articles
The Hold Steady
from volume 01 issue 07 // Michael Rabinowitz
The Hold Steady
Interview with Craig Finn
Words: Michael Rabinowitz
Photos: Marina Chavez
Can the best bar band in America also happen to be the smartest? It can when its lead singer looks like Peter Sellers and espouses quotes from Kerouac and Yeats. With a classic rock backdrop reminiscent of .38 Special, Mellencamp, Springsteen, and ZZ Top, The Hold Steady spins out tales of drugs, twin city kisses, more drugs, eternal high school nights, lost unemployed days, catholic school truancy, and even more drugs. All of these suburban Midwest yarns are delivered in deadpan monotone by lead singer Craig Finn on their new third studio album, Boys And Girls In America.
For Finn, writing about sinful nights in Ybor City that almost killed him in songs like “Killer Parties” has more to do with alliteration than the actually stumbling onto the fuzzy brick laden streets between 7th and 8th Ave. “Our last show in Tampa (February at The Masquerade) was the first time I’ve ever been in Ybor. I just looked at a map and I saw it and it was so much fun to say that I kept putting it into songs.”
This fondness for words as high art and the world of pimps and hustlers as low art has been the attraction and confusion to fans of The Hold Steady since Finn left Minneapolis for New York after his regionally successful former band, Lifter Puller, broke up six years ago. The confusion comes from Finn’s straight-faced delivery about the drug addled characters in his stories and whether or not he is empathizing, celebrating, or just plane mocking them. But, the thought of appearing too ironic for his own intent does not seem to affect him. “Well, irony is certainly not something I want to be accused of. I’m not that worried about it.” Finn adds, “I think its more of a matter-of-fact kind of way I say it. Like a narrator is sort of how I think of it.”
To Finn, The Hold Steady’s refusal to allow the stage to separate them from the audience is what defines this earnestness. But, in today’s escapist age of entertainment, where millions of young fans revel in the Bowie-esque machinations of My Chemical Romance, do fans really seek truth and sincerity a in rock show? Absolutely, according to Finn: “All of The Hold Steady fans I’ve talked to, a lot of them, really appreciate the sincerity that we work with. There’s a lot of ironic stuff out there that people can have if that’s what they want. But, I really do think that people react to sincerity.” (Note: The Hold Steady is not the most ironic bar band in America:)
Sometimes, fans look for too much sincerity in Finn’s lyrics. While a filmmaker is free to create whatever world he wants, he is never expected to live that lifestyle. (“No one thinks Martin Scorcese is a gangster,” laments Finn.) For rockstars, the opposite holds true. “There is sort of a weird thing that exists between sincerity, and I want us to be sincere and think of us as sincere but, at the same time these are not things that necessarily happened to me or at least not in a one-to-one relationship.” Sadly, Finn never got a bloody nose from sniffing margarita mix like the hero Mary in “Barfruit Blues.”
Paradoxical to most rock songs, Finn’s characters practice the weary notion that self destruction is no longer romantic, but inevitable. This makes The Hold Steady the most popular anti-drug bar band in America even with while its protagonists stumble through their nights on “powders and pills.” While not admitting to be an “angel” himself, Finn tries to show the dusk and dawn of a neverending Friday night, “I’d like to think that we write about the hangover as much as the high.”
The “comfort food” of classic rock and heavy blues chords (with tinkling piano keys thrown in for pure middle-American effects) give the spoken word style Finn created more resonance. The effect is at first jarring, like a coffee house beatnik yelling “Who mixed my spoken word in with the classic rock?” and a biker bar mullet head yelling “Who mixed my classic rock with spoken word?” Unlike his references to Ybor City, the deadpan release is not all about poetic licensing: “Its kind of the only thing I can do. If I tried to sing, it wouldn’t sound much different.” Laughing, Finn adds, “A lot of it also was developed out of necessity of just having small P.A.’s and trying to shout above them.”
Breaking out of their Midwest ceiling to become unabashed darlings of Pitchfork.com makes The Hold Steady the most famous new media bar band in America. But, the fact that fame did not come overnight to prevents Finn and The Hold Steady from becoming a cliché or a character in one of their songs. However, what if the celebrity he earns today at age 35 was bestowed upon him at 25? “I would be an asshole most likely,” Finn readily admits. “It would be hard not to. Our success is far from overnight. I think that its one of the reasons its all good.” This is a sincere answer from what is probably the most sincere bar band in America.
For the full transcript of Craig Finn’s interview go to Extended Play at www.reaxmusic.com.
Interview with Craig Finn
Words: Michael Rabinowitz
Photos: Marina Chavez
Can the best bar band in America also happen to be the smartest? It can when its lead singer looks like Peter Sellers and espouses quotes from Kerouac and Yeats. With a classic rock backdrop reminiscent of .38 Special, Mellencamp, Springsteen, and ZZ Top, The Hold Steady spins out tales of drugs, twin city kisses, more drugs, eternal high school nights, lost unemployed days, catholic school truancy, and even more drugs. All of these suburban Midwest yarns are delivered in deadpan monotone by lead singer Craig Finn on their new third studio album, Boys And Girls In America.
For Finn, writing about sinful nights in Ybor City that almost killed him in songs like “Killer Parties” has more to do with alliteration than the actually stumbling onto the fuzzy brick laden streets between 7th and 8th Ave. “Our last show in Tampa (February at The Masquerade) was the first time I’ve ever been in Ybor. I just looked at a map and I saw it and it was so much fun to say that I kept putting it into songs.”
This fondness for words as high art and the world of pimps and hustlers as low art has been the attraction and confusion to fans of The Hold Steady since Finn left Minneapolis for New York after his regionally successful former band, Lifter Puller, broke up six years ago. The confusion comes from Finn’s straight-faced delivery about the drug addled characters in his stories and whether or not he is empathizing, celebrating, or just plane mocking them. But, the thought of appearing too ironic for his own intent does not seem to affect him. “Well, irony is certainly not something I want to be accused of. I’m not that worried about it.” Finn adds, “I think its more of a matter-of-fact kind of way I say it. Like a narrator is sort of how I think of it.”
To Finn, The Hold Steady’s refusal to allow the stage to separate them from the audience is what defines this earnestness. But, in today’s escapist age of entertainment, where millions of young fans revel in the Bowie-esque machinations of My Chemical Romance, do fans really seek truth and sincerity a in rock show? Absolutely, according to Finn: “All of The Hold Steady fans I’ve talked to, a lot of them, really appreciate the sincerity that we work with. There’s a lot of ironic stuff out there that people can have if that’s what they want. But, I really do think that people react to sincerity.” (Note: The Hold Steady is not the most ironic bar band in America:)
Sometimes, fans look for too much sincerity in Finn’s lyrics. While a filmmaker is free to create whatever world he wants, he is never expected to live that lifestyle. (“No one thinks Martin Scorcese is a gangster,” laments Finn.) For rockstars, the opposite holds true. “There is sort of a weird thing that exists between sincerity, and I want us to be sincere and think of us as sincere but, at the same time these are not things that necessarily happened to me or at least not in a one-to-one relationship.” Sadly, Finn never got a bloody nose from sniffing margarita mix like the hero Mary in “Barfruit Blues.”
Paradoxical to most rock songs, Finn’s characters practice the weary notion that self destruction is no longer romantic, but inevitable. This makes The Hold Steady the most popular anti-drug bar band in America even with while its protagonists stumble through their nights on “powders and pills.” While not admitting to be an “angel” himself, Finn tries to show the dusk and dawn of a neverending Friday night, “I’d like to think that we write about the hangover as much as the high.”
The “comfort food” of classic rock and heavy blues chords (with tinkling piano keys thrown in for pure middle-American effects) give the spoken word style Finn created more resonance. The effect is at first jarring, like a coffee house beatnik yelling “Who mixed my spoken word in with the classic rock?” and a biker bar mullet head yelling “Who mixed my classic rock with spoken word?” Unlike his references to Ybor City, the deadpan release is not all about poetic licensing: “Its kind of the only thing I can do. If I tried to sing, it wouldn’t sound much different.” Laughing, Finn adds, “A lot of it also was developed out of necessity of just having small P.A.’s and trying to shout above them.”
Breaking out of their Midwest ceiling to become unabashed darlings of Pitchfork.com makes The Hold Steady the most famous new media bar band in America. But, the fact that fame did not come overnight to prevents Finn and The Hold Steady from becoming a cliché or a character in one of their songs. However, what if the celebrity he earns today at age 35 was bestowed upon him at 25? “I would be an asshole most likely,” Finn readily admits. “It would be hard not to. Our success is far from overnight. I think that its one of the reasons its all good.” This is a sincere answer from what is probably the most sincere bar band in America.
For the full transcript of Craig Finn’s interview go to Extended Play at www.reaxmusic.com.
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