DOA

DOA going on 40th anniversary tour with MDC & Kevin Seconds (separately)

Vancouver punk vets D.O.A. have been going strong for 40 years (with a couple short breakups in between), and just returned with their seventeeth album, Fight Back, which is more of the short, loud, and fast punk they helped define in the early ’80s (some give their 1981 album Hardcore ’81 credit for inspiring the “hardcore” genre title). Here’s an excerpt from our interview with founding singer/guitarist (and only original member) Joe Keithley about the premise behind the new album:

When we started out I thought the big problems were racism, sexism, greed and warmongers. Forty years later racism, sexism, greed and warmongers are still the big problems, right?

In some ways things have improved. Some things have gotten worse. Things go in cycles too, and we’ve got a rising tide of racism now happening in North America, in Europe, around the world. Those types of problems never completely go away. So I think it sets up this whole thing for fighting back; you have to continue to fight back.

When I start to write an album, I never really have an idea for a theme. You just have to come up with some songs. But I realized when I got about halfway through, okay, that we had a central theme of the album before we hit the title. That central theme is inequality in the world. When we came up with the title, Fight Back, it was perfect. It makes sense for what’s going on – economic inequality, racism, sexism, and all those kinds of things. We’re just talking about [how] the world hasn’t got better or we found ways to completely screw up and get worse.

D.O.A. are about to begin a 40th anniversary U.S. tour in support of the album this Monday (5/21) in Salt Lake City, and runs through June 16 in Spokane, WA, with fellow three-letter punk legends MDC opening. MDC also released a new album last year (their first in 13 years), and in case you can’t tell from the title, it’s also an angry album about the current social and political climate. It’s called Mein Trumpf.

After that tour, DOA are doing a Midwest to East Coast tour from July 13-25 with support from yet another punk legend, Kevin Seconds, whose long-running band 7Seconds sadly broke up earlier this year. All dates for the DOA/Kevin Seconds tour have not been announced yet, but we know that one of them is NYC’s Brooklyn Bazaar on July 22 (tickets). All known dates are listed below.

Stream Fight Back and Mein Trumpf, and watch videos from both albums, as well as a Kevin Seconds video, below.

DOA

D.O.A. — 2018 Tour Dates (more TBA)
May 21 Salt Lake City, UT Metro Music Hall*
May 22 Colorado Springs, CO Black Sheep*
May 23 Fort Collins, CO Hodis Half Note*
May 24 Denver, CO Streets of London*
May 26 Las Vegas, NV Punk Rock Bowling Main Stage
May 27 Laguna Niguel, CA Karmann Bar*
May 30 West Hollywood, CA Viper Room*
May 31 San Diego, CA Brick by Brick*
June 1 Tuscon, AZ Toole*
June 2 Tempe, AZ The Marquee*
June 3 Albuquerque, NM Sister Bar*
June 4 El Paso, TX Lowbrow Palace*
June 5 Lubbock, TX Venue TBD*
June 6 Austin, TX Barracuda*
June 7 Houston, TX The Secret Group*
June 8 San Antonio, TX Paper Tiger*
June 9 Dallas, TX Gas Monkey*
June 10 Tulsa,OK Shrine*
June 11 St. Louis, MO Fubar*
June 12 Kansas City, MO Riot Room*
June 13 des Moines, IA Lefty’s Live Music*
June 15 Billings, MT The Pub Station*
June 16 Spokane, WA The Pin!*
July 6 Vancouver, BC Rickshaw First Annual Fight Back Festival
July 7 Kamloops, BC Blue Grotto
July 13 Lombardo, IL B House Live^
July 22 Brooklyn, NY Brooklyn Bazaar^
July 27 Montreal, QC ’77 Montreal Festival
August 15 Duncan, BC Cowichan Theatre
August 16 Quadra Island, BC The Legion
August 17 Port Alberni, BC Rainbow Room
August 18 Ucluelet,BC The Legion

* – w/ MDC
^ – w/ Kevin Seconds