For the past several years, Jason Sudeikis and his longtime friend Billy Brimblecom have organized the musical charity event Thundergong!, celebrating the Kansas City-based nonprofit Steps Of Faith, which works to provide prosthetic limbs to people who need them. This year, the fifth annual event is set to include performances by musicians like Waxahatchee, Michael McDonald, and more.
Thundergong! 2021 takes place virtually this weekend. Along with Michael McDonald and Waxahatchee, the event will invite musicians like Sammy Hagar & The Circle, Ryan Miller of Guster, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, Wynona Judd and Cactus Moser, Ben Rector, Dashboard Confessional, and Counting Crows to perform. The night will also see appearances by comedians Will Forte, Fred Armisen, Heidi Gardner, and Kay Cannon.
Last year, Sudeikis and co-founder Brimblecom detailed how Thundergong! came to be in an interview with Uproxx. Apparently, the idea for the charity event was started when the pair took over a bar to help Brimblecom raise money to pay for his prosthetic leg. The success of the night made Sudeikis want to help more people.
“It’s a very profound thing, in this day and age, to celebrate the act of caring about people you may never meet,” Sudeikis told Uproxx about the benefit concert. “And it is a big line in the sand, I think, for the American experience. And this show walks on the side of, ‘We do that.’ And so when people care about something so much, they might willing to do even more work and do even more of this, and we go and we go bigger, and we go stronger.”
Thundergong! kicks off 11/20 at 8 p.m. EST, with viewers being able to donate in real-time. Tune in here.
