thePULSEIrish Rock at The Palladium
By Rebecca Carter
In the wake of the ever-growing Irish influenced rock wave, all the stronger in Massachusetts, came Flogging Molly ~ a band that many have been quick to assume (erroneously) is “another Dropkick Murphys,” but which has consistently challenged the all-too-common stereotypes of what Irish music is…while at the same time reinvigorating was the rock music scene can be.
Formed in Los Angeles in the mid 90s by front man Dave King, Flogging Molly (whose name originated from a weekly gig “flogging” the LA club Molly Malone’s) has released six albums to date with their seventh, Float, set to come out in February. Making this release unique, King was able to return to his native Ireland to write and record ~ he hadn’t been able to do so previously, hence why the theme of longing for home was a common one in his earlier material. “It was an emotional experience,” King described over the phone from Ireland (where he was driving through a small village being “…careful not to hit any small children”) during our interview. “I came to America with absolutely no intentions of living there. I thought I was going to get a band together and come back but it didn’t work out like that and I realized I’d nowhere to go. It was a world that I wasn’t used to, I knew nobody. I decided to stay in America and I think that was the best thing I’ve ever done.”
With forming the band ~ in which the tin whistle, bouzouki, uillean pipes and bodhran are as prominent as guitar, bass and drums ~ King had found his sound: a fusion of traditional Irish folk music, amplified through the energy of punk, that is more than just power chords and a fiddle. Says King, “When I met Bridget [Regan], she said to me, ‘Do you want any fiddle?’ So she came over the next day and started playing fiddle over some of the things that I had and it hit me because I couldn’t go back home at the time and this was my way to go home.”
Flogging Molly’s fan base ranges from 13-year-old punker kids to aficionados of Irish literature, due mainly to King’s appreciation and love for the classics. “Inspirations like James Joyce and Yeats are absolutely huge influences on my life. I look for the colorfulness in the writing and the simplicity as well. A lot of people think that Joyce is quite the read but I find him intriguingly simple to read and I love Yeats for the way that he lyrically almost puts music to poetry, I hear songs in my head as I’m reading Yeats,” he explained.
“We were playing in L.A. and Matt (Skiba) from Alkaline Trio came up to us just before the show and asked us to sign an autograph for his mother-in-law. It’s a strange little thing we’ve got going here. We just try to do what we do and do it the best that we can and it’s just nice to be able to do it.”
Photo courtesy of
www.floggingmolly.com
Who: Flogging Molly
Where: The Palladium
When: February 20th
