Dropkick Murphys guitarists Tim Brennan, 26, and James Lynch, 29, sauntered down the stairs under the Aggie Theatre into a small stone-walled room under the stage.
In the alley, two large shiny buses idled. There, the rest of the band hung out behind the dark-tinted windows. The Dropkicks live on the road two to three weeks at a time, returning to Boston for a week to 10 days to see friends and family (two of the members — Ken Casey, vocals and bass, and Al Barr, vocals — have young children).
As a sound check above rumbled the basement ceiling, they sat down for a few quick questions before their Fort Collins show last week.
Q: Despite the image, the rock lifestyle requires a certain kind of discipline to find success like the Dropkicks have.
Lynch: It’s the only thing I can do. I didn’t give myself any other option. Didn’t go to college — just barely got out of high school. But yeah, all day it’s all business — we have a to-do list posted every morning. But every night on stage is like the first night.
Q: You tour two to three weeks at a time. How do you stay healthy?
Lynch (playing with a pack of Marlboro Reds): I don’t! But it’s like family; everyone takes care of each other.
Q: Does the altitude here bother you?
Lynch: There’ll be times when it’s tough to catch your breath, but you just keep going.
Brennan: You get a lot of advice, but you gotta listen to your body. You learn to live like this. We played a lot of dates on this tour with The Mighty Mighty Bosstones. They kinda showed us the ropes.
Q: You played some of the Red Sox minor-league ballparks with the Bosstones. How was that?
Brennan: We’re not used to playing venues that big. It was like, how are we gonna fill this place?
Q: That feeling when you have a party and worry nobody’s going to come?
Brennan: Yeah, and then it was like, “Aw, you showed up!”
Q: Have you been back to Colorado since your Red Sox beat our Rockies in the World Series?
Lynch: I was in Denver for the World Series.
Q: Do you think the Sox can do it again this year?
Brennan: Oh, sure — but we can talk about the Celtics if you’d rather.
Q: We’ll see about the baseball. Back to music — your songs have a lot of choruses. It makes it fun for the audiences, too.
Brennan: Yeah, everybody in the band sings.
Lynch: That’s why the crowd’s the eighth member of the band.
And with that, Evan the tour manager, ever-protective of the group, signals it’s time to go — till 11 p.m., when the band finally took the stage after local screamer/bellower Bill the Welder (a friend of the Dropkicks) and Los Angeles girl-punks Civet.
Celtic folk soothed the sold- out crowd as the Dropkick Murphys ascended the stage and exploded into “For Boston” and segued straight into their new single, “State of Massachusetts.” The audience looked like it was at a prayer meeting, faces upturned, hands waving in the air to the opening banjo chords of “Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya.”
Like most Dropkick songs, the ballad burst into minor-key thrashing that sent bodies and kilts flying in the pit.
Introducing the 1998 cut “Curse of a Fallen Soul,” lead singer Ken Casey told the fans what they wanted to hear: “It’s good to be back in Colorado — we’ll be back next week in Denver, too.”
Civet singer Liza Graves brought some girl-power to the testosterone-fest on “Dirty Glass,” belting out what these Colorado fans seemed to feel: “Murphy, Murphy, darling dear, I long for you now night and day…”
A couple of Fort Collins cops came in the backstage door, smiling but alert for danger. “I hear their music is good,” said one. “But there’s a mosh pit and things going on. We gotta go around,” they say, opting against wading through the crowd.
As if on cue, singer Al Barr, looking Henry Rollins-esque, shouted the “God Willing” chorus: “see you on the other side…”
The stage filled with women for “Spicy/Kiss Me I’m Shit-Faced,” which many did. The cops left and the pit resumed its waves of aggression-surrender as thrashing boys made way for crowd-surfing girls.
“Here’s a little song we wrote for the Colorado Rockies, can you say 2-3-4?” said Casey with a smirk. The crowd happily chimed in on “Tessie,” the 1903 folk song rewritten as a Red Sox anthem.
The hour-and-a-half show with two quick encores ended exactly at 12:30 as the Dropkicks reprised “God Willing” with a stage full of fans, all singing “I’ve come here to put my arms around you/and say one final goodbye/Yeah, I’ll see you on the other side” to each other and the band.
Kristen Browning-Blas: 303-954-1440 or kbrowning@denverpost.com
Dropkick Murphys
Celtic punk. With the Offspring, Paramore, the Spill and Canvas. Fiddler’s Green, 6350 Greenwood Plaza Blvd., Englewood. Saturday, $15-$35. 303-830-8497 or .
