New Dropkick Murphys Album Has Deep Ties to Country World
The Dropkick Murphys may be best known for their loud and aggressive Celtic punk music, but for their next album, they’re taking an entirely different approach, and one that has numerous ties to the independent country realm. Called This Machine Still Kills Fascists, it’s a tribute to Woody Guthrie, who the band calls the original punk, and who has deep ties with the Boston-based band, believe it or not.
To be released on September 30th, the album features 10 songs that were specifically curated by Woody Guthrie’s daughter, Nora Guthrie. Evan Felker of the Turnpike Troubadours and Nikki Lane also contribute vocals on the album, and Dom Flemons also makes numerous instrumental appearances. Jaime Wyatt, despite being portrayed as “pop-country” by The Tennessean, will shirk her saccharine, powder puff pop disposition to open shows on a tour that will feature the Dropkick Murphys playing the album in its entirety.
Don’t expect this to be your usual Dropkick Murphy’s album. Not only did they tone down the guitars for this project, the recorded it completely acoustic, not using any amplifiers at all. And to get that real-world Woody Guthrie magic, they recorded the album in Tulsa, mere miles from Woody’s birthplace. One of the reasons Evan Felker is involved is because he was born in Okemah, Oklahoma—the same place Woody Guthrie was.
“We wanted to get into small town America…Tulsa, into Woody’s roots and not be doing it in New York City or Boston,” says Dropkick Murphy’s co-founder Ken Casey: “Woody Guthrie, he’s the original punk. He went against the grain, he fought the good fight, he spoke up and sang about his beliefs. I’m motivated by reading what he wrote and am inspired by his courage. One man and a guitar—it’s powerful stuff.”
Devoted Dropkick Murphys fans will know this new album is not out of left field. In 2003, the band covered Woody’s “Gonna Be A Blackout Tonight” for their album Blackout. Ken Casey was also inspired by some Woody Guthrie lines about their home of Boston, and turned it into the song, “I’m Shipping Up To Boston” released on their 2005 album The Warrior’s Code.
Nora Guthrie says, “I collected lyrics on all kinds of topics…lyrics that seemed to be needed to be said—or screamed—today. Ken Casey is a master at understanding Woody’s lyrics, which can be complicated, long, deadly serious, or totally ridiculous. Dropkick Murphys is capable of delivering them all.”
The sessions in Tulsa were so productive, they actually came up with two albums instead of one. Vol. 2 will be out some time in 2023. The first single and video from the album “Two 6’s Upside Down” will be released on July 6th. This Machine Still Kills Fascists is now available for pre-order.
TRACK LIST:
1. “Two 6’s Upside Down”
2. “Talking Jukebox”
3. “All You Fonies”
4. “Never Git Drunk No More” (featuring Nikki Lane)
5. “Ten Times More”
6. “The Last One” (featuring Evan Felker of Turnpike Troubadours)
7. “Cadillac, Cadillac”
8. “Waters Are A’risin”
9. “Where Trouble Is At”
10. “Dig A Hole” (featuring Woody Guthrie)
June 24, 2022 @ 7:38 pm
Well, Springsteen did pretty well with Guthrie material not that long ago. Will be interesting to hear what the DMs can do. Kind of disappointed that it will be acoustic, to be honest.
June 25, 2022 @ 1:19 pm
16 years is “not that long ago?!” Getting old sucks, yo.
June 25, 2022 @ 1:20 pm
Wait my mistake, I’mthibking if his Seeger Sessions album from 06. When did he do Guthrie? Besides a live performance here and there.
June 26, 2022 @ 1:31 am
And a couple of songs on the Folkways Guthrie tribute. Vigilante Man and I Aint Got No Home.
June 26, 2022 @ 5:09 pm
Damn you’re right. It does suck being old!
June 24, 2022 @ 7:40 pm
Trig, it would be interesting to hear you expand on
“Woody Guthrie, he’s the original punk. He went against the grain, he fought the good fight, he spoke up and sang about his beliefs. I’m motivated by reading what he wrote and am inspired by his courage…”
I don’t know shit about Guthrie and I trust you more than Wikipedia.
June 24, 2022 @ 8:03 pm
I personally wouldn’t consider Woody Guthrie the “original punk,” but I understand what they’re getting at. I would consider him the original singer/songwriter. Folk music always spoke to perceived injustices, so that’s more native to the folk realm than punk. But they’re trying to be complimentary, and I can definitely see how Woody later went onto influence punk’s propensity to speak out about the poor and downtrodden.
June 25, 2022 @ 11:13 am
1,2,3,4
Who’s punk what’s the score?
June 24, 2022 @ 7:41 pm
yankees go home
June 25, 2022 @ 6:50 am
fuck you
June 25, 2022 @ 7:05 am
Okay folks. Dale’s just trolling. Let’s try to keep the discussion on the Dropkick Murphys.
June 24, 2022 @ 10:31 pm
This along with Post Malone, Lil X Nas, Beyonce etc etc feels like an episode of Oprah where she would be screaming…..you get a country album, and you get a country album, everyone gets a country albuuuuuuum.
June 25, 2022 @ 9:10 pm
I have not seen anyone characterize this as a country album. It’s an acoustic Dropkick Murphy’s album paying tribute to Woody Guthrie with some cool collaborations from the country world. Not sure what the harm is in that. They’re not “going country.”
June 24, 2022 @ 11:50 pm
Heck yeah, this looks good.
Always been a big Guthrie fan and also a Dropkick Murphys fan.
I mean, halfway between is going to sound like Old Crow Medicine Show maybe?
Anyway, sounds great with the snips in the video.
Was Woody a punk? Maybe, writing on his guitar, not caring how his voice sounded, getting a message across that people were angry. I would say parts of his music would have had a punk effect.
Nothing was sugar-coated. “You will never see an outlaw drive a family from their home” “have you seen that vigilante man, does he carry a sawed off pistol in his hand, would he shoot his brother or sister down”
But Woody also had a lot of uplifting songs. So I wouldn’t say his persona was all punk, but I can see part of it.
June 25, 2022 @ 4:03 am
Preordered! Love the concept
June 25, 2022 @ 7:52 am
Oh, So E D G Y
The image of all involved with this project, patting themselves on the back for their incandescently candescent stream of consciousness.
Priceless.
Bless Their Hearts …
June 25, 2022 @ 10:42 am
Most of the punk rockers of the past have lived long enough to become the Facists. No thanks, I’ll pass. Just another edgy, bloated Gen X’r who thinks he’s still a true punk.
June 25, 2022 @ 1:28 pm
promoting a commie like Guthrie, how punk and edgy of them
that fat clown Ken Casey should stick to making christmas albums.
they do however do kick ass covers of Fields of athenry, and green fields of france. stick to making music for us micks, DM, and leave the pseudo political shite to the lefties. the dems ain’t JFK anymore.
June 25, 2022 @ 1:57 pm
It’s not as much of a stretch as you might think. It’s Celtic-flavored so you’ve already got the banjos and mandolins and so forth ready to go. There’s a whole Thing called Transatlantic where people get into the shared roots. It’s pretty easy to cross over. Zac Brown Band even covered Shipping Up To Boston when they played Fenway Park.
June 27, 2022 @ 1:17 pm
You call yourself a mick, and Woody a commie. Are you a Russian bot or just ignorant? I’m the son of a union organizer and my great grandfather came over from Dublin. You’re an embarassment to anyone from the land of Jameson’s Go back to watching OAn and dreaming about Boebert.
June 25, 2022 @ 9:13 pm
A lot of shitty and embarrassing comments in this comments section. It’s comments sections like these that literally result in Saving Country Music losing readers. If the concept of this album doesn’t float your boat, totally understandable. No reason to be an asshole about it. It would be one thing if some of the same commenters actually left positive comments upon occasions. Nope, they just wait in the weeds to shitpost and feel self-important.
You’re hurting the cause.
June 27, 2022 @ 6:00 am
don’t hurt yourself while patting yourself on the back too hard. Who opens a comment section with the expectation of reading about everyone holding hands and speaking positively about music like a grandma going on about her grandkids?
June 27, 2022 @ 6:46 am
I want there to be negative comments, and I want commenters to feel free to challenge me personally. I don’t think you could look at these comments sections and conclude anything different. That said, the incessant negative comments are making it where folks are being discouraged from leaving anything positive, or reading the comments, or reading Saving Country Music at all. This is creating an imbalance in the community. I’m not asking for all comments to be “everyone holding hands.” I’m just asking for folks to be aware of this issue, and try to be respectful with their posts, and pick their battles.
June 27, 2022 @ 6:55 am
How do you know this? Have people told you this directly, or is this just an assumption because your site traffic is down?
June 27, 2022 @ 7:59 am
I hear this from readers and former readers all the time. This is an open comments section. I’m simply pointing something out, and making a request.
June 27, 2022 @ 8:59 am
“Pointing something out” doesn’t automatically make the inference true. That’s why I was asking questions.
July 1, 2022 @ 2:50 pm
Eric –
Go back and read comments from stories published from 2010-2015. They were constructive and often times supplemented Trig’s work. At the vey least, the comment section harbored intelligent discourse. I’ve been a reader of SCM for 12 years and hardly ever go in the comment section anymore unless I know the article won’t attract bottom feeders (like today’s Town Mountain article). I know of at least 15 other regular commenters that I hardly ever see comment anymore. I suggested to Trig to close the comment section in 2018. I don’t know where he gets his patience.
June 27, 2022 @ 7:29 am
I don’t understand how you are arriving at “an imbalance in the community.” For example when people emerge from the weeds to criticize Charley Crockett’s god-given angelic voice, your response is that every comment everywhere else is 99.9% in favor of him. Also your articles have about 30 comments on average. I’ve never chose to stop read articles on a site because of the comment section. I do choose to stop reading comment sections when the comments are poorly written, poorly thought out, or just general spam. Your comment sections are in the upper 1% of quality.
June 27, 2022 @ 9:47 am
Sounds like a bunch of readers can’t handle different opinions. There are several posters here whose opinions annoy me but I would never let their comments chase me off.
No great loss in those readers leaving.
June 28, 2022 @ 5:47 am
For what it’s worth I don’t hold you responsible for what others say in the comments. Worse case if it gets too bad I’ll still read the articles without glancing at the comments, although it’s a sign of how messed up human discussion has become that adult conversations are getting harder and harder to find. More and more websites are having to shut down comments sections just to protect themselves.
July 1, 2022 @ 2:13 pm
Great website. Lots of dogshit readers.
June 26, 2022 @ 4:46 pm
I love Dropkick Murphys and all things “celtic punk”. Maybe, this is another sign of an impending cowpunk revival?
Don’t know of any up-and-coming acts that could be this generation’s Social Distortion. But, like country, punk rock has a “three chords and the truth” philosophy in its bones. I’m interested.
June 27, 2022 @ 6:19 am
I’m not sure about the concept, but I’ve been a fan of DKM since their first album and am looking forward to what they do here. They’ve put some acoustic numbers on their own albums and they have that ‘punk’ attitude to them. They’re extremely talented and I have no doubt they will do these songs justice.
June 27, 2022 @ 1:10 pm
Yeah, but are they gonna be able to license any of these tracks to Sam Adams beer commercials or every movie set in Boston?
July 1, 2022 @ 7:15 am
Yea kinda disappointed in dm with this one. Not the music I’m sure that will be great. But the political stuff? Are they trying to appeal to teenagers now? These guys are pushing 50 and fairly wealthy so save the communist propaganda and stick to the music.
July 1, 2022 @ 8:02 am
There is absolutely no evidence that Woody Guthrie was a “communist,” and throwing that designation out there so loosely is MyCarthyistic by definition. He never had any affiliation with the communist party. This has been well-established. “This Machine Kills Fascists” was in direct rebuke of the rise of Hitler and Mussolini. Yes, he was strong for workers rights, and the rights of poor people. Like Merle Haggard. Clearly, Guthrie was a left-leaning figure in culture, but let’s not take 2022 acrimony and impart it on a 1922 character. We have not heard a single note from this album so far. Let’s perhaps listen to it before we designate this communist propaganda.
July 1, 2022 @ 8:30 am
Woody Guthrie was revered by many. Bob Childers wrote Walking Woody’s Road and Boland covered it. I would never call those guys communists or communist sympathizers. There is a lot of good to take from Woody Guthrie’s life and a lot of bad. I don’t think its entirely unfair to call him a “communist” though. He was a communist even if he never joined the CPUSA. Many at the time were leery of officially joining the CPUSA. MLK said that he never officially joined the CPUSA because he didn’t want to be labeled a communist, though he generally agreed with their positions, was a creation of American communists, and was funded by them.
I think that its ok to look back and see the errors in someone’s beliefs and associations without completely dismissing them. Hell, many of the Founders, including Jefferson, initially were supportive of the French Revolution. If Jefferson had been in France, he would have been one of the first people guillotined.