One of the great things about the Melbourne Guitar Show is that you never know who you might stumble across in the aisles or on the exhibitor’s stands. Apart from the numerous high profile guitarists performing on stage or in workshops, there are many other notable, unadvertised artists who come down to the show just to hang out and talk gear at particular exhibitor booths.
On the ‘official’ list of booth appearances, you’ll find guitar show headliners like Nick Johnston talking Schecter Guitars on stand #47-50 at various stages of the show, Diesel representing Vox on stand #81, UK’s Alex Hutchings at the Roland/Boss booth #91-93, Twelve Ft Ninja’s Stevic Mackay on the Line 6 stand #63-65, Lloyd Spiegel at Cole Clark #A3, Opal Ocean for Yamaha Music #A10, Michael Dolce for Cilia Guitars #9, and Simon Gardner for Ibanez #60-62 to name a few.
Then there are booths like Tone Revival Engineering #4 where you might just get to meet some dead set guitar legends. On the stand’s guest list to appear are; Cold Chisel great Ian Moss, Baby Animals’ Dave Leslie and Pete Robinson from Electric Mary, none of which are playing on the weekend but all have been invited down to chat with people at their stand … oh and Diesel might make an appearance here too as well as others we’re not allowed to mention. Similarly, CMC Music on stand #98-99 will have a constant line up of musicians performing and talking at their booth, including; Damnations Day, Jay Parrino, Jesse Crofts from The Delusion, who performed on the main stage last year, Brett Kingman, whose YouTube channel has racked up almost 27 million views, plus Tyson Constantinou, Joshua Verco & James Pownall, Marcel Yammouni & Andy Sylvio, The Omnific, Drew Dedman & Eric Stock, and more. For Washburn #A16-17 you can meet and greet Australian guitar great Kirk Lorange and the list goes on and on.
News just in too is that on the Fender electric stand #84-87 on Sunday August 6th at 2pm, Something For Kate’s Paul Dempsey will be appearing and upstairs at the same time on Fender’s acoustic stand #A20-A21 will be blues legend Phil Manning. Plus you can see Ali Barter and Holy Holy’s Oscar Dawson at 11am on Sunday, on #84-87
Those are some of the guitarists we know are intending to hang out at booths but you can be sure as hell that there will be many more coming down of their own volition to check the show out. Last year for instance, we ran into Harts who came down to gain some information to help him decide which effects system to run with for an upcoming American tour. He attended two workshops from the brands he was considering and told us the day had been really helpful. Who knows who might attend this year’s Melbourne Guitar Show? Come on down and find out for yourself.
Melbourne Guitar Show August 5&6 Caulfield Racecourse. Ticket info: http://bit.ly/2qHRTtc