Flogging Molly's Dave King: "Irish music has always been punk to me"

It’s been a busy summer for Flogging Molly and their frontman, who finds himself somewhere in rural Czechia, fitting in a phone interview amidst a packed schedule. Hopping from metal to punk to folk festivals, you could be forgiven for not being able pin the band to a singular genre. For Dublin native Dave King however, it’s always been more straightforward.

"Irish music has always been punk to me," he says. "It always had that attitude. When you hear bands like the Dubliners or Horslips doing their thing in the ‘70s, and then the Pogues — they took it to a new generation."

While Flogging Molly have carried a similar spirit since forming in California in 1994, the singer’s own musical journey began a little earlier. He first made his professional mark in the early '80s as the vocalist for the hard rock outfit Fastway, founded by ex-Motörhead guitarist "Fast" Eddie Clarke and ex-UFO bassist Pete Way. After that band dissolved King found himself in Los Angeles, feeling lost.

“I didn't know what the hell I was doing in my life, after having already been in a band which travelled around the world,” he explains. “I tried everything to make ends meet. I'd work in the clubs that I was playing, cleaned the toilets and did whatever it took for me just to stay alive so I could hopefully do what I wanted to do.”

An Irish pub in L.A. provided a lifeline — and more. While playing at Molly Malone’s, King met his future wife and bandmate, Bridget Regan.

“The minute I met her, I knew something was there,” King recalls. “[Being married to someone in the same band] might not work for a lot of people, but for us it's absolutely perfect. We adore each other, we spend every day together. When she told me she was a fiddle player,  I said ‘Well I'll pop over to your place tomorrow morning and maybe we'll start working together,’ and that's how it started. The songs I'd already written took on a completely different colour.”

Flogging Molly began to build a devoted fanbase at the venue, with their name being a nod to how often they’d play the place. They recorded their first live album with just two microphones — one on stage and one in the crowd, and managed to scrape together enough cash to conjure up their studio LP Swagger, which boasts mixing from the legendary Steve Albini. A figure synonymous with '90s rock thanks to his production work with bands like the Pixies and Nirvana - who also had a longstanding relationship with Flogging Molly -  he passed away from a heart attack earlier this year, aged 61.

“You won't find anybody like that anymore”, King reveals. “He was one of those people that wasn't great at giving advice, shall we say, but once you knew what you wanted you know he would gladly do everything in his powers to get that. Anything was possible with him. It was it was such a loss.”

Though the band found creative success in L.A., as well as the rest of the United States, King describes his experience in the City of Angels as “prison-like”. A change in Visa laws, which was unbeknownst to the singer, meant that if he ever left the U.S, he wouldn't be able to return.

“I was bound to one place,” he states. “That was very frustrating and I think a lot of that came out the first few albums. The government changed the law on me, and I didn't know about it. It screwed me up for almost ten years. We couldn’t leave America, and I think we lost a lot of ground in Canada, Europe, and everywhere else because of that."

Despite their stateside success, King also reveals a frustration with the band’s lack of recognition from the media in his home country.

“It's shocking, to be honest," he says. "We've had three top ten albums in America, but you wouldn’t hear a note of it in Ireland. Anytime we've ever done an album, Hot Press we're the only ones that ever reached out to do anything about it.

"The crowds have been the least of our troubles in Ireland. They've always been amazing, the warmest bunch, believe me, but [the Irish press] don’t see it as rebel music or punk, or people’s music. They think of it as ‘diddly-eye’ and ‘da-da-da,’ and that couldn’t be further from the truth."

Recent events at this year’s Electric Picnic would seem to suggest that young people think otherwise, with King singing the praises of emerging acts like The Mary Wallopers and The Scratch for their rollocking embrace of Irish sounds.

“There's some great bands coming out,” King observes. “Maybe it's time to come around again and say that it's okay to celebrate where we come from and how we do things. It's great to see bands taking a hold of something and doing it their own fucking way, so I wish them all the best.”

Away from music, King is a die-hard football fan, and has done multiple interviews for his beloved Manchester United’s website and fan club. A particularly fond marriage of his two passions came in 1988, when he was invited to contribute to ‘We Are The Boys In Green’, ahead of Jack Charlton’s men’s foray into the European Championships in Germany that year.

“I was asked out to Windmill Lane,” King says. “Paul Brady was there, a couple of the Dubliners were there. We were doing a backing track so when the football team came in they'd know what to sing. The whole fucking team came in and it was unreal. We all went out to the Dockers pub afterwards and had a load of pints with them, even though they were training the next morning!”

The Dockers is well-known haven for sailors, and Flogging Molly have spent plenty of time on the high seas themselves. Their signature ‘Salty Dog’ cruise has become a revered tradition among fans, with this year's iteration of the floating festival seeing Irish punk band SPRINTS join the lineup.

"It’s just a wonderful community on the seas," King says. "People get all the booze and the food they want and get to see the bands they love. It's turned into this amazing thing and there's a whole group of people who call themselves 'The Shipmates'. It's a wonderful community on the seas. We get a bit of shit for it too, for the environmental side of it. I understand that and maybe it will come to an end some day, but for Christ's sake it's okay to have a bit of fun, especially with the world we live in now.

"Fuck the begrudgers,” he laughs. "That's what I say."