A DALE musician who helped set up a regular jam session six months ago is looking for 1,731 like-minded musicians in an attempt to break a world record.
Keen guitarist Eddie Tinkler, from Barnard Castle, set up a regular jamming session at the town’s Cricketer’s Arms pub with the help of fellow musician James Dykes before Christmas.
The sessions, held every first and third Tuesday of the month, were becoming quite popular with up to 12 musicians joining in playing all manner of instruments from recorders to accordions. When the coronavirus lock-down restrictions closed pubs in March, Mr Tinkler was un-deterred and using video conferencing technology was able to continue the regular met ups with fellow musicians.
He said: “We’ve had be-tween six and 10 people at the Zoom sessions and we’ve kept to the normal dates. It’s a bit different from a normal jam session. We allocate three-minute spots to those in the session. Then everyone else mutes themselves and can play along, but without disrupting the equipment.”
Now the 73-year-old is looking for more like-minded musicians to take part in a post-lockdown, socially dis-tanced guitar extravaganza and get into the record books.
He added: “It’s amazing how the mind can wander in boredom. I was just thinking about open air guitar events and wondered what the largest number of guitar players to have played simultaneously.
“I checked out the Guinness Book of Records and 1,721 guitarists played Smoke on the Water together in Kansas City in August 2007.” Another attempt in the same year, saw 1,730 guitarists from north east India come together and play Knocking on Heaven’s Door.
Mr Tinkler added: “I’m not sure if that’s a record though as there wasn’t an official Guinness adjudicator on site it was only videoed. But it got me thinking how many guitarists do we have in the North East. We could have one heck of a jam session in our very own amphitheatre, The Bowes Museum.
“It would be a cracking thing for Barnard Castle but I’d need a bit of help putting it together as that number of guitarists means there would be a lot of cars and people, but it could be fantastic. “If each guitarist took part paid say £1 or £2, we could donate that to The Bowes Museum and it could be a fund raiser but it could also get us into the record books and put Barney on the map for the right reasons.” Mr Tinkler said he will be speaking with Durham County Council to put for-ward his idea for a guitar extravaganza and in the meantime is trying to think of an appropriate song title for the musicians to play. He added: “It’d have to be something non-political and something that players of all abilities could easily master, something like Let It Be.
