A lot of people have recently asked, “When did the Dropkick Murphys get so political?”
Band leader Ken Casey has an answer.
“The first line of the first song on our first album sings about Reagan breaking the backs of the unions,” Casey told the Boston Herald.
This would be the title track of 1998 album “Do or Die” — a punk rock anthem if there ever was one.
Flash forward a few albums and a few decades, and Casey and Dropkicks will roll into Boston for their annual hometown run of St. Patrick’s Day shows during a time of dark and divisive politics. These clashes of tribalism aren’t just happening online or in the halls of Congress, but in the crowds at Dropkicks’ shows.
“I don’t know why, in a country that’s supposed to have free speech, people are so intolerant of our band,” Casey said.
He’s seen a handful of people leave shows or return merch. But he’s also seen the band’s fanbase grow as working people — always the Dropkicks’ focus, see new album “For the People” — start to cheer on the Boston boys.
“A lot of people say, ‘I don’t agree with all your politics but I see now that Trump is bad for the country,’” Casey said. “Actually, we’ve seen more of these people (speak to us) than the people who are supposedly walking away from us.”
Casey doesn’t consider himself a radical. He doesn’t think his politics are far left. What he sees are the ultra-wealthy taking from everyday people and he doesn’t like it.
Of course, he’s also doing the work any good punk would — especially a punk whose band recently recorded two acoustic-focused albums built from lyrics Woody Guthrie never put to music. The Dropkicks recently released a split LP with Boston hardcore band Haywire, including a remake of Murphys’ 2005 song “Citizen C.I.A.” as “Citizen I.C.E.”
“I just changed the lyrics on the fly,” Casey said of first remaking the song at a European show last year. “I sang ‘I.C.E.’ once and (the crowd) started singing along. It just seemed to resonate. We’d been hearing these folky songs protesting against ICE but we didn’t have a fast hardcore kind of song doing it. I think the song’s energy meets the moment.”
Nearly three decades in, the Dropkick Murphys’ politics haven’t changed. And two decades since breaking big with “I’m Shipping Up to Boston” (another song built from Guthrie lyrics), the band is as popular as ever — it’s booked MGM Music Hall shows March 13, 14, and 15 plus a House of Blues show March 17; half the dates are already sold out. Between the two Guthrie records, “For the People,” and the split LP with Haywire, the band released four albums in five years.
“The downtime of COVID combined with how much that Woody Guthrie experience inspired us and then maybe something to prove at 30 years where a lot of bands might coast at that point,” Casey said. “It says, ‘We’re not just out here to milk this thing.’ ”
“When we lose the enthusiasm for new music, that’s probably when the end is near for us,” he added. “And I will say, we owe a debt of gratitude to our audience who are still buying the new records and still coming and singing along to new songs.”
For details and tickets, visit dropkickmurphys.com