LOOPING FROM CITY TO CITY ON A WORLD RECORD QUEST

SEAN BRADY STAFF REPORTER sbrady@kamloopsthisweek.com

On Saturday, July 8, Kamloops band LooPS will attempt to set a Guinness world record for the most concerts performed in a 12-hour period, with a frenzied tour of nine Lower Mainland cities planned.

To earn the record, the band must perform in front of at least 10 ticket holders at each venue, which all must be located in different cities.

The duo, made up of Jon Fennell and Kevin Roy, has turned the effort into a fundraiser for BC Children’s Hospital, a cause Roy said he feels “real personal” about.

“My younger brother, who passed away, had a complex immune disease. I was 18 and he was only sixand-a-half,” he said.

Roy said his younger brother received care at Toronto Sick Kids Hospital and, while there, the quality of life staff provided for him was “unbelievable.”

“Now I have two nieces who live with cystic fibrosis and they spend all their time at BC Children’s,” he said, referring to the renowned hospital in Vancouver.

The band has started its fundraising in Kamloops and will be collecting in the run-up to the show, as well as throughout the day during the record attempt.

Proceeds will go to the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation and are being collected through the foundation’s online portal. To access the donation page, go to the band’s website, officialloops.com, and scroll down to donate.

The band’s route is an ambitious one, with just minutes to spare between the nine tour stops, each of which needs to be at least 50 kilometres from the previous concert.

The rapid tour will start in Squamish at 10 a.m. with a show at Coastal Ford. From there, the duo will dart south to downtown Vancouver for a show at the Blarney Stone Pub.

From there, the two will ping-pong from Abbotsford to Burnaby, from Chilliwack to Richmond and from Mission to Delta. The final show will be at Poseidon Restaurant and Bar in

Langley at about 8 p.m.

“I put a lot of time into making sure we could do it,” Roy said. “But yeah, it’s going to be rough. I mean, it’s a world record for a reason.”

The current 12-hour record of eight cities was set by Minhee Jones, a singersongwriter originally from Los Angeles, but based in London. Jones’ attempt in 2019 was set in the United Kingdom, covering a wide area northwest of London.

Two witnesses will also need to observe the band throughout the attempt, with each pair limited to four-hour shifts.

Record attempts are sometimes monitored by Guinness directly, but at a significant cost to the person making the attempt. Roy said that cost was prohibitive, especially with the event as a fundraiser, so LooPS opted to validate the record with witnesses instead.

There will also be video evidence of each stop, with the band live streaming each performance on its Instagram page, @official_ loops.

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