This Is My Home

As promised, The Black Donnellys are back.

Singing for a record.

A local Irish pub has carved its name in the record books.

They set the record for the longest continuous gig.

And we smashed through the world records.

More than 360 hours of live music.

-You set a Guinness World Record. -I have the other world record

for the longest guitar playing, five days.

They'll keep on playing for however long.

Well, in the words of Bachman Turner Overdrive,

"You ain't seen nothing yet."

Cheers, sham.

We'd like to introduce the band.

-How you doing, I'm Dave. -I'm Dave, how are you?

-It's great seeing you. -And we are The Black Donnellys.

We've been playing together for 12 years.

We played all over the world, every country in Europe.

We went across the States, as far as Southeast Asia.

-Every county in Ireland as well. -Every county in Ireland.

More than once.

We have two world records.

And the first world record was Dave's,

a marathon guitar playing, 114 hours.

Second world record was the longest concert ever held,

which was 372 hours.

And this one will be our third world record.

When they first did the world records,

they came up with it and everyone got involved in it,

and then they were talking again,

and they were saying, "How are we gonna beat this one?

How are we gonna beat the next one?"

And he says, "We're going to go

and do every, every state in America."

You know, once again they're embarking on something

that's just, y'know, it's larger than life.

I was like, just even the logistics of that,

what are you talking about?

That's, that's--

I mean, I've covered in Ireland

in the back of the van with 'em, and it's hard work.

Y'know what I'm saying?

People only talk about doing what they're doing,

y'know, most people won't get up and do it.

World records aren't easy,

that's why they're called world records, only a few people have them.

We wanted to see the States, we wanted to tour the States.

Looked up the record, it was 50 gigs, 50 states in 50 days.

It's like, I can do this, we can do this, no problem.

That they pitched this very crazy idea

of doing this Guinness World Record breaking tour

of hitting every state with at least one gig

in less than 40 days.

Nobody has ever done that before.

No individual, no group, no artist.

Okay, here's the idea,

we're gonna start in our home venue, our home ground,

which is Ri Ra Las Vegas in the Mandalay Bay.

And we're going to end in Arlene's Grocery in New York City.

And every single state in between, every nook and clanny and…

A clanny?

A clanny, did I say clanny?

Nook and cranny.

Yeah, I mean, you know we're set to go here

in less than an hour, and we just need to know from your team

exactly how we're supposed to document all this

and all the things we've been talking about for a while.

Guinness did not confirm this world record before we started.

The big questions that we've had from them

is what exactly constitutes a gig,

how many people have to be at every venue,

and how exactly do they want us to keep track of this,

so we make sure that we actually earn this world record

at the end of this monumental journey.

We were on the phone

about four or five months prior to this putting together,

ringing the venues, "How you doing, this is what we're doing,"

introducing ourselves,

telling them exactly what we were looking for.

The Daves have taken an incredible amount of time

to stitch this thing together. It's a dream, it's a dream that they have,

but it's an incredible amount of territory to cover,

60 places in 40 days.

That takes an incredible amount of planning and logistics.

I got this, I got this!

That's how you pack, and these are very essential, aren't they?

- Okay, throw those in! - Okay.

When Dave mentions a new world record, I do cry a little bit inside.

Oh, Ziggy, do you get sad when the suitcase comes out?

The first time we had been together a year,

and it was for five days and it was a long five days.

He was obviously 24 hours during that time.

And after that I said to him, if you do another one,

do it shorter.

But then he went on to 21 days,

and then the next one obviously was this one.

-Can I have one of the-- - Who's your favorite?

-Daddy. -That's what I want to hear.

-Mommy. -Mommy, Mommy.

Mommy be your favorite for the next five weeks.

Some people turn around and say, "How do you do that?

How, he's gone all the time or he travels." It's a job.

You just accept it, it's our way of life.

If you don't work towards something together,

it's not gonna work.

All of this.

We had no idea what we were in for.

We thought we did, but we didn't.

All right, folks, getting ready to start off here.

First, we'd like to thank everybody

for turning up today for our played gig.

Yeah, it's great to see such a show of support here.

We are very, very grateful, so thank you for that.

Okay, and we think we're ready,

we're not actually sure whether we are or not.

Um, all right, okay, let's do this and see what happens!

Thank you.

Wanna see your hands going up, up, up, up, up, up!

The launch was great, our friends, our families were down.

People from Vegas and Ri Ra looked after everyone.

It was a great vibe and we felt really good

and was thinking okay, this is the start,

let's go up from here.

Stuff I don't want is that we wasn't ready and we knew it.

We were looking down from the stage.

The driver was still sitting in the bar going like,

"We don't have a van."

We don't have an RV.

We already started, we kicked off the record, you can't stop,

if you stop, you've lost the record.

We were standing at the car, and you just like,

"Fuck this, let's just go."

We drove in my car for the first state,

ya know, just to get the job done 'cause the show must go on.

Oh, yeah!

Anyway, eventually we got it sorted out,

so at least we know then that we've got wheels to move on, so.

Now that's a hectic day.

We're sitting the back of this RV.

Never been in an RV before. - Ever.

And we picked the bedroom at the back of the RV to sleep on,

we thought we were being smart.

The RV, and I'm not joking you, it was going like this.

And I was going up and down, bouncing off the mattress.

An hour and a half and all I heard was,

"This is fucking hell!"

We have six weeks of this shit.

Yeah, right there and then I said to myself…

I'm going home.

What the fuck have we done.

- Just that for you? -Yeah, that's it.

It's $1.89.

I'm loving this.

Something it's all about,

our new world record attempt.

We started it yesterday in Las Vegas, and it's been a bit of a, an adventure

but it's a, thankfully I'm glad to say

that we've made it here and mostly in one piece.

Our primary driver for the RV, Chad, slipped and broke his toe

but it kind of looks like he's dislocated it.

We are on our way over to help him out.

It's 10 minutes til five now so we've gotta,

we have to be in Carmel playing at 7 p.m.

And Carmel is 78 miles away, so…

Now I'm backtracking, which we're gonna do,

we're now going south to Carmel to turn around

and go north to Portland, Oregon, tonight.

We get Chad checked out, leave him here in Mountain View,

and pick him up on the way from the second gig

that we're doing at seven o'clock in Carmel.

They got the X-ray ordered,

so they're looking at like, an hour and a half, two hours tops

and they'll get me in.

- Okay so… -And see how the X-ray goes.

We gotta leave you here and then come back?

Probably, sounds like it, right?

Best of luck.

A mutual friend told me that they were doing

this world record tour, said I could sponsor you at this level.

It was friends asking for support,

it was something I believed in, so… Easy.

We were very lucky to have a hotel winery

as our main sponsor.

We loaded the van up.

They gave us lots of red wine.

And a glass of red wine at the end of the night

doesn't hurt anybody.

But two or three bottles might.