“For a band like us, who’s always talking about working-class people and that sort of thing, it would be difficult for our music to not be affected by the current political climate.” That’s Dropkick Murphys guitarist and accordion player Tim Brennan telling Apple Music about the story behind the title of the Celtic punk band’s 13th studio album, For the People. “I’m not hugely political myself,” he adds. “I come from a more human aspect—I just think everyone should be good to everyone else. The fact that that has become a wild idea is crazy, but I think it’s clear what the right and wrong sides of this are.” On For the People, Dropkick Murphys deliver a call to populism that’s very different from the counterfeit version offered by right-wing politicians. Leadoff track “Who’ll Stand With Us?” addresses unjust deportations, widespread layoffs, and the revocation of benefits while special guests The Scratch, The Mary Wallopers, and English songwriter/activist Billy Bragg join Dropkick’s chorus of righteous voices. Elsewhere, personal lyrics about vocalist Ken Casey’s childhood (“Streetlights,” “Chesterfields and Aftershave”) mingle with tributes to Pennywise guitarist Fletcher Dragge (“The Big Man”) and departed Pogues leader Shane MacGowan (“One Last Goodbye”). Last but not least, longtime Dropkicks singer Al Barr returns on “The Vultures Circle High.” Below, Brennan comments on each track. “Who'll Stand With Us?” “It’s not often that we play songs live before we’ve recorded them or released them, but this was one where we started playing it live pretty much as soon as it was written. It’s a good lead-off too, because Ken did a great job with the lyrics, describing the current state of things from the perspective of a bunch of guys like us—blue-collar, family, working-class guys. This album has a lot of different sounding stuff for us, but this is a tried-and-true Dropkick Murphys song, and it addresses the current state of things in a very Ken Casey/Dropkick Murphys way.” “Longshot” (feat. The Scratch) “Somewhere around 2007, when we put out our album The Meanest of Times, we came across this state-of-Massachusetts-style, sinister Irish type of song, and ‘Longshot’ falls into that category. Our banjo player, Jeff DaRosa, came up with that opening banjo riff, and we just kind of expounded from there. Lyrically, it’s a song about people who underestimate you, and you working your way through those people and those inner thoughts that tell you that you can’t achieve whatever it is you're looking to achieve. Our buddies The Scratch, from Dublin, laid down some vocal tracks for the song in Copenhagen when we were on tour together.” “The Big Man” “We did a bit of touring with Pennywise over the last few years, and we had known the guys casually for a while. You hear so many stories about [Pennywise guitarist] Fletcher [Dragge] and the destruction that happens in the wake of that man, but when we started hanging with him, we realized he’s such a fucking gentleman, so sweet and nice. And yeah, he likes to cause a ruckus now and again. I’ve seen him pick up [Warped Tour founder] Kevin Lyman in the middle of an interview on Warped Tour and throw him in a pond. I’ve seen him shoot BBs at people. We had a blast writing this song about him.” “Chesterfields and Aftershave” “Some of my favorite Dropkick songs are the ones where Ken talks about his childhood, because he's got so many interesting stories from that time. This one is about him spending time with his grandfather as a kid. He held his grandfather in such high regard. I never had the pleasure of meeting him, unfortunately, but there's a couple of Dropkick songs written about him. ‘Boys on the Docks’ is one of them. But this is a song where Ken is writing about being raised by his grandfather, essentially. Ken will be the first person to tell you that he was a bit of a foul ball as a kid. To have a role model like his grandfather set him on the right path was clearly so important for him, and that is not lost on him.” “Bury the Bones” (feat. The Mary Wallopers) “I wrote the music for ‘Bury the Bones’ during the first bit of the pandemic. I was sitting in my apartment, so I started recording shit, just stockpiling stuff. Often, I’ll do a demo like that and send it to Ken, and he’ll start writing lyrics to it. Sometimes he’ll have me swap stuff around, like put the chorus in a different place, but with this one, he called me and said, ‘Meet me at the practice space, and we’ll put vocals down.’ That was the summer of 2020, so we just hung on to it. We knew we wanted the Hendy brothers from The Mary Wallopers to do some stuff on this record, and they nailed the shit out of this. Their voices sound so great on it. I started working on it so long ago that to see it finally come out is a personal triumph.” “Kids Games” “We don’t often write on the road because it’s difficult, but this was one where Ken had an idea for a melody line and some words, so he and I got together and started working on it. I love The Replacements, so I snuck a little bit of a Westerberg-y type of thing into the intro riff. I love doing little Easter egg tip-of-the-caps and things like that throughout the songs—you can find them everywhere. It’s obviously not a standard Dropkicks song, but it’s very Dropkick Murphys in the way that it goes, and I think it came out great.” “Sooner Kill ’Em First” “Our producer, Ted Hutt, was in Boston with us when we were kind of working on new stuff. We were just fucking around, and the music for this song appeared. We thought it sounded very much like Red Roses for Me/Rum Sodomy & The Lash-era Pogues. Interestingly, the lyrics used to be on a different song. But the vibe of the music for that song made the lyrics seem way too serious. So, we took those lyrics, tweaked them into a more jovial Irish song, and it became a completely different thing that we felt fit better.” “Fiending for the Lies” “This song and the next one are my favorite songs on the album. I had been listening to a ton of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds when I wrote this one, and I put this demo together that pretty much sounds like what you hear on the album, with a couple of small differences. When I sent it to Ken, I said, ‘I know this is not anything close to what we’re looking for.’ But he liked it, so we started working on it. It’s very hard-hitting and aggressive, and it sounds like nothing we’ve ever done. I can’t wait to do it live. I’m pushing for us to open with it, but I think Ken’s going to be like, ‘Chill out, man.’” “Streetlights” “This is my favorite song on the record, hands down. Musically, we’d done two years of touring with The Scratch from Dublin, and between seeing them every night and listening to their albums, I started gaining a lot of inspiration. So, I made a demo of ‘Streetlights’ that was based on a Scratch song called ‘Old Dog,’ but I ended up getting blasted off in another direction. Lyrically, it’s from a part of Ken’s life that he’s not really touched on before, a very personal story from his childhood. I was so over the moon when I heard the finished version. It’s probably my favorite thing we’ve done in a decade.” “School Days Over” (feat. Billy Bragg) “About a week before we went into the studio to record this album, I texted Ken and Ted, our producer, and I sent them the Luke Kelly version of the song. It’s a song by Ewan MacColl, who also wrote ‘Dirty Old Town.’ He’s the father of Kirsty McColl, who sang ‘Fairytale of New York’ with The Pogues. Not only is it a great song with a great melody, but it seems apropos for the times. So, we started working on it. The idea of asking Billy to sing on it came up when he came to Boston two St. Patrick’s Days ago and played a few songs with us. They say don’t meet your heroes, but in Billy’s case, meet him. He’s the sweetest guy you’ve ever met in your life. He told us it was his favorite Ewan McColl song, and he agreed to do it. When we heard his vocal on this for the first time, we were in awe. His ‘There is Power in a Union’ has been our intro music for 23 years now, so to meet him and get to work with him is unbelievable.” “The Vultures Circle High” (feat. Al Barr) “When I did the demo of ‘Streetlights’ originally, it had an Irish-y outro. The idea was, I would ditch my guitar and grab the accordion, and we would do this instrumental outro. I played it for my wife, and she said, ‘That’s a separate song.’ And I said, ‘What do you know?’ Then I brought it to practice and everyone went, ‘It’s a different song.’ So, now my wife is taking credit for this because we took that part and expanded it into another song. It turned out to have that sinister Irish thing, kind of like ‘Longshot.’ And the opportunity to get Al on there was wonderful because we did so many years of touring together, and now he’s home doing his family thing. But first and foremost, people need to know that he’s very much a part of the family, no matter what is going on at home.” “One Last Goodbye ‘Tribute to Shane’” (feat. The Scratch) “The Pogues are so important to Dropkick Murphys, obviously. When I was 14, there was a young English teacher at my high school who was like 22 or 23, fresh out of college. I wasn’t the best student, but this guy realized I was big into music. I was already playing in bands and was way into traditional Irish music in addition to punk and hardcore. He showed up with a dubbed cassette of The Pogues’ If I Should Fall from Grace with God, and my fucking life changed forever. I was obsessed. These days, I could have a doctorate in Pogues’ history. More people texted me about Shane passing away than they did on my birthday. The outro is an Irish traditional song called ‘Mo Ghile Mear,’ which is what they played at Shane’s funeral when they wheeled his casket out of the church to go to the cemetery. The Scratch guys are singing in Irish, and it just worked out perfectly.”