For Drew Miller, one word sums up the themes that attract Boiled in Lead to traditional tunes: Darkness.
Darkness extends to the Celtic punk band’s name too. Boiled in Lead is derived from an Irish song, “The Two Sisters,” specifically a version associated with Clannad and is a reference to the punishment that befell a murderous sibling. “In 1983, that seemed like a really good name for a punk rock band doing folk music,” the bassist explains.
In the 46 years that the Minneapolis-based group has been active, that hasn’t changed much. “We lean into the heavier subjects,” says vocalist/guitarist Todd Menton. “Your murder ballads. Your murder ballad love songs. Songs about war, and the futility and horror of war, for obvious reasons, remain relevant.” You’ll hear these themes, and more, on King of the Dogwoods, the band’s first studio album in over a decade, which is set for release on March 20. Amongst the songs included are “Bold Lovell,” which follows a man heading towards the gallows after a betrayal by the woman he loved, and “Love, Farewell,” where a man parts with his love as he heads to war.
Miller, Boiled in Lead’s sole original member, has been fascinated by vinyl since childhood. Sometime in the late 1970s, he went to a Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington D.C. and stumbled across a booth filled with British folk imports. “I got into first the British stuff and then the Irish and then moving into the rest of the world after that, as a listener,” says Miller, who now runs a record store north of Minneapolis. All that listening to music led to a revelation. “All of the ‘70s folk rock bands were more folk than rock and they did not rock me sufficiently well, so you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” Miller says. So, he formed his first band, Boiled in Lead.
Menton came to folk music through artists like the American guitarist Leo Kottke, known for his fingerpicking skills, and the English folk revivalist Martin Carthy and eventually became enamored with Irish traditional music while performing in a play in junior college where he had to learn the bodhrán drum and tin whistle. A member of Boiled in Lead since the band’s second album, he also contributes lyrics for some of their original songs. “A couple of the earlier songs have straight up ripoffs from traditional songs, line borrowed and structures borrowed from traditional songs,” says Menton. “But, as the years went by, the songs mostly centered around whatever lyrics came out of my head.”
Roughly a quarter of their repertoire are original songs. “There’s always going to be a flavor, I think, in anything of traditional sound because that’s what I’ve always done,” says Menton. “The difference comes when the band gets a hold of it.”
Originals include the title of King of the Dogwoods, with a narrative structure and attention to geographic details reminiscent of a traditional song , while references to things like a monster movie that lets you know the song is a much more recent vintage. In the case of “(I’ll Sing You) Sail Away Ladies,” the band merges new and old where the band’s original number, about a character who has no money, but can sing a song, jumps into the American folk song “Sail Away Ladies” with a fiddle explosion.
Boiled in Lead has had a number of lineup changes over the years, with new members introducing different ideas to the band. They’ve also incorporated a broad swath of folk music into their work throughout the duration of the band as well. “Probably the aspect that we grab a hold of is propulsion, as you would say, the beat, the rhythmic power of it, of which the melody is part is most of that music,” says Menton. That sense of propulsion is what keeps the punk mixed into the folk with big, stomping beats and urgent melodies.
The current lineup, with drummer Morris Engel and violinist/vocalist Haley Olson rounding out the quartet, previously appeared on the 2024 live album, 40 Years. “The live album was the current lineup of the band’s first gig, actually,” says Miller. “We had a multi-track recording of it and we got enough good stuff that we were able to put that out to prime the pump. But, there were things that we wanted to do properly, so we’ve done them properly.”
40 Years was recorded at The Parkway Theater in Minneapolis, the same venue where Boiled in Lead will play their record release party. So far, there are no tours planned for the band. “We go where we’re wanted,” says Miller, “and we’ll see what people want.”
King of the Dogwoods by Boiled in Lead is out on Friday, March 20.