The home stretch

The Dropkick Murphys rally for All Roads lead to Boston tour

 The Dropkick Murphys have reached the title destination that concludes their frantic All Roads Lead to Boston tour, and last night began the storied six-day stint at the new House of Blues on Lansdowne Street.

“We’ve had a love/hate relationship with that street for a while now,” said singer Al Barr when we met with the entire seven-piece band this summer.

At the time, the Dropkicks weren’t certain the new club would be ready to house their ninth annual St. Patrick’s season celebration, which historically took place at the now defunct smaller capacity Avalon club. The tradition is the love portion of the “love/hate relationship” Barr mentioned. The flip side of that can be found in their song “Pipebomb on Lansdowne,” where the Dropkicks detail their angry agenda for the college kids who tend to overrun the area.

Meeting up with the band at McGreevy’s, the sports bar on Boylston that singer and bassist Ken Casey had just opened, the band happily discussed everything from Boston accents in movies (they all agreed that Matt Damon’s in “The Departed” was horrible) to what they do in their downtime (guitarist James Lynch sheepishly admitted that he was at Allston’s punk rock pub O’Brien’s “yesterday afternoon into last night into this morning.”)

They jokingly bemoaned the fact that Peter Wolf has never joined them onstage.

“I think he’s done it for every other band in Boston,” said drummer Matt Kelly, rolling his eyes about the famed J. Geils frontman.

The band was in good spirits, but they were humble about their future. When forced to contemplate that right now the Murphys are Boston’s biggest musical export, Casey thought for a moment before saying, “it’s scary.”
He considered Geils and Aerosmith and the other local acts who broke big in their time.

“They sell more records,” he said as a gut reaction, and then expanded after a moment. “We are hopefully a good representation of the city, but it’s not necessarily about being the biggest band. Why do Red Sox fans always like the dirt dogs, the Trot Nixons, the Dustin Pedroias? So it doesn’t surprise me that there would be a spot in the hearts of most Bostonians because each of us, are like regular guys playing regular music. I think that has to do with the nature of the city in a lot of ways.”

Well said. Now if only Peter Wolf joins them onstage one of these nights, the circle will be complete.