Holding Steady

Recently, The Village Voice called Mpls.St.Paul Magazine “Craig Finn-friendly”—whatever that means. We’ve never talked to the man. But Finn and his band, The Hold Steady, are in town on November 15 and 16, co-headlining with the Drive By Truckers, a band that chronicles the South in a manner similar to what The Hold Steady has done with the Upper Midwest. We called Finn in Brooklyn before the bands started touring.

How did that tour come together?

Well, it was a mutual admiration thing. I met Drive By’s lead singer Patterson [Hood] years go, but I’m not even sure I had The Hold Steady at that point. One thing that was instrumental is our tour manager is from Athens. When he came on board, he was really connected with all those guys and their crew. We’ve been telling our agent for a long time we want to do something with them, and [The Hold Steady] kind of caught up to their size in a way that made it possible to play with them more as co-headliners. Which makes it a lot cooler, I think, for everyone.

Do you think the audiences will overlap?

I certainly see a lot of Drive By Truckers shirts at our shows. Obviously, we’ll see some change regionally. We’ll be strong in Minneapolis, and they’ll probably be strong down South.

On this tour, you’ll have the Target Corp. Democrats at your shows in Minneapolis and the Sam’s Club Republicans down South, huh?

Yeah, exactly. And we’ll probably end up playing together and all that. We’ll see how it all shakes out, but I’m guessing that the encores will be kind of a free-for-all. I think it will be interesting. Besides the geographics, we might have more of an indie rock-oriented audience, and they have more of that Americana following, so I think there are people to be won over for each band. It’s a great challenge.

The Drive By Truckers seem almost Faulknerian in the way they concentrate on a few counties in the South. Whereas you guys have kind of expanded over your four records. Is that because you started with your little Minnesotan diaspora in Brooklyn and then gradually expanded your template as you started touring?

Absolutely. When we started this little band, we were going to play a show or two maybe. We certainly weren’t going to put out a record. To be opening for The Stones in Dublin, you know, it made me think a lot about the possibilities of rock 'n' roll. And certainly rock 'n' roll has taken me around the world. So Stay Positive is really about how we’ve been influenced by that process. At thirty years old, I thought I was done with music, and what’s happened since has been incredible for me. So it’s the idea of holding on to something, of persistence, of holding on to musical ideals while still trying to rise to meet the challenges and responsibilities of adulthood. That’s really what Stay Positive is about.

Are the characters in Stay Positive, the townies and the druggies, do these people all live in the same universe as your past albums?

With Stay Positive, I really didn’t name names like I had in the past. I did make it a little murkier. So, I’m sort of avoiding that question, but I think that, all things considered, the hes and shes on Stay Positive are the same people as on our other records.

Is it called Stay Positive because it’s more about people in your age bracket?

Yeah, Stay Positive, it’s about the whole idea of aging gracefully. Thirty-seven-year-old in a rock band—it’s a tough concept. There are certainly people who do it. I mean, Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young come to mind as people who have never embarrassed themselves. But there are a million other examples of people [who haven’t aged gracefully in rock 'n' roll].

It seems like you have to be nineteen to be in a band these days.

Absolutely. Again, in England there are all these bands, and that’s like their main thing: They’re nineteen, and they’re skinny, and they have guitars. And it’s not really rock 'n' roll. I don’t know what it is—it’s just kinda pinup. We have the Jonas Brothers, which is something way more mainstream. But they have all these indie bands that are kind of like—I don’t know their names—but you see ' em at the festivals. Anyway, the characters on this record are older, and I’d written a lot about young adults—people in their late teens—and I wanted to do something more about people my age. People coming to the end, or potentially the end, of a bohemian/hipster lifestyle. When you’re in bands and you’re playing the Entry, and all of the sudden you turn thirty or thirty-two, it’s like, “Whoa, what am I doing?” At that point, do you just buy the house and go to law school?

Or do you go to Brooklyn and start a band?

Exactly!

How long do you think you can you push the hipster lifestyle?

Well, we are getting better at it. I’ve changed my lifestyle dramatically with all the touring we’ve done. Exercise and nutrition have become a bigger part of my life than ever before. I went from drinking eight beers on stage every night to now, when I won’t drink before or during the show. Because I can’t. My voice won’t hold up.

It’s harder to get off the mat as you get older, too.

Yeah, you get older, and your hangovers get worse. So, you know, there are changes there. I would like to keep [playing rock 'n' roll] as long as it stays natural and stays relevant. But I think I’m always looking for ways to expand it. I’d like to write more when I have time. I’m writing a piece for The Independent over in the U. K. right now. One of the cool things about the band is you meet a lot of people that are doing really cool things in a lot of different areas.

How many Twins games do you catch on the road?

Not many. Well, I watched 'em on mlb.com, and when I’m in Brooklyn, my friend has The Package. I probably only see five games a year in person, though. But I’m still pretty obsessive—my days rise and fall with the results.

Why baseball instead of football?

There’s some sort of a romance in baseball that I find. And I really like going to the games better. With football, I can never tell what’s going on when I’m there—I like it on TV. But also baseball is day in/day out. It’s sort of like being an artist. Some shows are going to be good, and some shows your bullpen is going to blow it. It does mirror the artistic lifestyle in some ways. And there are obscure players, and you can make jokes about that. It’s like collecting records.

Fenway Park has “Tessie.” New York has “New York, New York” by Sinatra. Is there a Replacements song or a Hold Steady song that could work as a Twins anthem?

Well, I think for the new stadium, I would like to see “Constructive Summer”—“We’re gonna build something this summer.” I would really love to see them use that. I know that the music guy at the Twins, Kevin Dutcher, has been really good to us. He’s the one that suggested we record “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” And when I went to a game this summer, he played about seven Hold Steady songs while I was there. And I got out on the field and everything. I met Bert Blyleven, too.

Did you write that one with an eye to getting it played at the ballpark?

No. That one really just worked out. I knew we wanted to have a summer song. I knew when we were writing the album, it was likely to come out in the middle of the summer, so I thought, “We need a summer song.”

The characters on the record are kind of bumbling through life, but the songs sound hopeful.

Yeah, hope’s a huge part of it. Hope and optimism. Even the down-and-out things that I write about. And certainly the things I take from the Catholic Church are forgiveness and redemption. I saw David Carr read the other night. I’m a little friendly with him, and I love his books. Here he is, he’s addicted to drugs, his two twins have been taken away from him. At that point, is he not pretty close to what a lot of people would say is hopeless? Fast forward twenty years, now he’s a best-selling author and a New York Times columnist, and he has two kids in college. I don’t think anyone’s beyond hope. It gives you hope that you can be the best that you can be and people can always make changes. I’ve had people around me that had to go through things to get better.

You’re going to be playing these shows with DBT in November. It could be a real bummer.

I was just looking at our schedule. We have a day off on Election Day. And we’re going to be in New York right after the election. Hopefully it will be cause for celebration. Right now, that’s hard to see—it’s hard to see what’s going to happen. It is one thing, from a political standpoint, to be here in New York City (or even in Minnesota) and then [to go on the road] and understand the rest of the country isn’t in your same mindset. I saw both towers fall on 9/11, but the people who seem to be the most scared of terrorism are the people in the middle of the country. On tour, you’ll stop at a Wal-Mart, and they’ll have a sign out front saying what the terror level is. Well, the terror is being created by that sign, at least in part.

But the guitars on your records sound so Wal-Mart parking lot.

Well, what we wanted to do with The Hold Steady is to strip away some of the irony and posturing that come with indie music and maybe hit something that sounds more honest. But as far as the message of hope and optimism, I think that includes understanding that people have both good and bad within them, and they’re not one or the other, and anybody can come back.