Known for their dense, storytelling lyrics and energetic live show, the Hold Steady has been at the top of "Best Of..." lists ranging from your neighbor's music blog to the Rolling Stone and NPR. buzz had the opportunity to speak with lead guitarist Tad Kubler about the band's past, future and the state of the rock and roll song.

buzz: Urbana-Champaign, we call ourselves twin cities; Minneapolis-St. Paul, the primary twin cities...

Tad Kubler: The primary twin cities I would think would be Sodom and Gomorrorah.

buzz: There's a common line.

TK: I've been there. Actually, growing up I used to race BMX in Champaign. Springfield that had nationals there. I can't remember now. I feel like I've been through Urbana. The thing is, I don't believe that we have.

buzz: This is going to be a pretty intimate show. The venue is in the student union, what do you think —

TK: Do they serve beer?

buzz: Sadly they do not serve beer.

TK: Uh-oh. We'll get through it. I actually don't drink anymore, but I know that our audience like to imbibe.

buzz: So there's a little bit of a connection: I saw that you're originally from Janesville, Wisc.

TK: I am.

buzz: I am.

TK: OK, so rotation station.

buzz: Yes. Since birth I was raised on Cheap Trick.

TK: Excellent.

buzz: I've read and heard in the music a lot of Rick Nielson influence in your sound and what you do. Where does that Midwestern power rock sound, how did that influence you coming up as a musician?

TK: Well, I mean, you know. Growing up in Wisconsin and Cheap Trick being my first concert and probably one of my first records and meeting, getting to meet the band, through some neighborhood friends of mine whose dad managed Cheap Trick. Really between that and KISS, which is everybody's sort of first real two rock bands in kind of my age, (Cheap Trick in particular), I think that Cheap Trick always seemed to be a real working, a real working man's band. They were four guys that just wrote great songs and played great music. It was kind of, I wanna say, especially when you think about Bunny Carlos, you don't really, if you passed him on the street you wouldn't be like, "Wow, that's one of rock's best drummers," you'd be like, "Is that a friend of my dad's?"

So I think that that was great. Rick Nielson, rather than doing that, they were in between times of the Glam Rock of bands like T. Rex and also sort of the rock look like Led Zeppelin and then also before a lot of the heavy metal stuff too, so they just look like fairly normal dudes, I guess. Robin Zander and Tom Peterson [are] both kind of, fairly attractive well-dressed guys without being overly made-up. That's kind of what I've always kind of liked about Cheap Trick. That, and obviously the songs that they had.

buzz: "Workmanlike." I've heard the Hold Steady described as, “America's Favorite Bar Band,” can you expand on that?

TK: That's interesting because when we started out and we did concerts, that's what we were calling ourselves. At the time we weren't just playing in bars, we are also playing in much smaller clubs where the bar was right near the stage and sometimes people would show up, and not really to see us specifically, but because they were coming out to get a drink and see a live rock band.

I think that people really appreciated that we got up and played really kind of traditional rock music that you could enjoy. It didn't have that sort of exclusiveness of indie rock where it was kind of more about your look and being fashionable and kind of what other bands you're into or know about, as opposed to just really going out to enjoy a rock show. I think it has a lot more to do now, people are still using that term, it tends to do a lot more with our work ethic or our mentality of our band. It's about getting up on stage and really just having at it and having a good time. I can guarantee, if you're going to run into me at 4 in the afternoon, I'm probably going to be wearing the exact same thing on stage that night that you saw me in that day. …and it's not going to be a pair of skinny women's Levi's.

buzz: It's interesting, you're alluding to this authenticity, I'd like to connect that. There's a feeling of Americana to the Hold Steady I think. Taking Bruce's, instead of the Jersey Shore, it's the upper Midwest, and you know, the kids today are wearing flannel out and Red Wing boots are being sold at Urban Outfitters and whatnot. Do you think there's a longing for this America that we might have lost?

TK: I don't know. I think that definitely with Craig's lyrics you've got a very cinematic picture of teenage life that isn't just like Midwestern, but is just about anywhere that isn't a major metropolitan area. I think that one reason that we got a lot of attention is we all moved to New York, and coming out of really the biggest city in the world and still painting this picture of kind of, everyday…I don't want to say everyday life because that sounds really incredibly pretentious and is really kind of false, but kind of coming of age and the things that you go through during that sort of period in your life, a lot of material on some of the earlier records. I think what people, what lacks, I think what people miss is, as you said, a certain amount of authenticity and sincerity. I think people are kind of tired of the smoke and mirrors of all fashion and no function.

It's a difficult line to tread, when I get asked questions like that. It's like, you know, you want to be careful because you don't want to take away from bands like Led Zeppelin and Jimmy Page coming out in the black or the white suit with the dragons and the Zoso symbol and all that, the great mystery of that era of rock and roll, that was so fantastic. At the same time, there were bands like, when you think of New York artists, even though Bruce, Bruce Springsteen is from New Jersey I would say he's considered sort-of New York City's native son. You've got bands like Billy Joel and stuff like that, that are kind of "what you see is what you get." I think that, I would like to think that is what our band is a little bit about.

buzz: How long have you and Craig been making music together, all the way back to Lifter Puller days?

TK: Yeah, I joined the band in the late ‘90s and that band dissolved in the 2000s. We took a break, I moved to New York in about 2002, and about a year later started playing music. I mean, Craig and I have been doing this together for a little over a decade.

buzz: Right on. In a sentence, how would you describe your and [Craig Finn’s] working relationship?

TK: Haha Fuck. I was hoping you weren't going to ask me that. Craig and I have a fantastic working relationship and I think there's a tremendous amount of trust in the song-writing process. I was working, it's kind of, the dynamic is interesting because I write the majority of the music and I don't write any lyrics — that's really Craig's thing. In the sense that we need each other that way, that dynamic of the relationship is really fantastic and the amount of trust you have to have to work with someone like that.

You have to excuse me, there's a helicopter taking off next to me. That's not our helicopter, by the way.

I think, Craig and I are two human being that can work together on the bus for six weeks at a time and really not say more than five words to each other and it’s really just, we've known each other for so long that we don't really need to. So, I think that our friendship at this point has gotten past a lot of sort of the formalities that a lot of people have to deal with in bands. And that said too, there isn't a lot of bickering or anything like that, or quibbling or you know. He's the lead singer and the front man and the face and the voice of the band, and I kind prefer to take the backseat roll and kind of do my thing. We're not famous and we're not a household name by any means, but certainly when we're out places, Craig, especially if we're in bigger cities like London or out in New York, Craig is pretty easy to recognize, but people didn't know who the hell I was — that's kind of a luxury. I would hate…I can't imagine bands that are really famous actually have to go through a day to day level, getting around, that's kind of foreign to us.

buzz: Something you mentioned before was storytelling and the cinematic component of the songs. What's your thoughts, if you had to give a diagnosis on that state of the album in rock and roll today, do you think that's the primary vehicle of the art, or is it the individual song? What's your take?

TK: We still make records, and that's something we've always kind of prided ourselves on as a band in terms of being in the studio and picking out songs. This last record we made, we ended up having 19 or 20 songs and after everything was finished we trimmed it down to the 12 songs that would make the best record and tell the best story and sequencing and mastering and stuff like that, that's kind of where you get into that. I like to think that our records make sense from our first song to the last song. Obviously digital downloads and iTunes and the way technology is and the way people consume music, I think that's changing, but I think that the whole thing is, I think the consumers are smarter than people give them credit for. There are people who do listen to a whole record, rather than just downloading the single and we're just now starting to get radio play, so we'll see what happens — if it’s people that just know the one song that whoever is playing at the local radio station, or if they know the rest of album. Judging by the shows that we've played, it's great to hear everybody know all the words to all the songs.

buzz: Very cool. I was interested prepping for this and I Googled your name a couple times and I came across your photography portfolio.

TK: My website hasn't been updated since we started the band. I've got an actual portfolio that's much more current than anything that's online, but yeah. I can argue I was a photographer before this all started.

buzz: How do the two arts relate to each other for you?

TK: I mean, the industry itself, there's a lot of parallels. I was talking to Mark Selleger, who's a huge celebrity photographer who worked for Rolling Stone for well over a decade and shot all the covers then and now works at Conde Nast and shoots for Vanity Fair and the rest of the magazines that go along with that, in terms of what he does, there are huge parallels. He's kind of a celebrity himself. As far as photographers go, there's kind of Annie Liebowitz and Mark Selleger. There are certain things too — taking pictures, it allows me to be kind of anonymous and be behind the lens. I'm much more comfortable being there than in front of it.

buzz: Right on. I'd like to touch back on the songwriting. Where do the riffs come from? How is it born? Is it a stork?

TK: I don't know, sometimes. I just try to play guitar all the time or a lot, lately I've been playing piano a lot, and because I'm not a very good piano player it's been fun to come up with song ideas on that. You kind of learn as you go and you can transfer that to other instruments. I would say that, you know, someday you might be sitting around and playing something and it's like, "It's garbage, it's crap," and then you come back to it a couple weeks later and you realize that you've got something out of it. I try to play all the time and come up with different parts and kind of show them to the guys, and we sit down and start to hammer stuff out and arrange songs, and Craig brings in lyrics. I think that as technology becomes so much easier to record and document music, I do a lot recording on the bus and in our practice space in our studio in Long Island City that we've done, all if not some of the record that you saw. I try to spend a lot of time in there coming up with material.

buzz: I don't know if you've heard this, but tickets aren't being sold for the show on Friday, it's strictly at-the-door sales. What do you recommend for all the kids that are starved to see “America's best bar band?” What should they do with their time while waiting in line?

TK: Um. Well, I can give all kinds of suggestions but I'm sure, I'm sure they can figure out what to do with their time while waiting for tickets for a rock concert. What they should be doing is what people have been doing for years while waiting in line for a rock concert. I think that they'll be able to put two and two together.

buzz: Where's the band at? What's going on with this tour? Anything coming up live coming out of it, like live album work?

TK: We've got a live album and a documentary DVD that comes out here at the beginning of April that was the footage and the recordings [that] were done over the Boys and Girls in America tour while that first record came out, and the documentary is kind of interesting. It was before we had a tour bus and were still driving ourselves around in this old cargo van, like a box truck that we had that we converted into a very unsafe touring vehicle, so it's kind of interesting. It's when the band started gaining momentum, shows started to sell out, I guess that's coming up. In terms of this tour, we're just trying to promote that a little bit, and playing. We're kind of, we've done so many tours where we've hit major markets and bigger towns, I feel we've kind of ignored some of the smaller cities, tonight we're in Albany and tomorrow we're in Buffalo and then Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Iowa City, like that and so on. I'm looking forward to getting back there, smaller venues and more intimate audiences.

Don't miss the Hold Steady when they venture to the Courtyard Cafe on Friday, April 3 with the War On Drugs.