Dropkick Murphys’ Tim Brennan Talks New Album, Touring Buddies And Being The Handsome One!

INTERVIEW| DROPKICK MURPHYS – TIM BRENNAN by Craig Harston

Between Dropkick Murphys recently releasing their thirteenth album, the excellent ‘For The People’, and embarking on an epic North American co-headlining tour with punk rock legends Bad Religion, I was lucky enough to sit down for a chat with long time member and the multi-talented, multi-instrumentalist Tim Brennan.

NE: So you’ve been with the band for roughly about twenty years now and twenty years since the first album you recorded on, which was ‘The Warrior’s Code’

Tim: Correct, yeah.

NE: Can you tell me little bit of how it came about that you joined the band? I know it’s a long time ago now (laughs).

Tim: Sure, yeah, it’s sort of a crazy story in that everything just sort of fell into place. So, when I was a kid, I was always a drummer growing up. And when I was young, like fourteen, fifteen, I was pretty good for a young kid so it wasn’t out of the ordinary for me to be in bands with older guys. I grew up in Connecticut and there was this one band I was in with these three older guys and we would play a lot of shows around Connecticut and Massachusetts. And there was one band in Massachusetts that we would play with all the time that had the same sort of thing – three older guys and then their guitar player was this wicked young kid, he and I were probably like fifteen. And his name was Mark Orrell and about two years after he and I met, he, when he was seventeen, ended up joining the Dropkicks as their lead guitar player.

NE: Yeah, I remember Mark being with the band.

Tim: So, he went on tour and stuff and we sort of fell out of touch – I went to college and in my freshman year, I became friends with this girl and one day she was like “My boyfriend’s coming up this weekend to visit, I think you guys would really get along”. So that weekend comes, the boyfriend shows up, and it’s Mark, who I haven’t seen at this point in probably like two and a half years or something. He and I start hanging out again and we start playing music together and he realises that I can get my way around a bunch of weird shit like the accordion and mandolin and tin whistle and stuff. And so, he started floating my name to the rest of the band guys as somebody who could do the sort of multi-instrumentalist thing. Now at the time they had a member, Ryan (Foltz), who was doing mandolin and tin whistle and some stuff like that. They were doing the Warped Tour in 2003, right after the ‘Blackout‘ album came out.

NE: Of course, yeah!

Tim: So, I go on the road with them, selling merch, and then for one or two songs I would run up to the stage and I would play accordion or tin whistle or something and then ditch my stuff and run back to the merch stand and sell shirts the rest of the day. I did that for like three months in the summer of 2003 and then shortly after that, school was starting back up so I said, “Fella’s, this has been wonderful but I’m going to go back to school” – I was starting my senior year of college. So, I go back to school and I was there for maybe like a month and Ken (Casey, Dropkick Murphys singer and frontman) called me one day when I was at work after class and he said that Ryan had left the band and asked me if I wanted to join as a full time member. So I said yes, and, you know, obviously the Warped Tour was a real tour but my first tour as a band member I went out probably like two weeks later or something. And that was that! And then a few years after that, Mark left the band and instead of getting somebody who had to know every single Dropkick Murphys song that ever existed, what we did was I switched over to lead guitar and then we found a guy, a friend of ours, Jeff DeRosa, who’s just another super talented musician that can play anything, we scooped him up and he started doing all of the multi-instrumentalist stuff. And that’s how that happened! So, very little legwork had to be done on my part (laughs). I literally just sort of fell into one thing after another until I ended up in the band in the most wonderful way possible.

NE: That’s brilliant – I imagine you’ve not looked back since?

Tim: No, that’s right, I have not – there was a brief look over the shoulder when I had to tell my parents that I was quitting college to join a rock ‘n’ roll band. But once we got through that it was smooth sailing.

NE: That’s good, that’s really good. So, in the intervening years, has there been any particular album you’ve enjoying working on, or any favourites that you’ve got?

Tim: You know, I always have a good time in the studio and obviously everybody says that their new album is their favourite but as a guy who writes a lot of the music this is the one I’m probably the most proud of, simply because, you know, I think there’s people who aren’t huge fans of ours that would say that they know what we sound like and I feel like this is the first time in a while where we’ve made a big step in a different direction as far as what the songs sound like. Of course there’s like your standard sort of Dropkick Murphys sounding stuff but we did stretch our legs a bit as there’s a handful of songs on this one that are way different for us and I’m always super proud when we can do that, especially being in a band that’s in a very specific niche, You know, as far as like Irish punk rock stuff, to be able to sort of find ways to stretch the boundaries of what that means is always something I’m super interested in so I feel like we did a really good job doing that on this one. So the short version of that very long answer is that the new album is the one that I had the most fun with, I think (laughs).

NE: That’s great, and for my part I think it’s brilliant, it’s a great album.

Tim: Thank you so much.

NE: It’s excellent. So, that does actually bring me nicely onto my next question. Obviously, ‘For The People’ released last week and you’ve already touched on it a little with where the sounds gone. For me, I felt it had a little bit of an old school, back to basics feel to it as well. Was that like a conscious decision or did it just come about naturally – you may have answered some of this already with your last answer (laughs).

Tim: Well, it came about fairly naturally, yeah, there’s songs where we’ve really tried to do something different and I agree, there’s a few songs where they’re very throwback sounding. And as somebody who was a fan of the band before they joined that’s super exciting for me to have new songs that sort of have that excitement and energy of the original stuff that drew people to the band in the first place. I would never want to be in a band that ignores the sort of touchstones of their past music so I’m always happy when we can sort of make reference to the older stuff like that, whether it’s sonically or lyrically or whatever. So, I think that the way that I’ve been describing this album to people is that there’s a bunch of stuff that sounds like what we’ve never done before and then there’s just sort of like real classic sounding Dropkicks songs on it. And so I think it’s kind of the best of both worlds in that sense.

NE: Yes, and I’d totally agree with that, that’s brilliant. So, you’re clearly very proud of the album – is there any particular favourite songs in there, or any you’re looking forward to playing live as I imagine you’ve not gotten around to performing many live just yet?

Tim: Yeah, there’s two songs from it that we’ve played live, the first single ‘Who’ll Stand With Us’ we played a decent amount on the last tour and then I think maybe once or twice we played the song ‘Chesterfields And Aftershave’ live, we definitely did it at one of the St. Patricks Day shows. And apart from that we haven’t gotten to play anything out yet, which I’m super excited about, but yeah, there’s two songs back to back on the record, ‘Fiending For The Lies’ and then ‘Streetlights’. ‘Fiending For The Lies’ is probably the most different sounding thing that we’ve done in a long time, so I’m so excited to play that one live. We’ve sound-checked it a few times and based on the excitement I feel when we’re just sound-checking it in front of nobody I think I’m going to have fun playing that one!

NE: Yeah (laughs).

Tim: And the song after that, ‘Streetlights’ is probably my favourite song that we’ve ever written at this point. Musically, I was so proud of it and then lyrically, any time Ken touches on his childhood, because he had a very interesting time when he was growing up, and so he has lyrics that sort of make reference to then, and I’m always totally down for it. And that one, y’know, I’ll leave it to him if he wants to talk about what the song’s actually about but that song makes reference to a very specific time in his life that he’s not written a lot about. And so, yeah, that’s got to be probably my favourite song on the album and maybe even my favourite song that we’ve done in a very long time.

NE: That’s good to know, it’s a great song. So, I know you’re back out on tour soon and you guys always tend to play with some pretty big punk bands. Obviously, you’ve had the tour with Rancid, you’ve been over in the UK not so long ago with Pennywise and Gogol Bordello and of course the upcoming tour is with Bad Religion which is huge – I’ll be honest, we need that tour over here (laughs), we’d love it if we got that over here!

Tim: Knock on wood, I’m sure that it’s all going to go well in the States and so it would not surprise me if we show up over there with Bad Religion in tow as well.

NE: That would be amazing. But is there any of those bands that you enjoy touring with more than others?

Tim: We’ve been so lucky in that every band that we go on the road with for the most part are complete gentlemen and we always have such a good time. We did about two years of touring with this band from Dublin, The Scratch. Touring’s great but like, you get tired after a while, typically halfway through the tour the list of priorities starts to change a little bit and you start to prioritise like, resting as much as possible versus doing other things – it’s rare that I would spend a whole tour making sure that I ran inside to see the first band. But I tell you, every night I would go running inside to see The Scratch play. Not only are they the best guys but they are so amazing to watch live, they sound so incredible. That was the most fun I’ve had touring with another band in a long time as far as just being excited to go out and watch them, and they would let me play songs with them every once in a while on stage, that was so great! I’m sure we’ll go out with them again. Luckily, we got them to come and sing a couple of songs on the album with us as well, people will notice that there’s a couple songs that feature The Scratch and if for some reason people haven’t checked them out yet make it the first thing you do because, holy cow, they’re so amazing!

NE: I was going to mention, yeah, they’re on a couple of tracks on the album and it sounds like they have the full package for you there when you’re on tour together.

Tim: Yeah, they’re such great guys and so fun to be around, that’s always a plus.

NE: Absolutely. So, again, there’s lot of great bands you’ve toured with but is there anyone on your wish list to tour with, obviously I know The Scratch would be on there.

Tim: That’s a good question, I mean, yeah, there’s plenty of bands – I would love for us to do a run with The Chats, that Australian band, I thought they were so great.

NE: Great band!

Tim: Of course, I’m hard-pressed in the midst of an interview to come up with decent answers for that (laughs) but, yeah, there’s a good amount of up and coming bands out there that I would love to do trips with. We have some friends in the Boston scene who’re great. There’s a guy who worked for us for a little bit and has his own thing, his name’s Cody Nilsen and I actually produced a record for him that hasn’t come out yet, hopefully it’ll come out at some point in the near future but he’s done two solo records and his second one I produced. It was amazing to be in the studio with him because he’s such a talented kid and such a nice guy. He opened one of the St. Patricks Day shows for us on this last run in Boston and maybe someday we could do a full tour, that would be nice. There’s a lot of sort of up and comers out there that are really great right now.

NE: It’s good, because of course those bands, it’s nice when they get on with the bigger bands and it gives them that exposure.

Tim: Absolutely, yeah.

NE: It’s a really good shout. So, you touched on it earlier, you play a lot of different instruments in the band, the accordion, the lead guitar and everything – I’ll be honest, your accordion solo’s are always amazing when you play them live!

Tim: Thank you so much (laughs).

NE: Yeah, as soon as you’re up there with the accordion it’s just perfect.

Tim: (laughs) So growing up, I was the biggest Pogues fan, I don’t have the authority to write any books about anything really but I could write a book about The Pogues with the amount that I know about them (laughs). And so, over the years, we’ve had the pleasure of touring with them on their Christmas tour in 2005 and doing some other things with them so over the years I’ve had the absolute pleasure of becoming friends with James Fernley, the accordion player for The Pogues, who is the reason I started playing the accordion. He’s taught me so much, the reason that I can do anything cool on the accordion is because he’s taught me how to do it, so that’s been incredible. But thank you, that’s nice of you to say.

NE: No, it’s always brilliant. And that might answer my question actually, I was going to ask if there’s any particular instrument that you enjoy playing most?

Tim: I do really enjoy playing the accordion – it’s heavy, that’s the only problem, and like if I was just standing there that would be one thing but there’s a lot of throwing it around that happens. So it’s tough to wield, especially if you’re having like an aching back or something, but I would have to say, gun to my head, the drums is the thing I have the most fun playing. That’s the first thing that I ever really started on and up until I joined the Dropkicks every band I was ever in I played drums. And I still do it now, if you see over here I have like the shelled version of the V drums (pans camera to show drums in the corner of the room) because I wouldn’t put my wife through the headache of having me slamming on real drums down here. It was funny, there was one time where she was like “Y’know, you can bring your drums home and set them up in the basement” and I said ”I don’t think you want to approve that” (laughs) and she was like “No, no, it’ll be alright”. So, I went to the Dropkicks practice space and got all my drums and when I tell you, when I put the cymbals down the noise was loud enough that I was like no way, I can’t do this to her (laughs). So, luckily I found this set of V-drums. Normally, they have like the pads but this has the actual shells with depth, so you feel like you’re actually playing the drums but the person that lives upstairs doesn’t have to suffer through it as well. So, I still get to play the drums every day, which is lovely. And then, any time I’m doing demos for new Dropkicks stuff or whatever I always do the drums on those. So yeah, if I had to name one, it would probably be the drums, I would say.

NE: That’s great, and it sounds like you get a lot out of playing those, especially in your own space. But again, as you say, the accordion’s your other one, especially in a live setting.

Tim: Oh, thank you, I’ve got this bad boy right here (lifts up accordion). He sits at my feet all day (laughs).

NE: Brilliant (laughs). So, last question from me – I don’t know if you’re aware, but you’re quite often labelled as, and this is no disrespect to the other guys, you’re labelled as the ‘good looking one’ in the Dropkick Murphys (laughs) and I was wondering what you might say to that if it ever came up?

Tim: Okay, that’s the first time that I’ve ever hear somebody say that but I will take it and I’ll say “You know what people say to me in interviews all the time, “you’re the good looking one”” – I’m really going to rub that in the other guys faces so I appreciate that.

NE: Nice (laughs), it might be a bit of a boost for you when you’re back with them. So, thank you for your time today, it’s been absolutely brilliant talking to you.

Tim: Thank you so much.

NE: No worries. Good luck on the upcoming tour and I’m sure the albums going to do brilliant as well – I mean, you guys have never had a bad album but it’s up there as one of your best.

Tim: Thanks, that’s so nice of you to say.

NE: My personal favourite is ‘Going Out In Style’, I love that one.

Tim: Oh, yeah!

NE: Yeah, but I’ve been really enjoying listening to this one.

Tim: Thank you so much, that’s really nice of you to say, and I appreciate you taking the time to ask questions and everything about it.

NE: No worries, okay. Thanks, Tim, enjoy the rest of your day and take care.

Tim: You too, awesome, thanks so much, I appreciate it.

‘For The People‘ is available to stream now with the physical versions due to release on and available to purchase here