Dropkick Murphys named themselves after a local rehab clinic in Boston. It's a good fit for the Celtic punk band who would gladly drink David Crosby's blood if they had no alcohol around. But that doesn't take away from their new album Blackout which sports powerful lyrics about deadbeat dads, their beloved Boston Bruins and a traditional song about banishment to Australia. In fact often times their lyrics are so politically charged that Woody Guthrie's family took notice and offered them a song from his unpublished archives called Gonna Be A Blackout Tonight about World War II air raids.
I got a chance to talk to the self proclaimed old man of the group singer/bassist Ken Casey. He's got one of those great Boston accents that make you want to just chill out. There also seems a thread lately of these nutty bands accidentally setting their tour bus on fire. Coincidence? I think not.
Check out the website for Dropkick Murphys.
Daniel Robert Epstein: What inspired the new album?
Ken Casey: Just the fact that it was time to make a new record. We're fortunate because we get to play in so many different styles on one record so we can play straight ahead punk songs, then Irish folk songs, hardcore songs and do a cross of all three. When we go in to write an album we never feel that we need to go in a different direction or expand our horizons because I think the records are all pretty broad.
The only real difference we had is that we wanted this record to sound better production wise. We're all big Boston Bruins fans and they play a lot of our songs at the games. So when we record in the studio we make everything so high end and in your face so it sounds great when you put it on your Walkman. But when you hear it on a huge PA system in an arena it sounds like crap, all distorted so we knew we had to make it sound good.
DRE: Obviously there are some very personal songs on the new record like Walk Away. Do you all contribute to songs like that?
KC: Al our singer wrote the lyrics to Walk Away. It's no so much personal but it is about the epidemic of deadbeat dads. Single parent homes with people who have kids on a whim.
DRE: Is it tough playing those kinds of songs live?
KC: I think the kids that come to see us support us no matter what the topic is. We play to a pretty good audience so I bet that a lot of those kids do come from single parent homes and things like that. Maybe they identify with it a little more.
DRE: What was it like getting permission from Woody Guthrie's family for Gonna Be A Blackout Tonight?
KC: It's a huge honor to work with some of his lyrics. I got to go down to the archives in New York where all his songs are and pick up the original pieces of paper from the 1940's the songs were originally written on. They are in the process of putting everything on the computer so in the future people won't get to hold it in their hands. I even had to wear these special white gloves. They kept yelling at me because they said I wasn't being gentle enough. I never held anything so carefully in my life. I know I have stuff I wrote on at the beginning of this tour and its already yellow and falling apart.
DRE: Maybe its time to start saving those bits of paper.
KC: I guess so.
DRE: Does Woody Guthrie's politics jibe with yours?
KC: Oh I definitely think so. He's pro-labor movement and working class. I think that's why we were contacted by the family because they knew we were cut from the same cloth.
DRE: Do you think he would like your version?
KC: Jeez I hope so. He was a rebel. The whole idea is that if you listen to the other bands that work with his lyrics they usually do it in a folky way. But we thought that would be too obvious. The irony is that we used those lyrics and made the heaviest song on the whole record. His daughter Nora was real cool in that regard because she said that her father would want our interpretation of it. So we wanted to give people what they would least expect.
DRE: You being a fan of punk music yourself how would you compare Blackout to your previous albums?
KC: I would say it's just as punk but what is punk to some people. It's not as fast as our previous albums but I grew up listening to all different kinds of stuff. Mid-tempo original power punk stuff like the Buzzcocks, The Stranglers and all that early UK stuff then I also was equally a huge fan of the Boston hardcore scene. I think we could do a record that's all acoustic guitars and it would still be punk rock because the lyrics would have an edge.
DRE: How was the Warped Tour?
KC: Our bus caught on fire at one point and we had to run off. I was standing on the side of the highway in nothing but my boxer shorts. We were told it would be fixed and we'd get our luggage back. Four days later we still didn't have our bus and we were all wearing band t-shirts from other bands. It's the only time you would see me wearing A Simple Plan shirt but we had nothing else. [The sponsor] Yoo-Hoo even gave us some boxier shorts. We got a new bus and it used to be Styx's bus. It's funny because in every small town we show up we usually in we tell the people we're Styx. Who would have thought we would actually end up in their bus?
We're good friends with a lot of the bands on the tour like Rancid and we got to be friends with Andrew WK. That's been really cool. But the Sex Pistols tour we've been on was amazing. To my surprise they were very nice guys and cool to us. That's not Johnny Rotten's reputation, I don't want to blow his cover but I think it might all be an act.
DRE: I heard you guys were playing gigs during some crazy thunderstorms too?
KC: On the Warped Tour we did 45 shows all outdoors so we were bound to hit some weather. But it always seems to hit when we were onstage. Tents were blowing around but once the lightning starts we had to stop. We didn't mind but we would feel really guilty if a kid got hit. When we play kids are known to bring big giant flags to show and wave them around, so there is like 20 lightning rods in the crowd. But we've been lucky.
DRE: What happened with the strike in 2001?
KC: We almost didn't play at that Warped Tour show because we were coming into a venue where the stagehands were on strike and we're friends with them. Basically we just offered whatever help they needed. The union guys asked that we do go on stage wearing their shirts because it would bring more attention to the cause. The scab stagehands were trying to physically take the shirts off us and they tried to pull the plug on us. We're big pro-union band; I come from a union family and I feel their pain. Then we played acoustic on the picket line. It was cool to see these older union guys get surprised when these young kids with Mohawks hold up the signs and help them out. I think we may have changed their views on punk music and its fans.
DRE: You guys started kind of late in the punk game, around 1995. Do people ever fault you for that?
KC: Well with the Warped Tour we've been around longer than 90 percent of the bands that were on that. It's all relative to the age you are. Our original guitar player was in a punk band in 1978 then the youngest guy in the band is 20 years old and was 13 when we started.
DRE: It was this year you broke a ticket selling record held by the Ramones.
KC: The Ramones had held a record of 5000 people at this club in Boston. We played and it was 8000 not that we care about that stuff. But the only thing that made us care was that the owner of the venue gave us a plaque as an award for highest attendance breaking the Ramones record. We thought it was cool it said the Ramones on it. So being involved with any record that has to do with them is what made it cool. It was also the first legitimate thing my wife will let me hang on the walls in our house having to do with the band. The rest of our crap is in the basement.
DRE: Whose idea was it originally to fuse Celtic with punk?
KC: When we started the band we were all listening to punk but we came from a heavy Irish American neighborhood. Irish music was everywhere. You couldn't be in our families and not know every traditional Irish song inside and out. Not because we bought the CDs but because our parents played it. It just came out of us naturally.
DRE: How much alcohol do you guys consume on the road?
KC: The Warped Tour didn't have enough alcohol to keep up with us. They only gave us a case a day so it became our mission to steal as much beer from other bands as possible. I got a wife and kid with me on the road so the other guys go out and wreck havoc on the beer supply.
DRE: What's your favorite pornography?
KC: Let me ask someone. [To someone else] Hey favorite porno?
It's Cummin' Clean!
by Daniel Robert Epstein
I got a chance to talk to the self proclaimed old man of the group singer/bassist Ken Casey. He's got one of those great Boston accents that make you want to just chill out. There also seems a thread lately of these nutty bands accidentally setting their tour bus on fire. Coincidence? I think not.
Check out the website for Dropkick Murphys.
Daniel Robert Epstein: What inspired the new album?
Ken Casey: Just the fact that it was time to make a new record. We're fortunate because we get to play in so many different styles on one record so we can play straight ahead punk songs, then Irish folk songs, hardcore songs and do a cross of all three. When we go in to write an album we never feel that we need to go in a different direction or expand our horizons because I think the records are all pretty broad.
The only real difference we had is that we wanted this record to sound better production wise. We're all big Boston Bruins fans and they play a lot of our songs at the games. So when we record in the studio we make everything so high end and in your face so it sounds great when you put it on your Walkman. But when you hear it on a huge PA system in an arena it sounds like crap, all distorted so we knew we had to make it sound good.
DRE: Obviously there are some very personal songs on the new record like Walk Away. Do you all contribute to songs like that?
KC: Al our singer wrote the lyrics to Walk Away. It's no so much personal but it is about the epidemic of deadbeat dads. Single parent homes with people who have kids on a whim.
DRE: Is it tough playing those kinds of songs live?
KC: I think the kids that come to see us support us no matter what the topic is. We play to a pretty good audience so I bet that a lot of those kids do come from single parent homes and things like that. Maybe they identify with it a little more.
DRE: What was it like getting permission from Woody Guthrie's family for Gonna Be A Blackout Tonight?
KC: It's a huge honor to work with some of his lyrics. I got to go down to the archives in New York where all his songs are and pick up the original pieces of paper from the 1940's the songs were originally written on. They are in the process of putting everything on the computer so in the future people won't get to hold it in their hands. I even had to wear these special white gloves. They kept yelling at me because they said I wasn't being gentle enough. I never held anything so carefully in my life. I know I have stuff I wrote on at the beginning of this tour and its already yellow and falling apart.
DRE: Maybe its time to start saving those bits of paper.
KC: I guess so.
DRE: Does Woody Guthrie's politics jibe with yours?
KC: Oh I definitely think so. He's pro-labor movement and working class. I think that's why we were contacted by the family because they knew we were cut from the same cloth.
DRE: Do you think he would like your version?
KC: Jeez I hope so. He was a rebel. The whole idea is that if you listen to the other bands that work with his lyrics they usually do it in a folky way. But we thought that would be too obvious. The irony is that we used those lyrics and made the heaviest song on the whole record. His daughter Nora was real cool in that regard because she said that her father would want our interpretation of it. So we wanted to give people what they would least expect.
DRE: You being a fan of punk music yourself how would you compare Blackout to your previous albums?
KC: I would say it's just as punk but what is punk to some people. It's not as fast as our previous albums but I grew up listening to all different kinds of stuff. Mid-tempo original power punk stuff like the Buzzcocks, The Stranglers and all that early UK stuff then I also was equally a huge fan of the Boston hardcore scene. I think we could do a record that's all acoustic guitars and it would still be punk rock because the lyrics would have an edge.
DRE: How was the Warped Tour?
KC: Our bus caught on fire at one point and we had to run off. I was standing on the side of the highway in nothing but my boxer shorts. We were told it would be fixed and we'd get our luggage back. Four days later we still didn't have our bus and we were all wearing band t-shirts from other bands. It's the only time you would see me wearing A Simple Plan shirt but we had nothing else. [The sponsor] Yoo-Hoo even gave us some boxier shorts. We got a new bus and it used to be Styx's bus. It's funny because in every small town we show up we usually in we tell the people we're Styx. Who would have thought we would actually end up in their bus?
We're good friends with a lot of the bands on the tour like Rancid and we got to be friends with Andrew WK. That's been really cool. But the Sex Pistols tour we've been on was amazing. To my surprise they were very nice guys and cool to us. That's not Johnny Rotten's reputation, I don't want to blow his cover but I think it might all be an act.
DRE: I heard you guys were playing gigs during some crazy thunderstorms too?
KC: On the Warped Tour we did 45 shows all outdoors so we were bound to hit some weather. But it always seems to hit when we were onstage. Tents were blowing around but once the lightning starts we had to stop. We didn't mind but we would feel really guilty if a kid got hit. When we play kids are known to bring big giant flags to show and wave them around, so there is like 20 lightning rods in the crowd. But we've been lucky.
DRE: What happened with the strike in 2001?
KC: We almost didn't play at that Warped Tour show because we were coming into a venue where the stagehands were on strike and we're friends with them. Basically we just offered whatever help they needed. The union guys asked that we do go on stage wearing their shirts because it would bring more attention to the cause. The scab stagehands were trying to physically take the shirts off us and they tried to pull the plug on us. We're big pro-union band; I come from a union family and I feel their pain. Then we played acoustic on the picket line. It was cool to see these older union guys get surprised when these young kids with Mohawks hold up the signs and help them out. I think we may have changed their views on punk music and its fans.
DRE: You guys started kind of late in the punk game, around 1995. Do people ever fault you for that?
KC: Well with the Warped Tour we've been around longer than 90 percent of the bands that were on that. It's all relative to the age you are. Our original guitar player was in a punk band in 1978 then the youngest guy in the band is 20 years old and was 13 when we started.
DRE: It was this year you broke a ticket selling record held by the Ramones.
KC: The Ramones had held a record of 5000 people at this club in Boston. We played and it was 8000 not that we care about that stuff. But the only thing that made us care was that the owner of the venue gave us a plaque as an award for highest attendance breaking the Ramones record. We thought it was cool it said the Ramones on it. So being involved with any record that has to do with them is what made it cool. It was also the first legitimate thing my wife will let me hang on the walls in our house having to do with the band. The rest of our crap is in the basement.
DRE: Whose idea was it originally to fuse Celtic with punk?
KC: When we started the band we were all listening to punk but we came from a heavy Irish American neighborhood. Irish music was everywhere. You couldn't be in our families and not know every traditional Irish song inside and out. Not because we bought the CDs but because our parents played it. It just came out of us naturally.
DRE: How much alcohol do you guys consume on the road?
KC: The Warped Tour didn't have enough alcohol to keep up with us. They only gave us a case a day so it became our mission to steal as much beer from other bands as possible. I got a wife and kid with me on the road so the other guys go out and wreck havoc on the beer supply.
DRE: What's your favorite pornography?
KC: Let me ask someone. [To someone else] Hey favorite porno?
It's Cummin' Clean!
by Daniel Robert Epstein
VIEW 19 of 19 COMMENTS
serudeboi:
How did DKM do an interview and only get 17(18 now) comments? Were/are people too awe struck by them or do the kids these days no longer associate the bands with the band shirts they wear around(cause I see a fethin' lot of DKM shirts around here)?
tallguy:
This one goes out to the Boston punks and skins... A rowdy bunch indeed.