Hold Steady hold steady

By Nate Adams
Collegian Editor
October 31, 2007

It’s a matter of fact: The Hold Steady make music for drinking. With big guitars that sound best blasting out of car stereos and lyrics about the boys and girls in America getting drunk and making mistakes, one has to expect a fair share of inebriation when seeing the band live. To sober eyes, the crowd must look like a modern day Sodom and Gomorra.

However, to those eyes blurred by drink and merriment, it feels like you’re dancing with 300 of your closest friends. It was with this communal mentality that the drunks, punks, sober and sinners descended upon the TLA Oct. 26 to drink in deep the world’s finest bar band.

There were two opening acts on the bill, but I chose to open the show in a different manner; namely, playing quizzo at a nearby bar with my old friend Joe and two strangers from NYC. So if you want to know how British art punks Art Brut were live, I can’t help you (according to Collegian reporter Mandy Bee, who was also in attendance, they were pretty good). However, if you want to know which Hollywood starlet is currently dating Riley Giles, then I am your man (answer: Lindsey Lohan).

When I finally left the bar and entered the TLA, there was a palpable energy in the audience that gave me a very good feeling about the show. Art Brut did a great warm-up job; the feel-good buzz in the room brought a silly grin to my face and a warmth in my chest stronger than any liquor could produce. People were crammed ass-to-elbows in front of the stage, dancing, singing, talking and waiting for a five piece rock band from Brooklyn-via-Minneapolis to take the stage and take them away. When the band finally arrived after a 20 minute lull, it was greeted like a band of heroes, with roars from the audience.

Opening with “Positive Jam,” off of debut album Almost Killed Me, lead singer Craig Finn slurred his timeline prose over a subdued guitar harmonic with a knowing grin on his face. By starting the show with a slow, minimal track, Finn lit the fuse on a rock powder keg by kicking right into “Party Pit,” a danceable track off recent album Boys and Girls in America, that got the fans screaming along and dancing their heads off.

Thus began a set that lasted well over an hour-and-a-half and consisted mostly of tracks off Boys and Girls and religious concept album Separation Sunday. While the entire set was well received, it was tracks like “Massive Nights” and “You’re Little Hoodrat Friend” that received the biggest ovations, with both being fistpumping sing-a-longs that let the crowd join in on Finn’s usually conversational delivery.

The Hold Steady had the crowd eating out of their hands the entire night. Finn lurched around the stage, pointing and stumbling like a bar room poet giving a soapbox about foreign policy, while lead guitarist Tad Kubler remained deatched and calm, even when riffing off some seriously excellent guitar solos on “Stevie Nix” and “Kooks.” Keyboard player Franz Nicolay worked the crowd like a seasoned pro; he was all grand gestures and piano flourishes in between swigs from a wine bottle. The band was pumping up the crowd, which was in turn pumping up the band. It was the best kind of give-and-take.

After an encore consisting of fan favorites “Citrus,” “The Swish” and “Girls like Status,” the band ended the show with its finest anthem, “Killer Parties.” As the show drew to a close, Finn told the audience, “There is so much joy in what we do up here, we just want to thank you for being a part of it.”

Looking out over a sea of people, each one with an ear-to-ear smile and the kind of glow that only comes from being a part of something; I wanted to tell Finn that there was a lot of joy out here, too.

adamsn1@lasalle.edu