Boston punk-rock legends the Dropkick Murphys are hitting the road this October to honor American folk hero Woody Guthrie for their This Machine…Theater Tour.
The outing, which begins Oct. 20 at Capitol Center for the Arts in Concord, New Hampshire, will be the band’s first seated theater tour, bringing Guthrie’s words to life on their new 10-song acoustic album This Machine Still Kills Fascists, to be released digitally and on CD Sept. 30, with a special edition vinyl out in November.
The first single and video from the album “Two 6’s Upside Down” will be released on July 6.
“The project has been a long time in the making,” Dropkick Murphys founder Ken Casey said in a statement. “Nora Guthrie thought her father would’ve got a kick out of us, would’ve liked us, that we were somewhat kindred spirits so to speak, which to us was a huge honor,”
Nora Guthrie provided the band with lyrics written by her father that was incorporated into their 2004 hit song “I’m Shipping Up To Boston,” which hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart and was featured in the film The Departed.
For the past decade, Nora Guthrie has continue curating a collection of her father’s never-published lyrics for the band. In 2021, Dropkick Murphys co-lead vocalist Al Barr took a leave of absence to care for his ailing mother. Instead of making a “normal Dropkick Murphy’s album,” a press release explained, the band began combing through the lyrics Nora Guthrie had compiled for the band and came up with This Machine Still Kills Fascists, a record the band says is “the true fruition of like-minded rebellious artists collaborating – albeit nearly a century apart.”
The album title pays homage to the text Woody Guthrie famously painted on his guitars in early 1940s in the midst of World War II — “this machine kills fascists.”
The new record includes guest appearances by Nikki Lane, Turnpike Troubadours’ Evan Felker and Woody Guthrie’s grandson Cole Quest. Tour dates and ticket info can be found at www.DropkickMurphys.com.
