Headliners

Raising the bar

by Chris DeVille

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During Hold Steady concerts, Craig Finn is the center of attention, just as he is on the Brooklyn band's records.

The singer's rich, nasally croak would demand notice even if he weren't using it to spout smart stories about those time-honored topics sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. But his frantic stage presence, punctuated by flailing arms and strangled microphone stands, is nearly as memorable.

With Finn's spectacle in mind, it's a wonder any other part of a Hold Steady show sticks out. Sure enough, though, as the band barrels through its songs, each one a fist-pumping Springsteen-Westerberg cocktail, a few more things do.

The mustache... The wild eyes... The gaping mouth...

It's inescapable: Franz Nicolay looks thrilled to be on stage.

"You gotta be," said Nicolay, whose classic piano and organ stylings helped the Hold Steady come into its own.

"The fact that people care about it and we're able to do it every night, it's really amazing," Nicolay said. "And also, especially on tour, that's the only fun thing to do all day."

Well, that and drink. Despite their coastal home base, the Hold Steady are poster boys for Middle America, and they seem to be aiming for Guided by Voices' beer-drinking title.

"We play real classic rock 'n' roll, and drink a lot. The two things just go hand in hand," Nicolay explained.

In fact, the Hold Steady drinks so much that—like Spinal Tap—they sometimes forget which city they're in. That's the only explanation for why Nicolay fondly recalled the band's last trip to Columbus when they almost certainly have never played here before. Or, presumably, he doesn't know the difference between Columbus and Cleveland.

Either way, his point stands: When they hit the Newport Music Hall stage (on St. Patrick's Day, no less), the dudes should be all juiced up.

They'll have a high standard to meet: Opening act the Thermals, a group every bit their match in terms of hooks, cleverness and sheer power.

What the Thermals ain't got is keyboards—the Hold Steady's secret weapon. Finn and company added Nicolay just before recording their landmark second album, Separation Sunday. Washes of organ and prancing piano were just the right dressing for Finn's treatise on growing up on Catholicism and rock in suburban Minneapolis.

(About the Middle America thing: They're no frauds. Finn and guitarist Tad Kubler are Minnesota lifers who spent years in ace Twin Cities band Lifter Puller.)

Nicolay really arrived on Boys and Girls in America, for which Finn expanded his scope from Minnesota to (duh) America. Instead of following Kubler's lead, the piano man began collaborating, working in bits and pieces of his past. Nicolay went to school for jazz performance and classical composition, then dabbled in singer/songwriter indie fare before joining World Inferno Friendship Society, "a nine-piece circus anarchist punk gang."

All those factors only served to make the Hold Steady sound even more like classic rock. These latest songs are more melodic than ever, with catchy backup vocals and everything. The overused description "the world's best bar band" seems more and more apt.

For someone worn down by stodgy academia and punk legalism, being in a "bar band" is quite refreshing.

"There's a lot less fixation on what's cool, to put it bluntly, and a lot more acceptance of what makes people happy, including us," Nicolay said.

"There's a reason they call it classic. It's always going to work," he said. "I think it's a good jumping off point. It's a good way to prove that you can all play together.

"This is going to sound like the most retarded quotation ever, but rocking is harder than it looks. You can go and you can get experimental from there, but you have to start from a basis of being a solid rock band... then hopefully you've earned the freedom to do whatever you want after that."

March 15th, 2007

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