photo by: Mike Yoder

Travis Arey, AKA Eddie Hans Flailin' and Whitney Young, AKA Glory Wholesome will be two of several local air guitarists competing Friday April 22, at the Bottleneck in a regional round of the 2016 U.S. Air Guitar Championships.

Beth Melin is, on most days, an easygoing, congenial 38-year-old living a stable, decidedly adult life in Kansas City, Mo., complete with husband, children and a desk job at a market research firm.

But on a handful of nights throughout the spring and summer months, Beth becomes someone else — a provocative, “demanding” rock-and-roll type who favors “Black Swan”-esque eye makeup and shredded band T-shirts emblazoned with her name.

“CindAirella,” they read, in jagged black letters. She is currently the ninth best air guitar player on the planet.

“She is definitely a part of me,” Melin says of her diva alter ego with whom she shares the distinction, earned at last year’s World Air Guitar Championships in Oulu, Finland. “But when I go on stage, it’s no longer Beth. It’s definitely CindAirella.”

The 2016 air guitar competitive season (yes, it exists) will soon be upon us. For Melin and the tight-knit community of enthusiasts in northeast Kansas, it begins Friday at the Bottleneck with Lawrence’s first-ever official competitive air guitar show.

Slated for 9 p.m., the contest will select a winner to represent Lawrence in the U.S. Air Guitar regional championships in Kansas City. From there, ideally, the national championships at Austin in late summer, and then, the 21st annual World Air Guitar Championships, held every year in Oulu.

photo by: Mike Yoder

Travis Arey, AKA Eddie Hans Flailin' and Whitney Young, AKA Glory Wholesome will be two of several local air guitarists competing Friday April 22, at the Bottleneck in a regional round of the 2016 U.S. Air Guitar Championships.

For Melin, it’s a chance to slip into her CindAirella costume again and reconnect with a group of fellow air guitar competitors that is both figuratively and literally, in a few cases, her family.

Melin’s older brother, Eric, is hosting Friday’s competition, and also holds the title of 2013 world champion. She met her husband, Justin Fox, at an air guitar show a few years back, where he was performing as Iron Dragon.

And then there are the friends.

“It’s immediate bonding,” says Travis Arey, a Lawrence musician who goes by Eddie Hans Flailin’ in air guitar circles. “You can’t do that stuff and then not immediately be friends with the people who are also doing it.”

Like Melin, Arey is no stranger to the white-collar world. The 28-year-old works at a call center, where he has developed a serene, measured speaking voice and “phone butler” persona entirely at odds with his off-the-wall alter ego.

The call center is also where he met Cassy Highlander and convinced the 30-year-old, whose stage name is VelociRapture, to take up air guitar a few years back. She’s kept at it, and will also perform in Friday’s championships.

“We have this total working-stiff day job and then we go do this absolutely ridiculous thing at night a couple times a year,” says Highlander, who mostly sticks to “winging it” but can easily spend anywhere from 5 to 10 hours on her routine in the week before a competition.

photo by: Mike Yoder

Beth Melin, of Kansas City, Mo., is one of several area contestants slated to perform in Friday's U.S. Air Guitar competition at the Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire St. In this photo, Melin poses in character as CindAirella, her edgy onstage alter ego.

While some competitors are more disciplined and strategic, Arey is “a little more organic” in his approach.

At past competitions, Eddie has attempted to summon a few “rock-and-roll demons,” Arey says. Another time, Eddie was overtaken by an evil spirit while onstage. The details of Friday’s routine haven’t been worked out quite yet.

Competitors are judged on three key components: technical merit (to what extent does the contestant look like they’re playing a real guitar?), stage presence and “airness,” which is difficult to define but essentially describes a performance that has transcended the mere imitation of guitar-playing to become an art form in and of itself.

Air guitar is both athletic and theatrical. It can involve crazy, sometimes-dangerous stunts (Melin likes to recount one story in particular, in which a woman somehow lost a toe after leaping from a chair) and an amount of exertion that, for Arey, conjures up images of Mick Jagger, who reportedly struts 12 miles over the course of an average Rolling Stones concert.

“I’ve seen people jump off balconies, I’ve seen people jump up on amps and speakers, I’ve seen stage dives gone wrong,” Melin says. “These people are not messing around. It is a performance you will not see probably anywhere else, and it is so much fun to watch.”

Air guitar isn’t afraid of poking fun at itself, either. The hobby and its enthusiasts are serious, however, about the underlying, common thread that runs through air guitar.

The purpose of the World Air Guitar Championships, its website proudly notes, is to “promote world peace.”

“The idea is, if you’re not holding an air guitar, you’re holding a gun or a weapon,” Highlander says. “It’s a sport, but there’s a message to it, and I think that’s pretty important to the spirit of air guitar in general.”