Interviews Archive Flogging Molly
Written by Sarah Jaffe Friday, 01 October 2004 00:00
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Flogging Molly will once again be visiting Denver when they play he Fillmore on October 13.
Kaffeine Buzz: I want to say I love the new album, and I think it might be your best yet.
Dave King: Yeah, I definitely think for me, as a full piece of work, I'm really, really, really happy with it. When you consider the amount of touring that we do, and the amount of time that we actually have, it came out--I loved it. You know, I only heard it for the first time last week, in the sense that I got home off tour, had a couple of days off, and I sat down and I put it on. The cover and all the art was in it, and I was really, really proud, to be honest with you.
KB: You should be. You seem like you may have slowed it down a bit on this album. There seem to be a few more traditional Irish-sounding songs on this record. Was that something you were trying to do?
DK: To me, songs like "Tobacco Island" and "Screaming at the Wailing Wall," and "Queen Anne's Revenge," are still. . . You know, we started in a bar in Los Angeles, but at the same time, we've become a band, and we're growing as a band. We're not afraid to try anything. If you're going to try and make the same album all the time, forget about it, it doesn't work. We definitely tried to change it up a bit on this one, with "Whistles the Wind" and "Don't Let Me Die Still Wondering," stuff like that, didn't want to be afraid to basically let ourselves shine in a lot of ways.
KB: How did you end up working with Lucinda Williams on this record?
DK: When I went back to Ireland the last time, I stayed with my mother. She's getting really really on in years, and she's slowed down a lot, and it made me wonder how her life was, before I was in it. When she was younger, she used to tell me stories about working in the factory and I wondered what it was like when she had friends, because she doesn't have that many friends anymore, they've passed on. So I conjured up this image of her walking home from work with her friends, but as I was writing it, I started thinking, "You know, I can't really hear myself singing this song on my own, I need a woman's perspective on this."
So I thought of Lucinda, I've always loved her voice, but I thought, "There's no way in hell we're going to get Lucinda Williams to sing on our album." But I mentioned it to the record company, just in passing, and they knew a guy, Derek, whose wife was a friend of hers. So we made a copy of the song, and we sent it to her, and she said she'd do it! I never even got to meet her because I was on the road. So she came into the studio, and she sang it, and she called me and was like, "I hope it's all right, I hope you like it." She was so nice. It's unbelievable. She did such a great job. I need to meet her for sure because I need to thank her in person. I think she definitely made the song, to have her on it, I think it's great.
KB: What's with the obsession with pirates?
DK: We're pirates! When you're in a band that's got so many people in it, and you travel in one bus and you go from town to town in a day, I don't know. . . "Seven Deadly Sins," though, isn't just about that. The first line, "Johnny strummed his tommy gun," it's about Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer, people that influenced us. When you're living in your own little world, sometimes...it's about being together, doing the best that you can. We all get along pretty well, our camaraderie together is still pretty strong after all these years. It's just sort of great, the fact that we're all out there together doing the best that we can.
KB: It's pretty impressive that you're all still getting along, while bands with three people in them have trouble staying together.
DK: I think what happens with that is when you've got three people, they're the only three people you can focus on. When you've got seven, you've got a lot of personalities, but you become very respectful of each other's space.
KB: What do you think is the reason that Irish music seems to appeal to so many people?
DK: I think it's roots music, it's a traditional music, it's music that has a certain air to it. I think each and every one of us have that in our souls somewhere. I know when I hear traditional music, for me personally, it's an emotional feeling. I know because I'm Irish, probably, it does that, but it's all acoustic, you know what I mean? It doesn't need to be exaggerated. Even though what we do is sort of exaggerate folk music in a way, or traditional music, bring it into today's world.
But traditional music, I was brought up on it as a kid, my father would always bring people to the house that we lived in on Saturday nights. I always remember that, it was such a warm feeling, just having all these people come over and sing. We had a one-room house, that's all we had, but we had a piano. It always amazes me, looking back on it, thinking "Where the fuck did this piano come from? We don't have a pot to piss in, but we've got a piano!" Music was more important than anything else to my family, though. It really was. I think one of the first presents I ever got was an acoustic guitar.
KB: How old were you?
DK: Well, my father died when I was 10, so I must have been around 6 or 7. But my sister started playing traditional music when she was 2!
KB: How did you guys get involved with Punkvoter?
DK: Fat Mike, from Fat Wreck Chords, is a friend of ours, and he asked us to put a song on the Bush compilation, and we were like "Absolutely." I remember reading the newspaper one day, and hearing that the administration was trying to stop students from voting because their dorms weren't a stationary address. And I thought, "My god, they're trying to stop people from voting." I can't even put into words what that did to me. So I was excited to find a way that we could help. No matter which way people wanted to vote, at least they could vote. So we decided to get these booths that people could register to vote at our shows.
I'm not allowed to vote in America because I'm not a citizen, but I believe that people should have the opportunity to vote for whomever they like. Make it fair this time, not like the last fucking election, you know?
KB: I guess I never made the connection, and then I got the Rock Against Bush CD and I was looking at all of these bands that people don't normally think of as political. . . but then again, Flogging Molly is very political, just not usually U.S. politics.
DK: I believe that--I don't know if it's because I travel a lot, to Europe and all over the world, and so many different cultures, different people--I feel like I'm a citizen of the world, and I feel like what George W. Bush has done is alienate Americans from the rest of the world. The world is such a small place, and I think by alienating America, the people of America from the world, that's really sad. To me, I remember when I first came to America, I thought, "This is such a great country," I love the people, I love what it stands for, but I think it's confused. I think Bush has taken what was freedom and turned it into alienation, and personally as a citizen of the world, I don't like that.
KB: Do you think that the Irish in general are more politically conscious than Americans?
DK: They are! Look at what's happening over there right now. They're starting to have peace talks again, power-sharing talks between Catholics and Protestants. They hadn't had them in a couple of years because it just broke down and they just had them and they're at a stalemate again. So yeah, we are aware politically, but I don't know if it's right or wrong because we're still stuck in that quicksand. It's a situation where I wish I could take every Protestant and Catholic out of Ireland, take them around the world, and show them how pointless it is. Our efforts to bring peace to our country--it's really small-minded people's thinking as well.
The thing about people in general is that there's such a lack of understanding for somebody else, for religion and whatever. That's why I write songs like "Screaming at the Wailing Wall" and "Tobacco Island" and all. How long are we going to use God in battle, in war? I don't know about you, but my God doesn't believe in killing people. It's such a small way of thinking. I'm really, really fucking tired of it. Open your minds and open your hearts to other people. Embrace the differences in people. I love people, different people, different cultures--you can learn so much from them. And understanding somebody else could be the greatest gift God gave us.
KB: I went to Ireland several years ago, the summer of 2001, even before 9/11 and any of this, and I was still getting accosted in bars, asked about our election. I felt like people my age in Ireland knew more about what was going on in my country than we did.
DK: I have to agree with you, because people over there are encouraged to get involved. When I was living over there, I used to vote all the time. It was constant, for my voice to be heard. Over here, George W. Bush doesn't want everybody's opinion. He only wants the opinion of the rich, the oil-soaked bastards that he hangs out with. That's the only opinions he cares about. He doesn't care about students over here. He doesn't care about young people over here.
On the Warped Tour, for example, I meet some of the greatest people you'll ever meet in your life. The young people of this country are great people and that's why I want people to be involved in voting. I want them to vote this man out of office, but at the same time, they can vote for whomever they like, it's their opinion, I just want their voices to be heard. It's very important for the voices of the young people to be heard because it's a huge, a valid voice. It's a very powerful voice.
In Ireland and the rest of Europe, people are more conscious of the global aspects of decisions like this and not just the selfishness of it. It really is an eye-opener. I was watching the news yesterday and President Bush was addressing the U.N. and you know what the reporter said? "Bush got a very cool reception at the U.N., and why should he even bother with these guys." That just made me sick. How could you say something like that? How small-minded is that? Why should he bother with the rest of the world? At the end of the day, we're all just one race of people.
KB: You would think more people would know that by now.
DK: You know what it is? It's the fear of God being put into these people. The whole media, everything in this country is run on fear. Put the fear of God into the working man. Like Dick Cheney saying if we don't vote this administration back in, who knows when the next attack will be? Well, the only time this country was ever attacked, apart from the Second World War, was when you fuckers were in office! That's what has to be dealt with in this country. Let the free man speak.
KB: So I hear that you write your songs on a typewriter that was manufactured in 1916? [The year of the Irish Easter Rising that led to independence from England.] That's the kind of thing that people in this country don't seem to understand. They don't relate to the past, they don't relate to history, they don't relate to their history.
DK: The thing for me is, for example, to write on a computer, the computer doesn't have any history. It doesn't have any emotional attachment to it. The typewriter--who knows who wrote on that typewriter? Who knows who put their fingers on that typewriter to write a letter, to write something to somebody? Emotions were put into that. To me that's very important. I'm afraid of people forgetting about the past. When I write a song like "Tobacco Island," that's about the seventeenth century, but it's very important to what's going on today. Look at what's going on in the Sudan. We still haven't learned. And by singing about the seventeenth century, I might as well be singing about this present century right now. I'm dragging up ghosts and images of days gone by, but those ghosts and images are very relevant today. We're still not learning from them. History is very important to me. It makes me want to make a better future.
Flogging Molly plays with Street Dogs and The Briggs Wednesday, October 13 at the Fillmore Auditorium.
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