FLOGGING MOLLY - DENNIS CASEY and MATT HENSLEY

"When someone believes in what you have done that much, it recycles back into us." - Flogging Molly

PREVIEW:



ON EPISODE 50 - THE SHOW:

WATCH THE FULL SHOW HERE:

On Science this week, D-Man and Jeff discuss the recent photos and data from NASA's Juno Mission to study the planet Jupiter. The topic on What Fuels You stems from the idea of creating for yourself, being true to your own vision, even when you start getting a positive response from a fanbase of your work. Then a crazy contest opportunity, shoutouts and birthdays, and the hosts get angry about wearing pajamas in public on The Roast. 

ABOUT DENNIS CASEY AND MATT HENSLEY:

Guitarist Dennis Casey and accordion player Matt Hensley play in the seven-piece Irish punk band Flogging Molly. Dennis and Matt talk about their own musical upbringing and what it is really like playing with one of the hardest working bands in the world. Plus they talk about recording in Ireland and how they started the yearly Salty Dog Cruise. Matt is also an accomplished professional skateboarder, and he talks about his connections to that industry.

TRANSCRIPT:

Jeff: Starting out a show like this, especially with two incredible musicians like yourselves, a question that we always like asking, and I'm gonna start with you, and then we'll walk down. What got you into music? I always love asking this question. Either it's an influence or something in your life that really made you gravitate towards music, and I'm talking early.

Dennis: In the beginning, I remember going over ... I had an uncle, who his father owned a bar, and it closed or something and he put all the cool stuff in the basement, the jukebox, pinball machine, pool table. And he filled the jukebox up with Elvis 45 Sun Records, and the early RCA ones. As a kid, I would go over there and it was free, so you could hit any button. So I would listen to it and I was just really intrigued by it and I really got into it. I think it all started there, my love of music. It took a while, because my family wasn't really into music and we didn't have a stereo till I was 14, I think. It was a gift I got, and then I just devoured it. That was all I focused on and did. I wanted to play the guitar, and I started playing guitar. Yeah, the rest is history.

Jeff: Just never looked back?

Dennis: Yeah, I never looked back. My one vice used to be buying CD's and records, but now everything's on these little devices.

Jeff: Yeah. It's way easier.

Dennis: It is. It's easier. I still like the physical product, and the whole experience is so different now. And I know I'm jumping ahead to now, but the way ... When I was younger, you'd buy a record and you'd open it, you'd put it on, you'd sit there and listen to it, and either read the lyrics or just look at the album cover. That was the experience you had, where now it seems like I listen to music while I'm doing everything else.

Jeff: Right.

Dustin: Do you think there's something lost in that? Do you think it's not getting appreciated the way it should be, nowadays?

Dennis: I think there's something lost and I think there's something gained, because for someone like me, you can absorb and listen and experience music more often. Instead of, if you just had records like I did, you can't bring it to your car, so to speak, and listen to your records. I'm sure some people did something like that, but ...

Jeff: That's true.

Dennis: I think what's lost, though, is that whole experience, but what's gained is you have more access to more music.

Jeff: Like a quality versus quantity argument, almost.

Dennis: Could be.

Matt: In this modern age, you can get turned on to so many new bands. It's so much more easy to investigate stuff. We just talked about this the other day, but in the old days you actually had to do all kinds of work to even figure half the shit out. You'd have to go to record shows, and read zines, and go to ... There was no internet, so that's how you figured it out. Now, there is something pretty convenient about just pressing a button, then all of a sudden, "if you like this band, you might like these three other million bands," and then you just keep on going down that river. It's pretty sweet. But there is something extra rad about playing a record. My memory of not only just the music, but it is of that experience of looking at the record cover while it being played, and imagining whatever.

Jeff: Right. Yeah, totally.

Dustin: I always think of the Meatloaf record where he's like-

Jeff: Bat out of Hell?

Dustin: Yeah, Bat Out of Hell. I don't know why, as a kid, I was fascinated with that.

Dennis: You know, that's another good point, when you, as a kid, you go to a record store, and that record has a really cool cover. I hated it, by the way. You buy that record and you think it's gonna be this Black Sabbath metal, and it turns out to be this horrible-

Jeff: Show tunes.

Dustin: Yeah. You're right.

Dennis: ... music. I would buy records by the way the cover looked. Because, in the beginning, I'm talking like when I was a teenager, there's publications, to Matt's point, you had to find out about all this stuff. If you didn't read all these magazines about what band was what, or ... You know, you're just going to the record store and thumbing through records.

Dustin: It wasn't always pay dirt, right?

Dennis: Yeah.

Dustin: A lot of times you're like, "Damn it, this band looks so sweet." And then you're like, "What? What's going on?"

Dennis: I remember buying the Smiths, Meat is Murder, and I'd never heard ... I thought it was gonna be the most vicious punk rock record ever.

Jeff: You were wrong.

Dennis: You know what I mean? Meat is Murder, and the guy has-

Dustin: Is there any examples of things that go the other way, where maybe it's like, "Oh that's gonna be wimpy," and then you put the record on and it's like blaring, rock 'n' roll.

Matt: I don't know.

Dustin: Who did a soft cover album but hard music?

Dennis: That's a great question.

Jeff: That is a great question.

Dennis: I've never had that experience.

Dustin: Me neither.

Matt: There might be a couple of western and swing fans, or country guys who buy a Hank III record, thinking it could be his grandad, and you turn it on and it's not.

Jeff: That's true.

Dustin: It's almost the magic in it, like he's infiltrating ...

Matt: Which I love.

Dustin: ... country music.

Matt: Which I love, by the way. Yeah.

Dustin: Yeah, it's great.

Matt: He's definitely doing it with the ...

Jeff: So Matt, speaking on ... Back to early musical influence, I'm very curious to find out. You play an instrument that is something that not very many people pick up. Where did accordion come into your life?

Matt: Well, yeah, not a lot of people do it.

Jeff: Yeah. I mean, Weird Al comes to mind ...

Matt: I hear you, and my roommates and my girlfriend who's now my wife at the time, they were not necessarily fans of it.

Dustin: They weren't stoked on it, huh?

Matt: They were like, "What the hell are you doing?"

Jeff: "Can you put that down, please?"

Matt: Yeah. Like just, "Why don't you do like most people do. Play the drums, bass, guitar? Fuck, you know, rock shit and punk shit." I mean, the first time I remember hearing it and liking it was with the combination of, when I was much younger I would go to Maine in the summers because my mother's from Maine and her family's mostly from Scotland. So I'd hear Celtic music being played as a young person. I just was super young, seven years old and of course I'm just dancing around and we have cousins and stuff come drink all my old man's whiskey and play music, and I would just dance and thought it was great. Then I'm from California, so before the internet, going to Maine was like going 10 years back in time. I show up 11 years old or whatever, 12 years old in Portland, Maine, and I got fucking Vans on, checkered Vans, my hair's dyed ... I'm a skateboarder and then I'm mixing with people that ... It's not behind, but it's just such a different vibe, right?
So when I found whatever, punk music and that vibe, I totally turned my back on all that Celtic shit. I was over it, and then it wasn't till much much later when I was 17 or so that I got reintroduced to it, maybe through the Pokes. Because that kind of takes that ethos and turns it upside down, where for me I'm like, "That's a very acceptable way to re-engage that music." That's how I was like, "Wow, that is fucking so ..." It reached me in a way that maybe other things didn't necessarily, and then through that, you investigate and you kind of go down the hole, but living in California, I played a lot of ... by accident, my mom would just put it on AM radio driving me around, going to soccer practice or whatever ... I listened to a lot of Mexican music too. I actually really liked it, and just never put it all together, and then later, even going on skateboard tours around the country, I'd go to pawn shops and stuff and always fuck with an accordion and loved it. It's a pretty weird, complicated thing to just all of a sudden do, but once I picked it up and started playing it, I just have never put it back down. It's my favorite.

Dustin: How old were you when you picked it up?

Matt: Like, maybe 24?

Dennis: Excuse me. He does never put it down.

Jeff: This is a rare moment right now.

Dustin: So wait, that leads to my question. Have you ever played the accordion and skateboarded at the same time?

Matt: I have.

Jeff: Yay!

Dustin: That's great.

Matt: Yeah. Actually I wouldn't probably do it today, but 20 years ago, yeah. I was dared to do something, so I was playing a tune, then kickflipped over a chain, whilst doing it.

Jeff: Video of that?

Matt: No. It's pre-iPhone.

Jeff: Aw, man. Do you still skate?

Matt: I do, just not all the time. Not as much as I'd like to. We do a cruise every year now, Flogging Molly does, and last year we had our skateboard ramp on there.

Dustin: Oh, that's cool.

Matt: We had all my old teammates from H-Street, and we had like 15 skaters from that team. We had [inaudible 00:09:40] skateboarders in the world ... We had everybody. Danny Way, Eddie Elguera, Tony Magnusson, the entire Art Godoy brothers, everybody.

Jeff: Wow. All on a boat in the middle of the ocean.

Matt: Sal Barbier ... It was pretty incredible. We work on that cruise so much. I mean, we actually work behind the scenes making sure it's all cool in the gang, and in my head I'm like, "Okay, so like a month or two before the cruise goes out, I'm gonna start getting rust off." Because I can skateboard for real, but it takes some time to get that rust off. My brain will write some skateboarding checks that the rest of me really can't cash, so I was thinking I was gonna spend all this time getting that rust off but I just didn't. I just was too busy working on that, and then I remember just, we hadn't even thought about getting lights on the ramp yet, so it was dark and I'm like, "I actually really haven't skateboarded in three or four months here," and dropped right in. I'm like, "Wow, okay. This is gonna suck for a little while." And my son who's just about to turn 20, he skateboards every day, so when I'm around him, I tend to do it more.

Jeff: That's awesome.

Dustin: That's cool.

Jeff: Speaking on the cruise because you brought it up, I'm very curious how an Irish punk act like yourselves decided, "You know what we're gonna do? We're gonna get a bunch of our friends' bands and we're gonna get a cruise, and we're gonna go out in the middle of the ocean and go to the Caribbean." You guys started this a couple years ago. Where did that idea start from?

Dennis: Yeah, where did it start from?

Matt: We've been kind of like ... There's not a "hooray" moment that everybody's like ...

Jeff: "We're going on a cruise!"

Matt: It was just, over time we've done ... Some of the songs we sing about, there's been an easy equation to piracy.

Jeff: Oh, totally.

Matt: So you maybe could take that and go one step further. We've had talks where maybe we were gonna get a pirate ship, and fucking sail it port to port and kind of do like a Sex Pistols on the Thames fucking gig, where we shoot through your harbor, get down and see how that happens. But we ended up slowly investigating that. It was way too much money. That drifts into a millionaire yachting sort of a vibe, but now you have a pirate ship with a crew. It starts to get ludicrous. But we have always thought it would be a good idea at some point. Exactly how that looked, we didn't really know. And that's the thing. We fought with ourselves ... and Dennis, you can create me if I'm not right here, but the one thing that I didn't like about it when we started talking about it is just the word "cruise ship."

Jeff: Yeah. That's the thing that turns me off.

Matt: It kind of goes against this band.

Jeff: Right, exactly.

Matt: I find that I look ourselves as a pretty working-class band. We're not necessarily yachting around or cruising around, so that was the thing I didn't like. How do you fix that? So what we do is just, we do it. We pick the bands hand-done, and when you walk on that ship, it's like, yeah it's ship, but it's like the inmates are taking over when you go on there. It doesn't feel posh in a shitty way. It feels like, "Oh my god, they let the punkers take over the cruise ship." Everything is thought about. The music that you hear from the moment you walk on that ship in the hallway, everything has like this, "Oh my god, are they playing the fucking Vandals on the lido deck?" It has a sense that you ... and then, Dennis, I know you can testify but within 10 minutes of being on that cruise ship, people are drinking and hanging out. There's this great feeling of camaraderie that comes over you. You're like, "Wow, we're all in this together." I can't describe it, but you know that if there's any other ship that wanted to fuck with this ship, they would lose, because you'd just be like, "Yeah!" And that's hard to describe. It's hard to say even on this ... but it actually is there. No one feels like ... I don't know. I walk off that ship feeling legit.

Jeff: That's so awesome.

Dennis: Initially, I was really skeptical. I have to be honest.

Jeff: Yeah, that's what I wanted to know.

Dennis: I was like, "This doesn't sound right to me." I was never on a cruise before, but I just had visions of shuffleboard and piña coladas and ...

Jeff: Right. Yeah, exactly. Old people.

Dennis: I was skeptical all the way up till the day I got on the boat. I walked on, and I met two people from Belgium. The first two people I met, and I was like, "Alright, I think this can work." And then like Matt said, you go to the main part of the ship and there's all these people there, and there is a camaraderie. Everybody's excited to be there and there's a lot of music and fun in the air, and it just turned into this wonderful festival kind of thing.

Jeff: It's awesome that you guys take all the reins on it too, because that makes it ...

Dustin: Did you buy a boat?

Dennis: No, no no.

Matt: "Can we land our helicopter in front of your joint here?"

Jeff: But at least you guys are making sure that your fans and the bands that you're involving in this are having the best experience possible, and because you guys are so integrated in making this happen, and I think that's awesome. I mean, just since 2015 you guys have done this. Some of my favorite bands have been on this with you guys, like Gogol Bordello and ...

Matt: I would tell you, that sensation we're talking about ... Sorry to interrupt you, but the fact that like, "I don't know if that will work for me." That's not just us four talking. That's across the board, like when we wanted to get Rancid and stuff.

Jeff: I was gonna say, yeah.

Matt: We'd have to kind of tell them the same thing. I remember talking to Lars like, "It's not that."

Dennis: "It's not what you think it is."

Matt: Yeah, and when I've talked to those guys afterwards, they totally are 100% like, "Oh my god. That was fucking on-point."

Dennis: They wanna do it again.

Matt: Because it does feel, for a lack of figuring out some other way of saying it, like the crazy people have taken over the asylum, in a great way.

Jeff: That's awesome.

Dennis: When you offer free booze to Flogging Molly fans, you would think ...

Matt: It's dangerous.

Dennis: ... a lot of [crosstalk 00:16:07]

Dustin: I see broken bottles and ...

Dennis: Well, they don't serve bottles.

Dustin: No?

Dennis: They have bottles of whiskey, actually.

Matt: It's not suicidal, it's just ...

Dennis: But I think the whole vibe of it is that everybody maybe is aware ... I don't know. It's not complete mayhem where there's just debauchery everywhere.

Dustin: You gotta think, if there's a jerk on the boat ...

Dennis: It only takes one.

Dustin: ... you're dealing with that jerk the whole time. You can't kick them off, can you?

Matt: Well, there is a place to ... There is a boat jail.

Dennis: Yeah, there is a little holding area.

Matt: If you wanna get extra rad, there's a place for you to hang out.

Dennis: I mean, we're also very ...

Matt: It's a tank.

Dennis: ... involved. We're not in some private wing, waiting on ... We're right in the middle of it, hanging out with people by the pool, having some drinks and eating food with them and ...

Matt: Yeah, it's not meant to be separated between the ...

Jeff: Which is awesome. And you guys are saying, you'd think there'd be a lot of debauchery, but you're inviting some people who are known for that. I mean, like NOFX and Fishbone. Both Dustin and I actually ...

Dustin: I think of every Gogol Bordello show I've been to ...

Jeff: ... and Gogol, yeah.

Dustin: I don't even dance and I can't help but dance at a Gogol show. It just bring out the madness in you.

Jeff: Yeah. I wanna talk a little bit about, you guys are continuing it up, and in 2018 you're doing it again and that's really exciting. I think I saw a lineup. Is the lineup confirmed already for that?

Dennis: Yeah.

Jeff: Can you talk a little bit about that?

Dennis: Offspring, Vandals, Buzzcocks, Lagwagon ...

Jeff: The best and ...

Matt: Skinny Lister ... it just goes on. The list is ...

Jeff: And you guys do it for three or four days, right? Like down the Caribbean and back? Tickets are on sale now, right?

Dennis: Yeah, they are.

Jeff: Oh, man. I'll put up a link for everybody who's listening and watching so you guys can get your tickets, because that sounds like one hell of a time.

Dustin: So where's it take off, where does it land? Where do you go?

Matt: Well, it always leads out of Miami. This year it's going to two different ports. What's the different port this year?

Dennis: There is, but they always have an island you gotta play on, and I forgot what that's ... It's in the Caribbean.

Jeff: Oh, so you get off the boat and you actually play [crosstalk 00:18:17]

Matt: Yeah. That's part of a cruise, you get off for a bit.

Jeff: Oh, awesome. Awesome.

Dennis: The ship stays way off in the distance and they have these little ... What are they called? These flat ...

Jeff: Dinghies?

Dennis: Dinghies, boats that take everybody in, and you invade the island and you take over and there's a stage setup and us and another band always play. But this year, we're going to a different place.

Matt: Keys.

Dennis: I know Key West is one of the stops.

Jeff: Oh, very cool.

Dustin: Really?

Jeff: Very very cool.

Dustin: Wow, that's so awesome.

Matt: Of course there's been a lot of tragedy in these [crosstalk 00:18:44]

Dennis: We planned this before the ...

Dustin: My mom kicks it in the Keys when she's [crosstalk 00:18:49] and stuff now.

Matt: But I'll say, I've talked to a bunch of different people about that, and these places that got so devastated, like 99% of their income is through tourism, so you could have this argument I guess, and in my own brains I'm like, "Wow, so this sounds like this is out of a Sex Pistols song. We're holidaying other people's miseries." But the truth is, if your economy is 99% tourism, the best thing you can do is bring tourists there.

Dustin: Is bring people there, yeah.

Matt: Is to like, SS Salty Dog's parked out in front of your zone. We're gonna go and spend some money and try to help those people.

Jeff: "Come on, punkers, let's go."

Matt: Yeah.

Dustin: "Let's support the community."

Matt: Absolutely.

Jeff: Well, that's awesome. Speaking on travel a little bit, I'm curious on this. You guys this year came out with your newest record, Life is Good, which is killer by the way, and you guys are touring on that right now. This is, I believe ... and correct me if I'm wrong ... the second record that you've recorded overseas in Ireland, right?

Matt: That's correct.

Jeff: You did Float and you did Life is Good over in Ireland. What is that experience like? Especially for a band like you guys. Do you have the same kind of reception over in Ireland as you do in the States, or is it completely different?

Dennis: We do not have the ... I mean, people think that we kill it in Ireland. We do well, but it's countries you wouldn't think like Germany and Belgium and the Netherlands, we have a bigger fan base there. But the whole recording thing was really different than anything we've done. It's in the middle of Ireland, and there is nothing around it so you have to have ... It's gotta be catered, and there's a pub connected to the studio. So you can go somewhere but it's just surrounded by farms.

Matt: Right, and sheep everywhere.

Dennis: While you're doing takes ... It's all windows. There's cows going by ...

Matt: Randomly just scooting around.

Dennis: Ducks ... If you walk to where you're staying, there's always like four dogs, three chickens, and geese and yeah, it's really secluded.

Dustin: Sounds perfect.

Dennis: It is.

Matt: It is, the isolation to clear your mind and kind of keep you in the zone. We've done different records in big-ass cities, which is also great, but there's a lot of distraction. We all have lots of friends like, "What are you doing tonight? We're getting fucking crazy, we're going to wherever." No one's calling you to do that at Westmeath, Ireland. And if they do, it's like, "I'll meet you in an hour in Dublin for some pints or whatever." But you get to focus 100% on what you're doing, so it's pretty sweet.

Dennis: Yah. They have all these interesting things you can do like shoot guns, bonfires. We did a lot of bonfires this time.

Dustin: You're camping and recording at the same time. That's nice.

Matt: And not just shoot guns. Patty was very adamant about making sure that we were fucking, like a bank robber ... We went to go shoot a shotgun, you know? Not a lot of guns in Ireland, but for farming purposes, yeah. So it's alright, and we started shooting shotguns and stuff, and he's all, "You're doing it wrong. You need to do it like you're robbing a fucking bank."

Jeff: Oh my god.

Matt: It actually was lots of fun, to be like, "Give it the business!" And [inaudible 00:22:11] It was lots of fun.

Jeff: That's awesome. Did you guys record Life is Good in the same spot that you recorded Float in, or was it-

Matt: Same studio. Same spot, everything.

Jeff: Same studio and everything? That's awesome. That's very very cool. In recent years, Flogging Molly has definitely gained a lot more in the States. Would you guys agree? I mean, you guys have been a band now since the late '90s, but I think that, especially with your last couple albums, I think people are finally starting to give you your due. You guys said it yourselves. You're one of the hardest working bands out there. You have your own label. Everything you do, you guys put your thumbprint on, and I feel like now, and I'm hoping that you guys feel the same way, that you guys are starting to get some of that recognition. Do you feel that?

Dennis: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah. Continue, sir. No, yeah. Yeah, I think so, right?

Dennis: Yeah.

Matt: I think that just over the 20 years of doing this, that is starting to feel like that is starting to happen. We've done all this without a whole hell of a lot of record help, or radio necessarily being ... has not been our key, you know? It's keeping it real and writing great tunes is our recipe.

Dennis: And putting on good shows.

Jeff: What is it like not only being a hardworking band, having to tour, having to create music, record the music and all that stuff, but also have to have that label side? Does that hinder you guys at all, or does that help?

Matt: Well, I think we've had some changes in that department.

Dennis: Yeah, we don't have a label anymore.

Jeff: Oh, you don't?

Dennis: No.

Jeff: Oh, I did not know that, actually. So what is the next course of action then?

Dennis: In regards to what?

Jeff: In regards to the label. Are you guys shopping?

Dustin: You must have distribution, right?

Dennis: Well, that record came out on [Concord 00:24:10]

Jeff: Oh, oh wow. Okay. See, that's me for not knowing my stuff, everybody. I should have known that. Okay, so let's talk about that then. What's the transition from going from having to do that all the time, and now you're finally allowing someone else to put out your record?

Dennis: What is that transition? That's a long boring answer. It's like business kind of stuff.

Jeff: Was it something that was always on the horizon, or did it come organically?

Dennis: Yeah. We've been fortunate enough I think, the other companies we've worked with like SideOne, where I think we could decide what we wanna do with each record, and whoever was our manager at the time kind of looked out for us in that way, so every time we're gonna make a record, we would think, "Are we gonna stay with this company? Are we gonna try to put it out ourselves? Are we gonna go with a different company?" So I think it was just, at that moment we thought, "Well, let's try something different." We tried the label thing. Concord came around, we had a different manager ...

Matt: Yeah, I think we're just always trying to do the right thing by ourselves, right? I mean, we're just trying to be as successful as we possibly can, and people that work for us, they're trying to do the same thing most of the time for us, and we just keep trucking and trying to figure out ... and this is all while the last 20 years, the music industry always is constantly changing.

Jeff: Constantly changing, right.

Matt: The more I've talked to people about that, how things happen in the world, especially the internet and stuff, changes every frigging ten days. So it's a much different world than 20 years ago.

Dustin: Yeah, completely different.

Dennis: Or even when we put out Speed of Darkness on our own label, the industry is completely different now, and I think that played a part in our decision making.

Jeff: This is a type of industry, being able to speak with a lot of different musicians in the music industry, it is something that it's like, this industry no matter what, will always change.

Dustin: You have to adapt.

Jeff: It never will be stagnant, and you have to adapt. I think that's something that a band like you guys really has that strength for, because you're always willing to do that and you're willing to put the work in to put out the best product, like you said, and put out the best music that you can.

Dustin: It was really interesting to see the whole music on the internet day come through and all these bands that had all these major labels that sounded like every other band, now had a choice to like, "Okay, everything's watered down now. Do we make our sound, or do we keep on trying to shoot right up the middle?" And I remember seeing a handful of bands, I think of bands like Brand New and like Finch that sounded like your typical emo band, and then when that label devastation happened with the internet, we saw them come out with unique music, perhaps they had their own reign on it at that point. They didn't have a typical label backing them to make the mainstream music.

Matt: Try to steer it in whatever direction they're wanting.

Dustin: Yeah, and you guys probably didn't experience that at all, because you were calling your own shots.

Dennis: Yeah. From the beginning with SideOne, they were, "Whatever you guys wanna do." They never said, "Go back and write a hit single" or ... We would turn in a record and they'd just be thrilled.

Dustin: Awesome.

Jeff: That's probably why you can keep on doing it, because you're not selling your soul. You get to do what you wanna do, and it creates a longevity of your career, I would imagine.

Matt: Yeah. I can't imagine it any other way at this point. We're friends with bands and we hear the stories like this, you know, they'll record a record and then we gotta do it again with a different producer ... These kinds of things we never, fortunately, went through.

Dustin: Yeah, and with your tour schedule, I'm sure if you were playing music that necessarily you didn't wanna play, you were writing for other people, writing for the mainstream, you'd get sick of it really fucking quick.

Dennis: That sounds like a nightmare.

Dustin: Yeah.

Matt: I can't even imagine that.

Dennis: That sounds like torture.

Dustin: Ow.

Matt: I know, right?

Dustin: So that leads me to, you're 20 years down the road, calling your own shots. What fuels you guys to keep on trucking and keep on playing these tireless tours and keep on being the hardest-working band on the road?

Matt: I mean, the fans. Yeah, our fans. For me, the belief in the music. I actually really believe in what we're singing about. I just really feel that way, so even though yeah, you could have the argument that it's almost Groundhog Day sometimes, where you're like, "Okay, the same set list over and over again," but it's not. I'm excited to play these gigs and then, every day I meet people that go to our shows at the bar afterwards or wherever, that come up and they're being a thousand percent sincere, with a tear in their eye and tell me that like, "Man, I played your music at my brother's funeral."
And it's just such a heaviness that any bit of whinging that I might have been incurring that day because maybe I missed something at my house or my wife has called me and she's pissed or something, it all just fades away into nothing and I'm like, "Wow, this is so much more important than any kind of whinging or the shower wasn't hot enough or bullshit," you know? It really makes me feel like we're out here struggling for a really good end cost, for the right reason.

Dennis: Yeah, when you hear stories like that, there's really no ... Is there a bigger compliment than somebody putting your words on their headstone of their child or ... "Compliment" may not be the right word, but it's very ...

Dustin: Honor.

Dennis: Yeah, it's quite an honor, and to Matt's point, that really fuels ... When someone believes and loves what you've done that much, it just recycles back into us and this sort of cycle that happens, and those stories are still coming.

Matt: Yeah. So even though we've been on tour for a month, like tonight, five minutes before we go on, we're excited to do it and in a way that, because it's just keeping those sentiments real.

Jeff: That's awesome. That's very inspiring, guys. Really really cool. Like you said, you've been on tour for a month. This is, you're kind of wrapping up this aspect of Life is Good tour, and then the Salty Dog Cruise is happening in April 2018. You guys got anything going in between? Are you taking that time off, or ...

Matt: Oh yeah, we're playing with Dropkicks.

Jeff: Dropkicks, nice.

Dennis: Europe, we go to Europe.

Jeff: Oh, nice. So you guys are going over to Europe. That's cool, yeah. I know you guys are always out there, that's why I wanted to put that out there. One of the things that I wanted to ask you, just to wrap this up: The best place for our fans and your fans to follow you guys on social media. What kind of social media are you guys on regularly? I mean, I know Flogging Molly, the website obviously is the easiest way, but for social media.

Matt: I mean, we got Facebook and Instagram.

Jeff: Facebook is pretty much the best.

Dennis: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all of those.

Dustin: Do you guys believe in social media or do you shy away from ...

Dennis: I was just gonna say, I don't know if I should answer this because I don't have any of those things.

Jeff: And that's totally fine. That's cool.

Matt: The only thing I have is Instagram. That's my only ...

Dustin: We praise Instagram here a lot.

Matt: I had a Facebook for a little bit, and then I just was like, "Oh my god. I don't even know how to ..." I felt like shit not responding, and I just went, "Oh my god. We're done here."

Jeff: I think that's definitely the way to go. As D-Man said, we do praise Instagram here. We like that [crosstalk 00:32:26]

Dustin: It's like an album of your life you get to share with the world. You get to pick about how much you're releasing to everyone, where I feel like Facebook, if you're not careful, it's telling everybody everything about what you're doing, where you are, what you like, what you hate, what you're sick of. I don't know. Facebook gets weird sometimes, but I feel like you have a lot of control of what ...

Jeff: The future is weird.

Dustin: Yeah, the future is weird.

Jeff: Well, I wanna thank both you guys for taking time on your tour to come to Death Wish and talk with us. It was super rad to talk with both of you. We're really big fans, and we wish you guys the best, especially on the end of your tour and into Europe and the cruise of next year.

Dennis: Thank you.

Matt: Thank you guys.

Jeff: Cheers.