Street Dogs, Slaine and Jesse Ahern 'Wreck the Halls'

The 2015 edition of the annual Christmas season “Wreck the Halls” series of concerts by Boston punk rockers The Street Dogs took over Brighton Music Hall this weekend, with three separate shows featuring different opening acts each night. The Street Dogs, led by singer/songwriter Mike McColgan, the former member of the Boston Fire Department, made this year's version even more special by using each night to play one of their albums front-to-back.

The series started Friday night with the quintet's debut “Savin Hill” (2003), and continued Saturday with their popular 2005 effort “Back to the World.” It concludes Sunday night with a run through their “Fading American Dream” album, and tickets are still available.

But Saturday night's show was also unique for the local flavor. Of course many fans know that Dorchester's McColgan was an original member of the Dropkick Murphys when that outfit formed, but he left to pursue his career as a fireman in 1998. But by 2002, McColgan had the desire to follow his songwriting and performing muse, and the Street Dogs became his fulltime gig. The current lineup of the Street Dogs features Quincy's own Lenny Lashley on guitar, and Saturday's openers were Wollaston's Jesse Ahern and the Roots Rock Rebel Revue, and Dorchester hip-hopper Slaine.

The Street Dogs' headlining set roared through “Back to the World” in about forty minutes, but the band did some intriguing covers and assorted other cuts, which stretched the set to about 75 minutes in all, leaving many of the exuberant crowd soaked in sweat from their dancing and crowd-surfing. The tumbling drum rolls of “Strike A Blow” kicked off the main set, and the tune's references to Boston quickly had the crowd of about 300 jumping and stomping in frenzied joy. By the time the band uncorked “In Defense of Dorchester” with its “hey ho, let's go!” chorus, the audience was singing almost loud enough to drown out the musicians.

The title cut from “Back to the World” is one of the band's most rousing anthems, and it had a lusty backing chorus of about 300. The Street Dogs were augmented by accordion for the more traditional Celtic infused punk of “Tale of My Deception,” where it seemed McColgan's vocal was especially passionate. The churning rhythms of “White Collar Fraud” was another rowdy highlight, full of serrating guitar lines. The monicker for this series of shows probably emanates from the song “Unions and the Law” which is a kind of a lilting ballad, yet also an anthemic singalong in its own right, and it certainly had Saturday's throng well primed.

That finished the album's cuts, and Slaine joined the band for an older tune, inserting his own exhilarating rap segment into its. The Street Dogs then dropped in an amped up, punk-rock take on Kris Kristogfferson's “The Pilgrim,” injecting new life into that old nugget. The five-song Street Dogs encore included the furiously paced love song, “Punk Rock Love,” and a stirring cover of The Clash's “Guns of Brixton.” Lashley took the spotlight to sing his own raucous rocker, “Skinheads.”  After McColgan sang the jeremiad “Not Without a Purpose, Not Without a Fight,” the night ended with seemingly half the audience on stage for a crazed run through “Boston Breakout.”

Slaine's middle set was a tasty sampler of his flow and verbal skills, which seemed too short at about 30 minutes. Jaysaun of Special Teamz joined Slaine for most of the set, and their interplay was an added treat, on numbers like “We're Americans.” Slaine spoke of his conquering his problems with alcohol abuse, before launching into the jittery rhythms of his compelling “99 Bottles.” The booming tones of something apparently called “What's My Name” was yet another intriguing sample of Slaine's talents, leaving the throng wanting more.

Earlier, Wollaston's Ahern and his Roots Rock Rebel Revue played a galvanizing 45-minute set, almost entirely his original tunes. Ahern's latest record, “Tales From the Middle Class,” available for free on his website (www.jesseahern.com), is a stripped down, mostly acoustic affair, but in live shows he's now fronting a potent quintet. It is probably his tightest band yet, and it seems he basically adopted a New Bedford band. Ahern previously led the Ramblin' Souls blues-rockers, and one of his tunes had landed on the soundtrack to HBO's “True Blood” series, but his more recent work has been mainly solo or in small combos.

“I had been playing on a lot of the same shows with them, in their home area,” Ahern explained afterwards. “I suggested we try playing some together, and it all came together really quickly. They're great guys, we like the same kinds of music, and this is probably our fifth gig overall.”

Saturday's audience got a small view of what the former band sounded like, when Ahern stepped aside to let them perform their own “Another Night in the Whaling City,” an appealing rocker that was in that now-classic Dropkick Murphys/Pogues category of traditional-influenced punk.

Ahern's own music is infused with that, but also with country, blues, and rockabilly flavors. His “Highway of Life” could've been a modern Hank Williams Sr. tune, were it not for the triphammer rhythms driving it. A bit later, “Beer and Cocaine,” enhanced by harmonica, took a classic honky tonk feel and yanked it up to pell mell punk. Ahern's “Sunshine” came across as a surging rock paean, and the arrangement this unit played was really powerful.

In several places, we were reminded of the way Jason and the Scorchers used to crank country music up to lightning tempos–”blitzkrieg honky tonk” was a term applied to them, and Ahern's music is definitely in that ballpark, and one later number, “Peace and Rock 'n' Roll” was a superb example.   “Police and Thieves,” a Clash song, which Ahern introduced by noting what an inspiration they had been, was the lone cover, and yet another well done and tantalizing sample of this new quintet's talents, with subtle reggae underlying its punky energy.