Drew Miller is spending his morning behind the counter at White Bear Lake Records. He co-owns the shop, which he describes as the “second smallest record store in the metro area.” “We have a whole 400 square feet,” he says, laughing.

Miller has never needed much room to make a lot of noise. For 43 years, he has been the one constant member in Boiled in Lead, the Minneapolis band that took centuries-old ballads and dance tunes from Ireland, Bulgaria, Serbia, and beyond and ran them through guitar amps turned up to 11. Through three lead singers, a revolving cast of fiddlers and drummers, and stretches when the band only played a couple of gigs a year, Miller kept plugging in.

That run ends on Halloween. Boiled in Lead, which bills itself as the longest-running Celtic-punk band in the U.S., will play its final two shows before an indefinite hiatus. Both the 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. performances take place on Saturday, Oct. 31, in the Dunsmore Room at Crooners Supper Club in Fridley.

The decision came together over the summer. The band’s latest album, King of the Dogwoods, arrived in March to glowing reviews, with Americana Highways calling it “one of the year’s best albums for sure.” Then in July, violinist Haley Olson left the band.

“We mutually decided not to try putting it together again, not to add anybody,” Miller says. “We’ve been playing as a three-piece, and it has turned into an interesting beast. It’s yet another flavor of what the band is.”

The band’s announcement also points to health crises, weather-related cancellations, and a tough economy, even as the new record brought sold-out shows and three new music videos.

“Nobody died”

Boiled in Lead’s story began on St. Patrick’s Day 1983 at Goofy’s Upper Deck. “It was a punk bar above a strip club where all the parking ramps are now,” Miller recalls of the long-gone venue just north of First Avenue in downtown Minneapolis. That night, Boiled in Lead was eighth on a 12-band bill which also included Hüsker Dü.

When asked what he remembers about that first show, Miller doesn’t hesitate. “Nobody died.”

As for how the crowd responded to their set: “I’m not the right person to answer that because I was too busy trying to figure out what the hell I was doing up there,” he says. “Boiled in Lead was my first band.”

Miller grew up in Washington, D.C., where the hardcore punk scene showed him how much force that fast and heavy music could carry. But the records from British folk-rock bands really grabbed him. “Ever since hearing the ‘70s bands like Fairport Convention that did stuff to this traditional music, it was really the only thing I wanted to do,” he recalls.

But by the early ’80s, he felt like none of those bands were really rocking anymore. So he set out to do it himself, alongside singer and guitarist Jane Dauphin, fiddlers Brian Fox and David Stenshoel, and drummer Mitch Griffin.

“I’m not much of a writer, and we were proudly inauthentic,” Miller says. The real work, as he describes it, is “trying to figure out what’s the fire, what’s the juice inside any piece of folk music, what can we do with it?”

Sex, death, and amps up to 11

The band’s name comes from “The Two Sisters,” a centuries-old murder ballad in which a jealous sister drowns her sibling. “Boiled in lead is what happens to the bad one at the end of it,” Miller says. The band never actually performed the song, he notes, but the name seemed like a good fit for a group coming up in the early-’80s punk scene.

That kind of grim material has always been Boiled in Lead’s sweet spot. Take “The Twa Corbies,” a medieval ballad Miller describes as “basically two ravens perched on the skull of a dead soldier and they’re kind of arguing about who gets to eat his brains first.” According to Miller, Dauphin sang it the day before the first gig at the Upper Deck, with Griffin working a Roland Space Echo. A version of the song later turned up as a hidden track on one of the band’s Alloy compilations.

“There’s lots and lots and lots of sex and death in traditional folk music,” he says. “And that’s the kind of stuff that we’ve always gravitated to.”

Over time, the band’s reach stretched well past Irish and English sources into Bulgarian, Serbian, Arabic, and Appalachian traditions, among many others. But the formula stayed simple. “You find a set of tunes like that, that’s super powerful, the material itself is powerful, and then you turn all the amps up to 11.”

Seven standing ovations

Ask Miller for his most re-told stories from the past 43 years, and he goes straight to the 1988 Winnipeg Folk Festival. The band played the “Shopetski Kopanitsa,” a dance from western Bulgaria that Stenshoel picked up playing with the Ethnic Dance Theater Orchestra.

“Again, I was busy at the time, so I wasn’t looking, but apparently we got seven standing ovations during the tunes,” Miller says.

The payoff went beyond applause. “We came out of that with an English record deal,” he says. The band’s next two albums, 1989’s From the Ladle to the Grave and 1990’s Orb, were released in partnership with British label Cooking Vinyl. Winnipeg was also the first time Miller felt the band had a real context. Rock bands with violins, he points out, were more common in Canada at the time.

Another favorite goes back even further. First Avenue’s then-manager Steve McClellan booked Boiled in Lead to open for NRBQ, “and I think that was the sixth or seventh gig I had ever played,” Miller remembers. “So the terror was palpable but again, nobody died.”

The band would eventually earn a star on First Avenue’s wall. As for stage fright, Miller has it pinned down. “I’m most nervous when I’m not there yet,” he says. “Once all my gear is plugged in and working, I’m ready to rock, whatever happens.”

Boiled in Lead’s lineup churned over the decades. Todd Menton joined on vocals and guitar for 1987’s Hotheads, left in 1992, and returned in 2005, with singer Adam Stemple fronting the band in between. By the 2000s, Boiled in Lead was only playing a couple of gigs a year, including a long-running Halloween show in Mexico that featured indoor fireworks.

“You’re playing, and suddenly this firework shoots across the room above your head and smashes on the wall behind you,” Miller recalls.

A new beast

David Stenshoel, whose fiddle anchored the band across two long stints, passed away in 2021. Miller and Menton took some time before putting the band back together, this time with Olson on violin and drummer Morris Engel, Miller’s bandmate in the roots-rockabilly combo Kinda Fonda Wanda.

“We quickly found out that we’ve got that mysterious telepathy that happens between a bass player and a drummer,” Miller says of Engel. He remembers the moment it clicked. The two were both subbing on a gig, and a sudden stop was coming up. “I saw Morris’s stick hitting full speed, full strength towards the snare, and I gave him one of those raised eyebrow looks, and he stopped mid-stroke.”

What Miller values most is that Engel came in with no baggage. “He had no prior experience with Irish music or Balkan or Arabic or any of these traditions that we work with,” Miller says. “So he really came at it fresh.”

That lineup debuted at the Parkway Theater in March 2023, a show that ultimately became the live album 40 Years of Rock ‘n’ Reel, before cutting King of the Dogwoods. Asked what he wants people to remember about Boiled in Lead, Miller skips the legacy talk entirely. “I really want people to hear the new record.”

One last Halloween

Playing as a trio has meant trimming the set. “There are certain things that don’t work without the fourth voice,” Miller acknowledges. Still, the songs they’ve kept span the band’s entire history, and Miller has worked in some new textures, including Appalachian dulcimer on a couple of tunes.

He’s also finally made good on an idea he floated in an early interview: adding a theremin. Sort of. He plays a theremin-style instrument made by the company behind the Stylophone. “I’m not going to be Clara Rockmore and play it properly,” he admits.

As for what Halloween night holds, Miller is candid. “To be perfectly honest, we have no idea,” he says. The set list isn’t settled, and, as of this interview, the trio hadn’t rehearsed yet. As a three-piece, he says, the band can go in all sorts of directions. Menton once pulled out “The Town of Ballybay,” live, and the others followed. “We just went into it, and we didn’t rehearse it, but it was fine.”

Just don’t expect any indoor fireworks at Crooners.

What comes next

With no more forward motion for the band, Miller plans to dig through the archives for a series of Bandcamp releases. “There’s been a lot of pieces the band’s done over the years that haven’t been well documented,” he says.

The members are all staying busy elsewhere, too. Menton continues to teach at the Center for Irish Music and plays in O’Shea Irish Dance’s showband, while Engel also drums with Retrofizz and Vibro Champs. According to Miller, he and Engel are “ready to plug into any project that needs a rhythm section.”

Miller is also part of Thistle and Rose, which he describes as a mix between “Scottish bagpipes and all the Balkan dances.” The group plays all original pieces in Balkan meters of seven, nine, and 11 beats, and has five shows lined up with support from the Minnesota State Arts Board, including a November 20 gig at Tapestry Folkdance Center.

Beyond that, he’d rather not speculate. “I don’t like talking about things that haven’t happened yet,” he says. But one thing is certain: “I’m sure I’m not going to stop playing.”

For 43 years, Miller has kept a simple bar for a good Boiled in Lead show. Come Halloween night, he’ll plug in one more time, turn the amps up to 11, and hope, as always, that nobody dies.

Boiled in Lead’s two final shows are on Saturday, October 31, in the Dunsmore Room at Crooners Supper Club in Fridley. The 8 p.m. show is sold out, but tickets for the 5 p.m. show are available here. King of the Dogwoods is out now on Omnium Records.