Their broad anthems are about small-bit players. Their music is loud, raucous, and fun, but the stories they tell ache of desperation and loneliness.
They started the Hold Steady to play the kind of rock and roll they loved at a time when a very different sound dominated the scene. Only an hour late.”ĭon’t confuse these guys with their characters.įinn and Kubler are consummate professionals who have built their reputations on dissipation and debauchery. “A lot has been made of our lifestyle,” he says preemptively, “but it’s blown a little out of proportion.”įinn comes straight from the airport wearing a new Twins cap and looking a bit defeated by an encounter with modern American air travel.įinn shrugs. It isn’t quite the traditional cocktail hour, so he seems apologetic. In fact, I do find Kubler at the bar, but he’s drinking a mild greyhound. You might expect to find pimps beating up black-eyed whores while the whores dance and recite half-remembered lines from Revelation and pregnant chicks bullying me into smoking cigarettes with them.
And so you might expect me, when I show up at the Pencil Factory in Greenpoint, to find the front man, Craig Finn, finishing off sixteen shots of turpentine in nostalgic celebration of his favorite birthday, and Tad Kubler, the lead guitarist, doing lines in the bathroom. If you know anything about the Hold Steady, the indie-rock hybrid with one foot in Minneapolis and one in Brooklyn, you know that many of their songs are about drugs and alcohol and partying as those things might be experienced by a practicing Catholic.
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