This is the second in a two-part interview series with members of the Hold Steady.
After meeting with Franz Nicolay in the hotel, he and I took a shuttle over to the Crystal Ballroom where I would be meeting frontman Craig Finn and guitarist Tad Kubler. First, I had the opportunity to watch the sound check, which felt like a private, three song performance. Though the band reserved their energy during this run-through, it was a good chance to see the inner workings up close. Since the show had been sponsored by Jack Daniels, technicians set up lights and special booths as the band played.
Finn and Kubler met with me for 30 minutes in the Lola’s Room bar below the Crystal Ballroom. None of us drank alcohol and they both had the markings of musicians tired from being on the road. We spoke about baseball, drunk fans and Paul Westerberg. I am proud to present the Spectrum Culture interview with Craig Finn and Tad Kubler.
As I told you, I’m from Philadelphia, so I had a pretty good year for baseball.
CF: Oh yeah! Right on! We were actually down in South Carolina and we watched quite a bit of it as a band. We were in South Carolina and rented this house and we were out there at the same time. It’s the only time I think Bobby has taken a real interest in baseball. He was getting ready for the game a half hour before the game started. He was really into Pat Burrell.
He’s on the Rays now!
CF: I know, he’s moved. Pat the Bat.
The crazy thing is that when I was growing up, and I’m not that young, Jamie Moyer was just coming up in the league. He grew up in the next town over, so he was the big deal.
CF: I don’t know if you know Brian Dilworth but he does a lot of the shows in Philly. He went to the last 23 games or something, including all the playoffs and the World Series.
Have you been to the park?
CF: I have not. I am going to go this year, I think. I’ve heard it’s really good.
My assistant editor wanted me to tell you that the only reason the Twins won against the Cardinals was because of the dome.
CF: Ack. Yeah, I’ve heard that. And the fact that they won four games and the Cardinals won only three. (Laughs) One of the two things caused them to win the World Series. They also probably scored more runs.
Is that when Puckett was on the team?
CF: Both World Series.
Are you a vehement hater of the Phillies then?
CF: Nah, I don’t really care. It’s hard for me to get that worked up about the National League at all. The only thing I don’t like is the Interleague. I don’t like when American League and National League play each other. I think that should be only in the World Series. I think that creates more mystery.
I don’t like when they started doing the Wild Card games either.
CF: Yeah, that’s not as good either.
I brought you this as a consolation prize. (hands Finn a Frank Viola and a Tom Kelly card)
CF: Oh, thank you. Oh nice. Very cool. I appreciate that.
They’re probably worth 10 cents each.
CF: These are worth… yeah. Once the internet came out, baseball cards got kind of worthless because with something that is $60, all of sudden you could find a buyer who was willing to pay it. An efficient market isn’t always good for collectors.
I remember when I was kid….do you remember the Billy Ripken “Fuck Face” card?
CF: Yeah.
I remember buying a box of Fleer and just digging through them. I finally ended up just buying the one that said. Now, supposedly, the one with the whited-out bat is worth.
CF: It’s worth more? A friend of mine bought a box of basketball cards from Jordan’s rookie year. We sold a bunch of those to support a bunch of different things when we were about 17.
It’s before the bottom fell out of the market. Are you into baseball too?
TK: Nope. I mean, I am with the rest of the guys, but not like these guys are.
You don’t get joy when the Twins lose to piss Craig off?
TK: No. (Laughs)
CF: Galen and Franz are both into it too. Galen’s into the Brewers and Franz is into the Sox.
So, what’s this show all about tonight?
CF: Well, I’m not totally sure; it’s a Jack Daniels thing I guess. I don’t know. It’s some sort of marketing thing. I guess it’s free.
TK: Liquor companies do these promotional things a bunch. It sounds like what you do is somehow RSVP online and you go for free. There is probably some kind of free booze or whatever. For us, it’s just….
CF: Playing a show.
TK: Playing a rock show. We get up for 90 minutes or whatever and do our thing.
CF: It doesn’t feel that much different.
TK: Sometimes it’s not always your audience but that doesn’t matter so much. It’s us getting up on stage and playing songs.
CF: It’s hard to really differentiate. It doesn’t really feel that much different. I guess saw some Jack Daniels lights up there, but other than that we don’t do anything different at all.
Does it matter to you who you are playing for?
CF: Like fans?
No, like if it was some kind of Exxon concert.
CF: Man, you know, it depends. With Jack Daniels it hard for me to get too upset about…
TK: Considering it’s something that is around quite a bit wherever we are.
CF: If it was like military maybe….I would think more upset about it with cigarettes.
What about the Yankees?
CF: Yeah, the Yankees would be hard. It would be hard to deal with that.
TK: At the same time, I’d like to think that we’re taking their money.
CF: (Laughs) Yeah, exactly. But as far as Jack Daniels, we play in bars all the time.
TK: This will be the fifth or sixth time we played upstairs in the last two years.
Yeah, I just saw you guys in November here.
CF: Yeah, with the Drive-By Truckers.
TK: It’s a room we’re really comfortable with and like playing. Portland’s a great city. Like I said, it’s hard to know how you get into to show. A good part too is that people who would normally want to come see us could do so for nothing.
CF: Yeah, that’s what I thought. We’ve been out here and everywhere else for this record quite a few times. Usually once a year there’s a free show in New York that we play. You know, some sort of outdoor thing. But most cities don’t get that.
It seems like most magazines are giving you guys the title of America’s Best Bar Band. Do you feel that there is a certain point when you transcend that title when you’re playing ballrooms?
CF: Yeah, we are playing bigger places but I think it’s about the attitude we come on stage with. We’re trying to play like it’s still a bar and trying to make people feel like it’s an intimate venue. It’s certainly becomes a challenge, playing bigger stuff. Certainly with some of the opening slots we’re going to do and some of the outdoor festival type things we’ve already done. That’s just the challenge.
TK: When you’re playing 20,000 seat arenas and you’re opening for another band for what’s not necessarily your audience it’s how do we personalize it to our show and do our thing up there and make people feel the same way they would as if they were seeing us in this room which we’ve played before and is about 200-300 people.
I’ve been a fan of the Hold Steady since Separation Sunday and I’ve seen you a bunch of times. Going from a small place to bigger places like this and feel like the demographic, in terms of your crowd, has changed. My estimation is at first it was indie kids then it went to the drunk frat boy and then it became the older, Bruce Springsteen-type fans.
CF: Hopefully it’s all three. The indie kids are only going to come out for your first two records no matter who you are. It’s certainly getting more diverse and hopefully it’s gotten more diverse gender-wise.
A lot of dudes?
CF: There’s a lot of dudes. But I think it’s gotten more even on that. It’s a lot of different people. When we started the band it was meant to be as inclusive as possible. I always used to say when we started, “I hope that people would come see us, even if they don’t know who Pavement is.” I still hope that. I love Pavement but we have a classic rock sound and I don’t think any of us want to be limited to an indie rock crowd.
You seem to be cultivating that more as your albums progress. In rock criticism you are receiving a lot of Thin Lizzy comparisons. Springsteen has definitely played a big part.
CF: Yeah, absolutely. People always talk about Springsteen but when you see Springsteen now in a stadium it really is as good as seeing Fugazi in a club. I’ve been at both several times, and back to your question about being a bar band, the E-Street Band is a bar band.
That plays the Super Bowl.
CF: Yeah, that plays the Super Bowl and the back row at a Springsteen show can be better than being in the front row here most nights.
The one thing I noticed, and it hasn’t been as much the last couple of times, the only time I had to put my hands on someone at a show was at one of yours. Also, when I saw your show was Art Brut in DC, I was in balcony watching the pit, I saw some guy’s glasses get knocked off and all kinds of other shit.
CF and TK: (Laugh)
So does the bar band title give people license to go and get totally fucked up?
CF: There can be nights when people start…I’ve gotten on stage and looked out at our crowd and was like, “You all are too drunk tonight.” You can see it right away if it’s going to head into that.
TK: Or even you come into the venue sometimes and you see people outside who want to say hi and I think, “There’s no way he’s going to make it until the time we get onstage.”
CF: But in some ways, you want your shows to be events for people. Not everyone is great at timing things, but people are making a real night of it. We’ve had shows where there’s been tailgating in front of it and I always like that.
TK: I know my timing has been off some nights too. (Laughs)
Yeah, I remember in DC, Tad, when you climbed up on a speaker and couldn’t figure out how to get off.
CF: That was at the 9:30. That was great.
TK: I stopped drinking, so I’ve stopped climbing.
Actually, Franz and I were talking earlier about the intake of alcohol and how it has subsided recently.
CF: Yeah, not only for health reasons, but we’ve been doing this a long time and none of us are that young that we can bounce back. The first few tours were ridiculous.
TK: If we kept that pace we wouldn’t be a band anymore. I just think it’s one of those things where we want to play well every night. We want to spend a certain amount of time on the road every year. In order to that, rather than sprint across the finish line, you have to pace yourself.
Yeah, Craig, I’ve been to shows where you’re completely incoherent at the end and it’s like I don’t what you’re talking about anymore.
CF: Yeah, it happens both ways. Sometimes it will go in phases too, especially for me. Sometimes I’m like, “I got the perfect thing! I don’t drink until halfway through the show and then I drink tons!” I’m always kind of manipulating it. It’s always under review. Today you won’t see any drinking because it’s Lent.
Have there been shows that you don’t remember?
CF: Yes, there’s been some bad shows. But at the same time, I don’t feel bad about any of our shows that got off the rail, so to speak, because that kind of keeps it interesting.
TK: Yeah, it’s a live show. It’s always going to be a little bit different and you never know what you’re going to see. As Craig has said before, there are some nights for what we lack in precision we make up in enthusiasm.
CF: Two of my favorite bands, the Replacements and the Grateful Dead, have sucked more nights than they have been good.
They also had members that have died young.
CF: Yeah, but there is some excitement when you don’t know what you’re going to see. I think most of the nights that have been kind of bad or particularly drunken have had some of their own charm in them.
Well, you don’t want to be that guy where everyone thinks, “Oh, he’s going to get fucked up every night. Let’s go out and watch him!”
CF: You never want the guy who’s selling that. You don’t want to be the guy who sells the ticket to see how fucked up he gets.
Shane MacGowan?
CF: Yeah, or Paul Westerberg. The next thing you know you’re drinking ice tea out of a Jack Daniels bottle to make people happy.
Is that something you’ve done?
CF: No, but I think there’s bands that have. I’ve never done it. But I have had people yelling at me to drink. That doesn’t feel that…those aren’t my favorite fans. Let’s put it that way.
Has this opening for Dave Matthews and the Counting Crows been overblown in your opinion?
CF: Not really. I haven’t really heard that much about it. No. I think it’s something we’re kind of looking forward to because….
TK: Bigger venues.
CF: It’s something different. Like I said, we’ve been here however many times.
Is playing something that size a dream of yours someday?
CF: I think you want growth no matter what you’re doing. So yeah. Obviously it comes with its own set of challenges, but yeah. Playing for more people, reaching more people.
TK: It’s nice to continue to grow. But, I don’t want anything all the time. I don’t want the same thing all the time so one of the things we look forward to is continuing to grow as a band and change. Thinking about playing the first time right here in Lola’s to having more and more people come out when we’ve played upstairs to the first time we played a festival in front of 40,000 people or anything like that, it’s always fun. The first time you sell a venue out or the first time you play to a bigger number of people.
CF: Like when you first headline a tour.
What I’ve always thought about, like in my dream world if I ever became a musician, it seems like when they guys hit the arena circuit, they never come back. Wouldn’t it be cool if R.E.M. did a club tour?
CF: Well, they do stuff like that, like playing smaller shows, but it just gets to be…sometimes when you play something that exclusive it becomes more of a headache keeping people out than letting people in and upsetting people potentially.
TK: The one thing we’ve always wanted to do is that anybody that wanted to be involved, could be involved.
The audience?
CF: We’re starting to get to the point where we’re playing places with seats sometimes. That’s not ideal, obviously and it’s not exactly what you want. But Metallica had to go through that too. I think the first time I saw Metallica was in the Orpheum in Minneapolis, the time before they played at First Avenue, so my friends who had seen them then were complaining because they were playing a seated venue. Now it’s taken for granted there are seats at a Metallica show.
I saw them this summer for the first time and I just couldn’t take them seriously. It was at Bonnaroo. I felt like I was watching a corporation.
CF: This was 1986.
TK: I saw them in junior high school. It was 1990. They were great.
I was never into them in high school. But, now they got a movie about them.
CF: That’s a whole different thing. It’s just the timing.
Okay, for the last part of the interview what I’d like to do is talk about some of my favorite songs. I’ll tell you the song and you can tell me a little story behind it and then maybe I’ll ask you some questions.
CF: Sure.
We’ll start backwards. “Slapped Actress.”
CF: A lot of that is about the Cassavetes movie Opening Night, which my roommate had a copy on DVD. It was a great paradox. They’re rehearsing for a play and he says, “I want to slap you,” and she said, “You don’t have to slap me because it’s just a play. We’re just acting.” And he was like, “No, it won’t look real.”
Is that the one where the fan dies?
CF: Yeah.
TK: The music was written for Separation Sunday.
CF: Yeah, that’s right. The music is something we had all the way back to Sep Sunday. For me, that one really had a lot to do with thinking about how I was acting differently in public once the band had some success.
And how was that?
CF: Measured. Careful.
Like careful what you said?
CF: Careful what I was doing.
Guess you can’t piss in the street anymore.
CF: Yeah, exactly, that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. Fight with your girlfriend; that kind of thing. That’s kind of the idea of that.
The other one on that album is “Sequestered in Memphis.”
CF: That was kind of a fun song. I don’t really remember that one. That was kind of a little story I came up with. I think Memphis is an America city I’ve always been fascinated with. It seems authentic or something. Wouldn’t you say? There’s music there but it’s…
TK: A little bit dodgy.
CF: It seems sort of preserved or something compared to most American cities. The few times I’ve been to Memphis there has been less TGI Fridays and more holes in the wall.
TK: Yeah, in most downtowns in moves a Walmart or a Starbucks and stuff like that. Memphis doesn’t seem to quite…it hasn’t happened as rapidly as in some other places.
As a band that’s constantly on tour, do you ever look at the window and think, “Holy shit! Everything looks the same?”
CF: Yeah. It’s always fun to find unique things about each city that still exist. Which is becoming less and less obviously. That’s one of my fascinations with On the Road, the Kerouac book. How before the Interstate system how different Denver was from Philadelphia. A place like Denver in the ’40s was like sawdust on the floors and saloon doors and shit like that.
Cool. Boys and Girls in America. We’ll talk about “Chips Ahoy.”
CF: That’s a horseracing song. I was at a horserace and our old publicist called and I said, “I can’t talk. I’m at the horse races.” She said, “Put $50 on Chips Ahoy for me.” And I was like, that’s a good song!
TK: The music came together in about 10 minutes.
CF: That was one that came together really quick. I think we had an extra verse in that one and I was like, “Take it out.”
TK: With the riff itself, I said, “I got a song. Let’s practice tomorrow.” But when I came to practice I didn’t have anything so I had to make it up right on the spot.
Speaking of that song coming together very fast, which song was the biggest pain in the butt to put together?
CF: “First Night.” Remember? The outro for “First Night?”
TK: Yeah.
CF: We had nothing on that for like a long time. That one was a pain. “Barfruit” on the first record…
TK: We screwed around that a lot too.
CF: We screwed around forever until it was something a little different. We simplified and it took its own…
TK: It wasn’t a straight ahead beat. It was syncopated differently.
CF: Usually when things drag out we usually fix it by being it more simple. We like it better.
“Hot Soft Light.”
CF: That one…Tad had the music…I don’t remember.
TK: A lot of that stuff came up pretty quickly. I can’t even remember writing that song. I don’t have a story about the music for that one.
CF: The lyrics for that…
TK: The bridge part for that, the little breakdown, I didn’t know what we were going to do. Craig was like, “You should have a solo like “Fool in the Rain.”" I was like, “Oh, you mean the octave pedal?” And he’s like, “That’s what I mean! That’s what I mean!”
CF: “Hot Soft Light” that was, (sings) “Started recreational.”
TK: “Started recreational, ended kinda medical” is when I got strung-out on pills on that one tour. Because I started out kind of partying and then by the end of the tour I was a real mess.
CF: Yeah, you had to go to the doctor.
I’m not going to get into that one.
Both: (Laugh)
CF: I guess we did.
Ah, what pills?
CF: Codeine.
TK: Just codeine.
Codeine.
CF: Canada. They’re legal.
You can get that stuff in Mexico too.
TK: Yes, you can.
CF: You’re right. You can. I don’t know what you’d be messing around with codeine if you’re in Mexico for, though.
TK: You can get liquid morphine and stuff like that there.
Heh. Be careful! Okay, Separation Sunday. We’ll talk about my favorite song of yours which is “Cattle and the Creeping Things.”
CF: That’s just riffing on the Bible. Genesis and Exodus and Revelations. Actually, funny enough, the reading on Sunday at church was the Temple, Jesus chasing them out of the temple. I was like, “Ah! I have a song about that.” That’s kind of a Queens of the Stone Age kind of thing.
TK: The music I wrote when Galen and I lived together for awhile, right before my daughter was born. He’s got an old Dan Electro guitar which I used to write a ton of stuff. A lot of the songs I wrote for Separation Sunday were written on that guitar. That was the first one I wrote on that guitar. It was definitely a lot of that….
CF: Da! Da! Da! That’s Queens of the Stone Age.
TK: I was thinking a lot about Josh Homme and he does a lot of those crazy, inverted chords where he’ll skip a string and then just kind of mute it rather than play it and do a lot of crazy stuff like that. That song has a lot of those chords in it.
Okay. “Charlemagne in Sweatpants.”
CF: That one…
TK: You wrote that.
CF: I had the words and I just wanted to do something bluesy and I was thinking about bar rock.
TK: And Craig was like, “This will give you a good excuse to solo a lot.”
That one has your cool, inverted lyrics like “black and tan” and “killer whales.”
CF: No, that’s “Banging Camp.”
Shit.
CF: Do you mean that? Do you mean “Banging Camp?”
Which one’s got “Tramps like us and we like tramps?”
CF: That’s “Charlemagne in Sweatpants.” That one is just real simple. I always wanted to have a song that was so easy. That was the one where I rhyme “cars” with “bars.” That’s kind of the whole thing. Of course you’re going to rhyme “cars” with “bars.” And the chords are so easy. It’s just the straightest of rock songs.
Last song I’m going to ask you about is “Killer Parties.”
CF: We ended with that one for a lot of shows.
TK: The recording of it was actually really fun because we did the bass and drum to it and then Craig and I went in, I don’t think we had done lyrics to it yet, and I had all these pedals set up. I got really drunk and went in and Craig sat in the room with me and sang at me in my ear so I could hear him and I knew when to change parts. It was literally just both of us sitting on the floor in the studio.
So you don’t end with that one anymore then?
CF: We do sometimes. For awhile when we ended with that we started pulling people onstage and that took on a life of its own. It ended up becoming predictable and kind of negative.
TK: People assumed that was going to happen.
How so?
CF: It sort of becomes predictable if it’s going to happen every time.
Kind of like when you say you feel a lot of joy?
CF: Yeah, yeah. But that’s up to me. (Laughs) But, as we said, some people get pretty drunk at our shows and when you have 40 drunk people coming at you it’s not always polite.
TK: I had somebody nick a little thing I had on my guitar rack that was from my daughter. I noticed after a show that was gone and I was like, “All right. I guess that’s it. If people are going to abuse it, nobody on stage.”
CF: Sometimes it gets to be too much. Anytime you have people coming on stage for whatever reason it’s tough not to assume the worst.
Unless you’re Sharon Jones.
CF: See, when a really drunk guy is coming at you, he usually wants to hug you but it’s hard to assume that.
Are you ever fearful?
CF: Well, not really. Sometimes during those stage invasion things I’ve been trying to get off the stage and people grab me in weird ways. More fearful, I wouldn’t say fearful, more weird sometimes after the shows. One time I went out to the bus and there was a really drunk guy that got me in the alley. He was a big fan and he was trying to communicate that but he did so in a way that was sort of disconcerting.
Do you feel like sharing?
CF: No. I’m not sure exactly what he was saying, but all I know is he wouldn’t let me go physically.
That’s part of the trappings, isn’t it?
CF: Being touched by strangers has never been my favorite thing.
But, I thought you “like the crowds in the really big shows…”
TK: That’s a lyric.
CF: I like the crowds, but when I’m onstage.
TK: As we said, it’s not a one to one relationship.
CF: Also, I’m on the stage. (Laughs) I like when our shows are big. I definitely don’t like being a big shows.
What about Bruce?
CF: Yeah, but there’s seats.
The last time I saw him there weren’t seats.
CF: Where? Oh, on the floor, right? The last two times I saw him there weren’t seats. I saw him on that last tour but I was in the seated part.
Do you like the new album?
CF: Yeah. It’s all right. It’s not mind-blowing but it’s pretty cool.
I think he needs to get rid of Brendan O’Brien.
TK: A lot of people have been talking smack on Brendan O’Brien lately. It’s funny. And I haven’t only heard it with Bruce. He’s done some great records.
CF: I enjoy Magic more. It seems like Magic had a little more focus. He seemed pretty pissed off where this one he seems like it’s all cool.
Last question. You happy about Al Franken?
CF: I haven’t been following it that closely but I am kind of happy for him.
by David Harris
[Photos: David Harris and Jason Stoff]
