Violent Femmes are featured in clip
Dropkick Murphys’ video for the powerful song “Gotta Get To Peekskill” featuring Violent Femmes premieres today (Thurs, Apr 6th) at 1:30 pm ET on the band’s YouTube channel, followed by a live chat with band members.
“Gotta Get To Peekskill” is the current single from their forthcoming Okemah Rising album, out May 12th via the band’s Dummy Luck Music/[PIAS]. Okemah Rising is the second in Dropkick Murphys’ series of works interpreting the words of Woody Guthrie for a new generation.
The “Gotta Get To Peekskill” video features performance footage from Dropkick Murphys’ 2023 European tour intercut with clips of founder/vocalist Ken Casey as well as Gordon Gano and Brian Ritchie of folk punk legends Violent Femmes.
In the song, Woody’s defiant lyrics reference the 1949 Peekskill Riots – a confluence of American racism, antisemitism and anticommunist paranoia that brought the Ku Klux Klan to the banks of the Hudson River in violent opposition to a Paul Robeson concert – and the resolute solidarity of the musicians (including Guthrie and Pete Seeger) who joined Robeson in a rescheduled concert the following week.
“We had the privilege of collaborating with the Violent Femmes on this feisty track,” Casey shares. “Acoustic Dropkicks sounds a lot like the Violent Femmes in my opinion, so the collaboration is musically and symbolically fitting. And singing a song about fighting the Ku Klux Klan is always extra fun.”
The Okemah Rising album follows Dropkick Murphys’ highly-acclaimed This Machine Still Kills Fascists album, which exposed the band to new audiences through airplay on stations like SiriusXM’s Outlaw Country and others.
