A Hamilton man has been crowned winner of the 2024 Air Guitar World Championships and has Canadian band Nickelback to thank.
Zachary Knowles, 34, claimed the prize on August 23 at a festival in the city of Oulu, in central Finland.
Also known as “Ichabod Fame”, Knowles worked his magic while strumming along to Nickelback’s song ‘Photograph’ while decked out in a bespeckled outfit complete with white visor.
Contestants are judged on originality, stage presence, artistic impression and technical merit.
The organizers of the competition, whose hashtag is #MakeAirNotWar, say that the purpose is to “promote world peace”.
“According to the ideology of the competition, wars would end, climate change [would] stop and all bad things [would] disappear, if all the people in the world played the Air Guitar,” the Air Guitar World Championships website reported.
It was Knowles’ first world championship.