FLOGGING MOLLY
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took up songwriting, if my mother for one minute thought that I would one day be singing my songs onstage for a bunch of people, all over the world, she would have lost her mind. So it is a celebration, a celebration of sadness.” Mom had another final request – she told her son and his spouse to go through her belongings after she was gone, take all the pertinent photographs and mementos they wanted, then leave all the furniture and appliances behind, lock up the flat, and throw the key away. And that’ s essentially what they did.
After leaving Clarke’ s punk-metal Fastway, King wound up in Los Angeles on a working visa, and ricocheted back to his Gaelic roots by forming Flogging Molly out of a bar called Molly Malone’ s, where the ever-growing ensemble( today it’ s a septet) took up a popular Monday-night
legal, it’ s like,‘ No, we’ re not going to do that – we’ re going to go after them.’ It’ s just despicable.”
For the recording of the Vanguardissued Life, however, the band went back to Ireland, and worked with U2 producer Joe Chiccarelli, who emphasized the musicians’ innate rabble-rousing oomph. The last Flogging Molly disc, the grim Speed of Darkness, was released six years ago, highlighting the unusual career problem it faced in the interim – its exuberant shows had become such popular affairs, they could easily keep touring, ad infinitum, and never bother to release any new material at all. It was a Herculean task just to piece together 2016’ s two“ Jericho”/” Sullivan” singles. Finally, late last year, the bandleader made a pronouncement: No more gigs until everyone
Flogging Molly in 2012
24 illinoisentertainer. com may 2017 residency. But when he went in to discuss acquiring permanent US citizenship via a green card, he was blindsided by the news from his lawyer that immigration laws had changed and his visa had already expired. That’ s why he feels the injustice of Trump’ s proposed travel ban so acutely – he basically had two choices at the time: Leave the country and stay in Ireland for the next decade, or keep under the radar in Los Angeles and continue to pursue his craft. Wisely, he opted for the latter. For eight long years, during which he couldn’ t see his mother, he was an illegal immigrant, the kind of scofflaw our current president would have deported if he’ d caught him.
“ And we were starting to get the band really going at the time,” says King, 55.“ But we couldn’ t go up to Canada or down to Mexico or anywhere, really – we had to stay within the four walls of America. So I eventually got my green card, and then we started traveling all over the place. It was still a scary situation, but because I was a white-looking guy who blended into the community I was living in, I was one of the lucky ones. That was 15 years ago, and it’ s gotten worse now. Instead of working to make these citizens who were born here had scattered to their respective home bases and written their heart out on an album’ s worth of new material, which they would then arrange and track as soon as possible. They wound up with several extra songs, which might be issued this Christmas as an EP.“ Or we could put out another LP in two years instead of six,” King proposes, laughingly.
Every day the group took the Dublin train to the studio, they rattled past the real-life Adamstown.“ It was the first citylike town built in Ireland since the‘ 50s, and it had churches, schools, shopping centers – everything anybody would need,” King explains.“ But obviously, the crash went down and businesses were not moving in, people were not moving in, and the commuter train that went there from Dublin apparently only had a couple of people a day riding it. But it’ s starting to get there, and maybe with a bit of luck and a bit of hope, the Irish economy is beginning to grow again. But we had a huge housing crisis, and there’ s a huge homeless population now. But hopefully the government will come up with an assistance program to accommodate them, to makes
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