Flogging Molly calls off tour due to frontman Dave King’s ‘very serious health condition’

Flogging Molly, the Celtic punk band that formed in L.A. in the ’90s, is calling off its 2025 shows so frontman Dave King and his bandmate wife, Bridget Regan, can deal with what the group described as a “very serious health condition.”

That means a host of shows on the band’s Road to Rebellion tour, including a St. Patrick’s Day gig planned at the Hollywood Palladium, are off the table. Other shows had been scheduled for the southeastern and southwestern U.S. and in Austria, Belgium, France and Switzerland.

“Our fearless leader, the inimitable Dave King, is currently battling a very serious health condition. Dave and Bridget ask everyone to respect their privacy at this time, we will share as we can. Any good thoughts or prayers you can send Dave’s way, he and we would appreciate it,” the band said Wednesday in a statement on social media.

No details were given about the 63-year-old rocker’s condition. The band simply said it was “unable to perform” this year.

The other five band members, however, will show up as planned for a five-day nautical jaunt in less than two weeks, embarking in Miami and stopping on Grand Cayman island and in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. The Flogging Molly‘s Salty Dog Cruise 2025 boasts 18 other bands onboard, including Circle Jerks and the Gaslight Anthem, plus DJs and professional skateboarders.

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Band members said in the statement that they will be there “to celebrate the cruise, the community and our captain, Dave King.”

Flogging Molly was famously named in recognition of Molly Malone’s Irish Pub on Fairfax Avenue, where the members first came together and which supported the band in its infancy.

King was born in Dublin but eventually came to Los Angeles, meeting Regan and other band members and for a time struggling with his own immigration status.

“When I was living in L.A., there was a period when I couldn’t get to Ireland, I had a problem with my visa,” King told The Times in 2017, partially explaining how a Celtic punk rock band manifests in the first place. “And the band were just starting to get out of Molly Malone’s; we were starting to tour the West Coast. So it really reinforced in me, the time I couldn’t leave, how much Irish music meant to me.

“I said to myself, if I can’t physically go back home, I’ve got to go back musically — but in my own way, with what I’ve learned growing up.”

He added, “As a child I never saw things politically; I didn’t see the future, or that things would get better. But touring around, I’m very proud every time we go back to Ireland now to see the optimism, the celebration of life.”