So ready to rock again
Basking in the glory of their successful world-record bid, organizers would do it again
It takes a tireless work ethic and a healthy capacity for self-abuse to pull off a concert that goes on for 18 days and five hours
Life is slowly returning to normal on Stouffville’s Main St. strip after a successful local bid to take the Guinness World Record for the longest concert ever, but nearly 24 hours on from the 18-day music marathon’s big finale last Tuesday, a buzz — or maybe that’s just a ringing in the ears — still lingered in the air at the Earl of Whitchurch Pub.
Evidence that the Earl had just played host to a fairly raucous, non-stop, 437-hour party was dwindling on this Thursday afternoon, a few last vestiges of gear being packed up and carried down from the upstairs stage where about 400 bands had just finished playing around the clock since St. Patrick’s Day.
But one look at Kevin Ker, the big dreamer who marshaled Stouffville and the surrounding area to the cause in the first place — and helped raise almost $90,000 for 17 charities — told you something was up. Dude looked like he’d been up forever. “I had an after-party last night with a presenting sponsor,” he admitted. Ker still hasn’t stopped moving. He and his co-conspirators on the world-record organizing committee were feted by Whitchurch-Stouffville Mayor Justin Altmann and the local chamber of commerce on Wednesday.
This was after celebrating well into the wee hours — with an impromptu jam, of course — once they’d set the record for “longest concert by multiple performers” at midnight on Tuesday with a rousing performance of Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House” by Celebration Army.
Later that same night, he returned to his regular gig hosting a weekly open-stage night at the Unionville Arms.
It’s one of three he runs in the 905 under the Epidemic Music Group banner; he was off to host another at the Duchess of Markham on Thursday evening.
It takes a tireless work ethic and a healthy capacity for self-abuse to pull off a concert that goes on for 18 days and five hours.
And, as it turns out, Stouffville in general was up to the task, too.
The town really got behind Ker’s madness, especially during the crucial overnight hours when naught but coffee was served and a minimum of 10 people had to be in the audience — and awake — to meet Guinness’s strict world-record criteria.
One night, a horde of senior citizens showed up at 4 a.m. to fill the room.
A gang of high school students toting pizza and Cards Against Humanity arrived on another night when the drinks stopped flowing at 2:30 a.m.
“Everybody in this town wanted to be part of it in some way, shape or form, even if they could only show up for 20 minutes.” DAVID MILLS ORGANIZER
The local police force was on call to shore up the crowd when required. Strangers kept turning up with gifts of food.
Volunteers were required to keep the show moving, to work the doors, to rigorously document every song played and the time it was played.
“We always knew we were going to do it. I said from the very beginning, ‘Either we do it and complete it or we don’t do it,’ ” Ker says.
“But there’s no way this could have happened without the community. This was a community coming together in every way, every demographic . . . It was important for people to be here every day, to get in as much as they could. And that’s why people would wait in line for 2 1⁄
2 hours and come in with a smile on their face.”
“I’ve lived here for 24 years now and, you know what, this is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to this town in the years that I’ve been here,” concurs fellow organizer David Mills.
“But people I know who’ve been here for a long time say this is the biggest thing that’s happened in this town, from a standpoint of bringing people together and getting people out. Everybody in this town wanted to be part of it in some way, shape or form, even if they could only show up for 20 minutes. Some people would just show up at the door, give their money, get the ticket and leave.”
“I haven’t received so many gifts of food since I had a child,” chimes in Heather Scala, another member of the organizing committee. “I think people were conscious of the fact that we were here around the clock and our audience was here around the clock, and they were trying to make sure we were good. And that was the general vibe: ‘Is everyone good?’ We had, like, a hug culture.”
Amazingly, there were no major disasters on the way to besting the world-record mark of 396 hours, 45 minutes and 35 seconds at precisely 7:10 a.m. on Sunday, April 2, while an act called Shotzi and the Vortex played — albeit without its frontman, who might have overdone it the previous evening.
Two bands had to be “physically removed” from the stage along the way, Ker says, while a “rogue flautist” and a chap in a Superman shirt claiming to hold another Guinness World Record were tackled on sep- arate occasions trying to jump up with the musicians. During one of his own performances, Ker was horrified to see a bunch of lighters go up in the air precariously close to the Earl’s sprinkler system, but fortunately his brother-in-law intervened before a literal damper was put on Stouffville’s hopes. Two separate cold viruses also ripped through the sleep- deprived regular attendees — Earl owner George Bigelow reckons he was up and in the building for 38 hours straight at one point — leaving everyone with what became known as “the Guinness cough.”
Still, Scala speaks for everyone involved when she says it feels “glorious” to have pulled off such a daunting task. They’d do it again. And they might have to. A.J. O’Neil, owner of AJ’s Café in Detroit — which got an early jump on wresting the previous 372-hour, 10minute record from the Ri Ra Irish Pub in Las Vegas, forcing the Earl to extend its bid — pledged to the Star a couple of weeks ago to do “every possible thing we can to get the record back” from Epidemic Music Group and the Earl of Whitchurch.
“We could do it. We could do it now,” counters Earl co-runner Joely McEwen, without flinching. “Now we have a road map.”
“That’s not even a joke, with the bands we had and the passion behind the team,” Ker says.
“And we wanted to make it beatable. Someone else will beat us by two days and that way we’ll only have to do 22 days next time. I don’t wanna have to do 30 days next time. As long as us and A.J. have a mutual respect, it’ll be two, two, two, two, two. We’ll just dance together.”