Sudbury band Shaft Bottom Boys spent Monday, March 9 playing their way to a new world record.
After performing for 47 minutes at the 7,200-level of Vale’s Creighton Mine, the band officially got word that it had earned the Guinness World Record for deepest underground concert.
The record had previously been set by the heavy metal band Agonizer, which performed at 4,170 feet, in a copper-zinc-pyrite mine in Pyhäsalmi, Finland, in 2007.
During their set, the Shaft Bottom Boys performed Canadian favourites by The Tragically Hip, Blue Rodeo, and Stompin’ Tom Connors. The group even penned an original tune in honour of the event, titled “Creighton Deep.”
The feat doubled as a fundraising event for two local charitable causes.
Science North will use its portion of funds to send 1,000 underserved children across Northern Ontario to its Summer Science Camps, while Miners for Cancer will contribute its portion to research efforts at the Northeast Cancer Centre.
“Working for Guinness World Records, I get to meet a lot of very interesting people and travel to some interesting places,” said Kaitlin Vesper, an adjudicator with Guinness World Records, in a Vale news release. “But I can confirm I haven’t been anywhere as interesting as Creighton Mine or been this far below sea level before.”
