Think distortion meets bagpipes. For the last 17 years, New England-based street punk band Dropkick Murphys has been blending traditional Irish and American folk music with the driving riffs of punk rock, and has toured at a near constant rate to support eight studio albums. The band will play in the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on Saturday and on April 20 in addition to a performance at Los Angeles’ Club Nokia next Wednesday.
While the band has made a name for itself in both the domestic and international punk scenes through its live shows, listeners may recognize it more from the now-prolific use of its tracks in films, such as Academy Award winners “The Departed” (2006) and “The Fighter” (2010), as well as in TV, including MTV’s Nitro Circus, Sons of Anarchy and many others. The Daily Bruin’s Nick LaRosa caught up with lead singer Al Barr to talk about balancing family and the rock-star lifestyle.
Daily Bruin: In your song “Fairmount Hill” off “(The) Meanest of Times”, you make it sound like being in the Golden State is the epitome of being too far from home. As an East Coast-rooted band, what’s it like to come across the country to play a music festival in California?
Al Barr: We’ve spent the last 16 years on the road so, you know, we’re pretty used to going across the country to play, so that part’s not that big of a deal, but it’s a big deal for us to play Coachella. It’s the first time the band’s ever done that and it’s definitely something we’ve been wanting to do. But we always look forward to going to California in general – we have a lot of friends out there and we always have a good time.
DB: Are you guys used to playing the festival scene, or do you prefer to play smaller, single-concert venues?
AB: We’ve been doing festivals over in Europe for years. The festival thing is just kind of taking off in the last few years in the States, but it’s always been kind of a huge thing over in Europe in the summertime. When you hit a festival stage, you have a shorter set and you’re hoping more to reach more new listeners. Whereas the club show, those are the hard, devoted people coming to see you. They paid good money for the ticket, they know albums as opposed to a couple of songs. It really is two different plans of attack. We like both, but if you made me have to choose one, I think I’d say we’d say the club shows, just because there’s a relationship going on there with the fans.
DB: Your sound is heavily influenced by Celtic and Irish traditional music. What is it about Celtic music and punk rock that works as a musical marriage?
AB: We always felt like Irish and American folk was the punk rock of yesteryear. It’s music for and by the people, you know, with themes that you wouldn’t hear in pop music. We always thought that there was that link there and so we never really thought of it as that much of a stretch.
DB: What would you say is the theme for your January 2013 release, “Signed and Sealed in Blood”? Would you go so far as to call it a concept album like 2011’s “Going Out In Style”?
AB: There’s always kind of a tone that flows through every record. But as far as the concept record thing goes, it’s something that we kind of explored with “Going Out In Style,” but it wasn’t something that we really had anticipated doing, and we haven’t really done it again. When it comes to “Signed and Sealed (in Blood),” we wrote and recorded “Going Out In Style” and then went right on the road to support it, and we never really got off the road. We bled right into recording “Signed and Sealed (in Blood)” right from the road.
DB: Since you tour at such a constant rate, how is that now that you guys have families? I expected you to name family and coming home as themes in “Signed and Sealed (in Blood).” Songs like “The Boys Are Back” and “The Season’s Upon Us” really lend that air to the album.
AB: You know, it really is a double-edged sword. We get to do what we love to do – we get to tour the world and play music for people. That’s the greatest job on Earth. Then there’s the other side of it. Everybody in the band is married, three of us have children, and so that makes it tough. There’s no getting around that, you know? The upside of it is that when we are home, we really are home 100 percent of the time. I mean, as far as this record kind of being a homecoming, I think we’re always glad to get home. Again, we’re lucky to do what we believe in, but when we’re only home for seven days, I’ve got my four-year-old daughter going, “Why you gotta go daddy, why you always gotta go?” Kids don’t really understand, you know?
Email LaRosa at nlarosa@media.ucla.edu.