The quintessential Irish punk rockers the Dropkick Murphys are no strangers to the state of Connecticut, considering its proximity to their home city of Boston. They regularly make stops in Uncasville or Hartford on the way up to Beantown for St. Patrick’s Day — this time, they’re starting their St. Patrick’s Day 2018 tour at Mohegan Sun on Saturday.

Lead guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Tim Brennan is no stranger to the area, either, having grown up in West Hartford. He took a few minutes Jan. 25 to chat in the middle of the busy practice schedule before the band left for their three-week European tour.

“I used to play at the El ‘n’ Gee all the time when I was a kid, so we’d play with bands down there,” Brennan, 34, says. “There was quite the burgeoning punk and ska scene in Connecticut when I was growing up, and hardcore as well.”

Brennan’s interest in traditional folk instruments, including the accordion and penny whistle, didn’t come into play until he was a sophomore in high school and a teacher gave him a Pogues cassette.

“I started getting into traditional Irish music, stuff that my parents and my grandparents would listen to that I just started finding interest in for whatever reason,” he says. “I had started playing the tin whistle just so I could play along with the Irish stuff I had been listening to, but then, once I started getting into the Pogues, all bets were off. Accordion, whatever I could get my hands on to figure out how to play along with it.”

That same teacher also brought in the first Dropkick Murphys album for him, knowing his interest in both Irish and punk music. In 2003, he was brought on to sell merch at the Dropkick Murphys shows and play a little accordion on some of the songs, and the rest is history.

The penny whistle, bagpipes and other folk instruments give the band its iconic Celtic flair, and Brennan says over the years the band has been able to fuse its punk and folk influences within the songs rather than having distinct punk songs and folk songs.

The Dropkick Murphys are as Boston as the Bruins, the tannins in the Charles River and the distinct lack of the letter R. Nevertheless, their two decades in business have gained them fans around the country and world. After their U.S. dates, they’ll be headed back to Germany in August and the Netherlands in the fall before their South America tour.

“The crowd is pretty similar looking throughout the country. Everywhere we go, you can find people with Irish heritage, and even people that aren’t Irish seem to get into it as well,” he says. “You definitely see people decked out in kilts all throughout the country, it’s pretty wild.”

But what about their Boston-specific songs? “I’m Shipping Up to Boston” is arguably their most famous song, and “Tessie” and “Time To Go” draw from the Red Sox and Bruins, respectively.

“If we’re somewhere near Montreal, we’ll be sure to play ‘Time to Go,’” he says; for non-sports people, the Canadiens are the Bruins’ arch-rivals, the Yankees to their Red Sox. “Anytime we can goad the audience like that, we’re happy to do it.”

The mild teasing is part of the band’s repertoire with fans. They talk to the fans throughout their shows — it’s tradition for bassist and vocalist Ken Casey to go out into the crowd to sing with fans during “Kiss Me, I’m ————” — and if there’s an issue in the pit, they have stopped songs to address it.

Brennan says the band’s manager goes through set lists from their nearby shows from the last decade to make sure they’re giving the fans a different show each time, and they keep a few new covers handy to surprise even the most rabid fans.

Sometimes those fans even join them on stage.

“That’s kind of rare that somebody goes up there and kills it,” he says. “Typically, when we pull somebody up and they say they want to sing a song, we all kind of look at each other and say, ‘Alright, keep your head on a swivel, we have no idea what’s gonna happen here.’”

Sometimes they get someone super enthusiastic who can’t sing very well and forgets two stanzas, he says, laughing as he recalled the memory. “We ended the song probably a minute and a half sooner than we should’ve, and that was the greatest mistake that ever could have happened.” Sometimes they get someone who plays mandolin for a few songs. There’s no way of knowing.

Their latest album, “11 Short Stories of Pain & Glory,” came out in January 2017. While it features a rollicking cover of the folk tune “I Had a Hat” and another joyous end-of-the-night tune in “Until the Next Time,” the album is largely inspired by the opioid crisis, a problem in Boston and around the country. Referencing the Claddagh Fund, started by Casey in 2009, Brennan says the band’s charity work has always strived to help people with recovery from drug and alcohol abuse, and the album is another way to address the crisis.

“There was a time, I think, when we were first doing it that the feeling was that not enough attention had been paid to it,” he says. “I’m sure it’s not in direct relation to us putting out the album, but it seems like it’s been a little bit more in the conversation, which is a good thing. We’re just like everybody else as far as we’re happy to help people and there have times when we’ve needed help ourselves. Everything we’re singing about is true to us.”

Brennan won’t confirm rumors of a 2018 album release, but he says there’s always something in the works, and they’re grateful for the chance to do it.

“There are certainly things that have changed over the years, but we’re never going to be one of those bands that gets giant and is everywhere for a summer and disappears,” he says. “We’ve been super fortunate in that over the 20-plus years that the band has been in a steady incline and we’ve never felt like we’ve ever had to change anything for people.”

IF YOU GO

Who: Dropkick Murphys, with Agnostic Front and Bim Skala Bim

When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday

Where: Mohegan Sun Arena

Tickets: $35

Call: 1-800-745-3000