Flogging Molly guitarist Dennis Casey has been feeling a little too much love from the audience on the Celtic punk band’s current tour.

Early last week, Casey found himself in the emergency room for a cracked rib, postponing a planned conversation with GO! Magazine. When he sat down for the rescheduled interview a few days later in San Diego, he explained the situation:

“Well, that’s a funny story,” he said. “At the show in St. Petersburg (Florida), I have a very — there was a very big, wrestling-size kind of guy. We hugged, and my hand was in the way where my rib is. He squeezed a little too hard — he didn’t mean it, but he was just really excited to meet (me), and then I’ve been in pain ever since. But I’ve had that happen before. … I guess I’m getting old.”

To hear Casey tell it, that fan’s enthusiasm seems indicative of the audiences the band has been facing throughout this tour, its most recent in support of sixth studio album “Life is Good,” released last year. Cracked ribs aside, the run has been a rousing success with a number of sold-out shows throughout the month, including the tour closer at the Midtown Ballroom on Saturday. It will be the band’s first show in Bend in more than a decade.

The band has a busy year ahead after its Bend date. This week it announced a U.S. leg of its European tour with fellow Celtic punk band Dropkick Murphys in June. (The two bands’ fans have long maintained a rivalry between the two groups that both bands insist is imaginary: “No, there’s camaraderie,” Casey said.)

“There’s a great vibe in the air,” Casey said of the current tour. “… Fans have been really enjoying the new songs — we’re doing a whole handful of them, and they’re really going over well. After doing this so many years, having the sold-out shows is a great feeling.”

Flogging Molly celebrated the 20th anniversary of its first release, the 1997 live album “Alive Behind the Green Door,” last year. That album was recorded at Molly Malone’s in Los Angeles, where the band originally formed around vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Dave King and violinist (and now King’s wife) Bridget Regan and maintained a weekly residency for many years. The band’s name is a reference to the club (as in “flogging it to death”).

After some early lineup changes, the band’s lineup settled around King, Regan, Casey, accordionist/keyboardist Matt Hensley, bassist Nathen Maxwell, mandolinist/banjoist Bob Schmidt and drummer George Schwindt for the band’s sophomore studio effort and breakout release, 2002’s “Drunken Lullabies.” The album introduced the rest of the world to Dublin native King’s literate storytelling and bracing mix of traditional Irish folk and American punk, helping to usher in a new era of popularity for Celtic rock.

“Life is Good” was the band’s first studio album since 2011’s “Speed of Darkness,” and comes on the heels of a number of changes for the band, including new management and booking agents and a new drummer, Mike Alonso. King’s mother and Casey’s father also died during the album’s writing and recording sessions, and that combined with heavy touring contributed to the delay.

While the band was dealing with this, Donald Trump was elected president. Trump’s divisive campaign and the debate around immigration in the U.S. inspired King, who had his own struggles with moving to the U.S. in the ’90s. The album’s first single, “The Hand of John L. Sullivan,” tells the story of the Irish-American immigrant and the first heavyweight champion of gloved boxing (from 1882 to 1892) known as the “Boston Strong Boy.”

“There were songs, yes, that were already written,” Casey said. “Dave writes all the lyrics, so I think as events transpired, he was moved by that. My father died first; he was friends with all of us, and he would come to a lot of shows, and we all knew each other. I think that theme runs throughout the whole record, and I think the whole title is sort of a sarcastic take on ‘life is good,’ and it really isn’t. It’s actually both. A lot of people think it’s just caviar, champagne and yachts and life is good — that’s the good life. But life really — it’s painful and hard at times.”

Musically, the album continues the evolution in the band’s sound heard on 2008’s “Float” and “Speed of Darkness.” Songs range from the anthemic Irish pop of “Reptiles (We Woke Up)” to the crunching riffs of “Crushed (Hostile Nations),” a callback to King’s early career fronting metal supergroup Fastway (featuring former Motörhead guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke) in the ’80s.

“It’s a fine line because sometimes you wonder — you can go too far out and leave people scratching their heads,” Casey said. “I think that comes from seven very different people with different influences, and becoming better musicians. I think that’s part of the charm of the band — pushing the boundaries of this sort of traditional Irish music and adding things into it that may not have been, kind of like what other bands did to rock ’n’ roll and the blues.”