Los Angeles-based Irish punk/folk rock band Flogging Molly knows how to properly celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in Southern California.
Minus a few years playing outdoor events in Arizona on the holiday, the fiery band — which was born out of Molly Malone’s Irish Pub on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles in the mid-’90s — have thrown tremendously fun parties on March 17 through the years. At first, they were held in various bars, clubs and theaters and as the crowds grew, they moved into places like Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, Kia Forum in Inglewood and the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles.
This year, the band teamed up with Orange County-based Brew Ha Ha Productions for the Shamrock Rebellion, an all-day, all-ages festival that will include sets by Flogging Molly alongside Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls, Buzzcocks, Face to Face, Amigo The Devil, Skinny Lister, NOBRO and Gen & The Degenerates on Saturday, March 16 at Oak Canyon Park in Silverado and on Sunday, March 17 at the Downtown Las Vegas Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Ahead of the shows, we caught up with Flogging Molly vocalist-guitarist Dave King, solo singer-songwriter Frank Turner and Face to Face frontman Trever Keith to talk about spearheading Shamrock Rebellion.
“I mean, St. Patrick’s Day or not, we’ve always been about music and celebrating music,” King said during a recent phone interview. Growing up in Ireland, King recalls his parents going out and bringing back the pub crowd every Saturday night to his home where they’d keep the party going, playing music all night long.
“The place would go mental,” he continued. “These shows are kind of like going back to that. Sometimes you just have to go out and enjoy yourself and I think St. Patrick’s Day does that. It’s your little pass to go have a bit of a fun time and I think that’s important in life.”
FESTIVAL VIBES
What makes a music festival great is the vibe. Flogging Molly’s Shamrock Rebellion aims to have its usual high-spirited feeling of camaraderie and some good old-fashioned, guilt-free fun.
“After all we’ve been through with the pandemic and so forth, it has gotten harder to get out,” King said, admitting that for he and his wife, Flogging Molly fiddle player and singer Bridget Regan, it takes a lot to get them to get out of the house when they’re not out on tour.
“I can feel that across the board,” he said. “So the fact that we’ve created a festival, I think gives people more incentive to go out because it’s not just us: You have Frank Turner, Face to Face and the Buzzcocks. So, hopefully, it will give people more of a feeling that you’re going to participate in an event and this will become a thing. We really wanted it to be something special.”
Turner, who has toured with Flogging Molly as a solo act and with The Sleeping Souls on and off since 2010, knows about putting festivals together. He has his own multi-day affair dubbed Lost Evenings, which last year took over all of the stages inside House of Blues Anaheim.
“There’s a lot to be said for a vibe at a festival and trying to telegraph your intentions and your values to the audience if you’re either a performer or a curator,” Turner said during a recent Zoom call from his home outside of London, England. “I hope at Lost Evenings there’s a sense of camaraderie and collaboration and that doesn’t happen entirely by accident. It’s something I’ve spent a lot of time working on and some of that I learned at the feet of Flogging Molly. They’re wonderful at fostering a sense of community around their music and I’ve always been impressed by that.”
“It’s a tough thing to do,” he said of actually curating a festival. “Boy, is there a bridge to cross between your wish list and who is available and who you can afford. Certainly, Flogging Molly have screwed up this year because I’m going on after the Buzzcocks, which is ludicrous! To be on the same bill as the Buzzcocks is an honor for me, so I’m very stoked for that.”
Keith is looking forward to playing for the fans, but also the backstage hang, where he hopes to finally meet at least one member of the Buzzcocks.
“You’d think by now we’d have met anyone in the Buzzcocks at this point,” Keith said of himself and his bandmates, a group from Victorville that have been making music steadily since the early ’90s. “But I haven’t met any of them and they’re one of my heroes and one of my favorite punk rock bands of all time.”
Flogging Molly paired up with Anaheim’s Rad Beer Co., which is co-owned by Brew Ha Ha Productions’ Cameron Collins, to create the Flogging Molly Shamrock Rebellion Nitro Irish Stout. It’s a dry Irish stout, which is creamy with notes of coffee and chocolate. Plus it’s a more sociable and easily drinkable 4.4% ABV. Though he said these words may be blasphemous, King dared to utter that it rivals his beloved Guinness.
“I have to say that it’s absolutely gorgeous,” King added. “It’s absolutely fantastic and fair play to Cameron and Rad Beer and everyone else for getting it together. It’s a beer we can stand beside and fall down beside as well, all at the same time. It’s brilliant.”
The Shamrock Rebellion beer will be available for tasting and for purchase during the festival (it’s also available on tap at Rad Beer Co. in Anaheim and in select retailers). For fans 21 and older, there are three hours of complimentary craft beverage tastings (noon-3 p.m.) at the fest with a number of participating breweries offering samples of ales, stouts, IPAs and lagers, as well as seltzers, hard kombuchas and more.
SOUNDTRACK OF REBELLION
While the acts atop the Shamrock Rebellion bill have been around for decades, they still find time to produce new music, even with a busy touring schedule. Flogging Molly’s last record, 2022’s “Anthem,” was written and recorded within a few weeks.
“The last album was post-pandemic and when I say post-pandemic, I mean the minute curfew lifted we were in our basement rehearsing and wrote 14 songs in 14 days and recorded 14 songs in 14 days,” King said. “That’s the way we wanted to do it, no messing around. There was no time to go ‘Oh, let’s do this or that,’ it was just, ‘Let’s do it.’ The first song we did and plugged in was ‘The Croppy Boy,’ I think, and we all played together and the only overdubs are the hand claps. That’s what music is in our eyes and ears; that’s the way music should be and that’s the way we want it to be.”
While they’re sure to play some fan favorites like “Drunken Lullabies,” “Swagger,” “Devil’s Dance Floor” and “What’s Left of the Flag,” King said they’ll sprinkle in some of the fresh stuff; he’s got a few new songs that he’s tucked away for now.
“I was actually thinking of having some time to sit down and actually go through that back pocket, empty it out and see what we have in there,” he said of a possible gap between the American and European tour dates. “I had a few ideas I was thinking could be something very special, but I want to take my time and let it settle and see if it does in fact have what we’re all about.”
As a solo act, Turner is releasing his 10th studio album, “Undefeated,” on May 3. He’s already shared the single “Do One” and he and the band played “No Thank You For the Music” live while on tour in Australia late last year, much to the displeasure of his label as video footage ended up online.
“But we could not resist,” Turner said with a laugh.
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“I’m both furiously proud and pleasantly surprised that this is happening,” he continued. “Ten records is a lot of records. Not many people get to do that and get to do that at a consistent level and keep touring and keep having people pay attention and being excited to hear what I do. It’s a privilege. It didn’t fall from the sky; I’ve worked very hard and I’m proud of that, but at the same time, I know loads of people who worked really hard and it didn’t happen for them. So, there is luck and privilege involved in that, but yeah, I’m stoked.”
The second song on the new album, “Never Mind the Back Problems,” is a ripping track that sounds perfect for a circle pit. But will he debut it at Shamrock Rebellion?
“I don’t tend to broadly write songs with specific arenas in mind as it were, but that song is written for punk shows and that is going to be a punk show … so ‘maybe’ is the answer,” Turner said.
Face to Face put out its last album, “No Way Out but Through,” in 2021 and while Keith said select songs from that release will be in the setlist, they’ll also be peppering in the favorites for the festival dates. Last year, Keith was on Less Than Jake frontman Chris DeMake’s “Chris DeMakes a Podcast” to discuss the band’s song, “Disconnected,” a cut that will definitely remain a staple at every Face to Face show.
“I don’t know what the right word for this is — I don’t know if it’s heritage or legacy — but as a band with some years, OK, some decades, behind us, I think we’re at a point in our career as a band where I feel like we have a relationship with our audience and that we give them what they want,” he said. “We appreciate the hell outta them and I’m not going to withhold songs that are classic songs because I have some sort of artistic turn of emotion that day. So, we always play ‘Disconnected,’ as well as some other stuff from our early records, because that’s the stuff that we and our fans grew up on.”
Overall, King said Shamrock Rebellion is about celebrating all of the music and bands, new and old. But it’s also about celebrating life.
“It’s OK to go out and have a good time,” King says. “After what we’ve all been through, I think people are made to feel guilty for all the things they do all of the time. So, whether you have hair or not, it’s important to just let it down and have fun.”
Flogging Molly’s Shamrock Rebellion Beer & Music Festival
When: Noon on Saturday, March 16
Where: Oak Canyon Park, 5305 Santiago Canyon Road, Silverado
Tickets: $79 general admission; $179 VIP; $350 VIP admission and Flogging Molly meet and greet. All passes are available at shamrockrebellion.com.