Years of rocking out alone in the bedroom, layering on the KISS makeup and shredding the air to Queen has led up to this: the U.S. Air Guitar Championships.
This Thursday, contestants will head to the Troubadour for the Los Angeles Regional, showing off their air guitar skills and unique personas and spreading the message of world peace through air guitar.
The U.S. Air Guitar Championships started six years ago, when co-founder Kriston Rucker and a friend heard about the world championships, which occur annually in Finland.
“We were shocked that the U.S. was not involved, because we felt like we weren’t doing so well in the world economically, politically, militarily, but this was the one thing that we deserved to dominate worldwide,” Rucker said.
Los Angeles knows all about dominating entertainment, so performers who come to the championships recognize their opportunity to go all-out. Whether the contestant considers air guitar a sport, an art or a musical performance, each performer defines his or her own persona and moment of fame.
“Last year’s show in L.A. was amazing … crazy outfits, different kinds of stage personas, some people who are purists and just into rocking really hard and other people who are much more like performance art, so its pretty varied,” said Rucker.
Anyone at least 21 years old can enter the championships, where each contestant plays a 60-second air guitar solo to a song of his or her choice.
And while some may be looking toward the grand prize trip to the Air Guitar World Championships in Finland, many do it simply for the love of air guitar.
“L.A. is one of the cities where there’s a pretty strong circuit of air guitar … so (the lineup) tends to fill up quickly, and once it gets full, you have to demonstrate a reason why we should let you in,” Rucker said.
For Dan Adams, a 32-year-old second-time contestant from Perrysburg, Ohio, the stage persona varies, but his love for the sport remains the same. The U.S. Air Guitar Championships has become a yearly exodus he cannot give up.
“Last year I was into the dark side of metal and my persona was “˜Satan’s Only Bastard.’ … I had the Gene Simmons-style face makeup, fake blood on stage, covered in tattoos and I was playing to very fast “˜speed rock,'” Adams said. But this year, in an effort to embody a more peaceful world message, he’ll rock a completely different persona.
“This year, I’m doing more of a positive thing: My outfit is a Las Vegas-y, bright sequined suit with a bright-colored shirt and my hair flicked up in a pompadour,” he said.
In honor of the event, Adams took a two-month leave of absence from his computer technician job to travel across the nation.
So far, Adams has performed in Detroit, Cleveland and Chicago and is now making his way to Los Angeles. He placed third in Detroit but hopes to keep going.
“In Cleveland, I ended up jumping on a monitor and playing right out to the crowd and Chicago, I was just all over the stage doing my best to rock out and get the crowd going … so it’s going to be raw, fresh and straight out of the air soul,” Adams said.
For him, it’s worth missing work to compete, because air shredding isn’t just a pastime: It’s an attempt to reclaim the air guitar as a fixture of Americana. He explained, “We dominate so many other events and sports, the entertainment industry, why not air guitar?”
Rucker agrees taking back the air guitar was part of his original vision as co-founder.
“I think we need to show the world that this is ours: this one thing of all human endeavors, America should be good at,” Rucker said. “It’s just fun!”
Competitors like Adams hold on to the vision of dominating air guitar, but also never forget the goal of promoting peace among performers and fans.
“The concept (of the competition’s creators) was that air guitar produces world peace,” Adams said. “When you have an air guitar in your hands, you cannot hold a gun.”