The Long and Winding Road

The national live music circuit has been rumbling for a few years now about the powerhouse ability and utterly impressive presentation of a seven-piece traditional Irish-meets-punk rock outfit from Los Angeles known as Flogging Molly.
This crew of Guinness-quaffing players features the traditional setup of an electric guitar, bass and drums, with the addition of mandolin, accordion, fiddle and tin whistle and acoustic guitar. The effect of what is essentially a big, thunderous rhythm section behind a traditional Irish band is an unmistakably huge and relentlessly driving sound that is classically catchy and pulse-pounding. Dave King, the vocalist and rhythm guitar player at the helm of Flogging Molly, has a vibrant and infectious stage presence, and comes off on stage like a confident, hearty, ale-fueled master of ceremonies.
To hear King tell it, though, he is not necessarily always the passionate leader of one of new music's most interesting and quickly rising independent punk bands. In fact, says King from his home in Los Angeles, he suffers from pre-show jitters; more so these days now that Flogging Molly is headlining festivals as well as their own tours.
"Being the last band on is very nerve-wrackin' to me. I love performin' and I'm very confident about it, but I still get very nervous. Once I go on I'm fine, but before I go on, I can't even string a sentence together," says King, who answers quickly and flatly when asked about a cure for his pre-show jitters. "Yeah, drink. Guinness, but I'm not allowed to have Bushmills before I go on. I did that one night down in San Diego and I apparently I told the crowd at the end of the night to go home and suck their mothers' tits. That's not a good thing to do man, do you know what I'm saying? So I was banned from doing that. I have a couple of pints of Guinness before I go on and that'll usually settle me down."
Like many seasoned frontmen, King's nerves calm the second he hits the stage and an explosive personality comes out. He leads the band as a consummate frontman - with a friendly demeanor and assertive stance, the product of a life spent in music.
"Well I've been playin' music since I was a kid, but I've never gotten over my nervousness, no matter where it is, either. It could be in front of two people or two thousand people - it doesn't make any difference," continues the amiable Irishman. As Flogging Molly's rhythm guitar-playing and singing frontman and songwriter, the lyrical content and musical intent of the songs comes chiefly from the mind, heart and soul of Dave King. Writing music, he says, has become a catharsis for him, a way of getting what's in his head out, though it had never occurred to him that his pre-performance nervousness could be a product of the personal nature of his music.
"I never fuckin' thought of that. That's a very good point," Kings pauses for a minute and refers back to a time when he was new to American shores, having left his homeland under not necessarily the best circumstances. It's that string of experiences, he says, that began to form his habits as a songwriter. "I think that if I hadn't moved to America, I wouldn't be writing this way. I think it took me leaving my home to make me look back at myself. And it's funny that you brought that up because I'm actually talkin' to ya at the table where I always write my songs and it's a very passionate, personal little space that I have. I write all my songs and all my lyrics right here. It's very personal, that's a very good point, and I've never actually thought about that before - that I'm going out in front of a crowd every night and singin' about my dead father. But the whole atmosphere turns it into a celebration."
The atmosphere King speaks of both arises from and engulfs the entire experience that is a Flogging Molly performance. The last time King and his crew landed in Chico, CA at The Brick Works, for instance, it was as the supporting act for Epitaph Records mainstays, the Bouncing Souls. But it was Flogging Molly who stole the show that evening. From the second the band stepped onto the stage until well after they had made their exit, the entire audience, a capacity crowd of frothing, screaming all-ages fans - old and new - clamored for more of the music that ignited the air throughout the entire space for the better part of an hour. Kids with Mohawks and liberty spikes, indie rockers in horn-rimmed glasses, skinheads, average Joe College types, frat boys and everyone in between all pushed up as close to the stage as they could get, singing along in unison with every lyric, pumping their fists in the air with every break, change and rhythmic pattern that poured off the stage, and exploding with thunderous applause at the end of every number - especially crowd favorites like "Salty Dog," "Black Friday Rule" and "The Likes of You Again," a song King wrote about his father.
"I wonder, does he hear these people singin' these songs?" poses King, whose father passed on when the singer was young. "All he did was pump gas for a living, and he had a lot of things to say, but he came from an Ireland that was different, that was under British rule. He had a lot of opinions but he never got them out, so it's almost like I'm gettin' 'em out for him. So when I hear people sing 'The Likes of You Again' and songs like that, it's almost heartbreaking. When I write my lyrics, they take a lot out of me, it's very personal and it takes a lot of energy for me to write. But when we play live and I see the crowd reaction like that, it's like a fuckin' medicine to me. What else could I do with my life, what else would I want to do with my life? This is just great, it really is."
Music is something that King has dedicated his life to beginning at a young age, from the traditional Irish folk of his early days and the influence music of his parents' music to his infatuation with the rebelliousness of rock 'n' roll.
"Flogging Molly is definitely the combination of a lot of things, and for me it started out in Beggars Bush, where I was born and lived for 17 years," explains King. "My father died when I was ten, but I always remember before he died. We just had one room - we lived in a tenement house ya' know - but for some reason Max, we had a fuckin' piano in the room, and how it got there I'll never know and how it left I'll never know, but it was there. Most Friday and Saturday nights, my mother and father would go out for a couple of pints and they'd come back with a gang of people and sit on the floor or in chairs or wherever, all around in a circle, and they'd each take turns singin'. My mother was a piano player, my uncle was an accordion player, there were tin whistles out and I'd play the spoons. So now, not knowing it at first, I'm going back there in a sense - I'm trying to go back to that honesty and that tradition of storytelling.
"My father said to me one day, 'I'm gonna take you out to buy a couple of albums,'" King recalls another major influence, "and he bought me two live albums. The first was by The Doubliners, Live at the Gate Theater, and the other was Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues. I remember him playing them all the time, and they must have been ingrained in my brain as well. And then of course, as I was growing up, I obviously didn't know at the time that it's what I'd be doing now, and I tried to run away from all that traditional music. If you had played a fiddle to me, I would scream my fuckin' head off, I didn't want to be involved in that anymore, I wanted to get away from it and I wanted to be in a rock band. The first band I ever saw in my youth that really fuckin' blew my head off was a group called Horslips. They mixed traditional music with the rock of the time and it intrigued me the way that, one minute you'd have a fiddle, and the next minute, you're fuckin' rockin' out. I'd never seen that before, and I remember standing there and thinkin' to myself, 'I've got to do this.'"
King made a career out of music, writing songs and fronting rock bands that didn't touch his heart but afforded him a living and an opportunity to do something that he loved. At a time when his life in Ireland was in a tough spot, he was offered the chance to come to America - an opportunity and a needed change, he thought.
"When I came to America, I came over to join a band, but the band didn't work out," reveals King, who found himself having to choose between heading back to his native Ireland or staying in Los Angeles and making a life there. "I thought, 'The sun is shinin' here and it's probably rainin' back home. I think I'll stay here.' So I stayed here and got out of a record deal that I had with Epic Records. I had a solo deal, but it just didn't work out and I asked if they would drop me. They did, and I was just gonna pick up the acoustic guitar and just play for myself. That's all. I had a little bit of cash left over so I decided to take some time, write for myself and go to a bar and sit and play, just for me. And that's how Flogging Molly started."
King began playing music as a soloist, writing very much for himself and playing out in a Los Angeles bar called Molly Malone's. He wasn't looking for it at the time, but those nights at Molly Malone's were the humble beginnings of Flogging Molly. King didn't set out to build a band, he was just looking to find himself as a musician, and in the process fell into a good situation that just got better as it unfolded.
"The band just came together, it wasn't put together. When I met our accordion player, Matt Hensley, for instance, I'd never even heard him play. I met him in the bar one night, there was no band on and we just happened to be there drinkin' at the same time," remembers King. After a few pints and some polite conversation, the two had resolved to play together. The band's formation was a sublime union, says King and it worked itself out naturally. "It just all came together like that. I hate to put the mockers on it, but the thing is that it was meant to be. I've never experienced anything else like this, that's for sure."
King's personal connection to his music is equaled only by his personal connection to his band mates. Referring back to the vivacious nature of Flogging Molly live shows, King says that the prevalent atmosphere is a product of the band's passion for the music and his own passion for making a connection with the crowd. It's important for King to know that his fans are getting something out of what they're seeing and hearing, and it's the music's personal nature that drives the raw emotion in expression, resulting in such a powerful energy that permeates the room.
"Even though we're a full-time band and we generate that energy of having a good time, I'm certainly very private about what I put out. I mean, I put out so much crap for so many years that, if not for me or my immediate family, I wanna leave something behind that people ten years down the road pick up, put on and think, 'wow this is really good,' whether I'm around or not," exclaims King. "I want to leave something behind because I've been in so many bands and I've written so much bollocks - the worst lyrics of all fuckin' time and they're all out on albums, on CDs - that the thought alone of listening to them would drive a stake through my fuckin' heart. So yeah, it is very personal, but that's the way I want it to be. I want to be able to stand up on stage and bleed every fuckin' word that I say. There's no bullshit up there. We're having a great time, yeah, we're havin' lots of fun but I'm still very fuckin' serious about what I'm doin'. I've become that way because of my past and that's fine, I can live with that and I love that. I want it to be that way."
It's King's past and life experiences that lead him to Flogging Molly, for better or for worse - and these days, it's definitely for the better. Flogging Molly tours almost perpetually, pounding the pavement in the U.S. and in Europe, and will be spending the coming summer as headliners on the Warped Tour. With a new album, Drunken Lullabies (Side One Dummy), out now and a quickly growing following of doggedly loyal fans, there is seemingly no end in sight for King and Flogging Molly. And this is what King has been working towards his whole life.
"When I was sittin' down in Molly Malone's with my acoustic guitar, if you'd asked me if I thought I'd ever do the Warped Tour, I'd say no," King supposes. "The way this has gone, even though it seem like it's been really quick that we're doing all these things, to me it's been years in the making in the sense that it's really taken me this long to be able to stand on my two feet as a human being and as a songwriter. And the band - I mean, the energy I get off them as people, not just as musicians…as I said it's something that I've never felt before. I've never been involved in a band like this. It's really weird - there's a genuine fuckin' love for each other there."

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