Dropkick Murphys Fights Back in America’s ‘Time of Crisis’ on New Album ‘For the People’

After releasing a pair of acoustic albums created from unrecorded Woody Guthrie lyrics — This Machine Still Kills Fascists in 2022 and Okemah Rising in 2023 — Boston’s Dropkick Murphys is making noise again with its politically charged and topical 13th studio album, For the People.

“Coming off the Woody Guthrie albums, we knew we were gonna want to bounce back in a louder, more aggressive way,” co-founder and frontman Ken Casey tells Billboard. “It wasn’t necessarily a plan; we just knew we’d be ready to be loud, and I think it comes across that we’ve been waiting to do that.”

Call that an understatement. For the People‘s 12 tracks (out July 4 via Dummy Luck Music) blaze forth with punky, Celtic-flavored ferocity, from the galloping opener “Who’ll Stand With Us?” through the slashing attack of “Kids Games” and the grinding assault of “Fiending For the Lies.” Billy Bragg guests on a cover of Ewan MacColl’s “School Days Are Over,” while Dublin quartet The Scratch joins the Murphys for the reeling “Longshot” and “One Last Goodbye (Tribute to Shane),” a spirited and mildly irreverent tribute to the late Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan.

Fans will be particularly pleased to hear vocalist Al Barr, who’s been on leave caring for his mother in her battle with Lewy body dementia, on “The Vultures Circle High” where he returns to trade lines with Casey.

“We’re always in touch, and I always keep him abreast of how we’re making out with the process,” says Casey. “He wanted to hear a couple of demos and I sent him (‘The Vultures Circle High’); we’ve always had these songs over the years where literally I’d say one person physically can’t sing them because it’s meant to be a trade-off, almost like a relay race. [I said] ‘Hey, Al, I think this would be a good one for you to join me on.’ He was like, ‘Oh, man, I’ll have to get practicing,’ [because] he’s taken a couple years off and hasn’t been singing or anything. But it’s really second nature. I think he did a great job.”

For the People‘s guest list also features Ireland’s the Mary Wallopers on “Bury the Bones,” while Pennywise guitarist Fletcher Dragge takes part on “The Big Man,” a track that serves as Dropkick’s salute to him. “We’ve had a long history of having guests on our albums before people really had guests regularly,” Casey notes. “It’s just something we’ve always loved doing, and we’re doing it with actual kindred spirits who we respect and share something in common with.”

Casey adds that the band wanted to give an opportunity to artists who otherwise might not have a bigger audience in the U.S. through their new album. “In terms of The Scratch and Mary Wallopers, it’s maybe a way to give them a little bit of a hand with introducing them to some new people in America; they’re doing fine in other parts, but we feel like there’s some Dropkick Murphys fans who haven’t heard of them yet,” he says.

The album’s overtly political topics should not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the band. “We have a long history of speaking out about issues that are important to us,” says Casey, though he adds that he’s “a little more worried now” after Donald Trump’s election last November and all that’s transpired since. Most of the songs were written while on the road during the presidential campaign in the fall and recorded during December and January, while “Who’ll Stand With Us?,” with its declaration that “we fight the wars and build the buildings for someone else’s gain” came after the election and dovetails with the furor over the wealth inequalities in Elon Musk’s DOGE cuts and aspects of the so-called Big Beautiful Bill.

“The lyrics to that song work at any time,” says Casey. “That’s always been the case of the wealthy and the powerful trying to take away the rights of those with less than them. The same old playbook’s being repeated — immigration, racism, whatever the tools are that are used to divide people are being put into place once again. We bicker amongst each other while the ultra-wealthy siphon everything that’s left out the back door.

But Casey notes that in 2025, there is one major difference to the strategies being employed by those in power. “They’ve become so good at this game that they’ve now got 50 percent of regular people openly supporting the billionaires and what they do,” he says. “They seem to know that they’re giving all the power to the wealthy and the elite, and somehow they’re OK with it, thinking somewhere down the line it’s gonna work out for them — which is never the case.”

Casey adds that despite the album’s tenor, the Murphys did not see the writing on the wall during the fall. “I didn’t think (Trump) was going to win,” he recalls. “I remember saying at the last show we played prior to the election, ‘I hope this is the last time I gotta utter the f—ing a–hole’s name out of my mouth.’ I really believed it would be. Little did I know.”

But while working with Guthrie’s famous protest lyrics was on-brand for Casey and company, the exercise did not make a specific impact on For the People. “I think we’ve always been inspired by his lyrics, in general” Casey explains. “When you talk about Woody’s approach to songwriting, the idea is if you’ve got a couple of good chords, don’t screw it up. If you’ve got a story to tell, don’t over-complicate it … Obviously we’ve always been inspired by protest music, whether in the form of punk rock, Americana, the Pete Seeger or Woody Guthrie mode or even going back to traditional Irish music. We think America is in a time of crisis, and so being the band we are, we’re gonna sing about it.”

Casey is confident that protest will be a theme of Dropkick Murphys’ Summer of Discontent tour with Bad Religion and the Mainliners, which kicks off July 22 in Spokane, Wash. “We’re trying to find that balance of not letting the bad things that are happening consume you, but at the same time standing up and speaking up as well,” he says. “That’s what we do; we’re excited to be able to stand with people in protest but also help take their minds off life and tough times, whether it be politics or just the everyday worries of trying to live life in 2025.”

Dropkick Murphys also plans to perform in Europe during the fall, then roll into a 2026 itinerary that will commemorate the 30th anniversary of the band, with a number of other tours and celebrations planned.

“That’s a tough one to get my head around, to be honest with you. We started on bet to put a band together on two, three weeks’ notice and open for my friend’s band,” Casey recalls. “The goal was to win a $30 bet, which at the time was a lot of money — and he never paid me! And here we are 30 years later, so be careful what bets you accept and what you wish for. You might go on a rollercoaster ride you weren’t expecting.”