News
Dropkick Murphys recently wrapped their acoustic journey with Woody Guthrie to get back to electric performances, and are now capping that chapter off with a new documentary--This Machine Rising—a movie about working class music. The film chronicles Dropkick Murphys’ journey with the lyrics of Woody Guthrie, including the writing, recording and touring surrounding Dropkick Murphys’ two acoustic albums 'This Machine Still Kills Fascists' and 'Okemah Rising,' which blow the dust off unrecorded lyrics from the Woody Guthrie archive and set them to the new music and melodies of Dropkick Murphys, shining a light on issues of Woody’s day that we still grapple with in modern times. 'This Machine Rising' debuts August 30 at Noon ET on the Dropkick Murphys YouTube channel.
At the same time the documentary premieres, the band will release powerful live acoustic reworkings of the classic DKM songs “Citizen C.I.A.” and “Worker's Song.” Both songs were recorded live at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium on November 19, 2022 during the final show of Dropkick Murphys’ 2022’s This Machine… Tour, which consisted of acoustic performances in seated theaters.
“This Machine Rising tells the story of the acoustic songs we wrote around a pile of Woody Guthrie’s unpublished lyrics. These songs get to the core of what the band believes in — and what we’ve always stood for,” explains Dropkick Murphys’ founder Ken Casey. “Acoustic folk and protest music has always been one huge chunk of the puzzle that makes up Dropkick Murphys. We were trying to find lyrics to hit the same areas that were important to us – social [and] economic injustice, organizing the working class, standing up to fascism or conservative values that we don’t agree with, fighting for the working class people…There are a lot of similarities in the band’s mindset. To read these lyrics that were written in the ‘30s or ‘40s that are so apropos to today, it’s kind of scary and powerful at the same time because it’s so relevant now.”
It’s the story of Dropkick Murphys’ 20+ year journey with the lyrics of Woody Guthrie, which began with the Dropkick Murphys’ classics “Blackout” and “I’m Shipping Up To Boston” (the latter of which propelled the band to mainstream success), and culminated with the band’s first-ever acoustic albums.
In early 2022, Nora Guthrie gave Dropkick Murphys access to unpublished lyrics that her father had never set to music. As the band began writing music around Woody’s 70-80 year old lyrics, they were struck by how eerily relevant they were to current day headlines. In an effort to capture Woody’s spirit, the band traveled with trusted collaborator and producer Ted Hutt, to Woody’s home state of Oklahoma to record the 22 songs at the legendary home of the “Tulsa Sound,” The Church Studio. The recordings were released over two critically acclaimed albums: This Machine Still Kills Fascists and Okemah Rising, a homage to Woody’s hometown of Okemah, Oklahoma. The albums interpret the work of Woody Guthrie for a new generation and exposed the band to new audiences through airplay on stations like SiriusXM’s Outlaw Country, coverage in outlets such as Rolling Stone Country, Paste, CNN, Americana Highways and SPIN, and via Dropkick Murphys’ first-ever acoustic, reserved-seating theater tour in 2022.
This Machine Rising features interviews with Dropkick Murphys’ Ken Casey, Tim Brennan, Jeff DaRosa, Matt Kelly, James Lynch and Kevin Rheault, as well as Nora Guthrie, DKM producer Ted Hutt, DKM manager Jeff Castelaz and The Church Studio owner Teresa Knox. The film also features performance highlights from the band’s national acoustic tour, as well as international rock shows, a French television appearance, and the band’s world famous hometown St. Patrick’s Day week shows in Boston.
