Hey Lads, well what a crack we had in Clonakilty at the Guitar festival at the weekend! I arrived down at 11 a.m. saturday morning to see a stream of people with guitars pouring into the town, all ages, shapes and sizes, getting off the bus, getting out of cars, all streaming down the street towards Emmet Square, where we were attempting to break the world record for the most guitars played together at the same time.
 It was a strange, and I have to say, a very romantic sight. The record was held by a group of 2,052 guitars from California who played THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND by Woodie Guthrie, and we were attempting to top this while playing ORO SE DO BHEATHA ABHAILE by Padraig Pearse. I was leading the band! I had with me great local guitarist Bill Shanley and on bass John FitzGerald. Well first we had the TUNING UP! That was a laugh I have to say, as many hundreds of guitars tried to emulate the e string, b string etc we were giving them from the stage. Then we taught them the song, slowly at first and then at full speed. Two beautiful guitar chords A minor and G. Well I'll tell ya it was an amazing sound, the nearest I could compare it to would be a huge hive of bees buzzing away in A minor and G.
 It was a terrific atmosphere,  with an incredible array of humans all united in the playing of the  guitar! There were grannies and kids, heavy metallers, hippies and folkies, famous faces, and kids in buggies clutching their guitars. Then we had to wait as there were more and more arriving all the time, so we played RIDE ON by Jimmy MacCarthy from Cork, in Eminor C and D, my song JOHNNY DON'T GO TO BALLINCOLLIG, which has only one chord - G - easy enough like. Then we tore into ORO SE DO BHEATHA ABHAILE again and poured our two beautiful guitar chords into the West Cork afternoon. We also had a lash of THE DANCE OF THE CHERRY TREES - Well  done everyone, well done!! Then local hero Anto - AKA Anthony Noonan - AKA Armoured Bear gave a great rendition of his hit song- IMAGINATION. Then we learned the result! 824 guitars we had, far lower than the record, but I'll tell ye lads, it was the best crack ever! Like something from a movie like - the goodwill and the positive vibes were just brilliant!
Thanks a million to Ray Blackwell, Diarmuid O' Sullivan, all the Shanleys and all involved with the 5th Clonakilty International guitar Festival! WE'LL BE BACK NEXT YEAR! KEEP ON ROCKING IN THE FREE WORLD!

John Spillane!