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Drink In Deep, America: A Conversation With The Hold Steady

by Alexander Dimitropoulos
10/22/2007

Forget the presidential candidates’ blue or red ties. Toss their bloated speeches, their broad topics and their party pandering. Like it or not, the members of The Hold Steady seem to be the unofficial cultural ambassadors of this nation. Songwriter and lead vocalist Craig Finn speak-sings the map of adolescent America, usually with a pushpin stuck on the Mississippi River or Minneapolis, throughout the band’s three albums. The group even recorded “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” for the Minnesota Twins, who played the band’s version at the team’s home-opener on April 2, 2007.

“They’ve asked us to come and play, but logistically it’s just kind of an impossibility,” lead guitarist Tad Kubler said in a phone interview with Athens Exchange Oct. 11.

Music journalists often label the group a “bar band,” which could be appropriate for two reasons: Finn’s lyrics and the combined sounds of all the instruments. Finn creates visceral stories about substance users and abusers, and some fans may inaccurately assume that the characters in The Hold Steady’s songs live the same lives as the members of the band.

So how often do people at the shows ask if they can buy Kubler a drink?

“Never often enough,” he said with a laugh. “No, I mean a lot. And we’re pretty accessible guys. Certainly if there’s a pool table in the area, that’s where we are. A lot of times people are like, ‘Oh, let’s do shots!’ I think that there’s a little bit of maybe misconception or misperception that we’re totally fucked up constantly. But I think that part of our live shows is throwing up the drinks and having a good time.”

He elaborated upon the gap between the characters and their creator, giving a comparison that he said Finn has made in the past.

“When you go see Kill Bill or Pulp Fiction, you don’t think that Quentin Tarantino is, like, killing people,” he said. “The characters are good because I think it helps very much create a more cinematic story and kind of to hang these themes on fictional people.

“You know, there have been times though, I have to admit too, when there will be something that comes up in a particular lyric, and I’ll be in the control booth listening as he does vocals, and I’ll be like, ‘Wait a minute. I remember that party.’”

Kubler’s heavy, classic rock riffs also play a large part in the “bar band” label. The Hold Steady have been drawing many comparisons to jukebox favorite Bruce Springsteen, especially because of the prominence of Franz Nicolay’s piano on the newest album, Kubler said.

“You know, you hear kind of a rock and roll song with this prominent piano, and I think kind of the Roy Bittan, Springsteen stuff is an easy comparison to make,” Kubler said. “Or at least it’s an obvious one. Obviously it’s a compliment.”

Rock and Roll: Preserving the Myth

The Hold Steady have been on the cover of The Village Voice and Paste magazine, received rave reviews for their newest album, Boys and Girls in America, and opened for The Rolling Stones. They have also played high-profile U.S. music festivals such as Lollapalooza in Chicago and the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Tennessee.

Still, they have tried to create a community for their fans through the band’s message board, and Kubler said that he does not get an unreasonable, uncomfortable amount of attention.

“It’s not like I go out to dinner, and people are walking up to me or taking my picture or anything like that,” he said. “I mean, Jesus. Especially just in comparison to Craig, I go relatively unnoticed. Franz gets a lot of it because he’s pretty easy to spot.”

Kubler also talked about some of the drawbacks of a being a prominent Internet presence, and how the “virtual existence” of a band should not be a substitute for seeing the band live and in the flesh.

“You know, people say, ‘How many Myspace friends do you have?,’” Kubler said. “It’s like, well, I don’t know, but I know in Chicago we can pack 1,500 people into a room that are all going to party together... And I think that’s kind of what we’ve always tried to really pride ourselves in this band is that it’s a very inclusive experience, just coming to see us play.”

Even within the band, Kubler likes to keep some things secret. He said he does not ask Finn about his lyrics on the albums.

“I generally don’t,” he said. “I mean, he never asks me about my guitar parts [laughs]. No, I’m kidding. It seems like to me that he talks about it so much in articles and interviews and stuff. That’s just fun when we do press together... You get to kind of listen in on the answer and be like, ‘I always kind of wondered about that.’ I’m as big a fan of Craig’s as anybody is, so I mean it’s fun for me to kind of make up my own versions. You kind of fill in the blanks when you have lyricists that are different storytellers like that.”

The Now Album, The Next Album

The Hold Steady will go to the studio after their current tour, around mid-December, Kubler said.

“I think right now we’re working on structure and kind of just getting the skeletons down,” he said. “Stuff doesn’t really come together until we get in the studio, which is another nice contrast to touring and the live shows in that it allows us to experiment a little bit more with different things and then figure out how we’re going to translate that into a live rock show.”

On Boys and Girls in America, Kubler experimented with an acoustic song called “Citrus,” though he said he’s “not a very good finger-picker.” He played an exercise he created for his daughter, and she loved it. Kubler then presented the song to Finn, and he said Finn liked it.

“And then I did ask him, I’m like, ‘Could you please make sure nobody ODs or anything in this one?,’” Kubler said. “‘This is kind of for my daughter.’ And he just smiled and said, ‘Yeah, I’ll try’ [laughs].”

They might try to work on their new record with the same producer from Boys and Girls in America, John Agnello, who has mixed albums for Son Volt, Drive-By Truckers and Sonic Youth, according to Agnello’s Web site.

“I think he did a phenomenal job on the last record, and I think that we got along with him phenomenally,” Kubler said. “Working with a producer that you know already and like, you kind of avoid that kind of obligatory few days to a week of the getting to know somebody and figuring out how they work. It allows you to kind of dive in. It also allows you to experiment even more and try new things because I think he’s aware of what we’re capable of as players.”

Athens Connections

The Hold Steady are coming to Athens’s 40 Watt Thursday, Oct. 25 with English band Art Brut on the NME Rock and Roll Riot Tour. Tickets are available at Schoolkids Records.

“I’m not super familiar with Art Brut’s stuff, but what I’ve heard I like a lot,” Kubler said. “It seems like Eddie Argos, the singer, is a fan of ours. He’s said a lot of nice things about us in the press. I’ve also heard those guys like to party quite a bit, so I’m imagining it’ll be a pretty good time.”

The Hold Steady have played in Athens before at Tasty World, and Kubler said he remembered wishing they had been playing at 40 Watt at the time. Kubler has several connections in Athens, though he often misses them when he is in town.

“Patterson Hood is somebody that I e-mail with a lot too, and he’s like, ‘I miss you guys, you never come to Athens,’” Kubler said. “And then we always miss each other because we’ve been on tour, and it turns out he’s going to be in New York when we’re playing the 40 Watt.”

Kubler also knows drummer Gerry Fuchs, whom Athens Exchange interviewed previously. On their first tour, The Hold Steady asked Fuchs to take the place of their drummer who could not join them, but Fuchs was already busy with LCD Soundsystem, Kubler said.

“Gerry’s really weird because I run into him in the fucking weirdest places,” Kubler said. “I never see him when we’re in New York together. Like, I’ll never run into him at a bar, or at a show or anything like that. The last time I saw him, it was like six in the morning, I came in off like a 13-hour delayed flight, and I was in Zagreb in Croatia.

“Our tour manager is trying to get us all checked into our hotel rooms that they have released because we didn’t get there by midnight, and they’re now sold out, and we’re totally freaked out. And like we’re all exhausted, and none of us have slept. Bez from the Happy Mondays walks past me, and then out of the elevator comes Gerry, and he’s like, ‘Hey guys! What’s happening?’ It’s like six in the morning...

"Or like, we’ll be flying from Heathrow to Dublin and run into him, and he’ll be on his way to meet the rest of the !!! guys in Japan. Like, that’s the kind of shit that always happens with Gerry. We never get to hang out in New York, but I’ll see him in different countries or a weird airport. And it always seems to be like super early in the morning.”

And if that was not enough, the band’s tour manager, Craig McQuiston, is also from Athens. He was the bassist of Athens’s own The Glands.

“So it seems like we have a lot of ties to Athens,” Kubler said. “I don’t know why the hell we’re not there more often.”

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