FEATURE
It's Just "A
Mile From Happiness"
for Flogging
Molly's Dave King
by Shelly Harris
“Yeah, it’s a
celebration, really. It’s about life, the good and the bad,” reckons
Dave King,
leader, primary songwriter, and vocalist of his impossible-to-pigeonhole
band, Flogging Molly, who recently concluded a slot on their fourth
Warped Tour -- and are now set to hit the Congress Theater on October
8th as the headliners of the Punk Voter Tour.
Their newest (indie)
release, Within A Mile of Home, actually debuted at #20 on the Billboard Album
Chart.
Like the previous two
albums, 2000’s Swagger and 2002’s Drunken Lullabies, it tends to most often be put in the bins with the
rock/punk/pop genre, but, the truth of the matter is that it’s really a
wild child offshoot of King’s childhood experience growing up in a
household steeped in traditional Celtic music --- albeit now put on
steroids and amphetamines (best wear your dancing boots set at full
throttle)!
And, although the
subject matter of King’s songs are often serious -- rife with deeply
personal experiences obliquely stated, or social commentary etched in
the ultimate (James) Joyce-ian exiled-but-Irish-to-the core
contradiction, he deliberately throws another ironic juxtaposition into
the mix by setting the lyrics on a canvas of music that screams “party
hearty!” in the best Guinness and Bushmills tradition.
“I like to mix the
lyrics up with a completely different tone of music,” he elaborates.
“The lyrics might be sad, but, just by getting it out, you’re
celebrating that fact, and so the music takes the rest of it to the
other level.”
“In other bands,” he
continues, “I could never really be honest with myself because I was
always worried about the banner [image] of the band, for example. In
this band, it’s okay. I can sing about what I want to sing about, and
the rest of the band are all backing me, and it’s great!”
When King
speaks of “other bands,” he’s especially
referring to
Fastway, the ‘80s-era British group that first projected him out of
the hardships of growing up in a one room flat in the Beggars Bush
section of Dublin.
Though he was only 19
at the time, King’s Janis Joplin-esque wailing vocals on demo tape were
far more attention-getting than even his trademark flaming red curls,
and he promptly caught the ears of Fastway’s founders, UFO’s Pete Way
and Motorhead’s “Fast” Eddie Clarke.
Thus, though his only
prior experience had been with local pub bands, he was soon tapped to
front that band for several albums and many behemoth stadium tours with
the likes of AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Rush, and Scorpions. Later, after
Fastway ran its course, he was called to L.A. by legendary A&R guru John
Kalodner, and he stayed on to live there when a subsequent band project
fizzled out.
Explaining the
entirely new musical direction he would eventually take with Flogging
Molly, King states, “When I was very young ... [my parents] would go out
on the weekends, and they’d bring back all the people from the pub.
And, for some reason, even though we only had a one room house, we had a
piano! They’d bring over accordions and whistles, and everybody would
take a chance -- take a turn singing. At the time I remember it being
absolutely amazing! I mean, it was just wonderful to see all these
people singing in my house! But then, of course, you grow older and you
hear David Bowie, and you hear Led Zeppelin, and AC/DC, and The Clash,
and you go, ‘Oh, sh*t! I want to do that!’
“So, you sort of
rebel, and that’s what I did for years. So when I came to LA, and
decided to stay here, I didn’t really have a direction where I wanted to
go. I just knew I never wanted to write a song again for anyone else
but myself. So, I just picked up my acoustic guitar and the first song
I wrote was ‘Selfish Man’
– so I was puttin’ it right out there! (laughs) I thought, if you’re
going to be honest with yourself, start from the beginning, okay,
selfish man!”
He continues,
“Musically what happened was, I met our fiddle player, Bridget. I had
other violin players in the band, but they weren’t traditional players,
they just accompanied the music. When she came along, she played
traditional fiddle, and it made me want to go back home! Physically, I
couldn’t –– I had to stay here. So, musically it seemed, maybe I should
go back that way! Revisit my childhood, revisit my past, revisit the
people that were all around me, but still have the energy of the music
that I still love, you know what I mean? I sort of combined it
effortlessly – to be honest with you – the different genres of music.
You’ve got to remember, the first two albums I ever heard in my life
were a band from Dublin called The Dubliners, who were a folk band, and
Johnny Cash’s Folsom Prison Blues. That was all I ever heard. So it’s almost like, in
hindsight, I look back at that and go,
‘Jesus! -- that was actually the sort of a hybrid of where our bands’
sound starts from’.”
Some of the standout
cuts on the band’s new album include
“Tobacco Island” (a historical take on the 17th Century-era when
Oliver Cromwell shipped Irish Catholics to Barbados to be slaves on
sugar plantations) and the title song,
“Within A Mile of Home”
–– which, though it has a literal meaning in the context of going back
to his Dublin roots geographically and musically, is really a figurative
metaphor for King’s finally coming within “a mile of happiness” in more
ways than one.
King, who has
amazingly taken full advantage of a “second chance” kind of career
success that would defy all lottery odds, adds, “Music has been my
savior... This band has been great for me in that way. I mean Fastway
came too easy. I always remembered being in Fastway and going,
‘I don’t deserve this.’ I
don’t know why, but I come from a background where you think, if I don’t
work for what I get, then I don’t deserve it.”
Flogging Molly just
fell together. “That was the easy part out of the way,” he said. “The
hard part was getting it to where we are now. Nobody can take away the
fact that I’ve worked my arse off to be doing what I’m doing right now.
And that’s the backbone.”
As far as the band’s
unique sound and broad generational appeal, King reckons: “We’re not
your traditional punk band. We’re just a good live band. So, what you
call it doesn’t really matter. There’s definitely times when you see
seven-year-olds at our show, and then you see seventy-year-olds.”
No wonder Flogging
Molly prefers the all ages shows, rather than those like the one at the
Congress Theater.
“That 21 and over
stuff really bothers me,” King explains. “I don’t get into it, I love
seeing young people there. They’re not brainwashed. The older we get, of
course, we get very set in our ways,but it’s working the opposite for
me! Playing in front of these young people is opening me up, too. It
seems like it’s making me almost youthful in a way; my thinking, my
logic is more like a 20-year-old, you know what I mean? In this
country, with our government, the youth is almost like the hidden
populace in a way. The last thing that George Bush wants to hear is the
voice of young people in America. ‘Cause if he did, he’d f**kin’ crap
his pants, you know. They make way more sense than he ever f*ckin’
will, that’s for sure. That’s why this tour is the Punk Voter
Tour. We’re going
to have voting registry booths on our tour. I think that’s important,
because he’s obviously doing his best for young people not to vote.”
“I’m 42 years of age
now,” King concludes, “and, in theory, I shouldn’t be up there having
the number one independent album of this week. That shouldn’t be
happening to me, but it is! And that’s why I’m here. I want to break
those boundaries! But I wouldn’t want to be doing that if I wasn’t
doing this. Because I have worked hard at doing it, when I see those
young people out there enjoying it, it’s just brilliant!”
See FLOGGING MOLLY perform on Punk Voter’s
Tour
on October 8 at Chicago’s Congress
Theatre
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