The song: “This Land Is Your Land” by Woody Guthrie
The ensemble: 2,052 people w/ guitars!
The energy center: Country Joe McDonald
On Tuesday night at Todos Santos Plaza in Concord, exactly 2,052 people came from all over to play Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” simultaneously. Doing it for five straight minutes meant snagging the Guinness world record for “largest guitar ensemble.”
The mark to beat: 1,802 people played Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water” in June 2007 in Leinfelden, Germany. Before that, Kansas City held the record with the same song.
The playing started Tuesday at 6:30 p.m., with a quick rehearsal beforehand. But more than an hour earlier, Country Joe McDonald, of Country Joe & the Fish fame, was on hand to teach the song’s first few measures to throngs of people holding old acoustic guitars, bright blue or pink electric guitars and toy guitars (as long as they had strings, they were legal). The chords were in the keys of G, C and D. That’s it — easy peasy.
Read the whole story on the Contra Costa Times site.