Bjorn Turoque Interview

Dan Crane Is Bjorn Again
Air Guitar Nation Invasion
by Scott Bolohan

Don’t quit your day job. Seems like good advice for a professional air guitarist, such as Dan Crane a.k.a. Bjorn Turoque, star of the documentary Air Guitar Nation. But that’s exactly what he did.

Crane’s previous job probably couldn’t be farther from a rock star. “I was an educational software producer. I think at the time I was working for a pretty small company in New York that was making reading assessment software for schools,” Crane said.

A couple of Crane’s friends were organizing what would be the first air guitar competition in the United States and for Crane, it was something he had to do.

“Everyone said I should do it. I’ve got to do that obviously, I was born to play air guitar.” Crane said. “It was not a tough decision. The only tough decision was what song to play and what my stage name should be.”

Crane entered the New York Air Guitar Competition and finished in second place. After an appearance on Late Night with Carson Daly, Daly hooked him up with a flight to Los Angeles to compete in the West Coast Competition and he finished in fourth. Crane was determined to go to the World Championships and he started a fund raising drive on the Internet and ended up spending about a $1,000 of his own money to fly himself to Finland to compete in the World Championships. Crane won in the qualifying round, but failed to place in the Finals after being given the dreaded opening slot.

Crane said he told some of his co-workers what he was doing. “I was mildly threatened with a job loss like, ‘This is the last time you are going to one of these air guitar competitions.’ Little did they know that I’d be doing this for the next few years.”

His experience with air guitar inspired Crane to pursue careers he has always wanted to do. Crane has written a book about his life as a professional air guitarist, To Air is Human, and has appeared in publications from the New York Times to Esquire.

Crane retired from competitive air guitar in 2005, but remains a leader in the profession. “After my 5th second place win I guess you could say, I went to Finland for the last time in 2005 and I ended up having to go first again, which is just criminal, bad luck of the draw and I was just like, ‘If I can’t beat them, I’ll join them.’ So I just signed up to be the MC of the events. And air guitar is a young man’s game, and I’m getting pretty long in the tooth.”

Crane now is touring the country with other professional air guitarists. “We’re going to 15 cities across the country, we were at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC and there were about 1,200 people there, sold out. I think that was the biggest venue.” Crane said. “We’re just going to different cities and putting on air guitar competitions. It started off in the movie just east coast and west coast, now it's full blown national competitions.”

Crane mentioned some of his goals for air guitar as making it an Olympic sport and to have a competition in every state. As for his future, don’t expect to see Crane in a cubicle anytime soon.

“Eventually I’d like to find a life after air guitar. I’m not sure what that’s going to be. I want to keep on writing and playing music and keep on rocking out. Maybe for my 50th birthday I’ll head back to Finland and shred it out again.” | RDW

Air Guitar Nation plays June 21–24 at the Detroit Film Theater inside the Detroit Institute of Arts