Interviews

Interview w/ Dirty Sons of Ireland

By Stoney ⋅ January 7, 2008 ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

It’s no big surprise that St. Patty’s Day is one of the biggest party celebration days of the year even on par, if not more widespread, with Mardi gras. Who over the years have been able to define the word party like the Irish combining tradition, sing-a-longs and a never-ending supply of spirit? Why do you think River Street in Savannah turns into a sort of mini times square New Year’s celebration every March? But what if you could have that St. Patty’s Day experience all-year long? Well for those with the fortitude to handle such a celebration more than once a year such opportunities exist for in the fair city of Augusta there exists a band with enough green in the blood to bring a Guinness drenched party any night of the week.

The band? The Dirty Sons of Ireland and Lokal Loudness braved the chance of a 3rd degree hangover to talk to guitarist/vocalist Matt Roland and drummer Joel Hodges while Roland was applying a tattoo to a surely nervous customer. And in a Lokal Loudness first, the conversation was joined by guitarist vocalist Mickey McFarland via cell phone from McFarland’s car. (Hence the odd obscenities-we’re just glad these guys know how to multi-task!)

For the language squeamish we urge you to stop here.

LL - OK now first of I just gotta ask: who came up with the name “Dirty Sons of Ireland”? I mean, looking at the people in the band you’re not all “sons”. Are you all REALLY dirty?

MM - About 4:00 in the morning me and Matt were shit faced about 10 days before we were supposed to play our first show and I came up with some random retarded idea “Dirty Sons of Ireland” and Matt said – Ok we will change it later and we never got around to changing it.
MR - Mickey is right; we had to get an ad in the Metro Spirit, because we had booked a show. We tossed around names, the first one that came up, we planned on changing it, but never did.

LL - Now an Irish-themed band is not something new to Augusta but DSI is certainly one of a kind. What is that makes you guys so different?

MM - Probably mostly our music influences. We are all metal heads, we are really into it, but none of us can play it. Us basically trying to translate a piece of music so we have the ability to play it. (Yelling at a passing motorist) “You fucking cut me off you fu**ing whore!”

MR - It’s more Irish Punk. It’s more the whole fault of being the rebellious Irish, not so much being Irish.

LL - Now I’ve been to several DSI shows and noticed several occurring themes happening mainly to do with alcohol consumption and sex. Any reason you guys feel the need to lump those two things together in a band theme-pool?

MM - Drinking and f**king, what could be better than that?
MR - It’s downtown Augusta, and there’s only two things to do down here, and that’s drink and have sex; not necessarily in that order. If you are going to play music, you might as well play music about sex and alcohol – and its fun!!!

LL- So here’s the question: if everyone in DSI were stricken with an affliction that rendered half of their brain useless and were left with either the drinking side or the sex side, which would be the most DSI preferred side?

MM - If any member of DSI lost half their brain, that would be the end of it there, because we only have half a brain anyway……
JH – We only have half of one collectively….
MM - That’s a tough call drinking or sex….
JH - Matt is better at fucking that drinking anyway.
MR - If any member of DSI… if every member of DSI lost half their brain…. Wouldn’t that make us the G CITY ROCKERS!!!!?????
(Laughs and OOOHS) ….
MM - That… or Taming Bacchus

LL - OK seriously now (hmmm) aside from drinking and nakedness, what are some of the other attributes found within a DSI song?

MM - Unrequited love, The Whore’s that F**k you Over…. That’s pretty much it. I write about what I know and basically what I know is sex, drinking, drugs and getting f**ked over by some random woman. We have written a couple of songs about my brother being sent off to Iraq. (Yells at himself) “I forgot the Gatorade, God Dammitt!!!” I need to stop smoking; I’ve been high too long.
MR - Lost love and down with society, anarchy.

LL - Can you give our readers a first-hand account of what happens at a DSI show? For those who have never been or maybe HAVE been but for some reason or another, don’t remember.

MM - Alcohol abuse, drug abuse and verbal abuse. Pretty much any kind of abuse you can imagine, we pour it on as much as we can. As much as we can get away with, without going to jail.
MR - Definitely more crowd oriented than the average band in Augusta. Most bands love to play music because they love to play music. We love to play music because we love the way the crowd reacts to the music. I think that’s what it’s all about. There’s nothing more fun than feeling the floor vibrate and bounce. Everybody jumping around, getting stupid.

LL - Now was Matt (Rowland) the mastermind behind all this sick drunken pervertiveness? What makes a guy wake up one day and decide “I’ve gotta put together a punky Irish folk band that plays dirty drinking songs”?

MR - No.
JH - That goes back to the first fucking question, doesn’t it?
MM - The way I got involved with the band, there was a guy working at Matt’s tattoo shop as an apprentice there, named Rob, He and I had been kicking it around for a while, because we went to high school together and listing to Drop Kick and Flogging Molly and shit like that. We kept kicking it around, but both of us kept being lazy bastards that drank a lot, we never got around to it. I guess we talked to Matt about it at one point and he had expressed interest in it and one night Matt and I got completely shit-faced at a bar and we couldn’t drive, so we walked up to the tattoo shop and started tinkering around and I taught him how to play “Back Home in Darry”, and that was the beginning. The next night, Matt and I got drunk again, and we managed a show to play. WE both woke up the next morning, horribly hung-over and hating ourselves and then realizing we had two weeks to learn four hours worth of material to play a show and we did and we practiced six hours a day and at least every single day for two weeks and by the time we actually played the show, we had split fingers and our fingers were bleeding everywhere and all kinds of nasty-ness.

LL - Looking back what was DSI’s first show like?

MR - We managed to stretch 17 songs over four hours!!!
MM - Matt spent 45 minutes of the time heckling the crowd.

LL - How much would you say the band has evolved since then? What’s different?

JH - It went from two guys, to three guys, to four guys, to five guys, to five guys and a girl, to five guys and two girls.
MM - I guess we’ve grown up a little bit.
JH - We have not!!!!!
MM - Well considering we were hung over every morning and drunk every night…..
JH - The difference is you are not hung over anymore, you are just stoned!!!!
MR - We have grown up a lot more, we are writing more of our own stuff, taking the music more serious.
MM - I do think we have grown quite a bit; we have gotten more clever with our lyrics and stuff. We are not just writing “Hey I’m a f**king bitch”. Collectively I think we all have grown up quite a bit. We don’t party as much… we still party, don’t get me wrong….Everyone of us has our own little thing to do, whatever it may be. We are being more responsible about shows and music.

LL - During that time what would you say has been the band biggest highlight moment?

MM - Don’t know, we’ve had some really good shows; we have had some really bad ones too. We have had some really exceptional shows.

LL - With all that happens at a DSI show I just gotta ask: What is the craziest DSI story you can tell us?

MM - Me quitting the show, mid-show St. Patty’s Day, 2006. Or the fight at the Playground last year, that’s the first time that the band has ever done anything together!!! …and Joel was actually swinging in time to something, too… that was a first!!!!

With that we strangely enough leave this interview in a seemingly unfinished state but does that really sound strange for a band such as Dirty Sons of Ireland? This interview may be over but the story’s not done. To see what happens next go to www.myspace.com/dirtysonsofireland and find out where the next round will be.

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