I feel like every time I do a Dropkick Murphys St. Patrick’s Day Boston show, I tell myself it might be the last year I do it, because it’s a lot. It’s always near Fenway so parking is a bit of a nightmare and it’s always just A) so many people in general and B) so many people ossified on green beer and Jameson and the older I get, the less that’s my thing. I mean, I come from a Boston Irish family…but I’m not THAT Boston Irish if you catch my drift. But then, something happens that inevitably pulls me back in and reminds me A) why I still love going to shows and B) why Boston can be the best place in the world for a few days. You see, Dropkick Murphys St. Patrick’s Day runs feel like – well, they feel like a homecoming weekend of sorts. This weekend, I saw people I hadn’t seen since last St. Paddy’s Day, or the St. Paddy’s before that even. And I saw people from around the country (and Canada, which I guess will be part of this country before long if a certain orange puppet gets his way) and introduced old friends to other old friends and watched them become new friends, united by the common language that is punk rock.
Wait, sorry, this is supposed to be a show review and photo gallery, not a cultural thinkpiece or whatever that was. Mea culpa. ANYWAY, part of the reason that I jumped at the chance to make my way to Lansdowne Street for another year’s festivities was that the lineup for this particular weekend was insane. I’ve told people before that the last year that I went to a Mighty Mighty Bosstones (RIP) HomeTown Throwdown was for a lineup that featured opening sets from Flogging Molly and Avail and these very Dropkick Murphys and that the lineup couldn’t get better so I had to go out on top. If I never go back to a Dropkick St. Patrick’s show, I’ll have gone out on top there too, as the Sunday lineup included local favorites Rebuilder and the legendary Hot Water Music and Bouncing Souls performing opening duties. That lineup is bananas (not that the other nights weren’t also amazing lineups, with The Kilograms and The Menzingers and Cody Nilsen also helping to burn the neighborhood down over the course of four nights).
Rebuilder in the leadoff position was a particularly special moment. The band have been one of the finest punk rock bands in the city’s underground for over a decade at this point – and co-frontman Sal Ellington and bassist Daniel Carswell have been familiar faces to anyone who’s been in the MGM merch lines since the venue opened – so to have them occupy the bright lights at center stage was an awesome moment. The band – which also features co-frontman Craig Stanton on guitar and vocals and Brandon Phillips on drums and, in a return appearance for the big day, Patrick Hanlin on keys – kicked their set off with “Mile or an Inch” from 2017’s Sounds From The Massachusetts Turnpike, and blazed through a half-hour set that primed the surprisingly early-arriving crowd for the festivities to followed. I’ve seen close to two-dozen Rebuilder shows in venues of all shapes and sizes at this point, and while many of those venues have been of the sweaty, dive-bar variety, they more than showed that they belong on stage with a bunch of career heavyweights in a 5000-cap room.
Hot Water Music were in the two spot, and boy it says something about the quality of your lineup if Hot Water Music gets a half-hour set as second of four on a bill. The foursome ripped through “Remedy” to start the set in high-energy fashion and never really took their foot off the collective gas pedals. The iconic cheat code of a rhythm section that is Jason Black and George Rebelo pushed the tempo from their spot at stage center creating space for Chuck Ragan and Chris Cresswell to soar and wail through the set’s nine songs. I wasn’t quite sure how they’d be able to make a thirty-minute set seem representative of their thirty-year career, but it turns out that following “Remedy” with “Menace,” “Flight and a Crash,” “After The Impossible,” “Turn The Dial,” “Wayfarer,” “Burn Forever,” “Drag My Body” and, of course, “Trusty Chords” does a pretty good job of that. The latter song especially, turned into the first of what would be many full-venue singalongs, with most of the band even cutting out of the last chorus, letting the audience lead the charge before kicking back in in full force. Ragan seemed particularly amped up, at multiple points looking like he was trying to stomp a hole in the floor.
Accompanied by their longtime walk-up song “Don’t You Forget About Me,” the almighty Souls batted third and set themselves a high bar by jumping right into crowd favorite “Hopeless Romantic.” Much like Hot Water Music, the Souls have been headlining stages around the world for decades at this point, so they seem to be of a similar opinion that when occupying a comparatively abbreviated opening spot, there’s no time for messing around or exchanging pleasantries, and it is better to just get down to business. Probably doesn’t hurt that they also have George Rebelo behind the drum kit to keep the needle pinned. I know I’ve mentioned it a few times on these pages in recent years, but I genuinely think that the Souls sound as good or better now than they ever have. Greg Attonito’s voice is probably stronger now than it was three decades ago, and now that he’s recovered from the broken ankle that had him booted-up last time we caught them, he’s a ball of constant motion at center stage. And Pete and Bryan are – well – Pete and Bryan. They’re a package deal, left and right brain at this point, effortlessly creating high-energy melody after high-energy melody in a way that fills out the sound on a live stage more than you’d expect from merely a single guitar and bass. Highlight’s from the band’s fifteen-song, forty-five minute set included “That Song,” The Ballad of Johnny X,” “Gone,” and of course given the location, “East Coast! Fuck You!” The links between the HWM and Souls camps go back decades – long before Rebelo started doing double-duty – and in honor of that, Ragan made a return to the stage to join the Souls on gang vocals during set-closer “True Believers.”
And of course, that means Dropkick Murphys batted clean-up in this Murderer’s Row of a lineup. Wait, sorry, that’s a Yankees reference. Whatever, the Red Sox don’t have a similarly-named team. I mean yeah, the Morgan Magic lineup was fun, but Boggs and Barrett and Evans and Greenwell wasn’t exactly Ruth and Gehrig and Meusel and Lazzeri. I’m gonna regret this section text time I walk through Quincy Center, aren’t I… ANYWAY, accompanied by somber tones of the Chieftains/Sinead O’Connor classic “The Foggy Dew,” Ken Casey led his squad onto the stage and stormed into high-octane singalong renditions of “The Lonesome Boatman,” “The Boys Are Back” and “Middle Finger” before so much as taking a breath. Oh, who am I kidding…it’s St. Patrick’s Day weekend in Boston – every song the Dropkicks play is a singalong.
Casey spent the bulk of the ninety-minute set in a state of constant motion, pacing the length of the stage and making endless trips atop the barricade to whip the devoted into a full-throated frenzy. Tim Brennan and James Lynch hold down stage right and stage left respectively, the latter baring likeness to a punk rock Keith Richards (the one from the Stones, not the one from the Bruisers – he’s already punk rock!). It seemed like every time I looked up from the spot I was wedged in in the photo pit, Jeff DeRosa (guitar/mandolin) and Kevin Rheault (bass) had switched places, which actually came in handy given the limited elbow room in the scaled-down pit. As per usual, Matt Kelly maintained as steady a backbeat as you’ll find in the business from his perch at the rear of the stage, flanked by the band’s most recent piper, Campbell Webster. The setlist on this night drew predominantly from the earlier portions of the Dropkicks’ career, with songs from Do Or Die, Blackout and The Warrior’s Code making up close to half the set. It feels like it was during the Red Sox “Tessie” inspired run during the 2004 playoffs that there started to become a multigenerational feel at local Dropkicks shows, but it never really gets old seeing people across a forty or fifty-year age spectrum belt out the lyrics to songs like “The Fields Of Athenry” or “The State Of Massachusetts” in unison, arm-in-arm.
The Dropkicks found themselves at the center of media attention for what seems like the dozenth time in their near-thirty-year career for making pro-Union, anti-fascist commentary at a recent show. It baffles the mind that there are people who were somehow clueless as to where the band stood politically and who somehow find themselves bewildered that their for democracy and for the American worker and against things like Nazis and dictators, but then again, it’s 2025, so there are a lot of things that baffle me. This weekend found yet another on-stage confrontation with a MAGA-hatted showgoer. You do have to wonder if people make such style choices at a show like this hoping they’ll be singled out from the stage, which seems weird, but we know that proverbial shoe certainly fits.
The four bands on this bill – and really all of the other bands on the bills across the four-night, two-venue run – made for an epic event, and I don’t say that lightly. If it was my last Dropkick’s St. Patrick’s Day show – and I’m not assuming it will be – then I definitely went out on top with a lineup that was second to none and an evening full of performances that were poignant, cathartic, and representative of why this little corner of the music scene (and probably this little corner of the country) is just the best. It was like Homecoming Week for punks from across the land to come together amidst the growing chaos in the outside world to reinforce that we’re all in it together and that there are some people out there – like Rebuilder and Hot Water Music and the Souls and the Dropkick Murphys – fighting the good fight. Check out more pics in the galleries below – and probably stay tuned for more Dropkicks coverage in the coming months!
Warren Cohen
A Mike Greenwell reference in a punk rock show review! I’m glad to be alive to read it.
jaystone
He was my brother’s favorite player growing up. I remember telling one of my fall ball coaches that and he said “great player to have as your favorite if you don’t care about the fundamentals of playing outfield.”