Flogging Molly: “I Think That’s Very Important For A Band … That You Are A Generational Thing.”

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Touring non-stop over their near thirty-year existence, Flogging Molly have managed to capture the heart and soul of multi-generational, multi-genre spanning crowd with their iconic sound. We sat down with frontman Dave King backstage at Slam Dunk Festival to talk about new music, touring, and the upcoming 20th Anniversary of ‘Within A Mile Of Home’.

Hello, I’m Fraser Kerr, and you join me backstage here at Slam Dunk with Dave from Flogging Molly, how are you?

Dave: How are you doing, sir? Good. Not too bad.

I’m very good, thank you. Um, whenever I look into your band, you’re always touring. How do you find time to breathe?

Dave: Look at me. Do I look like I breathe. Yeah. We’re, uh…I mean, especially after what we’ve all been through, like with Covid and that, I mean, we thought there was a point where we thought that we wouldn’t be back again.

Yeah.

Dave: And so I think, honestly, I think we were one of the very first bands to really start touring, like, not just the week here or there, but we were going for months at a time, and we’ve seen how it gradually is starting to come back, you know. Long before the outdoor festivals, you know, we were doing the clubs and, I mean it was difficult, you know, I mean, backstage areas there still a little bit…

Yeah, yeah.

Dave: surreal. Uh, there definitely… there’s nobody really stealing your beer anymore. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, I’m not quite sure. Oh, you know, it’s… It’s getting there. It’s getting there.

So how do you find time to record new music and work on new music? Have you found time?

Dave: Well, the thing is, it was actually this last album, that we just did, um, ‘Anthem’ uh, we flew back, myself and Bridget flew back to the States. I had been writing in Ireland, in our house in Ireland, and as soon as we… they’d let us out we went to America, went into a basement, we rehearsed for 14 days, got 14 songs, and then we went straight to Chicago, to Steve Albini, and we recorded it in 14 days. It was literally balls to the wall live. That was it. But usually speaking, we have to make the decision, the physical decision to stop touring.

Yeah.

Dave: You know, because if we don’t, we just go on, and on, and on. We actually have to go, You know what? We’ve got to stop!

Um, and so you’ve recently released a small EP with a new track and two live versions of some older tracks,

Dave: Yeah.

How did that come to be?

Dave: Well, we did it in Steve Albini’s, and what we did was, we wanted to re-record ‘Drunken Lullabies’ and ‘What’s Left Of The Flag’ in the studio where we recorded them…

Yeah.

Dave: But do it live, and do it knowing the songs, because back then we didn’t know the songs, we were still writing them as we went along, so we thought, you know what, let’s, let’s do a… No overdubs. No nothing. Just, let’s play this and get them down. Just captured the 20 odd years it’s been since we first did it.

Capture the rawness.

Dave: and we had that other song ‘Til The Anarchy’s Restored’ uh, kind of in our back pocket cause we wanted the new album to be short and snappy, you know? and we felt like, we should maybe later… Because you know it yourself, the way albums are done these days, it’s not really albums anymore, people are bringing songs out, this and that. And being a live touring band, it takes you a while to get used to that.

Yeah, and so in preparation for today and tomorrow, you have been doing some warm-up shows, how have they been going?

Dave: Oh.. I mean we’ve… I mean we never take things as warm-ups, you know. You know, there’s no such thing as a warm up.

You’re already warm, you’ve just never stopped touring.

Dave: Yeah, you know, We um… We had an amazing opening night a couple of nights ago in Glasgow.

Yeah.

Dave: And it was, a wonderful, wonderful night, you know, we don’t know any different, you know, we love what we do and privileged to do what we do. And we just, try and bring that with us everywhere we go

And then on-then on Monday, you’ve got a show at Signature Brew in London, that’s a very small shows, something like 200 capacity, or something like that.

Dave: Yeah.

Do you find there’s a big difference between the bigger shows and all the festivals and the smaller shows like that?

Dave: Usually, the smell. They can probably smell us really, you know, no I mean but you know, but um, it’s always nice. That’s what’s great about being in a band like Flogging Molly, we do traditional Irish sets in pubs unannounced, like, you know, just hanging out, just playing, you know, our fiddles and our banjos, accordions and, you know, and we’re very, very used to that. And then like on one instance we did that in Holland on the 6th of June, a couple of years ago, well five, maybe seven years ago, it was Bridget’s birthday on the 6th of June, and we did a traditional set in a pub, the next day we were playing with The Rolling Stones.

Wow.

Dave: So we were quite comfortable doing that you know

I mean, you’ve managed to gain such a following throughout genres. Is there much of a difference between the crowds that you get, supporting different people?

Dave: No, I think everywhere we go it seems to be, you know, it’s lovely to see people. I mean, I remember like the first time we did the Warped Tour that’s really when we started to tour, was Warped Tour.

Yeah.

Dave: And I remember the first song we played was ‘The Likes Of You Again’, and it starts off with me and then a little bit of mandolin comes in, then the fiddle comes in, and I used to see the crowd all look at each other and go, what is going on here? and you could tell, and then you kick into the song and they’d all look at each other and start smiling. And then next thing is the mosh pit. You know, it was like, you know, it’s Irish music, you know, it’s soul music. It’s whatever you want.

I mean saying that, it hits the soul.

Dave: Yeah!

Uh, I mean, you’ve managed to capture a fan base that is multi-generational – like your set earlier I saw lots of children and lots of older people – but there’s a real range. Um…

Dave: I think that’s what keeps a band going though.

Yeah.

Dave: I think definitely I mean even at our own shows it’s always been the case. There’s always been a huge generation of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, grandparents, you know, it’s always been that at our shows. And I think that’s very important for a band. It means that you are… you are a generational thing. It’s not just…

Its not just a phase.

Dave: Yeah, I mean, we’ve been doing this for thirty years, you know what I mean.

Yeah.

Dave: So, you know, so yeah, it’s not a phase. It’s definitely a it’s a passion, it’s life! You know.

Indeed, um, you’ve got some milestones got some milestones coming up, next year is the 20th anniversary of ‘Within A Mile Of Home’.

Dave: 20th?

20th. Have you got any plans for the celebration of that?

Dave: Well, I mean, you caught me off guard, because I didn’t even know that was a thing. Wow. I didn’t-I didn’t know that. WOW! Um, well now that you’ve mentioned it, I suppose we have to do something, you know, but, uh, I remember that like it was yesterday, you know.

Yeah. Do you have any fond memories of recording it?

Dave: Yeah. I mean, I remember, you know, I remember the studio in Hollywood, California. Um, and it was just, you know, we’ve always done our albums as live as we can you know, it’s the only way that we can work, you know, and, um, but yeah, it was, it was a wonderful, wonderful time, yeah.

Well it has been great talking to you.

Dave: Beautiful talking to you.

Thank you for taking the time to talk to me and enjoy the rest of your day.

Dave: Absolutely. Yeah. Looking forward to Leeds tomorrow…