Since playing here four years ago, the Dropkick Murphys have upped their profile considerably, with a little help from Martin Scorsese and the sports teams in Boston.

America's premier Celtic-punk outfit -- a longtime staple on the Warped Tour (though not lately) -- has become more of a household name since putting the song "Shipping Up to Boston" on "The Departed" soundtrack. The band has also become more and more associated for its anthemic Boston rock, playing a big role in Red Sox and Bruins games. The Murphys' latest record, "The Meanest of Times," was its biggest success yet, charting at No. 20 on Billboard.

Less than two weeks ago, the once-very-aggressive punk band found itself playing a Hometown Heroes concert at the Comcast Arena in Boston with Aerosmith.

"They own Boston," Joe Perry recently told the PG. "They're in with all the sports teams and they're great guys and they built their career in the old-fashioned way, playing live gigs and playing great and having a sound that's unique. They're just great and we're lucky that they're opening for us. We don't even look at it as them opening, They could probably sell out any place they play."

Two months before that, the Murphys were invited up on stage in Boston to play two songs with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

In both cases, it was a rare convergence of punk with classic rock, which was totally cool with guitarist Tim Brennan, who talked to us this week.

In the past few years, you guys have become so associated with Boston sports. I was wondering how that plays in rival cities.

It depends on how hard we decide to push it. When we play in New York we'll definitely throw a couple Boston-themed songs in there. If there's a rival sports team, we might play one of those songs. It's sort of bizarre how that happened. It definitely wasn't something we set out to do. I think a couple songs were written that were about various sports teams just because that's what Ken [Casey] writes lyrics about sometimes. Then, the Red Sox thing, when we wrote "Tessie," that was the first time we really tried to write a sports song about a team that was actually accepted. Since then, we did "Shipping up to Boston," they've been playing that in a lot of games.

Having the song in "The Departed" seems to have been a breakthrough for you guys.

A breakthrough in the sense that people just get really excited. They get fairly excited during the set, but when we play that song, they get really excited. The strange thing with that is that when we wrote that and started playing it live, nobody cared about it. Then it was in 'The Departed' and people had something to associate with it and it snowballed from there. That song being in the movie has helped us with getting our name out there. You can really tell if we play that song last, a lot of people have been waiting for that song, cause that might be the only one they know by us, or something like that.

Your records seem to be more well received each time. Do you think you're getting better at the recording side?

Yeah, I think at first it was a difficult thing for the band to try to translate what we do live in the studio. But we've got a pretty good handle on it now. We've also gotten pretty good at putting together the types of music that we do, the traditional Irish stuff and the punk rock and the straight-up rock 'n' roll stuff. We've gotten good at combining all those. The recording process has gotten easier as we've gone along and everyone in the band has progressed in terms of writing.

How did the themes on "The Meanest" develop?

Ken wrote a lot about his earlier days in Boston when he was a kid running around causing trouble. And so as far as themes, that record he just ended up writing a lot more about experience, as opposed to picking a topic. He was writing about everything he saw when he was growing up.

So, tell me about the Aerosmith show.

The Aerosmith show was really cool. We were so honored that they even thought of us. It was at home in Boston, so a lot of our family got to come out and see the show. The Aerosmith guys were super cool to us and invited us on stage to do a song, and we had a really good time. And everyone in the crowd seemed like they were excited to see both of us.

There weren't some Aerosmith fans taken aback?

I'm sure there were, but there were a decent amount of Dropkick fans so we were all right.

You also recently jammed with Springsteen. How did that come about?

I'm a lifelong Springsteen fan so that was the coolest thing I'll ever get to do probably. I actually got engaged on stage. Bruce let me propose to my girlfriend. Our wedding song is a Bruce Springsteen song ["So Young and in Love" from "Tracks"], so they played it before. It was incredible. He plays this Irish song at the end of the night, so we played on that, then we stayed up on stage to play "Glory Days." I was excited to do that, and then the following days I'm getting all these pictures and YouTube videos of me playing guitar with Springsteen.

Wasn't punk rock a rejection of the mainstream?

The Springsteen thing. We met him because his son was a fan of ours. They wanted to come to a show we played in New York, so we said, "Come down, of course." So we got to hang out with him. We sort of built the relationship from there. His kids influence him a lot as far as new music. He hears most of his new stuff from driving his kids to school. He's been turned on to bands like us and Against Me!

So what's next for the band? You have a live album coming out?

We're working on a live album recorded on St. Patrick's Day and we're mixing that. Hopefully it will be out on the fall. Once that comes out we'll record a new studio record, and that will hopefully be out next St. Patrick's Day.

I read the comment in the Globe where they said "I think you're going to see the Dropkicks play until they're in their 60s. They'll be the Rolling Stones of punk rock." Your take on that?

I hope that I can still do what we do when I'm 60. I don't know that I'll be able to. Typically we'll go play for at last an hour and a half. We're basically kicking the [expletive] out of each other for 90 minutes a night. If I'm still standing when I'm 60 years old, I'll be happy to be up there.

The first time I talked to Ken, a big part of the story was this bad relationship you had with [Pittsburgh band] Anti-Flag. Have you guys ever crossed paths again?

I think the last time saw them was probably in 2003 on the Warped Tour. Dropkick Murphys is a little bit of a different band these days as far as our beefs with people, if you will. I think we're a little bit more grown up about situations these days, so we don't have any trouble anymore.