On Saturday, Dec. 17, Upstate musician Stephen Oliver hopped onstage at Swanson’s Warehouse in downtown Greenville and began playing his mandolin.
Sometime later — 27 hours and 8 minutes later, to be specific — he stopped, having unofficially broken the Guinness World Record for continuous mandolin playing. In fact, Oliver smashed through the former record of 26 hours and 41 minutes, and he even played a brief set with his band, Brother Oliver, at the end of the attempt.
“It was a really weird experience because I was physically exhausted. I kind of felt like I got hit by a truck.” – Stephen Oliver
Oliver, who started playing the mandolin around 10 years ago, was allowed a five-minute break every hour, but other than that, he had to keep playing, an impressive feat by any measure.
Part of the inspiration for this attempt came from Oliver’s childhood.
“As a kid just on Christmas,” Oliver says, “I had friends who would get the ‘Guinness World Records’ book and I remember being at their house and just reading the book. I always thought it was cool.”
After Oliver became a musician, he and his fellow musician brother Andrew noticed the record for mandolin playing and got an idea.
“We saw the record, and it was an obtainable time,” he says. “I was like, ‘I think I might be able to do that.’ We decided to attempt it, which it seemed crazier and crazier as the attempt got closer. But I’m glad that we did it and we were able to pull it off.”
There are, of course, strict rules when it comes to setting a record, and Stephen had to follow them to a T. No “jamming” was allowed; he had to play recognizable songs. And he had to play at least four hours at a stretch without repeating any songs.
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“I put together a four-hour set list of songs,” he says. “And it was a lot of the prototypical things that you might expect like Tom Petty’s ‘Free Falling,’ ‘Sweet Home Alabama,’ (by Lynyrd Skynyrd), ‘Ring of Fire’ by Johnny Cash, things like that. Just a lot of recognizable songs that were easy for me to play, because I didn’t want to play songs that would be too demanding, just because I had to play for so long. I think it was 63 songs and every four hours I would just go right back through that same set list.”
So how does one prepare to stand on a stage and play the mandolin for more than a day? Well, Oliver didn’t warm up by playing endlessly. In fact, he says his longest stretch of playing before the attempt was two hours.
“There’s no way to really know the proper way to do it because you don’t want to play so much that you damage yourself,” he says. “Then you go into the attempt with soreness and things like that. So my strategy was really based on the system of the attempt. We made sure that everything was streamlined, that there would be no technical errors. I just familiarized myself with what I was going to do, and I did play about an hour a day leading up to the attempt. But I never, you know, did a 10-hour session playing. I didn’t want to strain my wrist or go in with my fingers being sore.”
Swanson’s invited people to come out for the final hour of Oliver’s attempt, and with an enthusiastic crowd of friends and family in front of him, he says he was running on a combination of euphoria and exhaustion as time expired.
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“Once people started showing up, it did give me a little bit of energy,” he says. “So I was able to get through that final hour and they did the 10-second countdown, the crowd was yelling, and then I just took my mandolin off my neck, [then] went into the crowd and started hugging people. It was pretty crazy feeling. It was a really weird experience because I was physically exhausted. I kind of felt like I got hit by a truck.
Now Oliver just has to wait for the people at the “Guinness Book of World Records” to certify the attempt, which could take up to 12 weeks. He’s confident they will do so, but he says he’s thrilled with his effort either way.
“I already do feel good, no matter what happens,” he says. “I’m happy with the experience. So many people came together, and it just meant so much to have a support system.”
