"We've always been a band that kind of worked against the whole St. Patrick's Day connection," says Dropkick Murphys bassist Ken Casey. "But it just happens our shows this time of year have become a tradition."

And a popular tradition at that. In early celebration of St. Patrick's Day and their Irish heritage, the popular punk band the Dropkick Murphys will begin a four-night, five-show stand in Boston on March 11th at the Avalon Ballroom. The shows mark the fifth year the group has headlined a series of hometown shows to celebrate the holiday.

The St. Patrick's Day concerts actually started back in 1997, when the then two-year-old group was booked to play the notoriously gritty Boston punk club the Rathskeller. "We had a little bit of a rowdy crowd," remembers Casey, laughing. "It got a little ugly that night -- a lot of drunkenness and a lot of blood shed. We weren't welcomed back to play the city for a few years after that."

Since that bloody first year, however, the band's Irish-seasoned hardcore sound has caught on with both the Warped Tour generation and local officials, who now lend their support to the shows. "We usually bring the Boston police bagpipe team out to play with us," Casey says, "and we're trying to get the fire department pipe team to join this year, because they haven't done it before."

Besides the five shows, the group will also host a benefit breakfast on Saturday for fans to help out a local diabetes charity, and have cordoned off a section of the Fleet Center that same afternoon so that the group and its fans can watch a hockey game between the Bruins and the Buffalo Sabres. "We wanted to do some different things to make sure that the people coming to see the band could have a little more access to us," says Casey.

Despite the overall party-like atmosphere of the shows, the bassist insists the group keeps the debauchery to a minimum. "For me, these shows are a family event," says Casey. "I bring my two-year-old daughter and my eighty-year-old grandparents. So drinking a lot isn't my thing." He pauses. "But I think some of the other guys in the group would tell you quite a different answer."

Curious fans who are unable to attend the sold-out shows may want to check out the newly released On the Road with the Dropkick Murphys DVD, which documents the band's 2002 St. Patrick's Day shows in Boston, and features almost five hours of backstage footage, videos, additional performances, and, most bizarrely, an acoustic show the band performed for AFL-CIO office workers during a Labor Day event.

KIRK MILLER
(March 11, 2004)