Concert Review: Dropkick Murphys / Rancid / The Bronx

Mission Ballroom (parking lot) – 01 OCT 2021

Despite playing it a little safe, Rancid and Dropkick put on a hell of a show together!

It was a pretty warm day on October 1^st when Rancid and The Dropkick Murphys pulled into town on their double-headliner tour.  In Denver, summer is just beginning to wane in the beginning of October, so it wasn’t too cold for what turned out to be an outdoor concert.  Everything I read said that the concert was at the Mission Ballroom, but it was actually in the parking lot of the Mission Ballroom, instead.  This made for a fun outdoor concert instead of an indoor one, which was perfect for this early October night. 

First up was Los Angeles punk band, The Bronx, who I wasn’t familiar with.  They put on an excellent set and they really connected with the audience with their general vibe of being down-to-earth, working class guys.  They fit in pretty will with Rancid and Dropkick, who both preach a pretty broad message of acceptance of all people and a strong sense of community.  The Bronx echoed this pretty well in how they treated the crowd. 

Then came Rancid out onto the stage, with Tim Armstrong and Lars Fredriksen looking like the before and after pictures of someone who was made over by Queer Eye.  Lars Fredriksen has toned down his punk style as of late, favoring a pretty traditional jacket, shirt, and slacks, while Armstrong seems to have gone in the exact opposite direction with his dreadlocked beard and studded punk vest.  Rancid’s set leaned heavily on their most famous album, 1995’s …And Out Come the Wolves, with just a few tracks from other albums sprinkled throughout the set.  Part of me thinks they should have played more songs from other albums to try to establish other songs as part of their live repertoire, but as someone who grew up listening to …And Out Come the Wolves, I wasn’t complaining that they played the songs I know.  It started raining part way through Rancid’s set, but the body heat of the crowd was intense enough to evaporate the rain before it hit anyone. 

Finally came Dropkick Murphys, who I’m surprised were put up second as I would think Rancid, the older of the two bands and arguably the bigger legends between these two, would be put up last instead of Dropkick, although I know double headliner tours often take turns from one date on the tour to the next as to which band goes last, so perhaps it was just the luck of the draw.  I feel like I have a complicated relationship with Dropkick, as I was a very big fan in high school and kind of grew a little more lukewarm to them over the years.  It was because I grew up listening to punk rock and my father’s Irish folk music that I first got into Dropkick, but then I realized that there were other bands that did Celtic Punk even better.  But the wide-eyed teenager who excitedly lined up to see Dropkick play with opening band Lars Fredricksen and the Bastards in the early 2000’s was ready to give Dropkick another try. 

As I stated before, the big common thread between all the bands is seeing punk rock as a strong community of acceptance.  Dropkick, like Rancid, treated the audience as family, which I really appreciated.  Unlike Rancid, Dropkick had a new album from this year to promote, and they leaned pretty heavily on that instead of their classic stuff.  At one point they dedicated “The Queen of Suffolk County” to all the angry women of Boston, Massachusetts and, as an angry woman who grew up about an hour’s drive from Boston, I’ll allow it.  It had been a while since I had seen Dropkick and I forgot that Al Barr and Ken Casey trade back and forth on lead vocals and, with the exception of Casey occasionally picking up the bass, for the most part neither plays an instrument.  Barr had more of an intense energy, with Casey being a little more laid back, but Casey did most of the interaction and banter with the crowd while Barr mostly just hung back until it was his turn to sing.  When the band exited the stage, it was pretty obvious that they had an encore already planned as they hadn’t played their biggest hit, “I’m Shipping Up to Boston,” yet.  They ended on that song, which was more than a little bit of an obvious way to end things, but it was also pretty satisfying. 

My biggest complaints with this show had nothing to do with the band and everything to do with the way the venue handled the show.  For starters, beer was a ridiculous $10 for a small can.  For $12 you could get a cocktail in a can that tasted awful but had a higher alcohol content.  When I went through security they confiscated my taser.  I understand that they have to ban weapons, but this is a non-lethal weapon that I need for my trip home because I parked a half hour away and I’m a woman walking alone late at night.  Security said I could come back for it after the show, but in the throng of people pushing through the exit I both didn’t know how to get back to security nor remembered that I had to.  It was also clear that security didn’t have a protocol for how to handle this situation, and I wasn’t confident they’d still have my taser if I went back for it anyway.  So I walked back to my car with my keys in hand and made sure to only take main, highly populated roads, but I still would have preferred to have my taser on me. 

But my complaints about the venue aside, the three bands put on one hell of a show.  It was a pretty old audience, one of the oldest I had ever seen at a punk show, but that meant there was a great crowd of people who grew up with these bands.  Overall, if you have a chance to see this tour, I highly recommend it.