Street Dogs: Biography

• Overview
• Discography
• Biography
• Related Artists

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• The Bouncing Souls
• The Briggs
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• The Clash
• The Pogues
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• Billy Bragg
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• Dropkick Murphys
• The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
• Welt
• Bruisers

Formed:

Jan 1, 2002 in Boston, MA

Genres:

Rock Music, Punk and Hardcore Rock Music

Boston, Massachusetts is a uniquely divided city, consisting not of amorphously defined neighborhoods like the ones that make up Manhattan, but small, semiautonomous 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 skapunkmetal 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 everincreasing amount of Celtic folk influences, like a harderedged and more street version of the Pogues. On their early string of EPs Fire and Brimstone, Tattoos and Scally Cats, and Boys on the Docks, as well as their 1998 full length debut Do or Die, the Dropkick Murphys' lead singer was the fierce, gravelly Mike McColgan. Following that first album, McColgan 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 highprestige jobs in South Boston, but by 2002, McColgan returned to music, forming the Street Dogs with guitarist Rob Guidotti and bassist Johnny Rioux (both formerly of local street punks the Bruisers) and a fellow exDropkick Murphys member, drummer Jeff Erna. 2003'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 exBosstones drummer Joe Sirois; just as importantly, McColgan left his firefighting job in 2004. After a split EP with Allstonbased garage rockers the Dents introduced the 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. 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.

- Stewart Mason, All Music Guide