Murphys bringing Irish punk tonight
Boston’s beloved Irish punk rockers the Dropkick Murphys bring their rowdy anthems to Little Rock’s Metroplex tonight in support of their latest album, the fist-pumping 11 Stories of Pain and Glory.
The Interrupters and Blood or Whiskey will open the show.
For the uninitiated, the Murphys, who have been around since 1996, sound like what would happen if Rancid and the Pogues met at an AC/DC concert on St. Patrick’s Day — massive, arena-ready punk rock with singalong choruses and fat guitar chords alongside accordions, tin whistles and bagpipes (so what if bagpipes are more Scottish than Irish, they can still rock).
Nowhere is that sound more evident than on the new album, the band’s ninth, which was released in January on the Murphys’ Born & Bred imprint. Teaming with longtime producer Ted Hutt, who has also worked with Lucero, the group left Boston to record 11 Stories … in El Paso, Texas. The results are vintage Dropkick Murphys, only bigger. Just check “Blood,” the band’s fight song/love letter to its fans.
The Murphys have been on the road in force, banging out their tunes across Europe before returning to the U.S.
“The European crowds tend to latch on more to things like bagpipe lines,” says guitarist Tim Brennan before a show in Columbus, Ohio, last month on the difference between American and European fans. “They will literally sing the bagpipe part.”
Brennan, 34, heard traditional Irish folk music around his home while growing up in West Hartford, Conn., but it wasn’t until he was in high school and was turned on to Irish punks the Pogues that he began to really pay attention. And then, not too much later, he heard the Dropkick Murphys for the first time and was hooked.
“The same guy that introduced me to the Pogues gave me the first Dropkick’s record, Do or Die [from 1998] and I’ve been a fan ever since,” he says.
That fandom resulted in a job handling the band’s merchandise in 2003. At gigs, Brennan would jump onstage to play accordion, and that developed into a full-time spot as lead guitarist (he also plays mandolin, tin whistle, accordion and banjo).
The band got crossover recognition when “Shipping Up to Boston,” with lyrics from Woody Guthrie’s archives, was featured on the soundtrack to Martin Scorsese’s 2006 film The Departed.
Despite its hard-drinking image, the band isn’t exactly a nonstop, Guinness-swilling party. Singer and founder Ken Casey, who has been sober for years, started The Claddagh Fund, which supports children’s and veteran’s charities as well as groups working in drug and alcohol rehabilitation.
The current album features songs like “Paying My
Way” and “Rebels With a Cause,” defiant rockers that address not only themes of recovery and survival but blue-collar toughness and grit. There’s even a cover of “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” the Rodgers & Hammerstein chestnut from the musical Carousel that has been recorded by everyone from Elvis and Nina Simone to Gerry & The Pacemakers. The Murphys’ version becomes a rousing tribute to those who have pulled through the nightmare of addiction.
And then there’s “4-15-13,” a stirring remembrance of the bombings at the Boston Marathon that killed three people and injured hundreds.
“It’s a very difficult subject,” Brennan says of the band’s approach to “4-15-13.” “You don’t want a really somber, solemn song, but at the same time you don’t want to disrespect the whole thing by making a raucous punk song. We knew we had to find somewhere in the middle and we’re really happy with the way it turned out.”