The Street Dogs, it is somewhat of an understatement to say, are from Boston. Mike McColgan’s name was already indelibly linked with the city, as he had already made his name as the frontman for the Dropkick Murphys, the standard-bearers of Boston punk during the late 1990s. Most musicians dream of achieving that kind of once in a lifetime success. But the Murphys’ rise to fame was something of an entr’acte for the duty-bound McColgan, who had already served in the military prior to forming the band, and who aspired to follow in the footsteps of his uncle and join the Boston Fire Department. So it was that McColgan left the stage for the firehouse in 1998, working over the following years as an EMT and a firefighter. 

Now, the way these stories usually get told, the hero doesn’t fade out quietly into the night. Instead, he returns one last time before heading off into the sunset. And at first, when McColgan the firefighter continued to write during his downtime, and later began to moonlight with bassist Johnny Rioux in 2002, it almost seemed like that’s the way this story would end, too. They formed a new group along with members from each of their former bands (in Rioux’s case, he had formerly played for the Bruisers, another stalwart on the Boston’s 1990s punk scene). To hear Rioux tell it, the Street Dogs started as little more than a “poker night” for musicians, with piles of chips traded in for stacks of amps, instead. By the following year, the band recorded an album of new material, Savin Hill (named after the section of Boston from which McColgan hailed). They booked a date for a record release party at the Axis in Boston, and the scene was set for a triumphant return, one last time.

Street Dogs are currently recording, and will be releasing an as-of-yet untitled album later in 2010. “Two Angry Kids” is taken from their 2008 release, State of Grace.

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