Dropkick Murphys Recent News

The Departed wins Best Picture!

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 00:02:00 -0800

"The Departed" took home four Academy Awards last night, including Best Picture & Best Director for Martin Scorsese.

In a post show interview Martin Scorsese thanked the people of Boston and "that great group the Dropkick Murphys".

Check out a video of that interview here and read more about the film's big night at the Oscars.

Dropkick Murphys song "I'm Shipping Up To Boston" from their album "The Warrior's Code" is featured throughout "The Departed". The band says "it has been an incredible experience for us to be involved in such a great film that was set in our home town and was directed by Martin Scorsese, one of our favorite film makers.

If you haven't seen "The Departed" yet, it is now available on DVD.

Dropkick Murphy's soundtrack inclusion in "the Departed" praised by Vanity Fair

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 00:02:00 -0800

Vanity Fair

Fanfair
Hot Tracks
by Lisa Robinson March 2007

They all laughed last year when I suggested that Three 6 Mafia's catchy "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp," from Hustle & Flow, should get the Oscar for best song. Three 6 Mafia laughed loudest when they won. This year's most exciting movie song? Boston-based punk band Dropkick Murphys' "I'm Shipping Up to Boston," from the Martin Scorsese masterpiece The Departed. The song has an intensity that embodies the guts and energy of the movie and is another in a long list of music that the director a renowned music fan has brilliantly utilized in his work. He's made impeccable choices: the Ronettes in Mean Streets, Bernard Herrmann's Taxi Driver score, the Cavalleria Rusticana Intermezzo in Raging Bull, the Rolling Stones in GoodFellas, Mickey and Sylvia's "Love Is Strange" in Casino, just to name a few. The Dropkick Murphys number, originally on the band's 2005 CD, The Warrior's Code, was inspired by an unpublished Woody Guthrie lyric and has a hard-core bagpipe stomp that puts other bands who consider themselves punk rock to shame. It's included on the Departed soundtrack CD along with songs from the Stones, the Beach Boys, the Band, Van Morrison, and LaVern Baker. Kudos to Scorsese.

Lisa Robinson is a Vanity Fair contributing editor and music writer.

Dropkick Murphys start European Tour

Thu, 11 Jan 2007 00:01:00 -0800

Dropkick will start a run of European dates in Benelux, Germany, Austria and Italy on January 25, 2007. Essen, Tilburg and Amsterdam are already sold out.
The band, who recently had the track, 'Shipping Up To Boston' featured on Martin Scorsese's last movie, The Departed, is touring their latest album The Warrior's Code.
Check the dates here:
Tour Dates

Dropkick Murphys St. Patrick's Day gigs press release!

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 00:12:00 -0800

Tickets For Confirmed 7th Annual Hometown Events On Sale This Week

Dropkick Murphys � South Boston�s beloved, distinct punk band � are proud to announce the preliminary details of its 7th consecutive hometown St. Patrick�s Day bash. A March 16th gig at the Avalon Ballroom and a special holiday show at Boston University�s Agganis Arena on Saturday afternoon, March 17th will be among the performances.

The Saturday arena show marks the band�s first headline arena show in Boston. �We want to say at least we got to do it once,� says Murphys co-founder Ken Casey of the Dropkicks� big �rock show.�

�We are also discussing doing an additional late night St. Patrick�s Day, booze-fueled 21+ show at an undisclosed location,� Casey discloses. There will be a very limited number of tickets to this show and it will be announced through the Dropkick Murphys official website much closer to the show date. The final details of this event will depend on how the rest of the band�s plans for this weekend shape up.

Band activities for Sunday, March 18th are still being ironed out according to Casey, �but either way we will be at the South Boston parade and meeting at Broadway and C Street. We may end up playing on a float again if the City decides to invite us, seeing as how they kicked us off last year. Or, if [the fans] are able to twist our arms, we�ll do another show on Sunday.�

A limited number of pre-sale tickets for the Avalon and Agganis Arena shows will be available online Thursday, December 7th at 10:00 a.m. EST to the band�s mailing list. The official on-sale date will be Saturday December 9th and there is a four ticket limit per person.

To join the Dropkick Murphys mailing list, you may sign up at now at:
http://www.dropkickmurphys.tickets.musictoday.com

Ticket information for these confirmed Boston shows can be found below:

Friday, March 16th, Avalon Ballroom:
http://www.avalonboston.com

Saturday, March 17th, Agganis Arena at BU
http://www.agganisarena.com

Recently featured in Martin Scorsese�s #1 film The Departed, the band�s song, �I�m Shipping Up To Boston� played prominently through the opening credits and recurred throughout the acclaimed motion picture. Formed in the Irish Catholic working class neighborhoods of South Boston, Massachusetts, The Dropkick Murphys� fifth (and latest) studio album The Warrior�s Code was released on June 21, 2005.

Dropkick Murphys announce St. Patrick's Day weekend plans!

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 00:12:00 -0800

Okay you rabid bastards here is the 411 on our St Patrick's Day weekend in Boston, March 2007. We are proud to announce the preliminary details for our 7th consecutive St Patrick's Day bash and assure you we are more excited than ever before about this year's festivities.

Right off the bat our first show in Boston will be Friday March 16th at our old stomping ground the Avalon Ballroom. Saturday March 17th we will be playing a special holiday show at the Agganis Arena at

Boston University. This show will start at 2.00pm. That's right it's our first headline arena show in Boston, hey we want to say at least we got to do it once, so come down and support the big rock show!

Like last year there will be a limited amount of pre-sale tickets with reduced ticket handling charges for both these shows available to everyone on our mailing list. Pre-sale starts on Thursday December 7th. The on-sale date for all other tickets will be Saturday December 9th.

We are also discussing doing an additional late night St Patrick's Day, booze fueled 21+ show at an undisclosed location. There will be a very limited number of tickets to this show and it will be announced through our website much closer to the show date so stay tuned. This final details of this show will depend on how all our other plans go for the weekend.

Sunday March 18th we are still working on but either way we will be at the
South Boston parade and meeting at Broadway and C Street. We may end up playing on a float again if the City decides to invite us, seeing as how they kicked us off last year or if you guys demand it you may be able to twist our arms and we'll do another show on Sunday.

As we mentioned in our last email we have a bunch of shows in other cities around the US, Australia and Japan in March. We will have more details about those dates out to you very soon.

Here's all the ticket information for the Boston shows:

Friday March 16th - Avalon
Ballroom, Boston MA

Saturday March 17th - Agganis
Arena at BU, Boston MA

Pre-sale tickets for both shows available on-line Thursday December 7th, 10.00am
EST, if you are not a member of our mailing list yet please click on this link below
and sign up now:

The default password for all DKM ticket pre-sales is "forboston" All
other tickets will be going on sale this Saturday December 9th at 10.00am EST:
Available in person from the Orpheum Theatre box office for Avalon tickets,
1 Hamilton Place, Boston, MA 02108, phone: +1-617-228-6000 and from Agganis
Arena box office for Agganis Arena tickets 925 Commonwealth Avenue, phone:
+1-617-353-4628. Box office tickets do not have extra booking fees. Online
via ticketmaster or
over the phone P: +1-617-228-6000. Please note there is a four ticket limit
per person.

For those of you from out of town planning a trip to Boston below are some
tips and helpful websites.

Places to stay:

$$$$ Hotel Commonwealth

$$$ Howard
Johnson

$$ Hotel
Buckminster

Things to do:

BostonUSA

Travel
Yahoo

10 Best

More
about Boston:

Boston.com

Boston Herald

Boston Bruins

Red Sox

Where
to eat:

Restaurants

Where
to booze:

PJ Kilroy's Pub, 822 Beacon St

Model Café, 7 North Beacon St/Union Square

Silhouette Lounge, 200 Brighton Ave.

The Common Ground, 83-87 Harvard Ave

Great Scott, 1222 Comm Ave

Bukowski's Tavern, 50 Dalton St

The Harp, 200 Portland St

The Middle East, 472-480 Mass Ave

O'Brien's, 13 Harvard Ave

Don't drink and drive, use the subway or
get a cab

Dropkick Murphys get more "Departed" coverage from The Boston Herald!

Tue, 07 Nov 2006 00:11:00 -0800

With blaring bagpipes and growling guitars, the Dropkick Murphys� "I�m Shipping up to Boston" is blasting through movie theater sound systems around the world.

In the hit film ��The Departed,- the Boston punk-rock anthem blasts out between Jack Nicholson�s foul-mouthed rants and Leonardo DiCaprio�s chiseled chest. On "The Departed" soundtrack CD, released today, the Dropkicks� song sits beside tracks by the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys and Patsy Cline.

Martin Scorsese�s crime epic has boosted Dropkick sales, but that isn�t what thrills founding member and bassist Ken Casey.

"It�s like the Red Sox thing," Casey said, fondly recalling the band�s reworking of the old chestnut ��Tessie," the theme song of the 2004 World Series win. ��It�s all about Martin Scorsese. In 20 years, after the band is over, maybe I�ll have �The Departed� DVD and get to tell my grandkids that my music was in a Scorsese movie. That�s so cool."

Of course, Casey admits the sales boom also has been cool. Sales of the Hub heroes� 2003 album, "The Warrior�s Code" - from which "I�m Shipping up to Boston" was pulled - tripled the week after "The Departed" was released. On top of that, Dropkick manager Dianne Meyer calculates that there have been about 15,000 paid downloads of the song since the movie came out. It has also been streamed more than 200,000 times on the band�s MySpace page.

All this because someone slipped the right someone a Dropkick disc.

Being a bunch of Boston boys, the Dropkicks knew about the movie weeks before the film�s crew showed up. Seeing an opportunity, band members got their album into the hands of extras, crew members and anyone else hanging around the set.

"At the time we were handing out CDs, I didn�t know anything about the movie," Casey said. ��I didn�t know what it was about or if it was based in Boston. But when I heard �Martin Scorsese,� I asked all my friends if they could pass some CDs around."

A year went by and the band didn�t hear a thing. Two days before the film�s final edit, someone called asking to use "I�m Shipping up to Boston."

According to a Scorsese spokesman, The Band�s Robbie Robertson, a longtime Scorsese collaborator, introduced Scorsese to the song.Not that Scorsese needs a lot of advice when it comes to music and film - last year he directed the Bob Dylan documentary ��No Direction Home"; now he�s working on a Rolling Stones concert movie - but Casey sure is happy Robertson suggested "I�m Shipping up to Boston."

"I�m a pessimist about these things," Casey said. "Years ago they used one of our songs in �The Sopranos.� I was on the phone with a friend waiting for it to come on when he said, �Did you hear it?� "I said, �Hear what?� The song was so far in background you didn�t even know what it was. I expected �The Departed� would be that way. I was blown away when I heard how loud and prominent it was."

http://theedge.bostonherald.com

Dropkick Murphys feel buzz from The Departed!

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 00:10:00 -0700

The Departed catapults Dropkick Murphys soundscan sales: Revered Boston Band�s �Angry Bagpipe Punk Adds To Film�s Boiling Ambience�

Boston�s beloved Dropkick Murphys are currently featured in Martin Scorsese�s #1 film The Departed. As a result of increased exposure for their song, �I�m Shipping Up To Boston,� sales for its parent album, The Warrior�s Code and its entire Hellcat Records back catalog tripled this past week according to Soundscan.

The song plays prominently through the opening credits and recurs throughout the entire introduction of the film as the backstory of the characters in The Departed are revealed. The use of �I�m Shipping Up To Boston,� is the latest example of Scorsese�s willingness to prominently feature music in his films.

�The Departed is one of the best films we have seen in a long time,� says Dropkick Murphys co-founder Ken Casey of the Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson and Mark Wahlberg-starring movie. �We were fortunate enough and feel honored to have one of our tracks used in the film.�

Lending credibility and authenticity to the project � which was adapted from the Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs and released on October 6th � the Dropkick Murphys� inclusion has reaped praise from The Village Voice. �It's weirdly thrilling to know that a legendary 63-year-old film director thought to include a song from these guys on the soundtrack of a movie that so perfectly reflects the corner of the world they represent,� critic Tom Breihan writes. �And the movie wouldn't really suffer if the song played over every single scene, sort of like "Scarborough Fair" in The Graduate.� Breihan adds, �Since seeing the movie last weekend, I've listened to "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" about a hundred times, and I'm not even close to being sick of it� It can be easy to forget just how great the Dropkick Murphys are. If it takes a movie like The Departed to remind us of something great that's been under our noses all this time, that's a shame, but I'm glad somebody's doing it.�

And in its four star review of the film, L.A. Daily News wrote, �Scorsese's brilliance at marrying mood and music continues,� adding �South Boston's hard-core punkers the Dropkick Murphys' "I'm Shipping Out to Boston

Martin Scorsese Loves the Dropkick Murphys

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 00:10:00 -0700

The Dropkick Murphys song "I'm Shipping Up To Boston", off the album The Warrior's Code, is featured prominently, several times in the new hit film by Martin Scorsese: The Departed!

Shipping up to Boston, whooooaaaa: Plenty of great moments in Martin Scorsese's new cop-robber-cat-mouse movie The Departed, but the one that sticks with me is a tense nighttime car ride where the movie's cops and robbers have about five seconds to figure out where their real loyalties are before people start dying. The scene is set to a mighty bruiser crash-roar called "I'm Shipping Up to Boston," an ominous mandolin reel beefed up with bagpipes and crashing guitars and furious gang-roar vocals: "I'm a sailor peg! / And I've lost my leg! / Climbing up the topsails I lost my leg!" (Idolator has the mp3.) The lyrics are supposedly some old unpublished Woody Guthrie scribblings unearthed in a basement somewhere, but the song's righteously riotous thump comes from the stalwart Boston beerpunk crew the Dropkick Murphys. The Murphys' shoutalongs supposedly get heavy play at Boston sporting events; their "Tessie" was apparently the theme song of the Red Sox' winning season or some such.

Outside that town, though, they're not exactly household names. So it's weirdly thrilling to know that a legendary 63-year-old film director (or at least the music supervisor he hired) thought to include a song from these guys on the soundtrack of a movie that so perfectly reflects the corner of the world they represent. The Departed, after all, is a movie about Irish people doing violent shit in Boston, and the Dropkick Murphys are a band that sing about Irish people doing violent shit in Boston; it's a match made in heaven. Scorsese is better at picking the perfect song for his scenes than any other director working (fuck a Tarantino), but I'm still amazed that he managed to nail this one so completely. "I'm Shipping Up to Boston"

also shows up earlier in the movie, as Leonardo DiCaprio does pushups in jail. And the movie wouldn't really suffer if the song played over every single scene, sort of like "Scarborough Fair" in The Graduate. Since seeing the movie last weekend, I've listened to "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" about a hundred times, and I'm not even close to being sick of it.
It can be easy to forget just how great the Dropkick Murphys are. After all, they're not an ambitious band; they've been doing pretty much the exact same thing for ten years and five albums now. And it's a narrow thing; they play rowdy singalong street-punk anthems and spike them with bits and pieces of traditional Irish folk music, and that's it. A few songs might swipe a trick or two from rockabilly or metal or surf-guitar, but they couldn't possibly be less experimental. The Murphys mostly sing drinking songs and brotherhood songs and pro-union songs and songs about a working class that mostly doesn't exist anymore (see The Wire season 2). If you've heard "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" or virtually any of their other songs, you get the basic idea:

bagpipes, galloping martial drums, gang-chant shouts, cheesed-out uplift about how we're all brothers in the struggle. They're the Pogues except with less finesse, if you can imagine that. They occupy an extremely narrow little piece of the musical landscape, but they do it with enough verve and authority to become my favorite band in the world when I'm in the right mood. On a day like today, when the Best Buy computer-repair people are telling me I need a new hard-drive, I have absolutely no desire to hear anything else. I'd have to listen to a whole lot more oi albums to say this definitively, but there's a pretty good chance that their 2000 album Sing Loud, Sing Proud is the best oi album ever made.
There's a real case to be made for bands like the Dropkick Murphys, bands that keep their focus narrow and do amazing work not in spite of their strict aesthetics but because of them. It's not like just anyone can pull the Murphys' whole schtick off; the LA band Flogging Molly does the exact same thing except nowhere near as well. The Murphys are great because they embrace their chosen path so joyously and wholeheartedly and because they know how to write songs with big hooks, the sort of things that actually make us want to want to scream along. Critics like me have a really easy time writing this stuff off, repping instead for people who try to tell us deep universal truths or who make a big point of leaping genre boundaries and changing their whole shit up on every album. But the Murphys' blare can be as sweeping and universal as anything else if we approach it on its own terms. If it takes a movie like The Departed to remind us of something great that's been under our noses all this time, that's a shame, but I'm glad somebody's doing it.

Boston, MA: Dropkick Murphys to hold charity event!

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 00:09:00 -0700

Don't forget to head over to the Hard Rock Cafe Boston tomorrow at 6.00pm (Tuesday, September 12th) for the Dropkick Murphys charity night in support of the Leary Firefighters Foundation. Please be early to ensure your entrance to this event as space is limited.

DKM are holding this event to benefit the Leary Firefighters Foundation, a non-profit charity aimed at providing equipment, training materials, and new vehicles for firefighters. The band will be there and also performing will be the Boston Gaelic Fire Brigade Pipes & Drums, led by the nephews of Jerry Lucey (Denis Leary�s cousin and one of the six firefighters who perished in the Worcester fire).

There will be a raffle, silent and live auctions and an opportunity to receive autographed DKM memoribilia with your donation to the LFF. We hope to see you there;

Hard Rock Cafe Boston
131 Clarendon Street
Boston, MA
617-353-1400

Tuesday, Sept. 12th
5.00pm doors open, event begins at 6.00pm

Free admission, all ages welcome

Please bring your wallet, credit cards and check book and help us to dig deep for such a worthy cause.

Boston Phoenix cathes-up with The Dropkick Murphys!

Thu, 23 Mar 2006 00:03:00 -0800

Irish guys are smiling - Paddying with the Pogues and Dropkick Murphys
By: MIKE MILIARD

I�d searched for Shane MacGowan all afternoon. He wasn�t in McFadden�s. Or at Mr. Dooley�s or J.J. Foley�s. He wasn�t at McGann�s, or in the Harp, or skulking at the Littlest Bar. No surprise, really. Rumor has it that Shane, that paragon of dissolution, can barely walk without assistance these days, so I�d figured the search was futile. He was probably in his hotel room, well into his cups, enablers by his side.

But by the time Shane-o dawdled on stage at the Orpheum on Tuesday, to the thunderous cheers of a few thousand well-oiled Hibernophiles, he seemed none the worse for the already considerable wear. As the seven other Pogues tore through snare-tight versions of the classics (�Sally MacLennane,� �If I Should Fall from Grace with God�), he barely missed a beat. His slurred voice is rough around the edges, but as he clutched the mike stand for dear life, he barely flubbed a word. During �Fairytale of New York,� he waltzed with banjo player Jem Finer�s daughter, Ella (subbing on vocals for the late Kirsty MacColl), as faux snow swooned softly. For the rollicking closer, �Fiesta,� he balanced a wine bottle on his head while piper Spider Stacy bashed a beer tray on his. Guitarist Philip Chevron, posting on the official Pogues message board just hours afterward, expressed his gratitude. �Thank you Boston�.�.�. we�d forgotten�.�.�. how special you are.�

At 8 am on St. Patrick�s Day morning, the martyrs of Easter 1916 looked down from the walls of the Black Rose, solemnly surveying a sea of fake-emerald beads, shamrock trinkets, glow-in-the-dark Guinness gewgaws, Celtics caps, and green mohawks as a capacity crowd, some of whom had been lined up outside since 3 am, chanted for home-town heroes Dropkick Murphys. It was an experienced crowd � one soul carried three pints in his left hand and a pint and a shot in his right � and the band, still bleary-eyed from the late night before, bashed out stripped-down arrangements of trad ballads like �The Auld Triangle,� �The Wild Rover,� and �Black Velvet Band.� Ken Casey prefaced their Southie-parade dig, �Bastards on Parade,� by noting the
irony: on Sunday, the band were slated to play atop a float trundling down Broadway.

Later, over coffee, guitarists James Lynch and Marc Orrell reminded me they�d opened for the Pogues in the UK last Christmas. (Stacy took a real shine to the band but MacGowan was a curmudgeon, preferring to hide out in a tent backstage.) They also reminisced about their days as young punks, when they�d attend religiously gigs by the Dropkicks� original line-up at the Rat and elsewhere. Now celebrating their 10-year anniversary, the band are bigger than ever, and their influence is felt in far-off places. Orrell marveled about a photo sent from a soldier in Baghdad, a defaced Saddam mural with DROPKICK MURPHYS spray-painted across it.

With their dedications to fallen soldiers (�The Fields of Athenry�) and moving tributes to departed friends (�Your Spirit�s Alive�), the Dropkicks� mammoth home stands seem to take on more emotional resonance every year, raucous fun punctuated with sadness. �No one rips their hearts out like you guys do,� a friend told Lynch recently. Surveying the body-surfing, fist-pumping, soccer-chanting, lighter-waving crowd at Avalon later that night, and the scores of young fans who followed alongside their parade float for blocks in Southie on Sunday afternoon, you could see what he meant, and what this band mean to people.

The Boston Phoenix