Updated July 24, 2025 at 2:23 PM EDT
The guitar riff starts up, then the drums and bagpipes follow. That’s how the Dropkick Murphys’ new album “For The People” opens.
Enter frontman Ken Casey with the fiery vocals: “Throughout centuries in every country/ We’ve faced the wrath and felt the pain/ Of the tyrant’s sword or the henchman’s boot/ For another rich man’s gain.”
It’s been nearly 30 years since the Dropkick Murphys formed in Quincy. The band played a show there earlier this month, celebrating 400 years since the city’s settlement and also serving as an album release party.
The music video for “Who’ll Stand With Us?” shows images of everyday people being blindfolded and kidnapped: a postal carrier, a construction worker, a cook, a woman doing laundry, a young girl on a swingset. In the chorus, Casey asks a simple question.
“Who’ll stand with us?” he sings. “Don’t tell us everything is fine. Who’ll stand with us? Because this treatment is a crime.”
The lyrics are pointed and aimed to inspire. That’s been a common theme in both Dropkick Murphys’ lyrics and Casey’s comments outside of his music. He has been vocal about being on the right side of history.
“Silence is complicit at this point,” Casey said in an interview with WBUR. “So to be making fluff music about stuff that isn’t of importance at the moment, I really just think is shirking away from the fight.”
On Wednesday, the band announced that they would no longer play any events for the traveling festival Punk in the Park after they alleged the festival’s organizer, Brew Ha Ha Productions, had donated to the Trump campaign. “Punk Rock and Donald Trump just don’t belong together,” the band wrote on Instagram in a post announcing the decision.
In March, a video of the band performing in Florida went viral when Casey asked a concertgoer wearing a MAGA hat and shirt where the apparel was manufactured. Casey bet him his shirt that it was made outside of the U.S.
“It’s made in Nicaragua!” Casey shouts from the stage with glee. The concert attendee removed his T-shirt right then and there and put on a Dropkick Murphys tee that was made in America. “He’s a good sport,” continued Casey in the video. “He’s taking the shirt off. We’re taking crime off the streets!”
For Casey, the substance of Dropkick Murphys songs is inseparable from the musical communities where the band has laid its roots.
“ American folk music, protest music, but also punk rock — it’s always been about that challenge the system, speak up,” said Casey. “It’s in our musical DNA from all angles.”
The band released “For the People” on July 4th. It features the band’s well-known Celtic punk rock sound. Casey said he found inspiration for this album in thinking about America’s future.
“ Going forward, having children …are they going to legitimately live in a free country?” he asked. “Are they gonna be allowed to speak their mind? Are they gonna be allowed to have opinions that don’t jive with the government?”
The theme of passing the torch from one generation to the next appears throughout the album. In the song “Chesterfields and Aftershave,” Casey reflects on memories of his grandfather, who raised him after his father died when Casey was 8 years old.
“If you could come back now/ If you were out there in the crowd/ You’d know that I turned out ok/ And I hope I make you proud,” Casey sings. The song continues with his wish that his grandfather could’ve joined him on the baseball field in St. Louis when the Red Sox won the World Series 2004. The team has since played the Dropkick Murphys’ “Tessie” at every home game win for 20 seasons.
The album’s closing song “One Last Goodbye” is a tribute to The Pogues’ Shane MacGowan, who died in 2023. It includes a cheeky phrase that MacGowan signed on Casey’s copy of the “Dark Streets Of London” in 1998: “piss off, you wanker.”
The heart of the album is right in the title: “For the People.” It’s a phrase that Casey said echoes pivotal moments in American history.
“The struggles for workers’ rights and civil rights throughout the years, you would’ve thought those were America’s greatest fights,” said Casey. “Fast forward to 2025, and arguably maybe now we’re actually in America’s biggest fight ever because we are fighting to preserve all the things that those people stood up for.”
After almost 30 years, the Dropkick Murphys continue the tradition of meeting the moment with music.
“ Some people have no idea that from the start, we’ve had this political social justice element to the band,” said Casey. “They’re learning about it now.”
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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