Familiar multicolored lights, the hallmark of Hillsdale Student Activities Board events, pierced the night sky April 10 as the crowd sang and danced to Bruno Mars’ “Treasure” and ABBA’s “Gimme, Gimme, Gimme.”

Centralhallapalooza Showdown was held at the Phi Sig pavilion for the first time. The annual battle pits Hillsdale’s most endeavouring student bands against each other to musically duke it out for a chance to perform at the year-ending Centralhallapalooza. This year’s winning band is Runaround.

CHP Showdown presented a lineup of new variety and talent in addition to tried-and-true campus favorites. The top three bands voted by students — Runaround, Backspace, and Jett Cruz and the Bahama Mamas — all fell into the latter category. 

Despite this, senior and Runaround frontman Daniel Doyle said the newcomers present promise for the future of the Hillsdale music scene. This year’s Showdown was Runaround’s third and final performance at the event, as the bandmates will be taking the stage for graduation next month.

“You’ve got bands like Plastic Frog Bank that are pretty good, and they’re new up-and-coming, and a lot of the guys that are underclassmen or juniors, so they’ll be around for a little while,” Doyle said. “There’s also movement and shaking within band members and what bands are around, which is really good, I think, and healthy.”

This year’s lineup also featured a country band, GoodTime, which diverged from the usual entourage of rock bands.

“I was just excited to get the opportunity to play at CHP Showdown because there’s usually not a country band,” said junior Amelia King, lead singer and guitarist for GoodTime. “It is great to have this opportunity to play country music for my friends and the people on this campus, and I just love playing it, so any opportunity that I get to do that is really exciting.”

Junior Martha Kennedy, a member of SAB’s creative team, is thankful for her position to help plan and staff at CHP Showdown.

“It’s super fun getting to plan this for SAB,” Kennedy said. “I love working the event, because you get to see so many students come and vote for all of the bands that they think are super talented. It’s super competitive, because they’re all vying for a spot in CHP and so everyone is at their best performance, which means that we have a wonderful show for the night.”

Doyle also had some thoughts on the decision to switch to the Phi Sig pavilion from the event’s traditional location, in the beloved Old Snack Bar. Without the Old Snack Bar’s brick walls, Doyle said, his voice felt louder, which was fun.

“CHP had been in the OSB all of my years here up until now, but I know it used to be at Grange Hall or sometimes the fairgrounds building,” Doyle said. “So it’s been in different locations, but I appreciated it at the OSB. But at Phi Sig I think the sound was able to dissipate and go out of the tent faster, which made it easier for the sound techs, because they don’t have all the sound waves bouncing back.”

The improved acoustics, the outdoor setting offered by the pavilion, and the great lineup of bands helped make this year’s Showdown a success, according to Doyle. For Runaround, another guarantor of their win was using their 20-minute time slot to play a set of fan-favorite songs. 

Senior Ezra Phillips, Runaround’s bassist, said the band has a well-tested formula for success by now.

“Normally we would talk about set lists, get together, and practice at least twice before the show,” Phillips said. “At this point, we have enough chemistry as a band that we don’t need to rehearse as much. So we basically slapped down a set list, practiced once, and then got up on stage, and it went really well.”

Doyle agreed.

“Our songs were ones we’ve played before, and we knew they were well-liked songs,” he said. “We didn’t try to do anything fancy.”

For those bands thinking ahead to next year’s Showdown in hopes of gaining a prestigious place among those Hillsdale artists who have played at CHP, assembling a successful CHP Showdown set list seems to be the key.

Phillips advised new bands to go home and practice over the summer — and find the sweet spot between crowd-pleasers and band picks. 

“I would say one of the number one things that’s made us really successful has been being willing to gauge the difference between what we want to play and what people want to hear, because there are some bands that play only what people want to hear, and they don’t have quite as much energy,” Phillips said. “So if you can kind of find that sweet spot in the middle, the stuff that you love to play, and mix it with the stuff that the crowd loves the most, that’s the best spot.”