Dropkick Murphys will channel folk icon Woody Guthrie in Oct. 21 show in Providence

Woody Guthrie is beloved as a pillar of American folk music, with his magnum opus, "This Land Is Your Land," ingrained in our country's cultural lexicon for more than 80 years.

But Guthrie also wrote songs to speak his mind about political and social issues. His music still resonates with contemporary musicians, including the Celtic-punk band the Dropkick Murphys, whose new album, “This Machine Still Kills Fascists," takes its title from a trademark inscription Guthrie wrote on his guitar and incorporates some of the songwriter's unused lyrics.

In support of the new album, the Quincy, Massachusetts-based band will perform at The Vets Auditorium in Providence on Oct. 21, with Nashville duo Jaime Wyatt & Jesse Ahern opening up the show.

Along with using Guthrie’s lyrics and words, the Dropkick Murphys recorded the album in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where the Woody Guthrie Center is located, at the legendary Church Studio, which was established by the late musician, songwriter and producer Leon Russell during the early 1970s. “This Machine Still Kills Fascists” was a couple of decades in the making.

“We first met the Guthrie family 20 years ago, when we were invited to come down to go through the archives,” vocalist and bassist Ken Casey says. “We had the amazing experience of getting to actually hold the original pieces of paper that Guthrie wrote these songs on in the 1930s and ‘40s. It was better than going to any museum I’ve ever been to."

Ever since then, Casey said, the band had talked about doing an album, but had trouble finding the time, given their touring and other recording projects. The delay proved to be beneficial, for a number of reasons, he said.

"Ironically, had we done this album any sooner in our career, we probably would have just done it electric, like a normal Dropkick Murphys album, so I think everything happened for a reason," he said. "We were ready at this point in time to try to do something unique, and I also think that the lyrics are at their most poignant in this day and age, with the political divide, countries at war and climate change.”

“These are things that Guthrie was writing about even back then, along with unions,” Casey adds. “If you look at the state of people trying to organize in Starbucks and Amazon, ... and how difficult that is with union-busting, his music is so topical that you could think that it was written yesterday.”

The album is different from the rest of the band’s material in a couple of ways. It's their first completely acoustic release, and their first album since their 1998 debut "Do Or Die" to not feature vocalist Al Barr, who is on hiatus to care for his ailing mother.

It also presented another challenge: forming music around Guthrie’s lyrics without taking too many liberties.

“The lyrics sometimes made it tougher, because you had to work within the parameters you had,” Casey says. “We did make some slight changes and additions, but we never wanted to take a liberty that might have taken away from the actual meaning, or overstepped the boundaries of interpreting them in a way that left too much of the decision-making in our hands. We didn’t want Woody rolling over in his grave."

At the same time, he said, the album had to be true to the band's identity.

"We didn’t want to make a soft record," Casey said. "We wanted to have it be intense, and when you can’t rely on an overdriven guitar to make something intense, you have to find other ways to be more creative in the ways you do it. I think it made us have to work harder at the song structure and the time and effort we put into getting the arrangements right.”

Casey hopes the new album will achieve two goals: helping Guthrie’s legacy reach a wider global audience, while showing parallels between "the rise of fascism in the ‘30s, when Guthrie was writing a lot of these songs, and some of the scary similarities to what you see in the world today."

He also wants the album to show that the Dropkick Murphys are more than just loud guitars and bagpipes.

“I feel like from the punk side of the band and the Celtic side of the band, we’ve always worn our influences on our sleeves,” he says. “We’ve always loved that younger fans possibly got into this music through us and then went on to research The Pogues, The Dubliners and The Chieftains, while on the punk side they perhaps didn’t know about the bands that influenced us, like Stiff Little Fingers, The Clash, Cock Sparrer and The Business, so they’ll find their way to their music."

If you go ...

What: The Dropkick Murphys, with Jamie Wyatt & Jesse Ahern

When: Oct. 21, 7 p.m.

Where: The Vets Auditorium, 1 Avenue of the Arts, Providence

Tickets: $39.50-$79.50

Info: thevetsri.org, (401) 421-2787

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Dropkick Murphys will honor folk icon Woody Guthrie in Providence show