Clash city rockers Boston's Street Dogs pay tribute to their hero on their new CD BY TED DROZDOWSKI

It’s 10 a.m. on a Tuesday and Mike McColgan, leader of Boston’s Street Dogs, is getting a tattoo. In Los Angeles. On the radio. Live.

McColgan is the guest of his friend and mentor Dicky Barrett, the ex-Bostonian and forever Bosstone who now DJs a morning radio show on the LA FM station Indie 103.1. And though Barrett’s policy of "Tattoo Tuesdays" may seem a bit unconventional, if Jenna Jameson can take her clothes off on Howard Stern’s radio show, why shouldn’t McColgan put something on during Dicky’s? Especially since, for McColgan, his new tattoo is a constant reminder of his values and his punk-rock roots.

"It’s six-by-six on the inside of my left forearm and the spitting image of the picture of Joe Strummer sitting down and playing his acoustic guitar on the back of the Streetcore album, his last record," McColgan explains over the phone from LA. It’s February 1, the night before Street Dogs head to Las Vegas to begin a tour with another set of heroes, Social Distortion, that will bring them back home to Avalon on February 22 and 23. McColgan is quietly psyched, reserving the more explosive side of this enthusiasm for when he and his fellow canines hit the stage to, uh, leave their mark. He says the fresh tattoo doesn’t hurt. After all, he’s already got eight more. And anyone who doubts his toughness isn’t aware of his history as a soldier in Operation Desert Storm and as a Boston firefighter. But even if the tattoo stabbed him like a thousand inky little needles, he probably wouldn’t complain. To McColgan and his friends, Strummer is a kind of punk-rock messiah.

"When I first heard ‘Clash City Rockers’ come blaring out of a pair of speakers, it changed everything," he says. That was when McColgan was in seventh grade, after he and his buddies in Savin Hill got their hands on a copy of the first American Clash album. "It rang with me. It was powerful and uncompromising. It sounded like they believed they could change the world. These guys were wearing their music and their ideals on their sleeves."

So it is with Street Dogs, whose second album, Back to the World (Brass Tacks/DRT), has just been released. The disc rocks like hell, with McColgan’s everyman’s voice backed by churning, focused guitar. Although the group’s debut CD, Savin Hill (Crosscheck), came out only two years ago, there’s a lot of growth in their new set of songs. McColgan has pushed into a higher region of his voice, the choruses stand out more sharply, and the band’s dynamics are a bit more dialed in. And these songs have range. McColgan and Marcus Hollar have always been capable of a mighty roar on their guitars, but here the wall of amps sounds a little thicker when it needs to yet tumbles back to allow the lilting Celtic rhythm and accordion of "Tale of Mass Deception" breathing room. The song is about the lies the Bush administration told to start the current war in Iraq, but with its gang vocals and swaying melody, it sounds something like a good ol’ Irish drinking song. Next comes the punk howler "Drink Tonight," a blaster about the panacea and the poison of excessive boozing. And that’s followed by the Studio One–style mix of "Stagger," which ricochets between rocksteady and full-tilt ripping after opening with McColgan’s finest Strummer impersonation.

If like Street Dogs you came up on the music of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, you might think you hear that band’s first guitarist, Nate Albert, in the mix from time to time. Those Albert-patented needling riffs and the six-string tags that answer McColgan’s phrases in the call-to-arms "Strike a Blow" and the bed of strumming behind the main guitars of the title track all sound very familiar. Albert in fact produced both Back to the World — a personal story about soldier McColgan’s longing to return home — and Savin Hill, and the guitars sound like his because they are. "When Nate’s anywhere near a recording studio, it’s nearly impossible to keep a Les Paul out of his hands," McColgan says, chuckling. "That’s a good thing."

McColgan was a fan of the Bosstones before he and Albert became friends. And he was in the Army before he became a serious musician. He knows what it’s like to hunker down in a desert sandstorm and to survive a firefight. His military experience reinforced the codes he learned growing up in Dorchester: loyalty to friends, pride tempered by humility, self-reliance, honesty, and a belief in taking action when it’s appropriate. These are themes that arise in his conversation as well as in Street Dogs’ lyrics.

When McColgan’s hitch was up, he came back home and began exploring music in earnest, eventually co-founding and fronting Dropkick Murphys, where his unbridled passion translated into a roaring vocal style he’s since learned to control better. "The Bosstones were always reaching out to the local scene and helping upcoming bands," he recalls. "They took us out on the road for our first major tours and we became friends. They were really easy to get along with, even after Let’s Face It sold a million copies and they were huge."

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.