Over 600 guitarists will be performing at the Big Guitar In at the Florrie tomorrow evening (Wednesday).
The event will see of all ages and abilities come together to play different tunes, with musicians Brian Nash from Frankie Goes to Hollywood, the Brigos Scotland, Pete Wylie, local artist Kelly Acra, a string quartet and a community choir run by John Fergurson, all expected to attend the event.
The event, organised by former Maybes guitarist Timo Tierney, is to raise money for the guitar tuition workshops that he runs every Tuesday.
The money will be used to help buy guitars and other equipment that people might need, such as cases, leads or strings.
Timo said: “It’s a way of getting 600 guitarists together all different levels, they can be from anywhere in the country and not necessarily live in Liverpool. We did an event in June where we had 600 guitarists, people cam from Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and we had local artists at the event.”
Many people have struggled with the cost of living crisis and the pandemic over recent times, meaning that money is tight. Timo is hoping that the money raised can help anyone that wants to learn guitar and allow them to pick it up as skill.
“Over the last year we’ve struggled to get instrument donated for people to use, so a guitar that they don’t want or a drum kit that they no longer use, or a bass guitar that they don’t use.
this has inspired him to put on an event of much bigger magnitude
“What’ve we done is we’ve got hold of a load of guitars and raise money to be able to purchase more instruments as well as the attachments, like strings, pecs or guitar leads.”
Timo first came up with the idea in lockdown, he wanted to to bring people together to play guitar and just have a good time.
He held the first event a few months after the end of the first lockdown with 189 people, but this has only inspired him to put on an event of much bigger magnitude.
“In lockdown I wanted to try and get a 100 people together to do a guitar group. We did it after lockdown and we managed to get a 189 people.
“So I thought maybe we could take it a step further and do something a bit bigger, with 600 people and have more established artists involved.
“It’s about giving people an opportunity to play with these instruments, we have people of all ages that come from 6 all the way up to 90, so its a really wide range of abilities and ages. People who can’t strum one chord to people that have been playing for 40 years.”
Featured image (c) Timo Tierney
