Billings said. The logistics of a Minecraft server concert soon became apparent when the build team considered accessibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe thought, we don’t really want to force all these bands to hop on this Minecraft world,\u201d Billings said, \u201cespecially if they don’t have Minecraft.\u201d So Billings came up with a second way to attend virtually: Youtube. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou kind of want to see the band, see who’s performing,\u201d Billings said. \u201cSo I think that’s more or less what we were focusing at least towards, like having the video and audio.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The third way to tune in will be on the radio, so if Minecraft and YouTube aren\u2019t optimal, listeners can turn their dials to 90.7 FM, KJHK, Lawrence on April 8th at 7 p.m. Central Standard Time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt’s like you’re doing eSports or something, but it’s a concert.” Billings said. Billings reported he could foresee some \u201chiccups,\u201d but that his experience with KJ and as a Twitch streamer had prepared him for this undertaking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This virtual battle of the bands is foreign to the previous live music director, Benji Bloom, who said he worked on live shows both at major venues, such as the Bottleneck and smaller performances at places like the Lied Center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere’d be a lot going on all at once and, you know, meetings every single day, talking about what we have in line for the week and whatnot,” Bloom said, “And it was a hectic job, but the best job I ever had in college.\u201d Apart from daily activities, he helped coordinate the annual Farmer\u2019s Ball pre-COVID-19. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI have to give credit to the team that I worked with. Farmer\u2019s Ball cannot be done with just one person,\u201d Bloom said. “The initial process involved receiving submissions from bands all across Lawrence and Kansas City, listening to them, and breaking them down into a smaller number.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After that, another listening session would occur with more KJHK staff. Votes would be sent in, semi-finalists selected, and that is when Bloom said the live performances would begin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bloom described the Farmer\u2019s Ball as \u201can American Idol thing. It’s like you’re gonna go to Hollywood, but you know, you’re advancing into the finals for Farmer\u2019s Ball, which is a really cool thing.\u201d He said the event could get \u201cpretty hectic\u201d as it involved a lot of preparation, people and publicity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bloom said a previous Farmer\u2019s Ball had a photo booth, tie-dyed t-shirts and a whole lot of stage blocking for the bands. \u201cThe preparation and the organization for having so many bands, and you have to talk to them to make sure everything is straight, they know their set times,\u201d Bloom said, \u201cand then to put that out into the public, it’s a lot of moving pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But at the end of the day, Bloom said, it all works out. And to those confused about how Farmer\u2019s Ball will work, Billings said, \u201cA lot of people are kind of surprised, but they’re not, not surprised because they’re like, we’re KJ. They kind of expected us to do something weird.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Billings said he\u2019s gotten questions about how the event will play out and has \u201ctried to explain bits and pieces of it, but really the only way to explain it is just actually doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we asked Bloom if he\u2019d be attending, he said, \u201cAbsolutely, absolutely. How could I not? I love Farmer\u2019s Ball.\u201d So remember to watch, listen, or craft on April 8th at 7 p.m. alongside Bloom, Billings, and the rest of the KJHK crew. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ellynn Mayo Farmer\u2019s Ball, the battle-of-the-bands held annually by KJHK, is what past KJ staff member Benji Bloom called the \u201cstaple of KJ.\u201d When he found out how this year\u2019s Farmer\u2019s Ball would be formatted, Bloom said his reaction was, \u201cI don’t fully understand what that means.\u201d There are three ways to \u201cattend\u201d the 2021 Farmer\u2019s Ball. One is through Minecraft, where the audio of the stream will be syncing in a Minecraft server. Cole Billings, who is in charge […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":77186,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3729,3736,3730,3740,3797,3225,3224,15,3232,4,3268],"tags":[2341,1712],"class_list":["post-77185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cbi","category-cbi-content-bubble","category-cbi-in-studios","category-cbi-inside-kjhk","category-cbi-presentations","category-culture-events","category-culture-interviews","category-featured-on-kjhk","category-live-performances","category-music","category-music-articles","tag-concert","tag-farmers-ball"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/2021-03-09_13.36.35.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77185"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77187,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77185\/revisions\/77187"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kjhk.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}