In February 2025, as Flogging Molly prepared to set sail for their annual Salty Dog cruise, the band abruptly announced they were canceling all their tour dates for the foreseeable future. The reason? Founding frontman Dave King had experienced a health crisis that demanded immediate and ongoing medical attention.
Now, nearly one year later, King has clawed his way back from the edge and has opened up about what exactly happened that derailed his life and the band for all of 2025.
During a Zoom call from Westport in County Mayo, Ireland—where he was visiting family—King greeted me with a jovial demeanor and a never-ending smile. Before going into detail about his health issues, King reminded me of the famous line he wrote decades ago in the song “Don’t Let Me Die Still Wondering”, from Flogging Molly’s third studio album, Within a Mile of Home.
“Take my advice / You’ll have to bury me twice / Because the first time, I won’t rest easily.”
The Line has become both a self-fulfilling prophecy and a creed for King
This brings us to his health crisis last year. King says it all started while he and his wife—Flogging Molly bandmate Bridget Regan—were at their home in Ireland. “I was having a procedure done three days after this event happened,” he began. “What happened was the medication I was on for that mixed with the high blood pressure medication I was on.” This “perfect storm” combination, as the doctors called it, caused King some really big problems.
“It seems like my blood pressure went so low that I fainted,” King recalled, then shared that this was only the beginning of the terrible situation. “I was on a staircase when I fainted. So, I went down the staircase, fractured my skull. Because we have concrete floors in our house here in Ireland. My head impacted the floor, [causing] a traumatic brain injury.
Thankfully, King’s “poor darling wife, Bridget, gathered the strength” to get him help. “She was saying I was on the floor,” the Irish punk rock singer reflected. “There’s blood coming out my ears. She got an ambulance, and thankfully, she was there, because she saved my life.”
“They told her, for the first few weeks I was in hospital, that she may never see me again,” King remembered. “Then after those three weeks, if she did see me again, and I’d be a vegetable for the rest of my life.” He grinned and added, “But here we are, right. We’re talking.”
King’s “traumatic brain injury” left him hospitalized for months
I was in the hospital for nearly three months,” King went on to share. “I had three brain surgeries. I was in a coma for three weeks.” He credits Bridget as his rock throughout the experience and notes that he wouldn’t be here today without her quick thinking and action.
King also offered his gratitude to the countless Flogging Molly fans around the world, whose love and support have been felt during his recovery. “It’s very important to have that in your life… I’m very lucky to have that… connection with people…. it keeps me viewing ahead.
“I can’t constantly be looking in the rear-view mirror,” King continued. “I’ve got to look straight ahead, take everything that I’ve gone through and make it a better future, right? Bizarre as that might sound, sure, because it was horrendous what I went through and my wife went through. We still have to [go] forward. It’s the only thing.”
So, once King’s health began to improve, the natural next question was: What does this mean for the future of Flogging Molly? King has a story that makes it clear where things stand.
“I remember, about five days after I got out of the hospital here in Dublin, I was lying in bed about six o’clock in the morning. I woke up, and I was in really, really bad pain. It was underneath my right ear,” King recalled. “I’d leaned over the other way to my opposite side, and it felt like somebody had cracked an egg on my head. My head was frying like an egg.”
Even at his darkest, most desperate moment, King simply had a Song to Write
This, understandably, caused some immediate existential crisis for King. “I lay on my back after that,” he said, “and I was like, ‘Is this it? Is this my life from now on? What am I going to do?’ Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to write a song.”
This is who he is on a molecular level: a storyteller. “The reason why I’m telling you that is because it’s my life. I’ve always only written about what I experience in life,” he explained. “And this is one of those experiences that I want to forget, but I also want to learn from it. I want to adapt to it. I want to not just adapt to it, but I want to take it and add it into the mix and see what comes out of that.”
King then shared that writing music and playing “gigs and shows” is therapy for him. Those gigs and playing with his bandmates are something he’s eager to get back to, even though there’s a chance they may not look exactly like they have in the past.
King is eager to get back to making music and playing gigs
Speaking of his Flogging Molly bandmates, King said that the support and “inspiration I get from them is incredible.” He’s excited “to get back into a room” with them and “to have that energy that we have all together.”
At the time that King and I spoke, he’d just had a meeting with renowned neurosurgeon, Mr. Kieron Sweeney, and was patiently continuing his recovery process. “There’s no reason why he doesn’t see me doing this,” King confessed, “but I’ve got to take it like gradually. For example, the Salty Dog Cruise is a perfect way to not just launch a ship, but launch me, maybe, back into doing what it is I love to do.”
Flogging Molly’s “Salty Dog Cruise” will set sail again in October 2026
He then made it clear that, right now, getting “on a tour bus and playing five nights a week” is not practical. He also said that he could “maybe even [play] the Warped Tour” in 2026. “You know, things like this could be a way of getting my brain and my body back into [gigs]. Because that’s something that is so natural for me. It’s always been so natural for us to do. It’s just a matter of time before it happens again, but it does take time.”
Finally, King reflected on the experience he lived through in 2025 and shared how he’s feeling now that he’s mostly on the other side. “It makes you humble. Because it makes you realize how vulnerable you are. In the sense that this could be taken away.”
“The thing about Flogging Molly [is] the spirit was always about celebrating life,” Kind continued. He then quipped that he didn’t expect to be “celebrating” his own life. “I’m so lucky to be able to hopefully get back on stage and do what it is I love doing with my darling wife and my bandmates.”
To borrow a lyric from King… He’s a “ripe old age” and doing the best he can.
The post ‘You’ll Have to Bury Me Twice’: Flogging Molly’s Dave King Opens Up About His Life-Threatening Health Scare and the Band’s Future appeared first on VICE.
