XRA Fest 2010 brings bands, friends together

His shirt drenched in sweat and tied around his head, Will Rose plays the drums at his last XRA Fest as a member of husband&wife on Saturday at The Bishop.

Under the fluorescent red and blue lighting that paints their skin neon, Bryant Fox works the bass, Tim Felton strums his guitar, Mike Adams sings and the crowd follows suit.

“Life was easier before the thought of leaving home was absolute,” they sing in unison.

The band is wrapping up their set and bringing an end to the two days of local music at XRA Fest 2010.

The third-annual festival was organized by Crossroads of America (XRA) Records, a local record label created in 2006. The two-day festival means as much to Adams, Felton and Rose, the label’s creators, as it does to anyone in the audience.

“Hey, really, thanks everyone for this,” Adams tells the crowd between songs. “This has been the best weekend.”

Although XRA Records was initially created to give an air of credibility to husband&wife’s second album, “operation:surgery,” it quickly became an outlet for promoting their friends’ bands, such as Friday night’s headliner Alexander the Great, in which Fox sings and plays guitar.

Alexander the Great rocked the crowd at Russian Recording on Friday in their first set in more than four months.

“It’s so good to be in Bloomington,” Bryant tells the audience Friday night. “Really, we don’t get to see everybody in the same place that often.”

The festival brought together many of XRA Records’ bands, and for the first time, bands from other labels like Homecomings and Vollmar played as well.

As the last of 10 bands to play at the festival, husband&wife begin their set at 1 a.m., performing in front of friends, wives, strangers and family.

“This one’s for my dear old dad,” Rose says, dedicating “Don’t Change” to his father, Stephen. The bittersweet finality of the night’s show stays in Rose’s mind as he drums. Before each song, Rose says he thinks, “This is probably the last time I’ll get to play this part live.”

The band decided in winter that they needed to do considerably more touring. “And I would like to do considerably less touring,” Rose says, who is staying on as the press manager for XRA Records.

A comfortable silliness pervades the festival’s atmosphere, as the band jokes with the crowd and the crowd jokes back.

“Anyone listening to this will imagine a gorilla, animated, in the jungle, playing the bongos,” Fox says before the band plunges into the deliberate, slow build to the wall-of-sound climax of “Mulberry Squeezins.”

 Beneath the sticky heat and sweaty energy, The Bishop’s floor trembles under the dancing feet of devoted fans.

For their last song at 2 a.m., husband&wife are joined by the brass section of Alexander the Great, Patrick Beard on trumpet and Aaron Burkhart on trombone. As the song finishes, Adams, Felton, Fox and Rose put down their instruments and Beard and Burkhart head offstage. The crowd claps for an encore, some break into “Auld Lang Syne,” and the band picks up their instruments.

“Alright, we’ll do one more,” Adams says, ending the night with “Class War.”

The crowd goes wild.