So Friday night we made our yearly trek to the Electric Factory to see my wife’s favorite band Flogging Molly. The band came to Philly as part of their traditional Green Tour and a great night it was! The show started with “Speed of Darkness” a song from their forthcoming album Don’t Shut ’em Down and right from the start you knew Dave was in a good mood and it was going to be a good show. After the opening number Dave shouted out – “I hope you all aren’t planning on going anywhere after, ’cause we’re gonna be here for a fuckin’ long time if you know what I mean.” The band then proceeded to put on a great two hour show filled with a bunch of old crowd favorites like “Drunken Lullabies”, “Worst Day Since Yesterday”, “Rebels of The Sacred Heart” and a song Dave said they hadn’t dome for a long while but we know they have because it’s been the encore at several shows we’ve been to “Black Friday Rules” . They mixed in with the old some new tracks like “Saints and Simmers” and the title track from the new album “Don’t Shut Them Down.” In the middle of the show they took a break and played a short acoustic set that included “The Wanderlust”” from the album Whiskey on Sunday and “So Sail On”. Prior to singing the songs Dave made a comment that most times you will find them sitting around with fiddles, banjos and acoustic guitars.
The show ended with the song “What’s Left of the Flag” with a large Irish flag behind them and newspaper headlines and photographs of the Irish violence that Dave acknowledged has finally ended!
The three song encore consisted of “Float” from the album with the same name. Complete with this video…..
Flogging Molly is a different kind of quasi-punk celtic rock band, what sets them apart from the rest of the bands you may know is the great songwriting of Dave King coupled with the unique line up of instruments included in this seven piece band: banjo, mandolin and mandola -played by Robert Schmidt, the accordion of Matthew Hensley and the fiddle, tin whistle and Uilleann Pipes of Bridget Regan (Mrs. Dave King) and then there’s the great guitar of Dennis Casey and the stromg rhythm section of Nathan Maxwell on bass and the drums of George Schwindt, on their website Dave King says this about the band:
“We’re not a traditional band,” explains Dublin born singer/songwriter King. “We are influenced by traditional music and inspired by it, but without question we put our own twist on it.” When asked to categorize the band’s sound King thinks for a second and replies, “Well, if it didn’t have mandolin, accordion, fiddle and whistle, I guess it would be punk rock, and if it didn’t have guitar, bass and drums, it would be traditional Irish music.” In the end King simply proclaims that, “You can’t be bothered being labeled.
But back to the last two songs of the encore, first, “Tobacco Island” sung with a background of a map showing the path from Ireland to Barbados, where in the 1659 during the rule of Oliver Cromwell over 50,000 men, women and children went sent to Bermuda and Barbados, as slaves under the command of other generals after Cromwell had left for England. I am going to delve into this in the book To Hell or Barbados by Sean O’Callaghan. The last encore song was “Seven Deadly Sins”. The show ended when the lights came up and Monty Python’s “The Bright Side of Life” came on as the people exited the band danced on stage and Dennis Casey and Robert Schmidt came down into the crowd and a good time was had by ALL!
The night was started by two bands, first from San Diego The Drowning Men followed by Moneybrother a band from Sweden of the two I enjoyed Moneybrother more!
Here’s a video from the Philly last year (we were a little farther back then the maker of this video!!