Punk rock bands the Dropkick Murphys and Rancid have a long history together, stretching all the way back to 1996, when Rancid’s Tim Armstrong signed the Dropkick Murphys to his record label, Hellcat, which released the band’s first album, “Do or Die.”
Now, 21 years later, the two bands set out on tour together: the Boston to Berkeley Tour, referencing the hometowns of the Dropkicks and Rancid, respectively. The first show of the tour, at Darling’s Waterfront Pavilion in Bangor on Thursday night, was as laid back as a night of high-powered punk rock could be. It drew a crowd of around 4,000, composed of both longtime fans of both bands, and newer fans drawn in by the Dropkicks’ many radio hits over the past decade, many of which are on regular rotation on local rock station WKIT-FM.
Thursday’s show was the second time the Dropkick Murphys have played on the Bangor Waterfront; the band performed in 2011, during the Waterfront Concerts’ second season in Bangor. Six years later, with two more Billboard top ten albums of Celtic music-infused punk rock under their belt, the band is still one of the most well-known and beloved New England bands, as inseparable from their hometown of Boston as Aerosmith and the Pixies.
The band played a loud, proud set of newer songs like “Rose Tattoo” and “The Boys Are Back,” classic covers of traditional Celtic songs, and, perhaps their biggest hit, “I’m Shipping Up To Boston.” The band’s newest album, “11 Short Stories of Pain and Glory,” deals directly with the opiate addiction epidemic currently ravaging New England.
Co-headliners Rancid zipped through a high energy set of songs from throughout their 26-year career. They played several songs from the band’s brand new album, “Trouble Maker,” released just last month, as well as punk rock chestnuts from “… And Out Come The Wolves,” the band’s classic 1995 album, including “Roots Radicals,” “Time Bomb” and “Ruby Soho.” Rancid, who originate from the San Francisco Bay Area, remain one of the most respected and long-standing punk rock bands to come out of the 1990s punk rock revival.
Doors opened at the venue at 6 p.m., despite a drizzly rain that briefly turned heavy around 7 p.m., the crowd remained fairly steady throughout the show. Opening the concert was Jake Burns, frontman of the seminal Northern Irish punk band the Stiff Little Fingers, and the Bouncing Souls, the venerable pogo-punk band from New Jersey.
Up next in the 2017 season at the Darling’s Waterfront Pavilion is a night of alt-rock with OneRepublic, Fitz and the Tantrums and James Arthur, set for Saturday, Aug. 5.
