Next fall, the Innocent Men will celebrate its 50th anniversary. The group traditionally consisted of six to seven members who performed last Friday in UW-Eau Claire’s Schofield Auditorium.

“A lot of silliness, a lot of laughter, some intimate moments and some super awesome music,” Sebastian Armendariz, a singer for the group, said about his group after the concert.

He said the Innocent Men were formed in 1985 and originally were a group of four singers participating in a university talent show. They sang “For the Longest Time” by Billy Joel. At the time, Joel had the album “An Innocent Man” and the group decided to name themselves after the album.

The theme of Friday’s concert was based on Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale of the James Bond Franchise. The group developed the idea after brainstorming ways to interact with the audience.

“We always like to think of games we can play or ways that we can involve the audience in the concert,” Armendariz said. “The idea that came out was to have a sort of casino theme and someone said they wanted a James Bond theme. So we decided to merge those two into Casino Royale.”

During the concert, the group had several games for the audience to participate in. As an incentive to get people to arrive early, they gave out playing cards to the first 52 people, who would then be drawn to play in the games.

“I thought the funniest game was the chips ahoy game,“ Elise Randall, junior, said. “I really like the people that got chosen. There was a wide variety.”

Some of the games included a numbers game where the contestant would run along with the audience members and try to collect phone numbers, the mummy game where participants would be wrapped up in toilet paper and the candy game where candy would be thrown from the stage and into a bucket held by an audience member.

“They put a lot of emotion into it,” Randall said. “They’re not just there to sing, they’re there to entertain,”

She said her favorite song was “Cry me a River.”

At the end of the concert, it was announced it would be the last for Sebastian Armendariz and Mark Green.

“I think it will be hard to fill their place,” she said. “They all have individual qualities about them that is going to be really hard to fill when they leave.”