By: Charlie Vaughan
With a final salute of pulsating guitar the curtain came down on the first of two consecutive nights at First Avenue for The Hold Steady, and the curtain came down hard. The band bounced off the main room stage for the third time and disappeared into the waiting galleys as the house lights rose over the audience. The sudden burst of light sent the sold out crowd streaming for the exits like rats fleeing a burning ship—drunken, sweaty rats with beer stains down the front of their shirts and wicked smiles cut in their faces. They had just ground through one of the most engaging rock & roll shows in recent memory. For nearly two hours they had been pinned in an alcoholic sing-along down a familiar landscape and the good times still burned in their glassy eyes.
I stood at starboard of the lower level bar, fighting against the tide of the crowd, waiting to reconnect with the show photographer. I'd turned him loose into the crowd when the music started and now he was probably chasing candid looks at the intoxicated caught off guard by the sudden burst of bright light. I set my feet and dug in to make a few observations of my own. There was plenty of material: six couples were openly making out, at least sixty people couldn't count past eleven, and there was another six hundred who could've melted a stainless steel breathalyzer. Only the underage kids without pink bracelets weren't staring down the barrel of a Wednesday hangover that kicked like a mule, although some of those kids appeared a bit ragged at the edges as well.
It was ten minutes before midnight, the sun was circling back from China, and nobody showed any visible signs of worry over the lurking dawn. Morning was going to pounce like a heaving polar bear at ready with a metal file to round everyone's eye teeth, but the crowd was too far gone into excess to worry about tomorrow. Bolstered by The Hold Steady's towering music, they swamped out into the inky black Minneapolis night proud as peacocks, buttoned by goodwill against the cold slanting wind, and headed home along the same streets and under the very same bridges framed so poignantly by the band they had triumphantly welcomed home.
“Home is not where you live, but where they understand you.”
--Christian Morganstern
The Hold Steady, with winding roots that tunnel back to Minneapolis, is a band that appears ready to jump the moon. Their rise onto the national radar follows on the heels of a local past that wasn't lost on the audience at First Avenue Tuesday night—they were bathed in pride and brimming with personal connections.
The Hold Steady had come home.
In the late 90's Hold Steady front-man Craig Finn and guitarist Tad Kubler were keystone members of local band Lifter Puller. Before dissolving in 2000, Lifter Puller reached the pinnacle of the Minneapolis music scene and achieved a small cult following nationally. Finn is a Minneapolis native, Kubler was a Milwaukee transplant; together they pushed Lifter Puller to the limits of local notoriety and to the brink of a national breakthrough. Generically defined as an art-punk band, their final release Fiestas + Fiascoes solidified a narrative outline that would resurface two years later in New York.
Finn and Kubler reunited during 2002 in New York City equipped with the Lifter Puller blueprint. With the addition of drummer Bobby Clarke, bassist Galen Polivka, and Franz Nicolay on keyboards, Finn and Kubler started over again as The Hold Steady. Shrugging off the bass and moving behind lead guitar, Kubler refined the Lifter Puller sound in a more accessible direction. The music became more anthemic, buoyed with classic rock guitar riffs and walloping chords. He also added a conservative amount of guitar soloing that fits over an increasing number of the songs like a satin pillowcase.
But casual listeners would be hard pressed to correctly identify a lineup of Lifter Puller and Hold Steady material. The signature of Lifter Puller remains the same within The Hold Steady: Craig Finn’s distinctive lyrical delivery. He has a one-of-a-kind chest tightening snarl that is unique because it comes not from the gut, but from the crown of the skull. His vocal styling borders on shout speak and tortured singing. And it is all his own.
Once you get past the hammering delivery The Hold Steady universe shrinks down to a single city. The content of Craig Finn's snarl is what really holds attention. He is a gifted writer with a knack for capturing in words the trappings of youth. Die hard fans pour over the lyrics and find dark humor and darker meaning, especially in Minneapolis where the lyrics move out of the realm of metaphor and cross over to the tangible. In Lifter Puller and for the duration of three Hold Steady albums, Craig Finn has used Minneapolis as the stark setting where his narrative songwriting unfolds.
Minneapolis for Craig Finn is his mythical Yoknapatawpha County, the fictional township where William Faulkner set 17 novels, including “The Sound and the Fury.” And like Faulkner, Finn's writing emphasizes environment in character development. His suicidally beautiful characters drink, drug, and try to love their way through a familiar Twins Cities panorama. You will find them drinking under Minneapolis bridges, haunting the City Center, passed out on Payne Avenue, and getting high along the banks of the Mississippi river.
“...take Lyndale to the horizon.
Take Nicollet out to the ocean.
Take Penn Ave out to the 494.
Meet me at the fabric store...”
“Southtown girls won't blow you away,
but you know that they'll stay...”
--Craig Finn
“Southtown Girls”
The question that sprang to mind while doing research for this article was how could the two same guys, using virtually the same formula, only generate enough momentum to push Lifter Puller to local stardom but shoot the band over the moon when unleashed in New York City under a different name? What combination of location, experience and timing made The Hold Steady America's hottest band? Was it some undefined shortcoming in the workings of the Minneapolis music scene or the galaxy of opportunity that New York offers? Or something else entirely?
In an effort to shed light on these questions, it felt necessary to speak with the men who held the answers. An interview with the band was essential, but something I considered as a pipe dream. I sent an exploratory email to the band's website thinking it would never elicit a response. I was wrong. Forty-eight hours later I received a response. Astonishingly, Craig Finn and Tad Kubler readily agreed to share their insights through a telephone. With the simplest of requests and absolutely no hassle—a credit to the personalities revolving in and around The Hold Steady—an amateur rock critic was given access to the main players in a band that mainstream media had recently vaulted to the forefront of indie rock consciousness. It turns out their offstage personas are just as accessible as their showmanship.
This is a sampling of The Hold Steady media coverage to date: Pitchfork has given the new album Boys and Girls in America the highest rating of the year, Rolling Stone featured the band on a one page spread in the latest issue, they were a MySpace band of the week early in October, and on top of all that, in possibly the greatest coup a New York band could pull, The Hold Steady were the subject of a 2005 cover story in Village Voice. Village Voice is a New York art’s publishing juggernaut and template of the City Pages, an influential weekly that hadn't featured a band on the cover in over fifteen years. Given the spate of powerful bands that have emerged from New York in the last decade, this acknowledgment signals a massive breakthrough for The Hold Steady.
Staring down at the appointed phone numbers, I thought I'd finally got a handle on this journalism business: wheels had been greased, the daunting publicity machinery had been steamrolled, and it was a downhill run from here—this article was going to write itself.
The arrangement had me calling Craig Finn at precisely 3:00 p.m. the coming Wednesday and then dialing a different number a half hour later to speak with Tad Kubler. The only hiccup was a harebrained miscalculation of the time zone changes and one of the band's handlers politely helped me wrap my head around the differential (the rotation of the Earth has always given me problems). Now there was nothing to do but wait until the prescribed hour; wisdom was at hand.
Two days later, a week before The Hold Steady sliced through the prairie wasteland of the Dakotas and rolled into Minneapolis saddled on the glowing crest of a national media wave, I sat down in my kitchen and conducted one of the worst interviews in the history of journalism.
...ring... ring... click...
It was a gray windswept October afternoon in Minneapolis with cold rain pattering the windows and Old Man Winter knocking at the door with a pair of brass knuckles. At the opposite end, Craig Finn was tucked into The Hold Steady touring van winding north through sunny California on the last leg of their west coast tour.
Craig Finn: Charlie?
HowWasTheShow: Mr. Finn? Mr. Finn, this is Charlie Vaughan from howwastheshow.com. Your publicist gave me this number and told me to call at this time for a brief interview.
Finn: I dfhrehd bcnxmu expecting tiufdk jfhg.
HWTS: Mr. Finn, this is Charlie from howwastheshow.com...
Finn: I know. Koiuieh rurwe the call.
Uh oh.
The cell phone connection was dominated by a savage buzzing that twisted Mr. Finn's words into a muddled mess of gibberish. It felt like I had been brained with a beer bottle. Panic seized my nerves and I became paralyzed with confusion. I'd planned on an unscripted interview which relied on Mr. Finn's responses to steer the questions. Without an understandable response the interview was going become a comic stumble through pitch darkness. The fragile masterplan quickly sank like a boat without a hull and my tongue swelled to the size of a grapefruit.
Finn: Desertg klinthod?
HWTS: May I ask a few questions about Minneapolis as it pertains to The Hold Steady?
Finn: Sure.
HWTS: When Lifter Puller broke up and you moved to New York, was it your intention to form a new band out there?
Finn: Not necessarily. When riwud lkdfnri yeuwudj two years. I zxnfehe qiurreu what I was going to do, so I afhnejnwriu say the answer is no.
HWTS: You've had success in a Minneapolis band, but your style has really taken off since moving to New York. Have you found something inherent in New York that is more conducive to a band's success in that city?
Finn: Well... yeah. I mean there is good and bad things with both. I think jdkjrep miiiiiijg jooeorw easier to deal with certain things. Wasjknkr eiiei kd lfwesd practice space, but they do vjiefoir dddsd kihhirewi djsd jkytuwy media center. New York is nmrehuir prehdsjh kdrjmdd quicker dkjdi nnasjrh national success.
HWTS: If The Hold Steady was based out of Minneapolis could you have established the same national success?
Finn: Ah, it's hard to nfrihskdj, but I sort of do. Yes, because I think that we are zejiejsii retoirisd Lifter Puller vnreiriwo ijij qqerr jbrupp national contacts. Whether that would have happened yequwi cxmvnnr djk first record, but I think eventually yes. We would have tiukdj zxnfewriu ie hdjskare.
HWTS: So the difference between Minneapolis and New York, for a working band, is that things happen quicker in New York?
Finn: Well, you have Spin, Rolling Stone, fjrhiuui djew labels are yueqiwou djh vnbcn those people dkljh show up dfjjrh ndndtyie poqq attention.
HWTS: Essentially, you're saying it's the media access? A band in New York is closer to the fire, as it were?
Finn: Yeah. Lpweeiq jnii qunthhehr.
I was hoping the telephone reception would improve as the touring van turned over the miles, but the wall of static had grown thicker and was now joined by a metallic scraping that sounded like an off balance washing machine. I decided to change the line of questioning; probing the mechanics of a band's rise to national prominence was too complicated to tackle with tin cans joined by three thousand miles of string. One thing was clear: Craig Finn is very polite. Even though I wasn't sure he could understand me, any more than I him, he answered each of my questions in a warm, thoughtful tone. It was a very pleasant conversation despite the technical difficulties.
HWTS: Are you looking forward to playing First Avenue next week?
Finn: Yes. Very, very much so. Two nights at First Avenue sdjhfruhu djjhjsooci rew fun. Kookletjy ununfh unhk watch the show, so ah... ureiwnnn zzxcequrt.
HWTS: Is there any added pressure playing in Minneapolis?
Finn: I think so. Ooporlj nuithe kllop uf the audience. You want to do right by them, you know.
HWTS: Will you be playing any Lifter Puller songs?
Finn: No. No. It’s two different bands.
HWTS: You have Sean Na Na opening for...
Finn: Yeah. I've known Sean for a long time now, going buiikkjgt dkks Minneapolis. And jreidjk htuii other people in the band from utwijehn njewnq Jeremy and iuosk kksjd keyboards. It's a niioruur plaasski crowd. Klingmup uzingtok afferung crew.
HWTS: Were they chosen as support on the tour because they too are originally from Minneapolis?
Finn: No. Sean lives in L.A. deloopinz qityflopor... porez incafew no. You could say that I choose them because I like them, but I like a lot of different people. I yolseft mujoirp nith.
HWTS: So it wasn't a conscious choice to share the stage with another Minneapolis bred band?
Finn: It wasn't that well thought kityuor.
HWTS: I see. Ah... um... how is the tour going?
Finn: Gadert nummmgr ij eiru nim ans fuhhymort last night. It was a great sahhrid rethin vhd fun show. The quert sy bemitherd crowds have been reftzup. Everything seems to be going really well.
HWTS: Lately, your band has received an awful lot of positive press. Has this paid off in terms of ticket sales?
Finn: Absoutely. That's the best way to ooplinget wefternad, you know? Whenever foyrefff nimkfjrtuy uni texvert jah people their lives huim laxooment take time out of their schedules for putingj luwazfem und opalit zzzzzferb.
HWTS: What are the venues like on this tour? Theaters? Small clubs? Bars?
Finn: I'm sorry. Cujiomshi numert fedsaw. Can intwer manno...
HWTS: Mr. Finn? Sir? ...Mr. Finn?
Dial tone.
The telephone had gone dead.
Did he hang up on me?
Had Mr. Finn finally taken all he could of my confused stammering?
I knew the interview was horribly out of tune, but did he? I wondered if it even made sense to try and call back; another ill-timed call was probably going to be the same mess of static and wheezing. At this point smoke signals seemed like a more reliable option. Convinced it couldn't get any worse, I waited two minutes then redialed hoping to salvage some wisdom with a new connection.
Finn: Charlie?
HWTS: Mr. Finn?
Finn: Charlie?
HWTS: Yes. Mr. Finn I'm sorry about that. The line went dead for some reason.
Finn: Yeah. I'm sorry about that. We're nfreiei daaa unjot ah dawsret reception is really bad in northern California. What was the hujop inhert you asked me?
HWTS: Ah, um... ah... let's see. You know, I can't even remember. Can we just move on?
Finn: Sure.
HWTS: A lot is made of your lyrics; it seems to be the focus for fans of The Hold Steady. Did the lyrical expectations crank up the pressure when you were writing the new album?
Finn: Well no. I enjoy it. Nertihf xandey exciting and reftiyink kooip challenge yourself more.
HWTS: I've read numerous times, in many wide ranging articles and interviews, writers referring to The Hold Steady as a “bar band.” It's impossible that all those writers each came up with the same exact definition. Is this how you have consciously chosen to label yourselves?
Finn: Yeah. Well, I think that's kolituy pontjas yamc munasegy the original record. Nothrod dinlase straight rock diffe buthim popplik zutyh va same bars a lot.
HWTS: Okay. Oh yeah... I remember the question I was trying to ask before we were cut off: What are the venues like that you’re playing on this tour? Are they bars, or places more like First Avenue?
Finn: Loojrewjr rhisdfin moontreg demx some bars and some are like First Avenue. I'd say it zitfum dfkjrifhr vncmcneo of the two. Gootkins frunheia cumru haselpoop.
HWTS: Which do...
Finn: Soigmub insfet eu loi thuenuer like the 400 Bar or First Avenue.
HWTS: What is the average crowd size. A thousand people? Two thousand? More? Less?
Finn: More like 300 to 600.
HWTS: So these First Avenue shows are...
Finn: Pretty big? Yeah. They're iednfdsja zcrerut jdohn at the same time. And we're doing the Metro in Chicago which is sunfburet.
HWTS: Do you know if both shows at First Avenue have been sold out?
Finn: I don't know, but I know that we will have a good time.
HWTS: Thanks for taking the time for this interview Mr. Finn.
Finn: Thank you Charlie. Jioewrk asfrw the show.
The first half of the interview was over. In ten minutes I was scheduled to call Tad Kubler at a different number. He was riding in the same van as Craig Finn, but I hoped that his telephone would have better reception in northern California.
And it did. Mr. Kubler came through with his share of static and off kilter clanking, but in general his half of the interview was far more understandable. Like Mr. Finn, he was sincere in his answers and extremely polite and often humorous. The responses were not as direct and concise as Mr. Finn's, sometimes shooting off in analogy before rounding back to the point. He graciously cleared up many of the mechanical questions and made interesting points along the way. You could almost hear his smile on the audio recording. Mr. Kubler seems like the kind of fellow you could share a drink with.
[Interview transcript missing.]
Craig Finn was true to his word. The Hold Steady did indeed have a good time at First Avenue. On Tuesday night the band put the pedal down, jumping and clapping their way through a fiery set and two long encores. Finn, wearing a pale blue country-western styled shirt and genuine smile, was beautifully charismatic. He absently dragged his hollow body guitar back and forth across the stage, engaging the crowd with sweeping gestures and wild ramblings mouthed outside the microphone to members of the enthralled audience. There were times when Finn seemed possessed by a strange spastic clapping that was contagious. Kubler, in a black nondescript polo shirt, sawed at his guitar like a modern day John Henry. Alternating between perfectly timed jumps and lightning strike guitar solos, he pushed the crowd farther off the deep end. The other band members found the pace and played their parts with the same affection.
When the first distorted measures of “You're Little Hoodrat Friend,” from the album Separation Sunday, blew out the amplifiers three songs into the performance, the genetic reserve typical of Minneapolis concert goers snapped and the show became a gigantic free for all of pumping fists and community singing. Beers spilled and voices raised, the dank hole which Fist Avenue can sometimes be opened its arms and the crowd, shoulder to shoulder on the stage floor and six deep along the upper landings, surged closer to the multi-colored stage. I widened my stance and tried to hang on as the momentum kicked it down a gear, or three.
“I first came here [First Avenue] in 1985 to see the Violent Femmes... You don't know how much it means to me to be playing here tonight. I never thought I'd ever sell out First Avenue.”
--Craig Finn on stage.
The Hold Steady knows how to throw a party. For the shows in Minneapolis they brought a road tested recipe of equal parts glee and volume, a liberal amount of charm, and a whole lot of booze. The band alone plowed through a case of long-neck Budweiser bottles and a liter of premium whiskey on stage in less than two hours. Their friendly, everyone-is-invited approach made me think they had tapped into the ghost of Jay Gatsby. Like the Great Gatsby at his famous West Egg parties, The Hold Steady aren't concerned with being the coolest guys in the room, nor are they the trying to blow people away with intelligentsia. They provide the forum, facilitate the good times with gentlemen charm, enjoy themselves, and like Gatsby beat on against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past.
In the surest sign of The Hold Steady's inclusiveness, I spent half the show bordered by two middle aged women, in typical middle age fashions, who sang along with each song, clapping and slapping hands with every Twin Cities reference. One of them grew more wobbly as the show progressed, finally wandering off to slump uncomfortably on the stairway. I couldn't help but wonder if their children were off running the streets and living out the lyrics...
robotboy had the privilege to act as the concert openers. robotboy is a relatively bland local five piece, festooned with the current fad of having a sexy girl on pointless keyboards. They played a set of mushy rock songs that nobody took seriously. As they broke down their gear the crowd interest picked up considerably. A fair percentage of the audience had arrived early to hear—and see—the next act. It was Sean Na Na's turn in the hometown spotlight.
Sean Tillman has one of the more legendary personas in Minneapolis music history and one of the most frequently exposed bodies. For a number of years he graced local stages with balding shoulder length hair as Har Mar Superstar, stripping to his underwear to beat laden R&B performances that relied heavily on irony and over the top boasting. While living in the Twin Cities he also established a lesser known power pop band called Sean Na Na. I'm not privy to the status of Har Mar Superstar (the last I heard he was burning up dance clubs in tropical Europe), but Sean Na Na is alive and well.
As the lead personality and vocalist of Sean Na Na, a closely cropped Tillman kept his pants on and sailed his band into familiar waters Tuesday night. Almost everyone in attendance knew of his past and when he strolled out into view, nostalgic cheers ushered him into the first song. Tillman played to the audience with his bursting personality, prodding them for drinks and applause while carrying his chunky frame around stage with a pervert’s grace. It's difficult to not enjoy Sean Tillman, even if the band and songwriting behind him is not musically great. His personality is big enough to keep people interested when the music gets stale. Not all of Sean Na Na's songs were overshadowed by the front-man though. “Dance Around My Casket” is a really good tune and it dropped out of the set like a bowling ball square in the lap of the audience.
The biggest surprise was how talented a singer Tillman really is. I had never realized how trained his voice had become. He held key with ease and reached every note, sometimes with frank tenderness, from start to finish. It's a skill that is not apparent in the Har Mar Superstar format, which emphasizes delivery over substance. If Sean Na Na can somehow craft more songs utilizing this asset, and scale back the constant dual chord crunch in favor of a few more guitar riffs, the band will overrun the Har Mar shadow.
“Are you guys ready for The Hold Steady? Those guys are so fucking hot right now...”
--Sean Tillman at the end of the Sean Na Na set.
The party was over. The Hold Steady was long gone into the bowls of First Avenue. But where was my god damned photographer?
I was getting pummeled by the solid wave of people driving for the exits. A drunken dingbat tried tossing a half empty plastic cup of beer into the garbage can at my side, missing by a mere three feet, hitting me in the stomach and unloading down the front of my pants. Christ, I thought, I've got to get out of here before everything goes off the rocker. That was when, between bobbing bodies, I caught a glimpse of the photographer. He was crawling around the tiled dance floor on hands and knees, shifting through an ocean of beer bottles and other assorted garbage. I wove through the crowd toward him, not knowing that some of us weren't going to have to wait until morning to take our bumps and bruises. It turns out that the queer forces that rule this city were going to get a running start, to shake off the rust by pummeling me before dealing with the majority of the drunks at sunrise.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
“Looking for one of my camera lenses. I dropped it during the show. Get down here and help me find it.”
“What?”
“C,mon,” he said looking up at me, “It cost me a thousand bucks.”
“You shouldn't have had so many Jack & Cokes.”
“I was trying to stay in the spirit of the show. I'm a professional,” he sighed while down on his knees picking through a small pile of broken bottles.
“What does it look like?” I asked getting down to join him.
“A black beer bottle,” was his reply. “Hey, did you piss your pants?”
“Shut up,” I cried. “You go look over there. I'll try on this side of the floor.”
There had to be half a million dark colored beer bottles rolling around the floor, among a degrading sea of suspect substances. It was sticky, wet and something I'll never do again. After ten minutes I'd given up on finding the camera lens, there was just too much debris to sift and the First Avenue crew was pushing the garbage into bigger piles at the side of the stage. It was like a scene from a garbage dump training video.
The photographer had cornered a pretty girl in a wheelchair, demanding that she get out of her chair and helps find the missing lens. Apparently during the height of The Hold Steady show she felt the photographer's lens fall out of his camera bag and strike her in the knee. She was doing her best to help out.
“Show me exactly where you were positioned when you felt the lens fall.” The photographer was shouting now.
“Right there!” the girl said pointing her arm about six inches away.
“Are you sure?”
“All right,” I said stepping in, “that's enough. We're leaving. If someone finds it they'll turn it in to the office. Call tomorrow or find another ride home.”
Pulling the photographer by his coat, we left First Avenue and made our way toward the parking lot behind the club. Rounding the corner into the lot, I slipped in a pile vomit and fell onto my back—hard. The unsuspected fall knocked the wind from my chest and bloodied my elbow.
“Ah, Jesus,” said the photographer as I stood back up, “you've got yellow puke all over your back.”
Yeah. And I had beer spilled down the front of my pants and sticky fingers from rummaging through garbage.
“Get in the car,” I told him. I thought once we were safely in the car I could catch my breath and maybe jab my pencil into the photographer's neck when he wasn't looking.
We sealed ourselves in the car and I began unloading my pockets into the center console: wallet, press pass, notebook containing the set-lists, digital recording device, loose change, and a few crumpled dollar bills. With practiced hands, the photographer was pouring from a flask into an opened Diet Coke can. He set the can on the dash and screwed the top back on the flask as I pulled to a stop at the parking cashier's booth.
“Nine dollars please.”
“Nine dollars! I'm a fucking rock critic, we don't pay for anything god dammit,” I wailed.
“Nine dollars please.”
The photographer pretended not to hear. I handed the cashier his money and stomped on the gas, peeling out into traffic like a deranged fruit bat. The acceleration launched the toxic Diet Coke off the dash and into my lap where it rolled off into the center console and emptied the remainder.
“Oh, fuck no. No. No. No.”
“Aw man, don't worry,” the photographer laughed, “There's plenty left in the flask.”
“No, you asshole. Your drink just spilled all over my notebook and digital recorder.”
The notebook was ruined. I'd torn the cardboard cover off earlier in the evening so it would fit in my pocket better. Without the thick covering the liquid soaked through the thin paper pages. All the words were run together in a blue ink swirling. The show notes were gone forever, including the all important set-lists.
“Whatever this thing is... I think it's broken.” The photographer was holding up my brand new whiz-bang digital recorder. There were syrupy brown drops trickling off the edges and the LCD screen was glowing with a bunch of undecipherable hieroglyphics. It was broken. No amount of sophisticated repair was going to bring it back to life.
“Why are you strangling the steering wheel?” the photographer asked. “Don't you want to wipe that shit off your lap?”
“I don't care about the pants,” I shouted. “There was a half hour of interview with Tad Kubler on that machine. I hadn't taken the time to transcribe it yet. There is no second copy. Thirty minutes of pure wisdom that is supposed to be the centerpiece of my article. How the hell am I going to explain this to my editor?”
“You should have a drink,” the photographer suggested.
I dropped the photographer in his driveway and drove back across Minneapolis to my doorstep before remembering I'd stashed my house keys in the photographer’s camera bag way back at the beginning of the night. Locked out and too wounded to continue, I reclined the driver's seat back to the hilt and went to sleep in the car. I woke super early the next morning to the nerve jolting sound of an impatient polar bear rapping on the driver’s side window with a metal file.
“Go away,” I groaned. “Can’t you see I’ve already been worked over?”
The Hold Steady may have a handle on the trapping of boys and girls in America, but if you go to one of their shows be prepared to take it like a man.
Location Info:
First Avenue
Artist Info: Sean Na Na, The Hold Steady, robotboy
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