I'm Shipping Up to Boston
From SoSH
Originally released in 2005, this Dropkick Murphys song was used by Martin Scorsese in his film The Departed. The lyrics were found in the Woody Guthrie archives by lead singer Ken Casey, and the Dropkicks put it to music.
The Sox began playing Shipping Up after Papelbon's traditional entrance song, Wild Thing early in 2007.
Links
NY Times on Woody Guthrie archive
Boston Herald on winning the Rock the Hub competition
USA Today on Scorsese, the Champs and Dropkicks: The Dropkick Murphys searched through Guthrie's lyrics and found one scribbled on a piece of yellow legal paper. Those words would become I'm Shipping Up to Boston, the music behind Papelbon's now infamous jig and one of the most popular tunes off the soundtrack to The Departed, a Boston-based mobster film.
"They liked this little ditty, this four-line ditty, not one of Woody Guthrie's greatest lyrics, but it had the word Boston in it," Nora Guthrie said. "They took it and created this masterpiece."
Epitaph Records: The Warrior's Code also marks the second time the Dropkick Murphys have set a previously unused Woody Guthrie lyric to music. Approached three years ago by Guthrie's daughter, Nora (whose son is a Dropkicks fan), with the prospect of putting some of her legendary father's unpublished lyrics to music, the band produced the hard-charging "Gonna Be a Blackout Tonight," from which the title of 2003's Blackout was taken. The Warrior's Code features "I'm Shipping Up to Boston" written around a whimsical lyric about a sailor who lost his wooden leg in Boston. "When Nora gave us the green light to go through the archives and take we wanted," says vocalist/bassist and founding member Ken Casey, "we looked through thousands of his songs. Obviously, there were a lot of deep songs about World War II and labor stuff, but randomly in the middle of all these serious lyrics was this silly song, which seemed kind of cool. When other people do Woody's stuff, you normally don't see that light-hearted side of his work."
I'm Shipping Up To Boston
I'm sailor peg And I've lost my leg A climbing up the topsails I've lost my leg
I'm shipping up to Boston
Shipping off to Boston
Shipping out to Boston
To find my wooden leg
