Dropkick Murphys Schedule Tour Leadup to St Patrick’s Day Boston Celebration : November 14, 2011

Irish-American punk band Dropkick Murphys, which had already announced the initial European leg of a 2012 tour, has added North American dates to its itinerary. The 19 da [...]

Dropkick Murphys Recruit Against Me for Theatre Tour : December 16, 2010

For spring next year, seasoned rock act Dropkick Murphys will be hitting the club circuit and conclude the run with a string of shows in celebration on St. Patrick’s Da [...]

dropkick murphys Biography

Dropkick Murphys is a punk and Celtic rock band hailing from Quincy, Massachusetts. Formed in 1996, the independent rock outfit is best known for hits like ‘I’m Shipping Up to Boston’, which is part of the official soundtrack of Martin Scorsese’s Oscar winning film ‘The Departed’, and their rendition of the Boston Red Sox winning theme, ‘Tessie’.

The band’s original members were Mike McColgan (lead vocals), Ken Casey (current bassist and backing vocalist), Rick Barton (guitarist) and Jeff Erna (drummer). At present, the band’s remaining founding member is Casey joined by Al Barr on lead vocals, Matt Kelly on drums and bodhran, James Lynch on guitars, Josh “Scruffy” Wallace on bagpipes and tin whistle, Tim Brennan on guitars, mandolin and accordion, and multi-instrumentalist Jeff DaRosa on guitars, keyboards, bouzouki, banjo, whistle, organ and mandolin. In effect, the band’s sound transitioned from hardcore punk rock, which is apparent in the band’s debut studio set, 1998’s ‘Do or Die’, to Celtic rock with the incorporation of more instruments characteristic of Irish music, a sound which shaped the band’s musical identity from here on, starting with their third studio album, 2001’s ‘Sing Loud, Sing Proud!’.

For almost ten years, the band was under Hellcat Records, which released their first five albums - 1998’s ‘Do or Die’, 1999’s ‘The Gang’s All Here’ (their first release with Barr on lead vocals and the last with Barton on guitars), 2001’s ‘Sing Loud, Sing Proud!’, 2003’s ‘Blackout’ and 2005’s ‘The Warrior’s Code’. Although none of these releases charted at the top 20 of the Billboard 200, it spawned some noteworthy singles such as ‘Walk Away’, ‘Fields of Athenry’ (both from ‘Blackout’) and the emotional ‘Last Letter Home’ (from ‘The Warrior’s Code’), which was written as a tribute to Sgt. Andrew Farrar, a member of the US Army who died in 2005 while in active service in Iraq. Farrar was a big fan of the band that while on duty, his family would constantly send him Dropkick Murphy CDs, and on his funeral, ‘Fields of Athenry’, which was re-written to incorporate Farrar’s letters to his wife and two children, was played live by the band upon his request. ‘I’m Shipping Up to Boston’, also taken from ‘The Warrior’s Code’, was instrumental in the band’s mainstream success after the song was used in the critically acclaimed crime thriller ‘The Departed’. In 2004, the band released the EP ‘Tessie’, still under Hellcat Records. The song is one of the Boston Red Sox’s winning anthems which the band covered to “put the Red Sox back on top” and true enough, the team won the World Series in 2005 after a long, 86-year drought in the league.

In 2007, the band released their sixth studio album and their first under their own label, Born & Bred Records. ‘The Meanest of Times’, which spawned the hit single ‘The State of Massachusetts’, was the band’s first top 20 album at the Billboard 200. In 2011, the band released their first top 10 record, ‘Going Out in Style’, still under their own label. The record, which has ‘Memorial Day’ as its lead single, features collaborations with Bruce Springsteen, Lenny Clarke, Fat Mike and Chris Cheney.