Street Dogs

Mike McColgan – vocals
Johnny Rioux – bass
Marcus Hollar – guitar
Joe Sirois – drums

“That the band is a full-time band. That whatever Street Dogs is doing, whether recording or playing live, we’re gonna give 110%. Always. But the thing I’d like to convey most through bio or anything is that this music has an honesty and earnestness to it. The lyrics are from legitimate life experiences from the band members.”

The End.

You know, Mike McColgan could leave it at that. Few bands can sum themselves up so succinctly and accurately and truthfully in a paragraph. They have to resort to hyperbole and clichés and any other public relations gimmick to make themselves interesting. With Street Dogs, you get truth -- real feelings, uncontrived sentiments -- and music that is as gritty and unwashed as their name. Case in point: their newly-minted second album Back to the World.

From the opening anthem “Strike a Blow” through the stirring closer “Unions And The Law,” Back to the World is a defiantly hopeful, inspiring journey through the tattered heart of The Everyman. McColgan and bandmates Johnny Rioux (bass), former Mighty Mighty Bosstone Joe Sirois (drums) and Marcus Hollar (guitar) speak plainly and loudly as they champion the working man (“In Defense of Dorchester,” “Unions and the Law” or the grunt soldier missing his girl and kids, “Back to the World”), and lament the state of the country/world (“Tale of Mass Deception”) or declare a night of drunken abandon (“Drink Tonight”). You understand and agree with every word as if they were copied verbatim from your soul.

While we’re indulging in some of that hyperbole: the folksy sensibilities and rollicking guitar rock sounds like Billy Bragg backed by the Clash; Bob Dylan on Red Bull and Guinness; Bob Marley fronting The Replacements; Joe Jackson having guzzled a liquefied Che Guevara—then ditching decorum and belching loud and proud. Get the drift? It’s punk, but it’s also heartland rock -- the sound of freedom. The sound of union workers walking home at quitting time. The sound of world- and work-weariness, imbued with the irrepressible, unwavering nerve and determination of the working man.

Back to the World was written in the short year-long period following the release of their 2003 debut Savin Hill (Crosscheck Records), and is the first release on Street Dogs’ own imprint Brass Tacks, which will be marketed via DRT Entertainment. Fellow hometown boys Matthew Ellard (Converge, Billy Bragg and Wilco) and Nate Albert (The Mighty Mighty Bosstones) produced part of the album at Q Division; Paul Q. Kolderie (The Blake Babies, Dinosaur Jr.) handled the rest at his facility, the erstwhile home of legendary platter factory Fort Apache. It sounds great thanks to these guys’ hard work -- proof that Street Dogs’ ethos is its ace.

Street Dogs is McColgan’s first project post-The Dropkick Murphys, which he co-founded, singing on the EP Boys on the Docks and LP Do or Die, two of punk rock’s modern classics. He left the band in 1998 to fulfill his lifelong dream as a member of the Boston Fire Department. “I have no misgivings, no regrets…and there are no bad feelings,” he says proudly. “I still talk to those guys.”

Unable to stay away from music, McColgan and Rioux formed Street Dogs in 2002, quickly recorded the acclaimed Savin Hill album, and hit the road. The band has been touring constantly since and building a following on rapid word of mouth. They’ve recently finished a successful jaunt with Flogging Molly in the US and the UK.

Once you hear the record, the only word left is real, which bassist Johnny Rioux hits upon in this convenient bookend quote:

“Punk rock music,” says Rioux, “is a rebellious type of music, especially these days. There is so much crazy stuff, from injustice to rebelliousness, to brush over and [instead] sing about breaking up. You’re really serving music an injustice by not addressing issues. But there’s a way to combine influences…into good, catchy, hooky songs with a message…that’s even better. That’s real rebel music, you know?”

Boston, MA, is a uniquely divided city, consisting not of amorphously defined neighborhoods like the ones that make up Manhattan, but small, semi-autonomous villages with names like Allston, Dorchester, Roxbury, and Jamaica Plain. Similarly, Boston's music scene has traditionally been equally insular, with little communication between the punk, indie rock, hip-hop, metal, folk, and Celtic scenes. One of the first bands to overlap some of these fiefdoms was the ska-punk-metal hybrid the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, which included drummer Joe Sirois for most of their performing career. About a half-decade later, the Dropkick Murphys formed in predominantly Irish South Boston, fusing hardcore street punk with an ever-increasing amount of Celtic folk influences, like a harder-edged and more street version of the Pogues. The Dropkick Murphys' lead singer was the fierce, gravelly Mike McColgan. Following that band's first album in 1998, Do or Die, McColgan (a veteran of the first Gulf War) left the Dropkick Murphys to join the Boston Fire Department. Ties between the Boston Irish community and the local fire department run deep, and being a fireman has long been one of the most prestigious jobs in South Boston, but by 2002, McColgan returned to music, forming the Street Dogs with guitarist Rob Guidotti, bassist Johnny Rioux (both formerly of local street punk band the Bruisers), and a fellow ex-Dropkick Murphys member, drummer Jeff Erna.

Released in 2003, the band's debut, Savin Hill, was a proudly Bostonian album named after a tough Dorchester neighborhood and filled with local references, plus a pair of tributes to McColgan's fellow firefighters (a massive, deadly blaze in Worcester in 1999, along with the tragedy of 9/11, had badly shaken the local firefighting community) and an odd choice of covers from Kris Kristofferson and Sham 69. Following the debut, the Street Dogs reorganized, replacing Guidotti with Marcus Hollar and Erna with ex- Bosstones drummer Joe Sirois; just as importantly, McColgan left his firefighting job in 2004. After a split EP with Allston-based garage rockers the Dents (Street Dogs/Dents), which introduced their new lineup, the Street Dogs released Back to the World, featuring the proudly parochial "In Defense of Dorchester" and several songs showing an increasingly political lyrical stance. By this time, Street Dogs had also added second guitarist Tobe Bean (ex-Welt) to the lineup to round out their sound. After its original release on the punk indie Side One Dummy, the Street Dogs reissued Back to the World on their own label, Brass Tracks, in 2005. Fading American Dream followed in fall 2006 as the guys spent time on the road opening for the Bouncing Souls. The impressive and intelligent State of Grace appeared in 2008 from Hellcat Records. ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide