Spider Stacy of Celt-punk godfathers, The Pogues, has said that Flogging Molly takes the sound they started to a whole new level. King has called the Pogues a huge influence on his band. Others include The Dubliners, Stiff Little Fingers, the Clash and Johnny Cash. Flogging Molly’s distinctive sound erases genre limits.
King started FM in Los Angeles in 1997 after playing with Fastway, the metal band formed by “Fast” Eddie Clark of Motorhead, and later Katmandu, with Mandy Meyer of Krokus. King retained Katmandu’s Epic Records deal when they broke up, but negotiated out of it when the label opposed use of traditional Irish instruments on his first release.
Flogging Molly’s sound developed from songs like “Devil’s Dance Floor” and “Black Friday Rule” that King wrote with guitarist Todd Hutt and bass player Jeff Peters in the late nineties after he left Epic. King had to find other musicians for the band when Hutt and Peters left for a record deal with their previous band, Reach Around. He put Flogging Molly together one player at a time.
The band — fiddle player, Bridget Regan, guitarist Dennis Casey, accordion player, Matt Hensley, bass player, Nathen Maxwell, drummer George Schwindt and mandolin player Bob Schmidt, the band’s seven members, range in age from their twenties to their forties. Accordion player Matt Hensley, also a pro skateboarder, left the band briefly in Jan. 2007 for personal reasons, but was back on the road with them by October. “I missed the feeling of knowing where you’re at...” he said in a statement on the FM website “I missed being able to affect people in a positive way,”
The band’s name comes from the pub where they played every week, Molly Malone’s in Los Angeles. “We used to play there ever Monday night, and we felt like we were flogging it to death,” King told Kerrang magazine, “so we called the band Flogging Molly.” Flogging Molly released a live album of their Molly Malone’s shows Alive Behind The Green Door, in 1997 on 26-F Records. Their persistence there paid. The band was signed to their current Side One Dummy record deal after label owners came to one of their Molly Malone’s shows. They released their debut, Swagger in March 2000. Drunken Lullabies followed two years later. By 2006, Flogging Molly had sold over a million total copies combined of releases including Alive Behind The Green Door, Swagger, Drunken Lullabies, Within A Mile of Home, and their 2006 Acoustic/Live/DVD set, Whiskey on a Sunday, a candid documentary.
Flogging Molly’s songs are full of references to the Catholic Church, a lot of punk rock, and a lot of great drinking songs. Some of their best-known songs are intense emotional ballads with personal references to Dave King’s childhood in the Irish conflict, his eight-year exile from Ireland in the U.S. and his father’s early death. He writes his lyrics on a typewriter manufactured in the same year as Ireland’s Easter Rising to celebrate his heritage.
Their new album, Float was released March 4. Recorded in Ireland, the album contains 11 new songs. Matt Hensley plays on the album, following his return to the band.
Flogging Molly is known for relentless world touring and raucous live shows. Their Green 17 Tour is an annual event that began this year on Feb. 1 and includes 30 cities and 34 shows. They will spend St. Patrick’s Day this year in Tempe, AZ. Flogging Molly also regularly plays the annual Warped Tour, which Dave King has called “The Survivor of rock.”
Dedication and close-knit, family ties with their fans distinguish the band. “I feel as good about meeting the fans as they feel about meeting me,” bass player Nathen Maxwell once said. Guitarist Dennis Casey has said, “I just give it all I’ve got because I just believe in it that much.”
By Frances Brennan
FLOGGING MOLLY