by Jason Walsh
10/24/08
Writing a few preview pieces for a couple city papers and magazines as well as a larger piece for AMP Magazine, I did a phone interview with lead singer Al Barr from the Dropkick Murphys on a windy Friday night. They are doing a quick tour in November following an intensive year of touring, but this time hitting a bunch of cities not usually on their U.S. tour schedule, like Louisville and Richmond, Virginia. However, it seems we talked more about baseball than the band. Al is a good guy and class act...read on...
JW: Let's just talk about this past year. You guys have had a really great year, it's been really busy, you have a new record out, all sorts of touring going on. Tell me a little about this past year for you guys.
AL BARR: Yeah, we've just been touring on the new record, y'know. Well, now it's 13 months old so it's not so new anymore. September we finished kind of a year of touring on it and we're just getting ready to do a little more touring before Thanksgiving and the holidays. That's about it. Just been touring.
JW: What made you guys decide to do this quick November tour, and it looks like you're hitting a lot of places that you haven't been to in a long time?
AL BARR: Well, that's just it. We wanted to go out because we actually just closed down. My wife's having a second child in December and my son's birthday is in December and you got Christmas in December. Kenny, the bass player and another singer in the band, he's got two kids as well and their birthdays are in December. We shut down pretty much from Thanksgiving 'til the New Year so we wanted to get out there and hit some places we hadn't been in a while.
JW: I did an interview with Matt and one of the places you're going to be going to is Louisville and you guys hadn't been to Louisville since 1997, played in a small bar and were paid $5 in quarters and taken to White Castle.
AL BARR: (laughing) Yeah, I wasn't there for that one. But yeah I've heard Matt talk about it.
JW: O.K., so this was before you were in the band.
AL BARR: Yeah, I joined in 1998. That was before my watch.
JW: So, you were in there right after that.
AL BARR: But I have been paid in small change before.
JW: That's just kind of the lot of being in a band that's touring. You never know what you're going to get into, but you guys are in a better place now than that I'm thinking.
AL BARR: A little bit.
JW: Tell me about some of the highlights of touring this year.
AL BARR: We've been, y'know, all over the country, we've been to Europe a bunch of times. We've been to Australia and Japan, did Reading and Leeds, and a bunch of other festivals this summer so we were busy.
JW: So you guys got the holidays off. What kind of stuff are you going to be getting into in the New Year. You going to be doing any recording? I understand you're writing a little but I mean that's probably something you guys always do.
AL BARR: We kind of try to write as you go so that way when you get to the point where you're ready to start working on a new record you're not just cramming, you know what I mean? But as far as the new year goes, we're real excited because we got the Big Day Out, which is a big festival in Australia, so we're planning on going to Australia for about three weeks in January, and New Zealand as well. We really love Australia. We've been to New Zealand only one other time and that was really cool, so we're looking forward to that, y'know. It's really cool, this band has afforded us all the luxury of being able to travel all over the world and that's pretty amazing.
JW: And that's got to be kind of a cool thing. When you first start in a band, you do some local tours, maybe you do regionals, then a U.S. tour, then all of a sudden you guys are in a place where you're going to all these places you probably never would have thought you'd be going to.
AL BARR: Yeah, it's definitely a privilege to be able to go all over the world and have people show up to hear you and hear your band. It's a pretty cool thing for sure. It doesn't get much better.
JW: Anything else coming in the New Year. Looking to record or anything coming out?
AL BARR: It's really too soon to tell. I mean we got ideas. But, we got St. Patrick's Day, that's the big thing we do every year in Boston. We do a series of shows and we're going to be doing another trip to Europe I think and some more U.S. and more festivals in the summer in Europe, so we'll be keeping busy. St. Patty's and the Australian tour are the things right in the near future.
JW: I been up to Boston for the St. Patty's, it was two years ago, when the great blizzard got me stranded in Philly so I missed two of the shows.
AL BARR: Uggh...
JW: But loved going up there when I finally made it. Got to go to the Southie parade. I loved your city, fell in love with it. I grew up in the Philadelphia area so to go somewhere like that, and be in your guys' hometown where you guys played a home game was incredible.
AL BARR: Well if you grew up in Philly, you must be pretty excited about your team being in the World Series, huh?
JW: (laughing) I'm not going to get into that yet, because I know you guys are still in mourning over that.
AL BARR: No, no...I'm all right. I got family in Philly and I've moved on from the Sox losing, and I'm supporting Philly and hoping they win. I hope they kick the crap out of Tampa.
JW: I watched game one and I was like, I can't believe they beat them at home.
AL BARR: Yeah.
JW: And then come game two I was like "uhhh..."
AL BARR: That didn't work to well for the Red Sox either. They won the first time in Tampa as well, so we'll see what happens.
JW: Hopefully we won't have a repeat. I'll tell you what, being a person from the area, we haven't had anything in the longest time.
AL BARR: Yeah, it's like 35 years, right?
JW: Oh my god...yeah, I mean, yeah...
AL BARR: Not quite the 86 years that we had, but still, y'know.
JW: Yeah, but you guys caught up and made up for it in spades. I mean you won everything?
AL BARR: Yeah, it's been pretty good for New England sports, for sure.
JW: O.K. getting back, when do you guys start planning for the St. Patty's shows? Is there anything you guys have started looking into?
AL BARR: Oh, we're already planning for it. We're already trying to figure out where we're going to do it this year and what bands we're going to have. All that. There's nothing concrete yet but we're definitely on. Everything's going, the conversation is in the planning stages now, so we start pretty early on that. We hope to have tickets on sale before Christmas, I think. In an ideal world, that would be what we want.
JW: And now you kind of have a base of operations with McGreevy's (Ken Casey's pub at Fenway) down there on the third base line.
AL BARR: Yeah, you know, I think whenever we're not practicing, we all have to meet somewhere, we all meet at Ken's bar, so that's pretty convenient.
JW: How's that place doing?
AL BARR: It's doing well. Y'know, I've only been there a couple of times myself. I'm not the barfly I used to be, but it's definitely a nice place and it's usually doing all right.
JW: Yes, we all get older, have families, and you just can't go to the pub every night.
AL BARR: (laughs) That's right...
JW: Is there anything that we haven't touched on that you think is important that people should know?
AL BARR: We're just excited to come to your town. We're psyched to go to these places that we haven't been to in a while, y'know, play some of the new music, relatively new music for people and get our groove on, as they say.
JW: And I know I'm going to be doing this for Louisville and they haven't seen you guys in, god, eleven years, so give a big shout out to Louisville and tell them why they should come out and see you guys.
AL BARR: Well, you just said it yourself. It's been a bit of a while since we've been down there. I had a friend actually call me that lives down there and said that we're playing some weird like place, I forget the name of it now, but he said 'you're playing THIS place, why aren't you playing THAT place?' and I'm like 'I don't know? Don't ask me. I'm not from there.' But we're psyched to be down there and it will be a good time for sure.
JW: All right Al, well you have a wonderful weekend, enjoy your time off, and hopefully I'll be able to make it up to Boston this next year to see you guys again.
AL BARR: All right man, thanks for the interview. You take care and have a good night. Have a good weekend.
Ken Casey in Richmond, VA
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