It was definitely a challenge when we got to the studio and decided not to use any amplifiers. But if we’d done it when we first talked about it, it probably would’ve been an album that sounded like our normal stuff. The plan had been to do this album for 20 years, ever since we went down to the Guthrie archives. “I don’t know whether we would have been ready to do it any sooner. “It took us 26 years to get around to doing this,” says Casey.
Though not part of that record, the same year, he released the iconic song This Land is Your Land.
When the Second World War broke in 1939, Guthrie moved from Texas to New York, where he wrote and recorded Dust Bowl Ballads in 1940, a record that recounted the Depression-era dust storms in his home of Oklahoma in the mid-1930s, which had driven many of the young and working Okies to California in search of work. He fought for peace even when his country didn’t want it. Woody Guthrie, who passed in 1967, was a pioneer of American folk, lauded for his ability to wield poetry like a weapon in the fight for socio-economic justice. The power of the album, however, lies in the history rather than the instruments. Lynch wielded a 1960s Gibson J-45, with its golden mid-range and full, juicy bass, as well as a small-bodied acoustic Martin 000 for a couple of overdubs. “It can come at you in a more subtle way.”Īs for guitars, Casey says “the guys broke out the good ones for ”.īrennan relied on a 1968 Gibson Country Western, a flat-top acoustic also beloved by Sheryl Crow, only with a narrower neck and a lighter build than the original late 1950s version. “As a weapon against ignorance or hate, music can cast such a wide net in terms of reaching people and garnering their attention, more so than a news article or something,” says Ken Casey, the Murphys’ chief songwriter, in his earthy Bostonian accent with a vaguely Irish lilt. The record is named after the words Guthrie scrawled on his guitars in the 1940s during the Second World War: “This machine kills fascists”.
Instead, Dropkick Murphys did the most punk thing they could think of by presenting Guthrie’s anti-fascist, proudly working-class lyrics against a purely acoustic backdrop. The Celtic band are well known for their blasts of amplified, flesh-tingling guitar.
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