In 2015, one of our artists for the Cat Country Snowball had to cancel due to a family emergency. About 30 minutes before the show, Big Kenny of Big and Rich asked us if they could do a guitar-pull instead of going on 1-2.  Being New Englanders, we had to Google “guitar-pull” to see exactly what that meant.

According to Villanova, a guitar-pull is a southern tradition where a small group of musicians sit around and take turns playing songs on a guitar.  The “pull” part comes from the assumption that there was only one guitar among the group, so one may have to “pull” it away from another in order to get a turn.  Big & Rich went on stage with Thompson Square and gave us one of the most entertaining shows we had ever done.

Once we moved the event to the Dunkin’ Donuts Center and could build a stage large enough for 3-4 artists at once:  Stars With Guitars was going to be a guitar-pull.

2016 was our first attempt and we learned a lot about guitar-pulls.  Calling some of our colleagues in the Carolina’s and Georgia (where guitar-pulls are norm) they told us the best events work where you book enough artists to have 3 on for 45 minutes, then take an intermission, bring 3 more on … then have a grand finale where all artists are on-stage at once.  Being that a guitar-pull is acoustic, that is possible and the goal each year.

Initially, the response from country music fans was “What is a guitar-pull?”  We know the event is answering that question as country music fans have already bought tickets from as far away as Maine and Albany NY to attend Stars With Guitars 2017 on March 16.  It’s going to be fun!