By Jim O'Sullivan
News Editor

Occupationally, it reads like this: Gulf War grunt to punk rocker to firefighter to minister of hometown defense.

Geographically, it's Sydney Street to Myrtlebank Avenue to Los Angeles, with stops in Scandinavia and the Czech Republic.

Lyrically, Mike McColgan puts it this way: "In defense of Dorchester/ A real community not idle zip codes … I forged a life on these streets and city roads."

The frontman for the internationally-touring Street Dogs, a punk band with a city soul, McColgan was back home in Dorchester Tuesday night. At a Blarney Stone party touting the world premiere of the Dogs' new album, Back to the World, with proceeds going to the Boston Firefighters's Burn Foundation and Project D.E.E.P. (Dorchester Educational Enrichment Program), he said his record label offered venues in New York, L.A., or closer to home on Lansdowne Street.

But McColgan remembers sawdust on the floor and "McHale's Navy" reruns on a black-and-white TV set in the now-classy Blarney, and he wanted to bring the party home.

It's been a long circling back, but for a punk band with closed-fist choruses, coming home was the only way.

McColgan reached stardom the first time as lead singer of the Dropkick Murphys, the Boston, Celtic-tinged punk band whose first two albums he fronted. Freshly back from Operation Desert Storm, McColgan was ready for the rock 'n roll life and the blue-collar Dropkicks fit the bill. He remembers those days and his bandmates fondly, but in 1998 was ready for a new hat, and the firefighter's helmet fit.

Stationed first at the Financial District's Engine 10, he was transferred to Engine 16 on Gallivan Boulevard, a short way from his parents' home on Myrtlebank, where he still stays when in Boston.

But the rock bug bit again, and McColgan started "informally jamming" with Johnny Rioux, former bassist for The Unseen and The Bruisers. "I missed writing music and creating songs," McColgan says.

One of those songs was "Street Dogs," which found its way onto a six-song demo tape. "The song was DOA," he says, perched on a pool table, the band's equipment waiting for a sure-to-please hometown set. "But there was something about 'Street Dogs' that resonated with me. Here we are, a bunch of guys from working-class background, without a sense of entitlement or the silver spoon. Not that we begrudge anybody who did, but it is what it is."

McColgan's lyrics are shot through with the same blue-collar pride. "In Defense of Dorchester" screams "Staring down Cedar Grove up on Indian Hills/ See a skyline littered with triple deckers and gin mills/ Years of tot lot pass my eyes/ Reflecting faces that have gone by/ Adams Corner embedded in my soul." Other songs contain odes to drinking and labor unions. Some of them rip domestic violence and President Bush. One decries a friend's problem with the bottle.

Onstage, McColgan's eloquence comes through in high-decibel articulation.

"He's like Clark Kent," says John O'Toole, a lifelong McColgan friend who handles East Coast publicity for the band. "He's mild-mannered and then he goes onstage and just morphs."

He's joined there by Rioux, former Mighty Mighty Bosstones drummer Joe Sirois, and new guitarist Marcus Hollar, who was so enamored of the band that he e-mailed and called his way onto the roster. "We said, 'We've gotta give this guy a shot or lock him up for stalking us," McColgan says of Hollar's persistence.

The demands of the rock 'n roll life mean L.A. makes better sense for McColgan's career now, and for his personal life, too, because it means he's closer to fiancee Tanya, whom he plans to marry in September. She spent two years on the East Coast ("She really misses Dorchester," he says), and now he's followed Affleck to Tinseltown.

"It's the last place in the world I thought I'd end up," he says, a bit ruefully, describing "a love and hate relationship" with L.A. "It's the polar opposite of Boston. Out there, everything is based around the entertainment business. Things here seem to revolve around the trades, city work, government, things of that nature."

He'll get more culture shock when the band goes out on tour again next week. Street Dogs tour nationally with Social Distortion, just as they did last year with Flogging Molly, and plans to hit the Warped Tour this summer. Another Europe junket may be in the offing.

McColgan stands firmly among the 'hood's local-grown chart-climbing glitterati. The artist Mark Wahlberg, formerly known as Marky Mark, Free of Black Entertainment Television's "106 and Park," and Letters to Cleo lead singer Kay Hanley - all big names in their respective genres, all Originally From Dorchester.

Holding court at the Blarney on Tuesday night, greeting well-wishers and whispering with thick-necked guys in scally caps and work boots, McColgan acknowledged that his buddies from the old neighborhood occasionally give him the business about his L.A. digs and rock 'n roll success.

"They definitely break my stones, and I would think less of them if they didn't do that," he admits. "But I will never forget where I came from. OFD for life. I never thought I'd be wearing one of those shirts, but I guess I am."