Hey, let's talk about The Hold Steady. It was awesome.

A 90-minute set, one encore, one impromptu-seeming second encore, a pretty adoring, enthusiastic crowd, quite a bit of sweat, one really heartfelt Craig Finn monologue and another absolutely fantastic, hilarious one, one dork with a Twins jersey on and another who threw a Twins hat onstage, a few buzz-beginning beers during the opener, and quite a few fist pumps, a few more odd jigs, and smiles by the miles.

The Hold Steady is a worthy favorite band, it's been determined.

Here's the setlist, because I'm "that guy" (In parentheses, the lyrics that I wrote down to help me remember the song, then Googled)

Stuck Between Stations
Hot Soft Nights
Chips Ahoy
Party Pit
The Swish ("Shoes and socks, baby, socks and shoes. We spent the night last night in Newport News.")
Massive Nights
You Can Make Him Like You (I did the 'hold up the cell phone' thing for The Boy during this song. He hung up.)
Don't Let Me Explode
Stevie Nix ("You came into the ER drinking gin from a jam jar.")
Barfruit Blues ("Kids with broken hearts, kids with broken bones.")
Your Little Hoodrat Friend
Southtown Girls

- - - - -

Citrus
First Night
Knuckles
Killer Parties

- - - - -

Certain Songs (Craig and Franz only)


On Craig Finn's heartfelt monologue:
It came during an instrumental break in "Your Little Hoodrat Friend," which is about their rockingest song, I think. Anyway, they extended the break, and he started telling a story. ...about how they're five days into a five week tour, or something like that, and about how they'll take three days off and then head to Europe to do it again. Just a "band on the road" kind of thing. And then he kind of looked to his bandmates, and then he kind of looked back at the adoring crowd, and he says, "There is so much joy in what we do up here, and we just want to thank you for sharing that with us." And then they ripped through the rest of the song, and they ripped through "Southtown Girls," Craig pointing in various directions to coincide with the song's lyrics ("Take Penn Ave. out to the 494."), and then they left the stage.

And we screamed, and they returned, and they played a few soft songs, and they played "Knuckles," which is kind of a dumbish song ("People keep calling me Sunny D. / Cause I got the good stuff that kids go for") but which we all eat right up, and then they just slayed (slew!) on "Killer Parties."

Late in the song, the normal-est looking bandmember, the guitarist with the glasses, came out in the crowd in barreled over the barricade, finishing in the party pit. And Craig just belted it out: "Now if they said we partied. Well I'm pretty sure we partied. I really don't remember. I remember we parted from our bodies. And we woke up in Ybor City." And then he gave an odd rock n' roll sign of the cross, and it was odd, and it was rock and roll.

And then they came back and played "Certain Songs," just Craig on 'voice' and Franz on the keyboards, and I was the dork singing along. The only dork singing along. But, my God, how could you not sing along to "...C9 is for the making eyes, and it's 'Paradise By The Dashboard Light' (ed: your author didn't even know that this was the Meatloaf "Let me sleep on it" song until he looked up those lyrics moments ago) and B12 is for the speeders, and the hard drugs are for the [gesture in proper directions] bartenders and the kitchen workers and the bartenders friends. And they're playing it again."

- - - - - - - - -

About the hilarious monologue:
After "You Can Make Him Like You," Craig went into what turned out to be a true story about Saint Barbara. How she lived in third century, and how her father was an aristocrat who went off to war, and how he returned to see that she had converted to Christianity, and how he ordered her beheaded, and how he was then commanded by the executioner to behead her himself, and how he did, and how he was then struck by lightning.

Not that funny, on its face, I guess.

But he told it in a "guy hanging out at the bar telling a hell of a story" voice and pose, and when he mentioned that she converted to Christianity, he hit an absolute home run: "And you gotta understand, back then, 300 years after Jesus, Christianity wasn't like it is today, with the ski trips and the youth groups and all that. No, back then, Christianity was roughly like getting a tattoo on your face."

It was awesome.

And then he closed the story by saying, "And so now Santa Barbara's the patron saint of land mines, or rather, not stepping on them. And this one's called 'Don't Let Me Explode,' and it was just so balls.

(In looking at Wikipedia, it's clear that he tells this story whenever he plays the song. A note references that he told the story to several thousand at Lollapalooza last summer, but I kind of figured he didn't tell it just to make me giggle. Part of the routine, and an awesome part.)

- - - - - -

In structure and song style, The Hold Steady really aren't anything at all like Guided by Voices, who are the greatest band ever. But they're just so similar - they want to have fun, and they're old, and they're keeping the dream alive and, most importantly, they're absolutely thrilled at the prospect of being a hardworking rock band with passionate fans. Bob Pollard was jaded towards the end, and Craig Finn might soon enough.

But right now, there's just so much joy up on that stage, and there are so many smiles, and it's just so damn genuine, and it's just so awesome. I'd like to think that any rock fan would enjoy The Hold Steady, though those that know and love the lyrics would obviously enjoy it more. But it was just so fantastic.

And Craig is just an absolute trip to watch. Ridiculous jigs, off-mic backing vocals ("And we walked across that Grainbelt Bridge. Into bright new Minneapolis" ["bright new Minneapolis"]), finger pointing to the crowd and to the bar, arms flailing. Just awesome. He's also smaller than I expected, legitimately short, it seems. That adds to it, because he's so gruff and so authoritative, and yet so tiny.

Meanwhile, the rest of the band does their job. The longhaired bassist is cool, Franz the keyboardist (occasional accordion player) has a nice mustache, and the longer-haired drummer looks like a metalhead. The other guitarist looks like an accountant, except a sweatier one. Like my brother.

People enjoy singing along to backing vocals more at a Hold Steady show than at most. This is because there's generally no rhythm to Craig's barking, and because the backing vocals ("Whoa-oh!") are really easy.

My only complaint about the show, oddly, is that the vocals were too low. That never happens.

Also, their t-shirt selection was a bit lame. They were out of all but smalls in the light yellow version of the Twins one, which would have been my selection, and they only had a white version of that one with the two kids on the phone, which would have been my second choice.

I wound up with this one, because I needed a Hold Steady t-shirt:


Not completely my speed, because I'm neither a skulls nor a hearts kind of guy, but it worked. Navy blue, and I'm curiously short of navy blue these days.

On Thursday, when I was the kid who wore the concert t-shirt the day after the concert, I thought it worked pretty well.