the Lineup
25 to 26 February, Birmingham
This year’s Guitar Show takes place at Birmingham’s New Bingley Hall – a chance to experience great brands with fellow guitar fans. Organiser Jason Hunt used his experience from working as the events manager for the Music Live event at Birmingham’s NEC to start the show and hasn’t looked back since. We sat down to find out more about it… What does the show offer players of all ages and experience? “I think what The Guitar Show offers is a chance for guitarists to experience, in real life, everything the guitar magazines review – you get all the big brands standing next to the wealth of talent we have with UK guitar and amp builders. Plus you get to hang out with a load of like-minded people for a day. As guitarists, there is nothing we like more than talking guitars!” There seems to be a lack of larger guitar events like this in the UK. What are the biggest challenges in organising them? “There are a number of factors that mean there is only The Guitar Show. First, I’m pretty sure that I’m extremely lucky. Bigger events require a skill set that only comes from experience. I had 14 years of training courses from the NEC, which I hated doing at the time – who wants to do a week-long IOSH [Health and Safety] course with an exam at the end? But I’m glad they made me do them now. I’m also lucky that I made a lot of contacts when doing Music Live, and I’m very lucky that they believed in me enough to come with me when this started. They will never understand just how grateful I am for their support.
“Lastly, the cost of mainstream venues is just too prohibitive – the last invoice I signed off for Music Live was over £100,000 for just the empty space. And the UK guitar industry is very small. While we are rich in glamour, we are not in pounds. The Music Industry Association told me that Tesco’s baked bean business alone is bigger than all the sales of music equipment in the UK!” What has changed about the way the show operates for this year’s event? “Due to overwhelming demand, I have removed the Live Stage from upstairs and created an acoustic guitar hall, so there are lots of new exhibitors in there. Plus I managed to sell the space vacated downstairs to many more new exhibitors – primarily UK builders and more bass gear. The Live Stage room is now larger, in an area that I haven’t used for visitors before.
“The Live Stage will have the usual mix of performances and demos, but this year I have a couple of highlights: there’s a Meet Your Maker panel, where we will have Tim Mills from Bare Knuckle, Adrian Thorpe from ThorpyFX, Patrick James Eggle and Adrian Emsley from Orange. There isn’t a question about pickups, pedals, guitars and amps that these guys can’t answer. I realised that if I have a question, I can just ring these guys and ask – not everyone can do this, so if you have a question, let us have it.
“We’ll also have The Story Of Guitar Heroes, a touring theatre production. With more than 20 guitars used on stage, the show accurately recreates the sound and ambiance of guitar heroes such as Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Hank Marvin, Brian May, Slash and many more.”