E-Mail This Article to a Friend Clash city rockers (continued)

Many Dropkick Murphys fans were shocked when McColgan left the band in 1999 to become a full-time firefighter. "I’m on an extended leave of absence from the fire department now, because of the demands of the Street Dogs," he explains. "To be honest, I joined the military to get college money through the GI bill, but what the military taught me was how to work well with a group of people under very intense circumstances and to get things done under stress. That’s not much different from the fire department. You work with a group under stressful circumstances to suppress fires and save lives. But it’s more community-oriented, so you have to be very good with customer relations. Citizens are your customers. They pay their taxes and your salary.

"Working at those jobs tested my perspective and gave me a lot of things to write about. In a band, you’re part of a team, and you have to work through any difficulties to find common ground and a place of mutual respect to make your songs come to life. So a lot of the same skills apply."

Even as he rushed into burning buildings, the need to make music was gnawing at McColgan’s spirit. So in 2002, he formed Street Dogs. As luck would have it, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones were winding down, and the group’s drummer, Joe Sirois, became Street Dogs’ rhythmic sparkplug after he was recruited by McColgan to cut some studio tracks. Veteran punk bassist Johnny Rioux signed on too. And then there’s producer and occasional guitar slinger Albert, whom McColgan considers the fifth Street Dog. "What I learned about Nate is that he’s really a visionary when it comes to focusing on songs. He’s got an endless amount of great ideas. When we got our first record deal for Street Dogs and were looking for a producer, we decided to go with Nate and he really became one of us. He got deep into the songs and had ideas that he supported with powerful convictions. So when it was time to record Back to the World, we had to work with Nate again."

The band were, consequently, well drilled before they set foot in Somerville’s Q Division, and the result was something "that everybody associated with it can be proud of," says Albert, who has become something of a Boston punk-rock MVP over the last few years. He also manages the Lost City Angels, who’ll make their major-label debut in April, and he’s written songs with the Explosion, whose first big national release hit stores late last year. "While being in the Bosstones for 15 years, I learned a lot about the music business, and I try to share it with any band I work with," he says over the phone from Brooklyn, where he moved in 2004. "One thing I learned is that really being committed to a band and to music is hard work. As you get bigger and more successful, there’s even more work, and it just gets harder. It’s more fun, too, luckily. But if you want your band to mean something to your fans, you’ve got to constantly be writing songs and sharing them with your audience. You can’t wait until you go into the studio where you’re being ‘paid’ to write because you’re making an album. Mike really understands that. He’s constantly got ideas for songs he’s working on. I had Street Dogs work up 30 songs, and we spent months to make them as strong as possible before we went into the studio. That way we were able to record the strongest songs possible instead of just settling for what we had when we went in."

Albert has also seen his friend McColgan develop as an artist through his years in Dropkick Murphys and Street Dogs. "Mike is like Dicky in that he really believes in emulating his biggest influence. For Dicky, it was Suggs from Madness. For Mike, it’s Joe Strummer. Both Mike and Dicky are exactly the same on stage as they are off it. There’s no acting, no room for bullshit. Mike has become more confident in what he wants to say and how he wants to say it. Since leaving Dropkick Murphys, his lyrics are a lot more personal and direct. His motivation is, ‘As long as I’m standing on a soapbox, this is what I think.’ How many punk bands today will end an album with an acoustic song about trade unions? Street Dogs don’t want to be put in a box like punk pop, Celtic, street punk, or oi. They want to write any kind of music that they want to hear. They want to be the American Clash."

Street Dogs open for Social Distortion at Avalon, 15 Lansdowne Street in Boston, on Tuesday and Wednesday February 22 and 23; call (617) 423-NEXT.