Still Floggin' It After all These Years

For Morphizm.com

Some say the true mettle of an Irishman is proven by how much he can drink in one sitting, before falling off the stool. Being the binge drinkers my people are -- I prefer the term to "alcoholic" or "drunk," because that's precisely what my grandmother was for most of her life, God rest her soul -- the number of pints they can stow in their livers has become the subject of lore.

Others, mostly the older generation, say it's all about the whiskey.

One can only imagine how many shots of either brew Dave King has chugged. His outfit Flogging Molly is a band of punkers that supports his Irish pedigree and a catalogue of songs that transcend age, class, sex, and any other boundaries you can think of. Those songs routinely serve King's own bottled pain, in seemingly every lyric of the band's previous work, including Within a Mile of Home, Drunken Lullabies and Swagger. But things have chilled: Their latest release, an unplugged full-length CD/DVD combo called Whiskey on a Sunday, boasts more mellowed, matured flavors of the band behind the band and of some of their greatest hits.

Molly has been around for more than a decade now. Its humble beginnings trace back to L.A.'s famed Molly Malone's on Fairfax, across the street from Canter's deli. Before that, King bummed around with Motorhead guitarist Eddie Clarke in the late-80s band Fastway, before finding himself cleaning toilets in clubs where he performed on acoustic guitar. It wasn't until forming Flogging Molly that he began playing for himself.

“My family would go to the pub and gather up people to come back to the house to play tin whistle, mandolin, fiddle and spoons, with my mom on piano and my uncle on accordion,” King remembers. “But I wanted to run away from that. As you get older, you want to pick up electric guitars and play loud. You rebel against those elements.”

He met a kindred spirit in Bridget Regan, who accepted his strange mandolin that the record companies refused to grasp. He embraced his youth, when his late father would play him old Dubliner records. He recruited Nathan Maxwell, a young unproven bassist, after sharing pints, without hearing him play a single note. Bob Schmidt filled in on mandolin once and he has been there ever since. Matt Hensley was a pro skater -- still is -- when he decided to learn the accordion. He met King and the rest is history. Even drummer George Schwindt was recruited outside of a Rite-Aid, after a conversation about music. Guitarist Dennis Casey repeatedly snubbed King's invitations, before relenting like everyone else.

Then there are Molly's interests: King's discourse on his father's death, his love for his lonely mother, his impoverished childhood in Beggar's Bush, a Dublin slum, amongst rats and IRA henchmen. But King also twists words into jigs, frolicking melodies and harmonies smacked back and forth from guitar to accordion to fiddle to mandolin. As violinist Regan says, the band relishes in “taking real traditional music and turning it into a train wreck.”

It's precisely these types of beautiful disasters that stands Flogging Molly out from the “punks” that whore their principles for airplay. It could also be his flaming hair and goatee, being spectacled or well into his 40s. It could be that he looks like the shady cousin of Conan O'Brien. But you just can't help but like his Molly and her music. It's fantastically contagious. Watching the live clips found on Whiskey on a Sunday, it's impossible to tell whether Flogging Molly draws upon the energy of its fans, or vice versa.

Yet, despite the hard-drinking rebellion of its youthful sonic, Flogging Molly is still a band filled with married men with children. It is a band that is defiantly familiar and familial. Speaking of, there's an age-old Irish saying passed from generation to generation that goes: “May you be dead a half hour before the devil knows your dead.” As they mosh gently into that good night, Flogging Molly is still alive, kicking and screaming, tearing up the fucking house.