Spinner

Dropkick Murphys Stand With Wisconsin Workers, Don't Want to Be 'Friggin' Bono

Kerry Brett

Last year, when the Dropkick Murphys were finishing songs for their new album, 'Going Out in Style,' they could not have predicted how timely the one feisty nugget, 'Take 'Em Down,' would turn out. The track is all about the struggle for workers' rights and given the Wisconsin protests against Union bargaining rights being axed, the song has added resonance.

"That song was written in August and was written about our families' dealings with organized labor," Dropkicks' singer/bassist Ken Casey tells Spinner. "It's the '50s when the fight for collective barging was waging. All of that was ratified in the late '50s for the first time in Wisconsin and here we are, someone's trying to take it away. We found it to be very ironic. It's a protest [song]. It really ties in because it was written very much in the spirit of the battle to have those rights in the first place."

In a show of solidarity with the workers struggle, the Dropkicks released the song early and created a limited-edition Take 'Em Down T-shirt. Proceeds from the T-shirt sales benefit workers' rights organizations. Apparently, the Wisconsin protesters got wind of the song and immediately adopted it.

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"We were on our way to Milwaukee to play a show, so we thought 'Let's put this out to inspire the people who are fighting,' the 100,000 people who are sitting up there, spending all their time trying to help do what they can to sway opinion and votes. I saw a YouTube link of them playing the song up there," he says proudly.

Casey makes no bones which side of the line he stands on here. "We supported it from the inception," he says. "The fine line is, I've always been turned off by bands who use politics. I don't want to be friggin' Bono here. Technically, we don't mix politics with music, but these are things that we try to say lyrically and in our actions."

Watch a Fan-Created Video for 'Take 'Em Down'

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