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Introductory Hold Steady Songs

Unfamiliar with the sound of the Brooklyn-via-Minneapolis rockers the Hold Steady? buzz suggests you check out the following songs as a quick guide to what to expect Friday night.

“Chips Ahoy” — There is nothing better than a good “wo-ah-oh-ee-ah-oh-ee-oh” sing-a-long chorus, and the Hold Steady exemplifies this with “Chips Ahoy” off of the critically acclaimed 2006 release, Boys And Girls in America.

“Your Little Hoodrat Friend” — Craig Finn’s can-you-even-call-this-raspy voice is at its finest on this 2005 track with lines like “because it burns being broke, and it hurts to be heartbroken, but always being both must be a drag.”

“The Swish” — The first full-length studio release from the band, 2004’s Almost Killed Me contains this gem, an epic clusterfuck of pop culture references and witty one-liners.

“How a Resurrection Really Feels” — The concluding song on 2005’s Separation Sunday, “How a Resurrection Really Feels” completes the album’s storyline of Holly, the hoodrat previously mentioned in “Your Little Hoodrat Friend.”

“Sequestered in Memphis” — Representing the group’s latest release, the appropriately titled Stay Positive, “Sequestered in Memphis” finds the men of the Hold Steady running from the clutches of a woman who “in bar light [she] looked alright, in daylight [she] looked desperate.”

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Courtyard Cafe - Illini Union »
Address: 1401 W. Green St. Urbana, IL 61801
Phone: (217) 333-3660
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On Friday, April 3, the Hold Steady will bring their critically-acclaimed rock and roll to the Courtyard Café with Philadelphia openers The War On Drugs.

The indie quintet has been garnering praise and loyal fans since their surprise debut Almost Killed Me in 2004. Frontman Craig Finn’s gravel toughened, Springsteen-esque vocals and Tad Kubler’s clean, catchy riffs marked the Hold Steady as a band to watch, and they justified the critical attention with their 2005 sophomore release Separation Sunday. A year later, the band came into their own with the release of Boys and Girls in America, which placed eighth on Rolling Stone’s Best Albums of 2006 list.

In July of 2008, the Hold Steady released Stay Positive, an expansive and varied album that continued their momentum, and showed that Finn and company still have plenty of tricks up their sleeves. The weathered, blue collar feel persisted in songs like “Sequestered in Memphis,” “Slapped Actress” and “Constructive Summer,” but the group also explored new musical territory in the harpsichord laced “One for the Cutters,” and the moody, twanging banjo of “Two Crosses.” Finn’s dense, storytelling lyrics are still there setting the feel and even the band’s stretching feels natural and polished.

The Brooklyn based act is currently touring in support of Stay Positive, and is due to release a two-disc documentary and concert film titled A Positive Rage in April. The film will highlight the Hold Steady doing what they do best: drinking, traveling and performing their dark, uplifting, drug-addled style of indie rock to a sold out crowd at Chicago’s Metro.

The Hold Steady’s stop in Urbana is part of the first leg of an international tour that will take the band across far-flung cities like Las Vegas, Dublin, London and Glasgow. The band’s soulfully rough but carefully constructed tunes and push for a “unified scene” has gathered fans worldwide, among critics and concertgoers alike. Their live show has been polished under the rigors of the Brooklyn bar scene, and their tour promises not to disappoint.

buzz’s Drake Baer had the honor of speaking with the Hold Steady’s lead guitarist Tad Kubler about the rigors of the Midwest, American life and the current state of rock and roll. Be sure to check the217.com for a full transcription of the interview.

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 Gomorrah.

buzz: I’ve heard the Hold Steady described as America’s Favorite Bar Band, can you expand on that?

TK: When we started out doing concerts, that’s what we were calling ourselves. At times 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 it has a lot more to do with 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 that if you’re going to run into me at four 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: 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.

We all moved to New York and coming out of really the biggest city in the world and [we were] 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, [there’s a] lot of material [like that] on some of the earlier records.

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; 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 would like to think that is what our band is a little bit about.

buzz: In a sentence, how would you describe your and Craig’s working relationship?

TK: [laughs] 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. 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 in 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.

buzz: 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. After everything was finished, we trimmed it down to the 12 songs that would make the best record and tell the best story. 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 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. We’re just now starting to get radio play, so we’ll see what happens, if its 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.