Dicky Barrett says his refusal to get the COVID vaccine is the reason the Mighty Mighty Bosstones broke up, but he’s got a new band.
In an interview with musician Joseph Arthur, a fellow COVID vaccine skeptic, Barrett said he and his former Bosstones bandmates “never say never” about re-forming, but he’s excited about his new act.
“I like the people I’m working with,” said Barrett. “I’m psyched. I feel like I’m in motion.”
The Bosstones, the Boston-bred ska/punk band whose debut LP was released more than three decades ago, abruptly split last February. There was no reason given, just a statement: “After decades of brotherhood, touring the world and making great records together we have decided not to continue on as a band.”
Soon after, though, people close to the band said it was Barrett’s unwillingness to get vaccinated that doomed the Bosstones, who released 11 albums, including 1997′s “Let’s Face It,” which sold more than 1 million copies thanks to the hit single “The Impression That I Get.”
In addition to the break-up of the Bosstones, Barrett’s vax status also cost him his job as the announcer on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” a gig he’d held since 2004.
The 58-year-old Barrett, who’s married with two children, hasn’t said much publicly about his vaccination views, but he did sit down earlier this year with Del Bigtree, the founder of Informed Consent Action Network, one of the country’s largest, deep-pocketed anti-vaxx organizations.
The new interview with Arthur was posted last week on TNT Radio, a fringe online station devoted, according to its website, to such topics as “Covid-19 Malfeasance, Big Tech Censorship, Digital Control, and Government Tyranny.” A once-respected singer-songwriter who recorded an album with REM guitarist Peter Buck in 2018, Arthur is best known now for his provocative — and thoroughly debunked — theories about COVID. (He believes the pandemic is the result of “mass formation psychosis”; he likens the treatment of people who oppose the vaccine to the persecution of Jews by the Nazis, and he calls the vaccine an “experimental injection” that’s part of a larger conspiracy to control people.)
Barrett told Arthur, whom he met in April at a rally in Los Angeles opposing COVID vaccine mandates, that he and his family moved from California to Arizona in November 2020.
“It was just the lockdowns and mask mandates and everything that was going on,” said Barrett.
The Bosstones frontman said he never seriously considered getting the COVID vaccination because “I felt that what was happening was dangerous and I couldn’t signal to people, or even let them think, that I was taking part in it.”
He said he was offered a fake proof-of-vaccination card, but declined.
“If somebody [got vaccinated] because of me, and something happened to that person — I don’t care if it’s one, I don’t care if it’s 100 — then I would have trouble sleeping and feel like I did something wrong,” Barrett said. “I had to do what I had to do. I don’t think I had a choice.”
But it also meant the end of the Bosstones.
“We’re still brothers. We’re still friends. They were uncomfortable, and it ended up the way it ended up,” said Barrett. “Whatever happened is whatever happened. I love my friends dearly, and that will always be the case.
Asked by Arthur if he thinks the vaccine is “some kind of nefarious agenda of control,” Barrett replied: “Yes.”
Barrett acknowledged it’s been difficult adjusting to his new life without the Bosstones or his job with Kimmel.
“To be quite honest, up until I met you guys and other friends, I sort of was, like, ‘Oh my gosh, I have nothing,’” he said. “Because I’m a social being and I love my friends and I felt alone and I felt, you know, here I am now in Arizona.”
But that passed, Barrett said.
“I gained and gathered and garnered strength,” he said. “It’s like, alright, then you start meeting people that think like you and share your beliefs, which aren’t crazy, which are basically ‘my body my choice.’”
For now, Barrett is keeping the details about his new band under wraps, but Arthur, who’s heard a few songs, said the lineup “really rocks” and includes “some luminaries.”
Barrett said Boston will always be home, but it could be awhile before he returns.
“I still feel like my heart is there,” he said. “I think the way things are politically and the way things are with, you know, the things we believe in, me and you, it’s difficult to think of being there right now, but who knows.”
Mark Shanahan can be reached at mark.shanahan@globe.com.