Under the influences, the Dropkick Murphys have prospered with punk, Irish

You know you've picked the right band name when

a.) nobody else has it;

b.) it sticks in your head; and

c.) it gives a hint or two about the music you make.

By these measurements, few bands have chosen better than Boston's Irish folk-inflected punk band Dropkick Murphys, coming to Pittsburgh on Wednesday. The name sounds Irish and a little old-timey, in a tough, pugnacious barroom-brawler sort of way. It's even better when you learn its inspiration.

According to guitar/accordion/mandolin player Tim Brennan, the band's name comes from Boston boxing legend Dropkick Murphy.

“Dropkick Murphy was a boxer/wrestler in the '50s and '60s,” Brennan says. “He started a primitive version of a dry-out clinic in Northern New England. It was a place where alcoholics went — he sort of ran it on his own terms — you'd get a drink a day, or something. It was a weird, very basic place where you'd stop drinking.”

Growing up in working-class Boston, Brennan says, those who drank in excess could expect to hear the threat, “We'll send you to Dropkick Murphy's.”

The Dropkick Murphys' working-class, Boston-Irish roots inform pretty much everything they do, which isn't exactly a secret.

“The subject matter is heavily influence by where we're from and what we know,” Brennan says. “If we write a song about another place, it's usually about how we're looking forward to getting home.”

Punk rock and team sports rarely go together. In fact, they're almost always natural enemies. In Boston, though, things are different. You can hardly make it through a Red Sox or Bruins game without hearing the distinctive wail of the Dropkick Murphys' bagpipes. Performing at Fenway Park is as big a deal to them as getting a song into Martin Scorsese's “The Departed” (“I'm Shipping Up to Boston”).

“Living in Boston, the sports thing is all-encompassing,” Brennan says. “The fact that they've embraced us and have us play at the games — that's great. The amount of people who are sports fans who aren't necessarily music fans — we're reaching a wider audience. We've gotten a lot of people who haven't heard us otherwise.”

Blistering, raw-edge punk rock and traditional Irish folk don't seem to have much in common on the surface, but in the Dropkick Murphys' hands, they go together like Guinness and, well, more Guinness.

“Especially the Irish music that we grew up with, the Dubliners, and The Pogues,” Brennan says. “They sort of took Irish music and turned it on its ear. Punk rock was rock and roll turned on its ear. I don't know that it was a conscious decision to put the two types of music together, so much as it just organically happened. Bands like the Pogues were definitely trailblazers. They played these complicated Irish songs, but kind of turned them up to 10.

“When I was a kid, most of us we were exposed to traditional Irish music that our grandparents listened to, and didn't want anything to do with that. One day, a teacher of mine brought me (The Pogues') ‘If I Should Fall From Grace with God.' ... Most kids learn how to play the guitar. When I listened to that music, I didn't want to play the guitar to it, I wanted to get a tin whistle and an accordion.”

Michael Machosky is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at mmachosky@tribweb.com or 412-320-7901.