The city of Quincy, Massachusetts, is celebrating its 400th anniversary this year with a series of celebrations that honor the places and faces who have made up the community for the last four centuries (or at least the last four centuries since the Europeans arrived, but that’s a long complicated essay for another time). If you’re not from around here, Quincy is a coastal community separated from Boston proper by the Neponset River. Colloquially known as the “City of Presidents” because not one but two President Adamses were born and raised there (as was John Hancock who wasn’t President but was at least able to write his name really big), Quincy in many ways has really embodied a lot of what has been considered sterotypically “Boston” since at least the middle of last century. As the socioeconomic landscape of its neighbor to the north has continued to change rather drastically over the last few decades, Quincy has maintained its reputation a tough, bluest-of-blue collar city, a tradition that dates back centuries, when Quincy was a home to shipyards and granite quarries and the first commercial railroad in the US. I have absolutely no way of verifying this, but my gut tells me that Quincy is probably home to probably the largest ratio of active union members among all of Massachusetts’ 351 cities and towns. The ethnic makeup of the community has ebbed and flowed for years, as is the case in most traditionally working-class communities, but the rough and tumble issues have not, nor have the sense of local pride. Hell, Quincy is also the home of the back-to-back-to-back Major League Rugby champion New England Free Jacks and if there’s a more rough-and-tumble blue-collar sport than rugby, I’m not sure what it is. Oh, and it’s also where Dunkin Donuts started.
As such, it would make sense that when Quincy decided to throw a year-long birthday party, it would include its punk rock native sons in the festivities. Long obviously associated with the Boston punk scene, the original Dropkick Murphys lineup got their start essentially on a bet offered to founding bassist/current lead vocalist Ken Casey close to thirty years ago, and set up shop in a Quincy practice space. Casey is the lone member of the original four-piece lineup still in the band, and it can be reasonably argued that, with Casey at the helm, no band of their size in this or any scene has been as proactive and outwardly vocal about supporting blue-collar, working-class causes, loudly and proudly trumpeting, labor unions, anti-fascist causes and supporting programs for underpriviledged kids, people struggling with substance use issues and, of course, veterans. In many ways, they’ve very much become the Irish-infused spiritual heirs to the Woody Guthries and Pete Seegers and Bruce Springsteens and Clash who came before them.
And so it was that the Dropkick Murphys took over the heart of Quincy Center last Saturday afternoon. The normally bustling Hancock Street was shut down for several blocks, and a giant stage was set up a literal stone’s throw from the resting places of a former President and First Lady. By most official estimates, more than 10,000 fans made the trek to bask in the warm summer afternoon sun with Casey and crew to celebrate both Quincy’s official 400th and the coinciding release of the Dropkick Murphys 13th studio record, For The People. Those who arrived early enough – it was a free, outdoor show in a popular urban center after all – early enough to arrive were able to see the band work through a few of For The People’s tracks at soundcheck for the first time, including the stage debut of the uilleann (Irish) pipes pulled off by the band’s recent bagpipe/tin whistle player Campbell Webster. Ever the man of the people, Casey made his way around the barricade area for a round of fist-bumps and high-fives to the early arrivers. Then local favorite DJ Stenny took the stage to provide the soundtrack as the masses arrived, playing a list that largely consisted of 70s rock and classic hip hop tracks for the gathering crowd to dance and sing along too.
At shortly after 5:00pm and accompanied as usual by the dulcet tones of the Chieftains/Sinead O’Connor version of the traditional Irish Easter Rebellion-inspired “The Foggy Dew,” the Dropkicks returned to the stage and immediately ripped into “Who’ll Stand With Us,” the lead single from For The People, followed immediately by longtime classic and fan favorite “The Boys Are Back” from 2012’s Signed and Sealed in Blood. In the half-dozen-or-so years since Casey officially handed off live bass-playing duties to longtime band tech Kevin Rheault – and especially since co-lead vocalist Al Barr has been on hiatus tending to his ailing mother – he’s been a constant source of energy on stage, endlessly pacing back and forth and frequently engaging in singalongs with showgoers at the barricade. The band blazed through close to two-dozen songs over the course of ninety-ish minutes. The new record was well represented, with a total of seven new tracks sprinkled amidst the longtime favorites. Particularly poignant were the new tracks “Chesterfields And Aftershave” “Kids Games” and “Streetlights.” It being the greater Boston area still, of course “Tessie,” “Skinhead On The MBTA,” “The State of Massachusetts” and “Shipping Up To Boston” made requisite appearances. “(F)lannigan’s Ball” and “Barroom Heroes” were crowd favorites, as was the circle-pit-inducing “The Big Man,” the band’s new ode to Pennywise’s Fletcher Dragge, a song that found Casey jumping into the crowd and performing from the middle of the chaos.
And speaking of constant energy…it will never cease to amaze me how many moving parts there are on stage during a Dropkick Murphys show. Webster and his bagpipes, uilleann pipes and tin whistle stood ground at stage right rear, longtime guitarist James Lynch mans stage left accompanied generally by his trademark low-hung Les Paul and Matt Kelly remains perched on his throne, providing the rhythmic backbone to the whole shebang, but Casey, Rheault, and the endlessly multi-talented duo of Tim Brennan and Jeff DaRosa do…not…stop… pacing the stage, whipping the crowd up, and genuinely revelling in the mood as much or more than the show goers. Brennan was constantly switching between the accordion and a couple of Motor Ave electric guitars, while I’m fairly certain I counted ten different instruments for DaRosa – a green Duesenberg electric, two different banjos, a harmonica, a Martin acoustic, a bouzouki, a Telecaster, an F mandolin and the keyboard – across the set’s 23 songs. Amidst the clamor and chaos of a punk rock show, the band and their crew present as a finely tuned and well-oiled machine. Must be something about those blue-collar, working-class roots.
Check out more pics below, including one gallery dedicated solely to the multi-instrumental exploits of Jeff DaRosa!