The web home of the legendary Las Vegas Band, Darby O'Gill and the Little People.

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“I’m a professional musician!!!” Darby O’Gill screamed into the summer night, beneath the neon of a Las Vegas parking garage — and he was.


This was 20 years ago, before Darby O’Gill and the Little People’s whiskey-soaked pub shows became something of Las Vegas legend; before the concept of combining pub rock and traditional Irish music — a blueprint provided by popular bands like The Pogues, Flogging Molly, and Dropkick Murphys — upset an otherwise boring, classic rock bar band scene in the so-called “entertainment capital of the world.”

You see, Darby was onto something, and the lad knew it. “There were too many Irish pubs and not enough Irish bands,” he says of the early days. “I wanted to create an act that catered to that environment specifically, just because it looked like such a fun thing to do.”


Well, he did, and the past 20 years have been a blur (and it’s not just because of the booze). After graduating from Las Vegas’s alternative rock scene, the musicians that formed Darby O’Gill and The Little People wasted no time in creating a scene of their own. This was achieved by taking well-known cover songs — such as Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child Of Mine,” and Radiohead’s “Creep” — and some not-so-typical covers — like Snoop Dogg’s “Gin and Juice” and the theme to “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” — and performing them in a rowdy, Irish drinking style. Oh, they performed their own songs too — ”I Got So Drunk I Crapped Me-self,” “Whiskey Christmas”... you get the idea. With a generous amount of dirty jokes, toasts, and bawdy humor poured on top of the music, a Darby O’Gill and the Little People experience is something Darby likens to “a Disneyland ride for grownups.”

📷 John Dietrich

The Las Vegas Weekly once called Darby O’Gill and the Little People “The best goddamn band in Las Vegas.” And in the years following, the band has not only provided a reliable source of good times for the thousands raising glasses throughout Sin City Irish pubs — with many establishments hosting the band for years — the private events for which the band has been hired are also storied engagements. Take for instance, the private Halloween party the band recently played for The Vegas Golden Knights hockey team. “The Golden Knights rented out the bar and they all went in costumes,” Darby says. “We went as the ‘Shitty Avengers’… in sweatpants and tees.”

The drunken schtick is what audiences have loved since the start, but make no mistake, Darby O’Gill and The Little People are, like Darby said way back in that parking lot for reasons no one can really remember (but surely with help of his friends Jameson and Guinness), professional musicians. Past members of Darby O’Gill and The Little People have even gone up the whiskey river to join some of the biggest bands on earth, including The Killers and Third Eye Blind — seriously.


But Darby you can still find, along with his current lineup of Ringo Malarky (accordion), Mr. Green (fiddle), Ewen McKiester (drums), and Miles O’Toole (bass), night after night on the same Irish pub stages the band has called home for 20 years. And when you find them, raise your bloody glass — you’re watching the best goddamn band in Las Vegas!


Bio by Jack Evan Johnson