We got the opportunity to chat with the one...the only...Ryan Foltz from the Dropkick Murphys after they had just finished playing the second of three shows at The Avalon in Boston, Massachusetts for the 2002 St. Patrick's Day festivities.

XROXX: First off, how are you doing?

RYAN: I'm doing pretty good, little drunk at this point, but feeling pretty good.

XROXX: You just recently released your split cd with Face to Face on Vagrant Records. It's kind of interesting because you guys have contrasting styles for two bands. How did you guys come about working it out?

RYAN: We played with those guys on the Warped tour at one point and somehow eventually ended up doing a split. We've done splits with a lot of bands over the years and it had been awhile so we wanted to do one.

XROXX: There has been news about charity auctions you guys are doing for the firefighters of New York City for 9/11. How did you guys go about organizing that, who did you go through, whose idea was it, and what do you really want to get out of it?

RYAN: I really don't know what the business end of the whole thing was but we're doing everything that we can. The last tour we did we donated quite a bit of the proceeds to the 9/11 fund. That's a lot of what the band is about is the working class and the people who charged in there and did their job and ended up dying in the big mess that happened that day. But as far as how it was organized and stuff I really wouldn't know.

XROXX: When you guys generally put records out each album has a distinct sound, each is a little different from the next, but you have kind of formatted your own sound. Do you guys have a certain thought process when you go in to make a record going ok this is how I want to sound, or is it more like whatever happens it's how it comes out, or is it just a natural progression?

RYAN: No, we write the songs kind of as a group effort. The last record was a little bit more acoustic just because it was the first record that me and Spicy played on and it's just a matter of us participating more in the songwriting process. This record is still coming together, the next record, we're working on it right now. We really don't know exactly how it's going to come out. It's just a matter of writing songs that we like. You know, hopefully the record comes out. Hopefully people buy it.

XROXX: The standard, most routine interview question of all time; who were some of your influences growing up as a band and you personally?

RYAN: I would have to say we all listened to a lot of the early punk bands The Clash, The Dead Boys, The Ramones. A lot of that kind of stuff obviously comes out in our music and a lot of the guys grew up on Irish music and had parents and grandparents that listened to that. And it has worked its way into our sound. I don't know what else to say about that.

XROXX: What is the one thing you want people to think when they hear the name Dropkick Murphys about 20 or 25 years down the road? What impression do you want to leave behind with your generation of fans?

RYAN: Just that we kind of did it our own way and we had our own thing. That's really all you can hope for with all the corporate music and all the horrible stuff that's happening today. We're playing what we like, having fun, and making some kind of a living at it. That's the most you can hope for. If this all collapses in six months, we'll all have had a great time and we'll walk away from it feeling great because no one told us how to write these songs. We're just doing what we do.

XROXX: You've done big festivals like the Warped Tour. You've also obviously done club dates all over the world; Japan, Europe, you name it you've done it. Which do you prefer, the wider outdoor atmosphere of the Warped Tour or the more intimate club dates?

RYAN: Mostly we prefer to play indoors. We're a bar band, you know. We all hang out in bars, we all drink it up. We're most comfortable inside in the middle of the night after we've had a few beers. We connect with the crowd and jump out there and do our thing. The Warped tour is a lot of fun too. It's a lot of different kids that haven't seen us and they come out and see us. It's in the middle of the day and it's hard to make rock happen when the sun's out but it works out pretty well. As far as Europe goes the last time we played there it was incredible. The biggest shows were all sold out and kids were going absolutely crazy. Everywhere we went it was a lot of fun. Japan's always insane, which is really cool. You would think with this Irish band from Boston, what connection would any Japanese person would have with us? I have no idea.  But every show we do over there is sold out and the kids are insane literally. They're piling all over the stage, going over the barricade, ripping of their shirts and whipping them around and throwing them. It's crazy. It's really cool.

Ryan Bray

ryan.bray@XROXX.com

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