\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div> \t\t\t\t\tKen Casey stuck around after the show in San Diego, California, talking to members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. <\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJohn Francis Peters for Rolling Stone<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tDuring their set, Casey, 57, took numerous opportunities to preach to the thousands of electricians who came out. \u201cThe truth is that the current president of the United States wouldn\u2019t piss on any of us if we were on fire,\u201d he says, the six other members of his band at attention behind him, his thick Boston accent making him sound like a lost punk-rock Kennedy. \u201cYou know it. I know it. But the problem is far worse than even him. It has to do with the wealth gap. It has to do with all these criminals that have taken all the blood, sweat, and tears that we\u2019ve worked for over the years, trying to take away our rights, trying to make it harder for not only us, but for our children and the next generation of people trying to build lives for themselves. Hopefully what comes out of all these horrible times is a much stronger and a much less divided America, and a much less divided working class, and powerful unions. So this one\u2019s for everyone who\u2019s sick of this shit.\u201d Another pause, before he shouts into the mic: \u201cAre you with uuuuus<\/em>?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n \n\tThey launch into \u201cWho Will Stand With Us?,\u201d<\/a> the lead single off last year\u2019s For the People<\/em>. The crowd jumps around, bearded men in the front singing along, kids on their parents\u2019 shoulders pumping fists in the air, catharsis at the end of a long summer. If Woody Guthrie had a taste for slam-dancing in a hardcore pit with bagpipe accompaniment, this song would be his jam.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWhen Dropkicks formed in 1996, they weren\u2019t known as a particularly political band. Sure, they sang about union life, but they also had a cop-friendly song (\u201cJohnny Law\u201d) and a lot of lyrics about getting fucked up and fighting other kids in South Boston. Their politics were of loyalty, pride, and hard work. It didn\u2019t take long for them to become punk-festival headliners, hometown heroes who opened for the Red Sox at Fenway Park, and even a household name after Martin Scorsese<\/a> used their song \u201cI\u2019m Shipping Up to Boston\u201d<\/a> in 2006\u2019s The Departed<\/em>. But these days, they\u2019ve become better known as the band behind a loud, pissed-off, working-class fuck-you aimed squarely at Donald Trump<\/a> and his cronies. They\u2019ve gone viral for telling off MAGA fans in the audience, and for calling the president \u201cthe greatest swindler<\/a> in the history of the world.\u201d As their songs and music videos get more pointedly focused on their old-school-blue values, they\u2019ve used collaborations with the Guthrie estate, Billy Bragg, and Bruce Springsteen to drive that point home.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n \n\tCasey\u2019s refusal to back down has earned him some powerful friends, like Governor Maura Healey, the chief executive of his home state. \u201cKen\u2019s never lost sight of who he is or where he came from,\u201d she tells me, noting that she was a fan long\u00a0before they met. She named Sept. 25, 2025, Dropkick Murphys Day in Massachusetts, and around the same time, she and her wife, Joanna Lydgate, took Casey, his mom, and his girlfriend as their personal guests to the gala where he was named Massachusetts Storyteller of the Year. \u201cHe\u2019s tough, he\u2019s direct, he\u2019s irreverent, he\u2019s loyal, he\u2019s deeply rooted in his community,\u201d Healey adds. \u201cThat\u2019s something that a lot of people in Massachusetts really resonate with.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tSome of the challenge-coin haul.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tBut it\u2019s not just Massachusetts, or even New England. Across the country, more and more fans are identifying with Casey\u2019s overwhelming frustration with the current state of our democracy. \u201cEighty percent of America, I think, in their heart of hearts, would say, \u2018Man it\u2019d be good if we could get back to some form of dialogue,\u2019\u201d Casey says. \u201cSometimes I\u2019m a source of that, and sometimes it\u2019s me flipping off the guy in a MAGA hat in front of the stage. I\u2019m only human \u2014\u00a0I don\u2019t get it right every time. But it\u2019s better than staying quiet.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tON A WARM BOSTON MORNING a few days earlier, Casey is sitting in the public library\u2019s main branch in Copley Square. The bright, airy lobby is home to the live studio for GBH, the city\u2019s public radio affiliate, and hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagon are talking with Healey for her monthly \u201cAsk the Governor\u201d segment. A couple dozen retirees, as well as a young guy wearing a Dropkick Murphys St. Patrick\u2019s Day tour shirt, watch her take call-in questions on everything from post-partum healthcare (Lindsay Clancy\u2019s case just ended in a mistrial) to nuclear power, data centers, opioid addiction, and the state\u2019s ties to the Israel-Palestine conflict. She patiently addresses each caller, continually referring back to her commitment to upholding the civil rights of all citizens, no matter their color, creed, or sexual orientation. Towards the end of the segment, Casey joins her to discuss a bill<\/a> he\u2019s been helping her promote, which would cap resale prices of concert tickets, as well as the recent debacle<\/a> involving Ed Sheeran, Macklemore, and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tOn air, his language is significantly less profane than it is onstage, but the message remains just as forceful. \u201cThe fact that Ed Sheeran took the knee, no matter what the cause is, and [didn\u2019t stand] with his fellow tour partner, just doesn\u2019t sit right with me,\u201d he tells the audience<\/a>. \u201cAnd that\u2019s not how Dropkick Murphys would operate.\u201d He seems confident standing there next to his friend the governor, as well as Eagon and Braude, the latter of whom has become a mentor of sorts as Casey\u2019s public profile has grown. He\u2019s been a guest on their show multiple times, and even guest-hosted on a few instances. After the segment, as we walk across the street to retrieve his car from a hotel valet, he tells me that he hopes to someday start his own radio show, if he can find the time amid the band\u2019s tour schedule. In the meantime, he\u2019s starting a podcast with Michael Fanone<\/a>, the police officer who was assaulted by rioters on Jan. 6, 2021, who is also a longtime Dropkicks fan. \u201cHe was at the very first D.C. show we ever played,\u201d Casey says.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s still Nazis in the punk and skinhead scene? Who gives a fuck if there are. The president is a fucking Nazi.\u201d<\/p>\n Ken Casey<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n\tCasey is a natural podcast host, if for no other reason than his voice \u2014\u00a0what Springsteen will later describe to me as \u201chis true Irish tenor.\u201d He has a warm presence, and when he smiles his eyes shrink behind his cheeks. Though he gets deadly serious many times during our conversations, he\u2019s quick to laugh and seems to delight at meeting fans wherever they might crop up. Before we leave the library, he says hi to the kid in the Dropkicks shirt; when he\u2019s getting the car from the valet, one of the doormen asks for a selfie. \u201cMy dad is going to be so excited,\u201d he tells Casey, who grabs his hand and eagerly poses. He\u2019s the city\u2019s unpretentious mascot, a stout divorc\u00e9 with three grown kids, a passion for union politics and Celtic-tinged punk, and an almost pathological drive to stand up for what\u2019s right.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAs soon as Dropkicks showed up in the Nineties, it was as if they had some kind of innate knowledge of how to make a punk band successful. \u201cIt almost seemed like they had a grown-up idea of how to do this thing that we were all figuring out as kids,\u201d says James Lynch, who joined them as a guitarist when he was 20, but had been playing in Boston punk bands for years. \u201cWhen the Dropkicks come on the scene singing about union labor and all this stuff, we\u2019re all singing along with it, with no idea what they\u2019re talking about. It was just something special from the jump.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBack in 1996, Casey was newly married, working construction and tending bar, putting himself through the local UMass, where he was taking classes to be a special ed teacher. \u201cI didn\u2019t know if I\u2019d ever get there,\u201d he says, as we drive through Boston in his giant black SUV, making our way from the ritzy Back Bay to South Boston, the once-working-class part of town that\u2019s since been overtaken by glass condos and rising rents. \u201cI was special ed in high school \u2014 not because I had a learning disability. I was an alcoholic. I was a chronic truant, and in an effort to keep me caught up and engaged, they put me in a special ed room.\u201d These days, he notes, that would never fly, \u201cbut back then they didn\u2019t know what to do with me. I got out of high school by the skin of my teeth.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAt 26, he was five years sober, and channeling some of that new free time into booking all-ages matinees at the Rathskeller (better known as the Rat), a local institution known for launching generations of Boston bands; putting out singles and splits on his label, Flat Records; and publishing band interviews in its accompanying zine, Flat Magazine.<\/p>\n \n\tAround that time, a fellow bartender who was enrolled at the prestigious Berklee College of Music offered Casey a proposition. \u201cYou\u2019re always talking about starting a band,\u201d Casey recalls him saying. \u201cMy band has a show in three weeks, I dare you to open for us.\u201d So he took his coworker up on it. \u201cJust out of pride and wanting to win the bet.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tCasey called up another friend, Joe Koonz, guitarist for the 1980s Cape Cod hardcore band the Freeze, who offered to play drums and teach Casey to play bass. \u201cWe had three weeks to come up with a name, so we did the first show under the moniker of the Snots,\u201d Casey says. \u201cNeedless to say, had we stuck with that, I probably wouldn\u2019t have just been on public radio with the governor.\u201d But he wasn\u2019t sure of his chops as a singer, so he recruited Mike McColgan, a Gulf War vet and fellow Boston punk, for vocals.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tThe band started as a bet. \u201cMy band has a show in three weeks,\u201d Casey\u2019s coworker told him in 1996. \u201cI dare you to open for us.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJohn Francis Peters for Rolling Stone<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tBy their second gig, the band were calling themselves Dropkick Murphys. By the third \u2014 opening for a Freeze reunion show \u2014 they were playing for a whole room of strangers. Soon, they had an \u201cundeniable buzz,\u201d Casey says, selling 200 copies of their six-song EP, Boys on the Docks<\/em>, at each show. The Mighty Mighty Bosstones tapped them for tour, and by the middle of 1997, Rancid\u2019s Tim Armstrong had asked them to record an album for his new Epitaph subsidiary. All four members quit their jobs to focus on the band full-time. \u201cI don\u2019t know that everyone thought it was going to be a career, by any means,\u201d Casey says. \u201cWe just thought, \u2018We\u2019re going to quit our jobs at the same time, and all go back to our jobs at the same time.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIt didn\u2019t hurt that the Boston punk scene was thriving. \u201cThe Rat at the time \u2014 and Boston in general \u2014 the mid-Nineties punk scene here was just unbelievable,\u201d Casey says, reeling off local bands they came up with: the Unseen, Showcase Showdown, the Ducky Boys, the Trouble. \u201cWe were all drawing more than what you would have thought.\u201d It helped on the road, too: Bands that visited Boston would be virtually guaranteed a packed house, so when Boston bands went to their towns, those bands went out of their way to make sure folks came out.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cAt the time, if you started a band and you were from Boston, you had someone waiting to put out your record,\u201d says Lynch. \u201cI remember being at the Rat one time, at a Ducky Boys show, and [singer] Mark [Lind] was like, \u2018People were always talking about what it was like to be at CBGBs in the Seventies. Someday, people are going to be talking about the Nineties at the Rat.\u2019 It was like some big, never-ending summer camp.\u201d (Last year, for their 30th anniversary, Dropkicks got a handful of the old bands to reunite, filling out the bills for three nights at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway. \u201cPeople just fucking loved it,\u201d Casey says.)<\/p>\n \n\tBeing in Dropkicks, though, was not a vacation. Used to working labor jobs, Casey wanted this new gig to feel real, meaning practice would often start at 7 a.m. \u201cIt\u2019s this work ethic thing,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s like, how can I have a job if I\u2019m not doing my job?\u201d The band members could handle it, but the property manager who lived above their first rehearsal spot was less enthusiastic. \u201cHe\u2019d get up: \u2018What the fuck are you doing?\u2019 \u2018We practice in the morning because it makes us feel responsible.\u2019 He\u2019s like, \u2018No no, that\u2019s why you get in a band, so you don\u2019t have to do that.\u2019 And I\u2019m like, that\u2019s not how we think of being in a band.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\tWhen they weren\u2019t rehearsing, they\u2019d be writing, or helping out in the community, like going to play an acoustic set at a hospital. They made their own merch, pressed their own records, did their own promo. \u201cBeing in a band can sometimes feel self-indulgent,\u201d Casey says. But keeping things DIY made it feel like a career.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tDropkick Murphys (from left): Casey, DaRosa, Webster, Kelly, Rheault, Brennan, and Lynch<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJohn Francis Peters for Rolling Stone<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tThough Casey is the only founding member still in Dropkicks\u00a0\u2014\u00a0the others left, he says, largely because they weren\u2019t up for the intense touring schedule \u2014 the core group has been pretty steady for the past 20 years. Drummer Matt Kelly joined in 1998, Lynch came on in 2000, guitarist Tim Brennan came on in 2002, and multi-instrumentalist Jeff DaRosa came on in 2007. Rounding out their onstage ensemble are touring bassist Kevin Rheault, who\u2019s been with the band since 2017, and touring bagpiper Campbell Webster, who joined in 2002. From the get-go, bagpipers proved the hardest musicians to keep. \u201cSometimes the bagpipe [player] that we had might have been in a pipe band at home and had a civil service job,\u201d Casey says. \u201cSometimes they were just not built to last in a band with seven people.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tBut the blend of Celtic music and punk was a surefire hit. Even before they brought in banjos and bagpipes, the musical phrasing hinted at their influences, and fans loved it. Not surprisingly, all the band members cite the Pogues as an influence; singer Shane McGowan<\/a> even guested on the 2001 track \u201cGood Rats,\u201d about a group of rodents getting drunk at a brewery off-hours. (In November, their cover of the Pogues\u2019 \u201cBody of an American\u201d will appear on the compilation 20th Century Paddy \u2013 The Songs of Shane MacGowan.<\/em>) From the start, blending the two felt natural to Casey: \u201cCeltic music was in my fucking genes, and punk rock<\/a> was my teenage music of choice.\u201d When he first heard the Pogues, he felt like the band \u201cwas genetically engineered for me,\u201d he says. Lynch felt similarly about Dropkicks. \u201cMy grandfather played Irish music; my dad played punk rock,\u201d the guitarist tells me. \u201cIt\u2019s like I was grown in a petri dish to be in this band.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI DON\u2019T KNOW WHETHER it\u2019s pride, or some kind of neurological disorder, but I want to push a rock up the hill and get it there,\u201d Casey tells me, digging into a cardboard tray of fried clam bellies, sipping a Diet Coke from a waxed paper cup. We\u2019ve made our way to Castle Island, where we sit on a bench, looking over a serene Boston Harbor, where a handful of pissed-off Bostonians once dumped a boatload of tea to protest British taxation. Now a state park, the first fort on this peninsula was established in the 1630s. It functioned as a strategic outpost through World War II, defending the city and the nation from Axis attacks. Casey, however, is talking about the enemy within.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tFor the past decade or so, Casey has been a hard voice against Trump, ever since \u201che fucking came down the escalator.\u201d The band had always been outspoken in a 1990s-punk sort of way, contributing the song \u201cWe\u2019ve Got the Power\u201d to the 2004 Fat Wreck Chords comp Rock Against Bush, Vol. 2<\/em>, covering the union classic \u201cWhich Side Are You On?\u201d on their 2001 album Sing Loud, Sing Proud!<\/em>, <\/em>beating up<\/a> any Nazi that dared to come into their pit. But it wasn\u2019t until the modern far-right started coalescing, and Trump used that anti-immigrant, anti-worker momentum to launch his campaign, that Casey\u2019s political rhetoric turned more public.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tDropkicks\u2019 first moment of this type of virality came earlier in 2015, when then-Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who\u2019d run for office on his intent to weaken collective bargaining, used \u201cI\u2019m Shipping Up to Boston\u201d as his walkout song for a speech at the Iowa Freedom Summit. Casey was enraged. \u201cUsing a Dropkick Murphys song as an intro is like a white supremacist coming out to gangsta rap,\u201d he wrote<\/a> on Facebook. But it was his tweet<\/a> that really got people talking. \u201cPlease stop using our music in any way,\u201d he wrote, tagging the governor. \u201cWe literally hate you!!! Love, Dropkick Murphys.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tCasey was surprised by how much attention it brought them. \u201cIt just goes to show how many of those fucking Republican politicians are so out of touch,\u201d he says, \u201cusing the song by someone who does, in fact, literally hate you.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tA few years later, in Clearwater, Florida, they had another moment when Casey called out an audience member in the front row who was wearing a MAGA shirt and hat. \u201cIn the name of dialogue and discourse \u2014\u00a0and I appreciate you being here \u2014\u00a0would you agree to a friendly wager?\u201d Casey asked from the stage. The man agreed. Casey pulled out a Dropkicks T-shirt, and noted to the crowd that the band only sells merch made by American workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIf you lose the bet, [you] switch shirts. If you win the bet, I give you $100 and the shirt,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can\u2019t lose!\u201d The audience member took the bet. Their tour manager checked the tag on the MAGA shirt <\/strong>and shouted up to the stage. \u201cIt\u2019s made in Nicaragua!\u201d Casey announced, before giving the guy the band tee and thanking him for being a good sport.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes I feel like being in the band keeps you young. Other times, it\u2019ll make you feel old if you\u2019re not ready.\u201d<\/p>\n Ken Casey<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n\t\u201cA lot of people are like, \u2018Why are you wasting your breath talking to MAGA?\u2019 I usually don\u2019t, but it was nice to feel like, fuck. I made a point,\u201d he says now. Even better, it gave him a glimmer of hope. \u201cThe reaction online shows that deep down in their hearts, the country wants to believe that some element of us can come back together again.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tLong before phrases like \u201creplacement theory\u201d<\/a> made their way into mainstream politics, Dropkicks had plenty of experience dealing with people on the far right. Nazi skinheads had been a thing since Britain\u2019s National Front party started recruiting punks with shaved heads in the 1970s. Two decades later, the tradition was still strong in the U.S. Though they weren\u2019t really present in Boston proper \u2014 the local anti-Nazi skinhead group FSU<\/a>, short for Friends Stand United (or Fuck Shit Up, depending on who you ask), would beat up anyone suspected of harboring far-right views, or really \u201canyone they didn\u2019t know,\u201d Casey jokes \u2014 they were definitely an issue on tour. \u201cOur shows would oftentimes be the breeding ground for Nazis coming looking for S.H.A.R.P.s,\u201d or Skin Heads Against Racial Prejudice, Casey says, particularly in places like Colorado and Florida.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tHe remembers a tour where they had the \u201cbright idea\u201d to bring street hockey sticks and nets\u00a0on tour.\u00a0\u201cWe were still young and thought, well, in the venues we can have street hockey games after sound check,\u201d he says. The games were largely a punt, but the gear ended up coming in handy for other reasons. One night after a show, as they waited to load into their bus, he says, Nazis started circling the venue. The band sent a roadie out as a decoy, and the Nazis stopped the car, ready to give him a beatdown. \u201cLittle did they know, all of us \u2014\u00a0our crew, whoever we had on tour\u00a0\u2014\u00a0were around the other side with hockey sticks,\u201d Casey remembers. \u201cWe came running around and smashed all their windows out, and may or may not have hit a few people.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWhile on tour with the British Oi! band the Business in 1998, they were supposed to play a show in Florida, but had to cancel after McColgan quit the band. The Business canceled too, but for another reason: They found out the day before that the venue they were set to play was a white power clubhouse. \u201cSo all the bands they had playing are all white power bands,\u201d Casey says. \u201cThe fans start showing up for Dropkicks and the Business, and they don\u2019t even tell them we\u2019re not playing. They take the money, [the fans] all come in and it\u2019s all these Nazi bands playing. This kid went back and said, \u2018It\u2019s not what I paid for, give me my money back.\u2019\u201d An argument broke out, and the 25-year-old fan was beaten nearly to death, his throat slashed with a broken beer bottle. \u201cWhat happened wasn\u2019t even fair,\u201d one witness told the Tampa Tribune<\/em>. \u201cThere was nothing I could do. They were all over this guy.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tCasey wasn\u2019t surprised when he saw these fascist elements start to encroach on non-punk spaces more recently. In 2022, members of the now-defunct neo-Nazi group NSC 131 rolled up to the St. Patrick\u2019s Day Parade with white masks and a banner reading \u201cKeep Boston Irish\u201d; the Nazis later did \u201ca little highlight reel,\u201d as Casey calls it, setting images from the parade to Dropkicks\u2019 song \u201cThe Boys Are Back.\u201d \u201cStop using our song for your little dress up party video. We will SMASH you,\u201d Casey tweeted, before serving the group with a cease and desist. He then sent them an invitation of sorts: \u201cI\u2019ll be down M street park walking my dogs if [y\u2019all] are looking to discuss,\u201d he wrote, referring to a nearby public park, and gave them a date and time.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI didn\u2019t want to, in a public forum, say I\u2019ll be down there with a bunch of guys, because then the cops would come,\u201d he tells me. \u201cI had probably 200 guys down there. Friends of mine. The ironworkers sent 40 guys down. Of course, [NSC] never showed up. All these groups, doing their little marches. They\u2019re just fuckin\u2019 nerds. Who thinks khakis and a blue shirt is a threatening outfit?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\tCasey is largely the voice of the band, but the other members back him up. \u201cWe\u2019re so lucky he\u2019s the mouthpiece,\u201d says Brennan, left. <\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJohn Francis Peters for Rolling Stone<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tHe takes a bite of a french fry. \u201cFor the most part, there are no Nazis in the scene,\u201d Casey says. \u201cNowadays, no one needs to try to convince some young kids with shaved heads to be their foot soldiers. It\u2019s the college campuses now, these nerds that are the young Republicans or whatever \u2014\u00a0you see their group text leak.<\/a> They\u2019re<\/em> the fucking white power people now.\u201d They don\u2019t have the same intimidating look, maybe, \u201cbut they\u2019re sure scary at what they\u2019re doing politically.\u201d He sees a fascist takeover that has happened \u201cfrom the ground up,\u201d\u00a0from school boards to the presidency. When it comes to Nazis in the punk scene, then, the worry seems almost quaint. \u201cThere\u2019s still Nazis in the punk and skinhead scene? Who gives a fuck if there are,\u201d he says. \u201cThe president is a fucking Nazi.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBeing this outspoken about the president, however, has made him a target for MAGA. \u201cNo one ever threatened me for speaking out against George Bush,\u201d he says. \u201cA lot of people threaten me for speaking out against Donald Trump.\u201d This only really happens online, he notes. No one is coming up to him on the street to tell them they\u2019ll kill him for what he said or wrote. \u201cI think it\u2019s because, as they\u2019re writing a death threat from their basement on a fake account, so their wife doesn\u2019t know it\u2019s them, they know deep down in their core they\u2019re on the wrong side of history,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m not here to tell people they got to agree with me on politics \u2014 what makes America great is a strong two-party system. But that other party is not a political party. That\u2019s a fucking psychotic cult.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tCasey says that friends have joked with him about whether he plans to run for office. But he has no interest. \u201cI have a distrust of it. I don\u2019t know if I have the patience to deal with people,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty easy to be a spectator with opinions, as opposed to the people trying to actually do it. It makes you realize, like, who that\u2019s really smart and and good would fucking want that job?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThough the other members of the band noticed him becoming more political, they tend to see that as a good thing, even if it sometimes causes onlookers to walk away during their set, which they say happened at a recent Rocklahoma gig. \u201cWe\u2019re so lucky that he\u2019s the mouthpiece,\u201d says Brennan. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of people who have no idea about the political leanings of the band. They\u2019re coming to the show because they know \u2018Shipping Up to Boston.\u2019 It was a surprise, apparently, to a lot of people, that we leaned to the left\u2026 All of us were like, \u2018All right, let\u2019s weed out the people that we don\u2019t really want to be here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tWhat Casey and the other members of Dropkicks can\u2019t quite comprehend is why so few other bands are taking a stand. \u201cBefore TV, radio, the internet\u00a0\u2014 a song is how you told the story,\u201d Casey said on the Jim and Margery Show<\/em>. Meaning, music is how you share your values, your message. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of people that are keeping their heads down,\u201d he tells me. \u201cBands like us have made the choice to speak out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tTHE DROPKICKS\u2019 REHEARSAL STUDIO is a massive warehouse space a few blocks from M Street Park that could moonlight as a Dropkicks museum. Walking in, we pass a four-foot plastic Santa Claus, a relic stolen from one of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones\u2019 annual Christmas shows that famously featured the statuettes. (\u201cI would go in and steal one of them and do ransom videos around town,\u201d Casey says with a smile.) There\u2019s a rack of Dropkicks hockey jerseys, gifts from the minor-league arenas they often play, which he plans to eventually sign and raffle off <\/strong>for charity. There are amps and half stacks and touring crates, a walk-in closet full of LPs and seven-inches, and along the back wall, above a cluttered stage, there are printouts of the track listings for each of the band\u2019s 13 studio albums. \u201cWhen we\u2019re practicing, we can be like, \u2018Oh, let\u2019s try this one.\u2019 I\u2019m not saying we go through all that in any one practice, but throughout the course of practice, we\u2019re trying to be able to pull out any song at any time.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tCasey had to learn to sing a fair amount of those songs solo. About five years ago, Al Barr, who\u2019d been the band\u2019s lead singer since McColgan left in 1998, decided to take an extended break to care for his mother. Casey had been tag-teaming singing responsibilities since a surgery forced him to give up the bass in 2019, but Barr\u2019s exit fully made him the face of the band. \u201cWe stay in contact, and I assume he\u2019ll come back,\u201d Casey says. \u201cThen again, if you took me off the road for five years, I ain\u2019t getting back out there.\u201d He laughs. \u201cSometimes I feel like being in the band keeps you young. Other times, it\u2019ll humble you and make you feel old if you\u2019re not ready.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tOne way that Casey and the rest of the band keep sane amid their relentless tour schedule is the Claddagh Fund<\/a>, a 501c(3) charity <\/strong>that Casey launched in 2009 as a way to centralize the charity work they were doing, but also keep his hands busy. These days, they raffle guitars or signed merch on tour, or play one-off benefit gigs. <\/strong>DaRosa even ran the Boston Marathon <\/a>for the Claddagh Fund earlier this year. The money they raise goes to a variety of charities, like South Boston Special Kids, which funds days out for children with disabilities, or Massachusetts Fallen Heroes, which helps support the families of service members who have died in the line of duty.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\u201cOnly the Irish can take a song about death and destruction, famine, alcoholism, and raise a glass like it\u2019s an anthem,\u201d says Casey. <\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJohn Francis Peters for Rolling Stone<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \n\tA lot of the work, though, has to do with helping people get clean. Casey got sober at 21 \u2014\u00a0\u201cI was sick and tired of being sick and tired,\u201d he says, quoting an old adage \u2014\u00a0but others in the scene weren\u2019t so lucky. \u201cSadly, one of the main things that we needed to get involved with over the years was addiction treatment recovery,\u201d he tells me. I know this for a fact, because an old friend of mine, a former member of one of those Boston bands who came up with Dropkicks, was given an all-expenses-paid trip to a top-tier rehab facility during the pandemic, when his drinking hit a wall. He reached out simply looking for advice, and was immediately told they\u2019d foot the bill. Without their support, he wouldn\u2019t have been able to afford it. Now, thanks to Dropkicks, he\u2019s still sober \u2014\u00a0and, frankly, still alive.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tCasey has seen a lot of the guys from the old scene need help with booze, but about a decade ago, he began witnessing a terrifying new kind of scourge. \u201cThere was a period in my life where I would be at two funerals a week of either friends or children of friends that were dying of overdoses,\u201d he says. \u201cNot always someone who was down and out on their luck. When the fentanyl came, it might have been someone whose child had anxiety and took a Xanax they bought off the street, not knowing what it was.\u201d His own experience as an addict, he adds, shaped his feelings around recovery. \u201cNobody should die of addiction. But if you\u2019ve gone down that road already, you know what you\u2019re risking. You know you\u2019re rolling the dice. When these people were dying from fentanyl \u2014 just kids that might have thought they were taking some party drug \u2014 it\u2019s like\u2026 \u00a0I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s even that much more sad.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tSobriety has long been a thread in the band\u2019s history. Back in 1996, when Casey had three weeks to put a group together, the first song he wrote was \u201cBarroom Hero.\u201d<\/a> The opening lines \u2014 \u201cFace down in the gutter\/Won\u2019t admit defeat\/Though his clothes are soiled and black\/He\u2019s a big strong man with a child\u2019s mind\/Don\u2019t you take his booze away\u201d \u2014 are sung as a sort of chant; from there, it jumps pace, rushing through a litany of lyrics that pepper in warnings. \u201cHis wife and his kids sing a different tune as they worry \u2018bout their daddy dying,\u201d he sings. \u201cWon\u2019t someone please step in.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tMany listeners didn\u2019t catch the meaning of the song back then. \u201cIronically, a lot of the lyrics were actually about the troubles that I had,\u201d Casey says. \u201cIt\u2019s like I always say, only the Irish can take a song about death and destruction, famine, alcoholism, and raise a glass like it\u2019s an anthem.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tEven future Dropkicks didn\u2019t pick up on it. \u201cI thought the band was a hard-drinking band,\u201d says DaRosa, a longtime Massachusetts punk whose group the Vigilantes had opened for Dropkicks many times before he joined the band. \u201cNow, as an adult with children, and almost four years of sobriety under my belt, I can look at those lyrics for what they are and really appreciate them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tWhen Kelly was told he made it into Dropkicks, in fact, he worried that he might not be able to keep up. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018Just one thing, guys. I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m expected to go out and fucking rage and drink with you guys,\u2019\u201d he remembers. \u201cLike, \u2018I don\u2019t drink a wicked lot. I can\u2019t drink before I play.\u2019 They\u2019re like, \u2018We\u2019re all sober.\u2019 I had no idea.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tSobriety became an unspoken undercurrent in the group. \u201cIt\u2019s so intrinsically tied to what the band is,\u201d Casey says. The band\u2019s name comes from an old \u201cdry-out\u201d spot run by a former boxing coach by the name of John \u201cDropkick\u201d Murphy, housed on a farm in the Massachusetts countryside, west of Boston. Many of Murphy\u2019s prospects showed up hooked on alcohol, so he came up with a program to wean his athletes off it, and had taken to paying cab drivers a full out-of-town fare to pick up unsuspecting vagrants. \u201cGuys would be sleeping on Skid Row, and the cabbie would throw them in the back. They wouldn\u2019t want to go there at all,\u201d says Casey. By the time Casey came under the wing of other recovering alcoholics in the 1990s, Murphy was a local legend. \u201cYou\u2019d hear guys say, \u2018I would have never got sober, but this cabbie snatched me,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cAll the old guys are like, \u2018I ended up at Dropkicks.\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018That\u2019s such a cool name. I\u2019m going to take that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tCasey rarely spoke about it in interviews back then, but he made room for others to find sobriety on their own terms. By the time they got to touring in earnest, Dropkicks members and roadies had two options for transportation. \u201cI used to call it the party bus and the family bus,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was a combination of sobriety and bringing our kids. Al and I were both sober and had young children at the time, and the other guys just wanted to rage. We\u2019re like, \u2018This is the life! Two of us on this one bus, and there\u2019s 12 guys packed on the other.\u2019 As time went on, slowly but surely, guess what? Our bus is more crowded than the other.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tFor Lynch, getting sober has meant being able to set an example for others from the scene who need help, too. \u201cIt became, \u2018Well if James <\/em>did it\u2026\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cI love being there for my friends who need that, and need a comfortable place to say, \u2018I think I might need help.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t<\/p>\n \u201cAll the old guys are like, \u2018I ended up at Dropkicks.\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018That\u2019s such a cool name. I\u2019m going to take that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Ken Casey<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \n\tTHE FINAL STOP ON Ken Casey\u2019s tour of Boston is the Wang Theatre, home to the Folk Americana Roots Hall of Fame, which is putting on a temporary exhibit called Chimes of Freedom<\/a>, a look at the history of protest song<\/a> in the United States. Dropkicks are featured prominently in it, as are Springsteen, Guthrie, and Pete Seeger.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tDropkicks got hooked up with the Guthrie estate more than 20 years ago, thanks to Cole Quest, Guthrie\u2019s grandson. He was a fan of the band in high school, and introduced their music to his mom, Nora Guthrie, Woody\u2019s daughter and the president of Woody Guthrie Publications, which owns the rights to his lyrics and music. \u201cCole was a teenage punk rocker and had a poster on his wall, and one day she said, \u2018Who\u2019s the poster?\u2019\u201d Casey says. \u201cHe didn\u2019t know his grandfather, but he says, \u2018Grandpa would have liked these guys.\u2019\u201d Around 2002, as part of a broader push to revitalize her dad\u2019s catalog \u2014\u00a0Billy Bragg and Wilco released Mermaid Avenue<\/em>, a collaboration using Guthrie lyrics, in 1998 \u2014\u00a0Nora invited the band down to New York, where the archives were housed at the time. Casey got to search through piles of lyrics Guthrie had written but never recorded. \u201cI was just like, \u2018Holy shit, I\u2019m holding history,\u2019\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tOne of the first sets of lyrics he noticed was called \u201cShipping Up to Boston.\u201d \u201cMy first reaction was, \u2018What the fuck?\u2019 Because the other [lyrics] were so deep and thoughtful, and then this is so short and random,\u2019\u201d he says. Lynch had written a riff a while beforehand, which they\u2019d worked into an arrangement, but it had no lyrics to go with it. \u201cWe don\u2019t often write music without any lyrical melody,\u201d Casey says. \u201cIt was odd that we had this one random song. I just never got around to writing it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThere in the Guthrie archives\u2019 temperature-controlled room, holding a yellowing page in gloved hands, Casey knew he\u2019d found it: \u201cI\u2019m a sailor peg, and I\u2019ve lost my leg\/Climbing up the topsails, I lost my leg\/I\u2019m shipping up to Boston\/I\u2019m shipping off to find my wooden leg.\u201d Many of the stanzas came with dates or annotations, but not this one. \u201cUnfortunately, there was nothing, because I\u2019d love to know what \u2018Shipping Up to Boston\u2019 is about.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThey tried pairing Guthrie\u2019s lyrics with Lynch\u2019s riff. Because those words were so sparse, it left a buildup between the verse and the chorus. \u201cIf I was writing the lyrics of that song, I never would have left all that empty space. I would have been like, \u2018We need some words in there.\u2019 But we couldn\u2019t because there were no other words.\u201d Casey says, calling that instrumental gap \u201cthe secret of that song\u2019s success.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\u201cAnytime it feels like things are about to plateau for us, something gives us a little bump,\u201d says guitarist Lynch. \u201cIt feels exciting. It feels dangerous. It feels like doing something.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJohn Francis Peters for Rolling Stone<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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