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The sentimental drop kick

A working-class band from Boston finds enthusiastic audiences around the world
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By Marika Ley
For The Prague Post
August 6th, 2008 issue

Photo by ROBERT PERACHIO
The band serves up biting, insightful lyrics over a raucous blend of Celtic, punk and hardcore music.
The Dropkick Murphys


When: Tuesday, Aug. 12, at 7
Where: Roxy
Tickets: 490 Kč in advance through Ticketstream, 550 Kč at the door
While some of Boston’s most reputable Ivy League schools are educating tomorrow’s leaders, other institutes of education in the same city are seeking out whoever blew up the men’s toilet in Pod A some 20-odd years ago. Chances are, at least one of the members of the Dropkick Murphys knows — but of course, would never tell.
A hybrid Celtic-punk band, the Dropkick Murphys have been described as having the forthright attitude of the Ramones with the musical underpinnings of the Pogues. Lifting their name from a legendary drunk tank/flop house, the band is well on the way to attaining a legendary status of its own.
“People all over the globe seem to identify with one aspect of our music or another,” says guitarist and accordion player Tim Brennan. “Whether it be a song about working-class people, where we come from or our sports teams, people seem to understand what we’re singing about.”
The group’s songs and shows can be raucous and beer-swilled as they pound out guitar-driven, working-class anthems. But it’s the Irish sentimental sways in song, lyricism and instrumentation, not to mention an abiding affection for Beantown, that gives the band’s music definition.
“Obviously some of the Red Sox stuff is over the heads of people in some countries, but for the most part people seem to be hip to it,” Brennan says. “As far as the songs being about Boston, we’ve had people tell us that the pride we have in our city makes them proud to be wherever they’re from.”
The band’s potent form of folk-punk, combined with their relentless touring, has cemented its status in the hearts of fans throughout the world. Perhaps it’s the Zen of being on the road so much that prompted vocalist and bass player Ken Casey to tap the legacy of Woody Guthrie. “The words to ‘Shipping up to Boston’ were at the Woody Guthrie archives where Ken had the opportunity to go to once,” Brennan says. “He got to sift through all sorts of songs and poems that were never published.”
It was from those unheard ballads that Casey culled “Gonna Be a Blackout Tonight” for the album Blackout (2003) and “Shipping Up to Boston,” which debuted on The Warrior Code (2005). The latter, featured in Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, took them a step up the entertainment food chain. “Obviously having our name anywhere near Scorsese’s is an honor,” Brennan says. “To have him actually say the name ‘Dropkick Murphys’ on television was something none of us ever thought we would experience. The whole thing was mind-blowing, and still is to this day.”  
The band has become an unfortunate yet honored regular on the funeral circuit playlist, even before their video dedication of “Last Letter Home” to Sgt. Andrew Farrar, a Dropkick Murphys fan who died on his 31st birthday while on patrol in Iraq. The band played at his funeral and incorporated parts of his last letter to his family into the song. It is not sheer sentimentality that brings the song’s message home. It’s the vocals fraught with anger and frustration, the bagpipes howling of war codes and commitment, the drums kicking your feet into action and the chorus that makes you question.
On the band’s sixth and latest studio album, The Meanest of Times (2007), an already stalwart sound was enhanced by Spider Stacy, a founding member of the Pogues, and Irish bard Ronnie Drew of the Dubliners. The cuts included “The State of Massachusetts,” an eerie banjo-twinged tune, one of the several rambunctiously related tales of domestic violence, misguided religion, family separation, worn-out war heroes, misguided youth and an undying loyalty to all of it.
The Dropkick Murphys invoke many of the stereotypical images of Boston: roving clans of The Fighting Irish carousing in Italian pizzerias, ivy-covered brick buildings, cops named O’Riley, pubs that close too early and a passion for local sports teams. But what they embody most is an unquenchable ironclad spirit, no matter what the odds, for just about anything that is deemed worth it.

Marika Ley can be reached at features@praguepost.com


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