Nancy
Hammerle: You just came off a three-night stand, three sold-out shows at the
Avalon celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. And I notice that you incorporated a few
new songs along with some of the old ones too, and it seemed to have a really
rousing response.Ken Casey: You know, having to play three nights in a row in the same place is kinda…you get really worried about it getting repetitive three nights in a row, so we wanted to play a couple of new songs. I think we played – between the three nights – something like 50 different songs, you know what I mean? Just because we were trying to mix it up as much as possible, and I know a lot of kids came for all three nights. People traveled from – I couldn’t believe it there was a kid from Calgary, San Diego, Seattle, just all kinds of people, from New York, New Jersey, someone from Toronto, two kids from Japan…and that’s just the people I met, you know!
NH: We met four kids from Texas, from Dallas, who came up to catch your shows and go to the [Bruins] game with you.
KC: So we didn’t want to be playing the same set every night for those kids, but I think it worked out to be a good weekend in terms of a good time to do it…a lot of people wanted to see Boston, wanted to see the parade, wanted to go to the Bruins game, which was a hard ticket unfortunately for them, but I had mine, and I saw a few other kids there…and the feedback I got from people was that it wasn’t just the shows, people were there for the whole weekend, and most people I talked to from out of town said that they hooked up with kids from Boston who showed ‘em around and we had most of the people that traveled backstage and it’s just cool that people can come from out of town and have people look after them and show them a good time.
NH: Everybody had a great time at your shows, we always have a great time at your shows, but the St. Patrick’s Day weekend really is special. I want to ask you about a couple of those new songs you played – they’re traditional songs, they have a very traditional sound to them. The first one was about unions and workers, and the second one was too, wasn’t it?
KC: Actually, they’re both traditional songs – one is by [pauses] Sorry, Seamus is disrupting you – bad dog! One is written by a guy named Ed Pickford, but I was introduced to this song by Dick Gaughin, who’s a Scottish folk singer that Billy Bragg covers a lot of his songs. We just basically took the words and made a song out of it; obviously the traditional version of that is probably the most different from the end result that we came up with than any of the songs we’ve ever re-done. It’s a song about workers’ rights, and the struggles in Scotland and stuff…it’s a pretty cool song, it’s kind of a little more old-fashioned, you know, pre organized labor, about the lower-rung having to fight the wars….It’s a really cool song, you should check out Dick Gaughin’s version of it too, I forget which album it’s on, but you can go to his website, it’s [spells name] http://www.dickgaughan.com/. And the other one is ‘Black Velvet Band’ which is an old traditional Irish folk song, which we’ve taken another one of those and screwed it all up! But it’s fun to play…we’re just writing songs for the album and just foolin’ around and figured it’d be a good time to play a few of ‘em….We have about 10-12 songs written for our new record….
NH: And they’ll be on the new record too?
KC: Those two will be on the new record, yeah, and we’re gonna write maybe another eight. I don’t think we’re gonna put as many – we usually put like 16 songs on a record – I think we’re gonna do like 12 or 14 this time, just because every time we release a record with 16 [songs] there’s always two to three that we’re like “Ugh, I wish we didn’t put that on there, I hate that song!”
NH: Can I ask you what might have been the case for some of your albums? Which ones you’re not as happy about?
KC: Which songs do I hate? Yeah, on the last one, ‘Ramble & Roll’…
NH: Gee, I like that one a lot!
KC: It’s funny though, you get the most mixed reaction, like every time people ask me that and I say that…that’s what strange about Dropkick Murphys, is the fact that we kind of do so many different styles of music, that what isn’t one person’s cup of tea might be the other person’s. I think a lot of people listen to the band that like [us], for instance, might not even really be into Irish folk, you know? They love the more rock’n’roll side of it, or the harder stuff. I mean, there’s always people saying “You gotta write more hardcore songs, this record doesn’t have any fast songs!” And it’s like “Well, then maybe the next one will be all fast songs!” But the variety is, I think, what keeps all the people coming back, whereas if we just wrote a record that was all one style, we’d probably have a lot of people that would get bummed out on it. And I think there’s a lot of people that might like all the styles we incorporate, but I think there’s a lot of people that might not.
NH: Some people skip over the acoustic, and some people love the acoustic, but in all your albums, you take some traditional songs and really punk them up, like the old labor song “Which Side Are You On?”. I’ve heard other people do that the old slow, old-fashioned way, well that’ll put you right to sleep! But to hear you play it, you just want to get out there and walk that line!
KC: I enjoy doing those songs because they’re the songs I grew up listening to, so do redo them in our way is kind of like to me one of the best things about being in this band. But on the other hand it’s a good bridge to the older generation, who if somebody puts on one of our originals, somebody’s father’s probably gonna say, “What the hell is this?”, but he catches “Finnegan’s Wake” and gives it a chance to listen to it, and I think that’s really helped us a lot.
NH: I bet a lot of people travel back to the older songs and find Irish music in a way they never found it before, or maybe never listened before. You certainly influence us that way.
KC: I hope that happens with every form of music we take influence from. I hope that every time we’ve ever done a cover song we pointed people in the direction of the original band, whether it’s CockSparrer, or the Pogues, or Sham 69, you know, we’ve done so many cover songs throughout the years. That’s the best part about it is when you see – not saying this is always the case – for instance, you see some young kid come to see us, and he’s new to punk rock and then the next time you see him he’s got a Sham 69 patch on and he went and bought all their albums too.
NH: Like you have those three great Clash covers that’s on your singles album now, and that could get people listening to the Clash. Of course they’d probably like your version better than the originals!
KC: Well, I don’t know if the Clash need any help with us pointing people in their direction! The reason we did all those Clash songs, by the way, is that’s how I learned to play the Bass, to that first Clash record, so at the time we were very limited to what we could play. It was like, “What covers should we do?” “Well let’s do one that Ken already knows how to play cause he’s the worst in the band!”
NH: Well, the worst in the band, the worst musician at one time, maybe, but not now, that’s for sure! But you have a great group together – a great new lineup. Well, it’s not new anymore, but…they’re the band now. You’ve got Matt still on drums, Al singing vocals, James and, um….Mark [forgets names] [laughter]. We’ll cut that part!
KC: No, that’s alright, actually leave that, cause James will actually like to see that, because James is the guy in the band that everyone forgets his name and stuff, and people always call him the wrong name…we call him Steve, just because he always gets Steve, they always screw up his name. So it’s good to see somebody else get screwed up, James’ll be very happy about that. [laughs]
NH: All your albums, they all have a very distinctive sound, but they all take a little different tempo, or little different sound. Like the first one is more mid-level street punk, then you went somewhat harder-core, then you went more folksy. Can we talk about the new album, how that one’s going to go? If you even know yet?
KC: Out of the songs we’ve written, it’s kind of that broad mix again, you know what I mean? I think a lot of stuff we’re trying to incorporate now on songs we’re working on is to be able to do stuff that’s like, for instance, not so much like “Hey, here’s a punk song,” or, “Ok, well, this song’s got the bagpipes, so it’s gonna sound Celtic.” For instance, “The Worker’s Song”, one of those new songs we played, I feel like if you took the bagpipes out it would just sound like a punk song. Like trying to mix the other instruments maybe into songs that don’t even have a Celtic feel, but yet, put bagpipes on ‘em like the same thing with that Pressed cover that we did, like putting bagpipes on the end of that. It doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with folk, you know? It was funny, I got an email from the guy from the Pressed that wrote the song, the other day, and he said that they originally wanted to have bagpipes on the end, cause it’s kind of got a marching thing and it was fitting for bagpipes, but time, resources, whatever, they didn’t know a bagpiper or something, they didn’t get it done. Also it’s played in another key, so they probably recorded it in that key and tried to put bagpipes on it and realized that bagpipes are the most unforgiving instrument – they don’t fit well with other instruments. If you want to play punk rock with bagpipes, for anyone thinking about it, plan on writing a lot of songs in B Flat.
NH: But Robbie really has added a lot to the band, being able to tour with you all the time; Spicy, should I say? Touring with you, and you’ve got a consistent bagpiper.
KC: We left Robbie in Germany and Spicy came home! His first shows with us, we flew from Japan to Berlin and he met us in Berlin and it was supposed to be his first show cause we had been practicing with him, but we just couldn’t afford to take him to Japan…so he went over to Berlin, and he was too drunk to play, he disappeared for two days, he almost missed his flight home, and we’re like, “Oh boy, this guy’s working out great!” And after he came home we had already dubbed him Spicy McHaggis, but when he came home, he hasn’t had an episode like that since – well, he’s had episodes like that, but it hasn’t affected that he couldn’t play or disappeared for days, so…
NH: See here in the states you have John to look out after him, make sure he gets where he needs to be…maybe you should put John on the payroll, take him with you! [laughs]
KC: Yeah, yeah, maybe…it’s a good thought! But you know, obviously having a full-time bagpiper in the band has given us the ability to write more songs with bagpipes cause now you’re gonna hear it, but it’s also given the writing process a chance to develop, whereas before my friend Joe Delaney would play the bagpipes for us, but he wasn’t in there practicing with us, he’d just come in and lay some part over it that we’d described to him, so it’s just a more cohesive feel you know? And the possibilities are endless, like “Heroes from Our Past”, on the last record, the whistle and the bagpipes together, we had never done that before, doing harmonies from each other…it sounded so cool, you know? I didn’t even know that the whistle came in that key! [laughs] That’s how unprofessional we are, when we’re writing music we’re like, “Hey, that sounds good!” and then someone plays a whistle and it’s like – “you can do that?” So I want to try a lot more stuff like that.
NH: Ryan seems really versatile, he’s added quite a dimension too, with the mandolin and the whistle….
KC: Yeah, he’s a music geek, you know, he’s one of those band guys, you know what I mean? Probably played marching band and had the big hat [laughs], and now he’s got a mohawk, but that’s alright, you gotta grow up sometime. It’s good to have someone who knows what they’re doing. I think a lot of us are either good at what they do, like Matt, who in my opinion is one of the best drummers there is. And Mark on the guitar and James on the guitar. Either that or have passion for what we’re doing. But overall, like music theory, and knowledge of music, might have been what the band was lacking, and Ryan knows that stuff.
NH: And you’re probably all learning a lot on the job too, I would guess. I mean, listen to your earlier stuff, it’s a lot rougher, and you guys have really come along, and I’m sure it’s not because of more studio input, it’s that you guys are evolving, growing.
KC: We have the opportunity to do what a lot of bands don’t, we do it for a living, we do it full time. Obviously, it’s like anything – the guy who goes golfing seven times a week vs. the guy that golfs two times a year, or whatever, I mean we just do it more. We get a chance to improve what we’re doing at a more rapid pace. Doing it every day we probably improve at the same pace as most people, but sometimes I wonder for how much we get to do this, we should be better than we are, you know? But we just have fun doing what we’re doing.
NH: [laughs] How do you get better? I mean you guys are just so great…
KC: Well, it’s not rocket science! We just care a lot about what we’re doing and wanna give it our best effort. And that’s all anyone can do, you know, you give it your best effort. That’s why I’m happy with myself and what we’re doing, because I know that myself and the other guys in the band give it 100% and put all their heart into it. Anything else is out of our control, you know what I mean?
NH: And let me just say, too, that you’re all a great bunch of guys, and you do an awful lot for your fans. You mentioned bringing the guys who came from out of town backstage, that was a real thrill for them, it really was. And just in general, like the way you keep ticket prices so low, like this Avalon, fifteen dollars, and not just for your, what, 90-minute set or so, but for two other opening bands that are always great?
KC: Jeez I wish the rest of the world shared your opinion, I mean a lot of people still think it’s 1988 and they want tickets to be six bucks, but inflation happens. The reason why we’re like that with the people that come to see us, is because – I hate to even use the word ‘fans’, because it’s like – if they didn’t come to see us…I get up on that stage and get to have my grandmother, for instance, my grandparents in the audience, in the balcony watching me, proud of me for something that I’m doing. I mean, I have to thank, and the band has to be thankful to, every single person who’s ever bought our record or come to see us, for allowing us to have the opportunity to do this….Musicians are the most screwed up bunch of people in the world; that somewhere along the line this attitude came in where it’s like…that’s why I hate when musicians try to give political speeches cause they’re usually the most uneducated bunch of drug addicts in the world! [laughs]
NH: [laughs] Not the Dropkick Murphys!
KC: Not the Dropkick Murphys, we’re family entertainment…ex-drug addicts at least. And aside from that, just punk rock in general. We’re a punk band, and whether people consider us that anymore or not, we are at heart, and that means that the band and the audience is on the same plane. I mean I don’t even like to have barricades and all that stuff, but at some level reality sets in and insurance with clubs these days you know…we try to the best of our ability to keep it as us and the audience being as close as possible, and at one with each other. But it can’t always be perfect. But when a kid walks up to me and says, “Hey I just drove up here from Texas.” That blows me away – I want to have him backstage, I want to introduce him to my friends, I want to have him meet my family. To me….that blows my mind! I would never drive…I don’t care if Elvis is playing, I would never drive to anywhere to see a band that far – they’re crazy! [laughs] I feel like I should pay for their gas money to come all the way up here to see us…
NH: Clearly it’s worth it to them; and you have 1,200 people, I think that’s about what Avalon holds, right?
KC: 2000.
NH: 2000! Selling out three nights in a row…some came more than once, like Dora and I came all three nights. But obviously you’re doing an awful lot, and you need some security, you need that little barrier because that would just be such a crush of people. But in fact, Kenny, fifteen dollars a ticket, you could have easily sold out those shows at twenty dollars a ticket – but you didn’t. You chose not to. You kept it reasonable. I think you could probably charge even more than that, but you’re not in it apparently just to make a ton of money.
KC: We’ll wait til my daughter’s getting to college age and it’s the 25th anniversary show, that’s when we’re gonna jack the ticket prices sky-high, baby! [laughs] But like I said, it’s not about making a fortune, you know what I mean? It’s our job; just the fact that we can pay our bills – and for years we couldn’t even do that – just the fact that we can survive and do just this as a living, is like, already living your wildest dream. So then to turn around and try to really make a lot of money off it…our fans, they’re too smart for that. This isn’t metal, you know what I mean. We’ve toured with Motorhead, the tickets were thirty-five dollars, and the t-shirts were forty dollars, and I was just like, “Holy shit!” I know how much a t-shirt costs these days. Forty dollars! We’re playing the wrong music, let’s start a metal band! [laughs] But we’re doing what we love, so…
NH: But in fact too your audience has broadened quite a bit, it’s not the original punks, or the kids. You’ve reached a much wider audience now, you’re more accessible than the typical punk band. Certainly more accessible that the hardcore bands out there. And you see a lot more kids now getting into the Dropkicks that never even heard of you a year or two ago, a lot of college kids and all that.
KC: Obviously, we’ve had a bit of mainstream stuff, you know. [W]BCN played our record, but nowhere else in the country played our record. We’ve had videos on MTV maybe once in the middle of the night, twice in the middle of the night.
NH: Dora caught one, and called me down and I fell down the stairs trying to rush down and see it. [laughs]
KC: So for the most part, it’s really been word of mouth. Maybe people in Boston see us in the newspapers and whatever and it might not seem like word of mouth, but on a global level, it really has been word of mouth. And to see it spreading that way, I couldn’t really take more pride in it. Basically, I would like to think that we’re more accessible…I mean, like Blink 182 is accessible too…
NH: [Shakes head] No, no no.
KC: But what I mean is, I think it’s the broadness of the styles of music that allows us to reach different ages and different people. That was the goal when we very first started the band. The very first song that we wrote, “Barroom Hero” was like, even though, granted there are bagpipes on it, but that was done in the studio, when we wrote the song, I still thought that it had a bit of that kinda Celtic feel to it. Originally I said I wanted to play to kids of all different types of people. I mean, I grew up always listening to punk, but I also grew up with all guys that were like, just kids from the city, that were maybe not persay punks, but working class kids that could identify to the things they we’re singing about in the lyrics. I always wanted them to be there too, because when we were playing to strictly punks, I always felt like, “Man I think there’s a lot of them that don’t even know what the hell we’re talking about,” you know what I mean?
NH: Too drunk to hear the lyrics?
KC: Too drunk, or just, you know, whatever, they weren’t into the words behind it, which is alright too, you know, but it’s nice to finally see the kids I grew up with that aren’t into punk actually come now, and they’re into it, so I know that it’s kinda crossed those boundaries.
NH: When I said “becoming more accessible” that was not a dis; there’s no way I would ever put you in the same category with Less Than Jake or Blink 182; like Rancid, to me you’re more like them in that your lyrics are coherent, you can understand the words, the songs are catchy, you’ve got some good hooks there, you’ve got some great music going. Cause let’s face it, a lot of punk bands aren’t all that good. And a lot of their songs really do sound alike.
KC: I didn’t say that.
NH: I said it! [laughs]
Sean: Well, you know, Rancid rocks and all that, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say you can always understand Tim Armstrong. I have a hard time sometimes, myself.
KC: I talk to him on the phone and I say, “What the hell did he just say?” [laughs]
NH: We were in England wearing Dropkicks shirts, and in other places wearing Dropkicks shirts, and people do come up to us and in fact, that’s how we hooked up with Tim, in London, I was wearing a Dropkicks shirt, and he came up to me. And Lars was there and he remembered us from the Punk-O-Rama tour, which was sweet. But even going into the Reading Festival, taking the trains and all that, we were meeting so many kids that were going there for you, for YOU, and anywhere we go, when we say we’re from Boston, we hear about the Dropkicks. And occasionally about the Bruisers, but mostly about the Dropkicks.
KC: How about the Bruins? [laughs]
NH: We never hear much about the Bruins! [laughs] One girl in London mentioned the Ducky Boys. But you guys really are establishing yourselves worldwide.
KC: Well, we’ve been to all those places. I mean I never listen to the radio, right? I mean I really NEVER listen to the radio, but I was flipping from one sports talk radio station to another or something one day, and on [W]FNX they had this thing like Worldwide Requests, I was in the car, and there was a thing about someone requested Dropick Murphys via the Internet from San Diego, and the DJ says, “Now how the hell would anyone in San Diego know who Dropkick Murphys are?” and I just laughed. We had played San Diego six times that year, and had probably played Boston twice! We’ve played Tokyo, London, and Berlin more last year that we did in Boston. We’ve just been working at it, and we went into a lot of these cities and took from the ground up approach – “We’re a local band and we’ve played the smallest clubs in every one of these towns.” It’s like anything, you go back once, if it goes good, you come back the next time and hopefully people have told somebody, brought somebody, and there’s more people there. We’ve had other really good breaks happen to us, like in Holland, the National Television Program, cause they have national TV, it’s not all about money, it’s funded by the government. They did a documentary on us, they followed us around for a week on tour last year.
NH: Right, I think your mother and I talked to them last year at the St. Patrick’s Day show.
KC: Right, and they’d never have something like that in the States, cause it’s like the equivalent of PBS, but nobody watches PBS here. [laughs]
NH: Well maybe if they covered you, we would! [laughs]
KC: They have to have oxygen just to keep the thing going! Anyway, then we went back to Holland and we had been fighting it out, growing, maybe a hundred people every time we went, to all of a sudden going to the biggest clubs, because of that show. People have been really good to us, to try and help us out, and I like to take pride in the fact that we don’t forget that, and always like to give credit to the people who helped us to do what we do.
NH: I guess we probably won’t be seeing too much of you in high school gyms anymore, or church halls, huh?
KC: Hey, if they’ll let us play there, we’ll play! Church halls and high school gyms, I have some fond memories of those. The show we did in Southie at the gym, I think the nuns there are still recovering from the heart attack from listening to Rob Lind’s speeches! Blood for Blood played that show and I said, “Sister I promise, you got my word, there’s gonna be no problems at this show.” And the whole show, the only time she walked in the gym was in the middle of a Rob Lind Blood for Blood tirade. [laughs] And we all know that those even give regular people a chill, let alone a nun, so that did us in for that place, but that’s alright, Rob.
NH: I remember you going on stage and saying, “Respect where you are.” [laughs] Do you think there’s any chance of any more shows locally, now that you’re gonna be around for a while? So if you can play six in San Diego, you know…
KC: The thing is, we’re terrified of wearing out our welcome, you know what I mean? What we’ve been doing here, trying to keep it few and far between, we’re now gonna do everywhere, and maybe tour once a year and try to do more limited shows and make it a little more special when we do it. At least for now, when the new album comes out we’ll probably [tour]. My wife’s already getting sick of me, she wants me to book another tour. She doesn’t like having me around all this time! [laughs]
NH: Any chance of another Barroom Heroes type show, where it’s a small club like Bill’s Bar, that’s not widely known?
KC: Oh, that I can see us doing. Because it’s less…it’s less pressure, if you’re only gonna play to a hundred people, okay, well, chances are those hundred people aren’t the ones that mind seeing you five times a year. I mean, I had fun – well, I wouldn’t say I had ‘fun’ the night we did that show, because we were bad! James crashed into his…that was actually…I’m glad it was in a small place, but that night was worth it alone to see James wipe out drunk and take out both his amps. That was a rock’n’roll moment, I’ll never forget. [laughs] I’m glad it wasn’t at Avalon though. When we do these shows – we did it in San Francisco, we played under the name Boys on the Docks, we did a benefit for Eric, for the workers, right after he had a stroke, and we couldn’t contractually play a show, because we were on the Warped Tour and you can’t play in the city, so we did it under another name and everyone knew, and it was the same thing. We have a tendency to when we do these low-key unannounced shows, take it a little too low-key and fall over and knock amps over and stuff like that.
NH: That’s the punk rock part of you, you know! You’re still punk rockers! So “The Gauntlet” has gotten airplay, though. I’ve heard that on the radio quite a few times. That’s like a hit for you guys!
KC: Closest we’ll ever get to it. But like I said, [W]BCN’s really the only one that’s ever played it.
NH: I play it on my radio show! I play all your music on my radio show! And I have listeners all over the world, on the Internet.
KC: Well that’s the good thing about the Internet, those shows now get people everywhere, whereas before, college radio it was like, ‘Oop, I just drove off campus, I can’t hear it…”
NH: I get phone calls during my show, even from Australia, all over, requesting songs. So, they hear you.
KC: That’s awesome. But I will say, not that [W]BCN doesn’t suck, but the music they play, and I’m sorry if you see this show, but I will say radio is back to the whole payola thing, and if you wanna be played, your label’s gotta pay all kinds of money and crazy stuff like that. Cause we won’t do that, on principal I would never give a radio station money to play the band, and they’ve played us just because they’re trying to support a local band. Whereas even [W]FNX was like, “Well, if you give us this kind of money…” and crazy stuff. So, that’s why we don’t get played other places in the country, because we don’t go along with that whole system. But, as much as I hate the music [W]BCN plays, they really have been just trying to support a local band, which I gotta say is cool, [looks at Seamus] and my dog’s about to maul your daughter, I don’t know if this a good time to end the interview or not. [laughs]