Irish band The Black Donnellys creating documentary about 9/11

It was the 19th anniversary of a day that no one wanted to commemorate.

But Dave Browne felt it was important to do so, regardless of the sting, the sadness. The pain, the loss, the sense of shock, America under attack — it needed to be remembered.

Sept. 11, 2020.

Up on stage at Mandalay Bay’s Ri Ra Irish Pub that night: Irish music duo The Black Donnellys, a resident act here, of which Browne is one-half. Between songs, he and bandmate Dave Rooney addressed the nation-changing act of terrorism that happened on the same date nearly two decades before.

The crowd didn’t want to hear it.

“No one really gave a (crap) about what we were talking about. It annoyed me,” Browne recalls, his face momentarily contorted into a grimace. “I said, ‘Do you know what day today is?’ I got a bit cranky about it.”

Passions stirred, the duo tore into oft-covered Rodgers and Hammerstein heart-wringer “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

“We belted it out,” Browne says. “For some reason, when we played it, something happened in the room.”

He kept after the audience.

“I said, ‘You always say you’ll never forget.’ You’re forgettin.’ Where were you on 9/11?” he recalls. “And it just sparked it. People said, ‘I was here’; ‘I was here.’ I said, ‘There’s something here. This is a thing.’ ”

That thing has become “Through a Storm,” a new documentary series in the works that The Black Donnellys are shooting a pilot for. Featuring interviews with musicians, firemen, police officers and others from around the country — and beyond — the project is posited on a simple question: “Where were you on 9/11?” Rooney asks.

“This is all about creating awareness of how it impacted people’s lives and how the world changed at that point,” says Jeff Olm, a 30-year film industry vet who’s directing “Through a Storm” and who previously worked on films such as “Titanic,” “Cast Away,” “Spider-Man” and dozens more. “Life changed completely 20 years ago.”

“Through a Storm” will be the Donnellys’ second documentary project in as many years.

In June, they took home an outstanding achievement: documentary Emmy for “An Irish Story: This Is My Home,” their 2020 film chronicling their attempt at setting a Guinness World Record by playing 60 shows in 50 states in 40 days. From May 11 to June 14, 2018, the duo traveled 26,000 miles — 2,000 more than the Earth’s circumference.

It’s been viewed over a million times on dozens of streaming platforms since its release in March 2020.

Having already shot parts of “Through a Storm” in Las Vegas and New York, The Donnellys plan to film in their native Dublin as well as Manchester, England. It’ll be a global shoot in response to a global tragedy.

“It’s one of those things, one of those stories, where it doesn’t really matter where you come from,” says Jimmy Denning, a founding member of the Tenors of Rock who’s taking part in the documentary. “I’m a Scottish person living in America. That day impacted the entire world. I don’t ever see it as an American tragedy. I see it as a human tragedy.”

‘Everybody was a New Yorker after that’

He remembers the smell. And the smoke. Five months afterward, both still hung in the air, grim reminders of a day he hardly needed to be reminded of.

It was January 2002, and Browne was in New York City to record with Irish pop-rock band Blink.

“I said, ‘I’m going down to Ground Zero,’ ” Browne recalls from the back dining room of Ri Ra, clad in a “Nation of Immigrants” T-shirt that features a picture of the Statue of Liberty and reads “I’m with her.” “I didn’t want to go down, because I knew it would upset me.”

Still, he went.

“I seen all the Irish jerseys, and all the names,” he says of the memorials left in tribute to those who lost their lives on 9/11. “I broke down completely. That really, really hit me.”

Years later, The Black Donnellys would visit the Freedom Building during the filming of “Coming Home,” again struck by the number of Irish people who died that day.

Their trip to the site would serve as another part of the inspiration for “Through a Storm,” as would their relationship with retired New York City police officer Mike Orlando, who has come to see The Black Donnellys perform at Ri Ra during his frequent trips to Vegas over the past five or six years.

Orlando, who has been helping out with and been interviewed for the documentary, was on the front lines of the rescue efforts following 9/11, working 18-hour days for weeks on end.

“Basically, they just ripped the clothes off of you, stripped you down, you slept a few hours and you just went right back at it,” Orlando recalls, “because you thought that if you could just find one person, one police officer, one EMS worker, one firefighter, one construction worker, all the workers that were working in the building, it was worth it.

“You didn’t get tired,” he says. “You didn’t even realize the time was going by until somebody slapped you on the head and says, ‘Hey, how long have you been workin’?’ You say, ‘How do I know? I can’t even see my watch.’ We did that for about 40 days.”

He still recalls the sense of community born from that horrific day.

“Everybody was a New Yorker after that,” Orlando says. “In my precinct, because we were all down there in the rescue, Seattle, Washington, would be patrolling the street; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, would be in the firehouse. It was just, like, everybody. And it was like that for six months. It was amazing.”

Hearing Orlando share his memories like this is rare. He says that he spoke about his 9/11 experiences on only a couple of occasions before contributing to the Donnellys’ documentary.

“It just brings up such tragic memories,” he explains. “I’ve never gone back to my precinct after 9/11 because you’re this tough cop and you’re supposed to have this persona that nothing bothers you. ‘Showing your feelings can get you killed’ is a saying we had on the street.”

Orlando isn’t alone in being reticent to revisit the traumatic aftermath of one of America’s great tragedies.

“Some of these interviews, some of these guys have never told these stories — even to family members,” Olm says. “It’s kind of like veterans of the Iraq war and things like that, where they don’t always share it.”

So why now?

“I think the world is ready for it,” Orlando says. “I think 20 years is the perfect time to have that fifth grader or sixth grader who wasn’t alive understand it and teach it and have the country come together again.”

‘In an instant,’ the world changes

His voice swells in unison with the horns, both reverberating through the room with the resonance of a marching band doing its thing in a broom closet.

Rooney’s eyes are hidden behind shades, his emotions far less concealed.

“Walk on through the wind / Walk on through the rain / Though your dreams be tossed and blown.” His face is wistful as he mouths the words to The Black Donnellys’ recording of “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

The Donnellys are in a side bar at — where else? — Ri Ra on a Friday afternoon, filming a video for the song, which will be released as a charity single, with proceeds to benefit the New York City fire and police departments.

“The stories about these guys runnin’ in to save other people, riskin’ their own lives to save somebody else’s life, they should definitely be remembered,” Rooney says. “All we want to do is respectfully remember the people who passed, and raise some money for the two charities, the FDNY, NYPD foundations.”

The Black Donnellys will return to New York City on Sept. 11 to perform at the Freedom Building in honor of the 20th anniversary of the tragedy.

They’re halfway through the making of the pilot, Olm estimates, and will then seek financing to complete the project — Ri Ra has invested in the documentary, fittingly.

“We did this thing with no money,” Browne says. “ ‘Yeah, we’re doing this. How much do we need? We’ll find it, we’ll find it.’ That’s what we did.” The idea is to make it an eight-part series to be released in March, around St. Patrick’s Day, Browne says.

Despite it being tied to a day 20 years ago, Olm feels like there’s a timely dimension to the project.

“It’s just like, ‘Oh, my God, stuff like this can happen and change the entire world in an instant.’ In some ways we’re going through that same exact thing right now,” he notes. “The world just changes and then you reflect on things differently.

“This is all about creating awareness of how it impacted people’s lives and how the world changed at that point,” he continues. “Life changed completely 20 years ago.”

It’s not always comfortable to speak of.

But for Rooney, that’s the whole point.

Memories can sting. But sometimes, that sting demands to be felt.

“I think there’s a kind of safeness, ‘If we don’t talk about it, maybe we won’t have the feelings over again,’ ” Rooney says. “Sometimes, you’ve got to rip the Band-Aid off.

“Something like this that was horrific … everybody’s got a story,” he adds. “Helping people to remember is a good thing. People need to remember this.”

Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476. Follow @JasonBracelin on Twitter and @jbracelin76 on Instagram