Craig Finn (Concert Quote)
speaker
58 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Craig Finn (Concert Quote)’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
There was a guy who called down and said, hey, do you follow local music at all? And I was like, yeah, a bit. And he goes, there's a band called Lifter Puller, and their singer has the same name as you. And he didn't think for one second it could be me.
It was 2000. It was kind of this first internet boom, you know, and it was kind of that time where there was a lot of internet companies and there was like, no one knew how they were going to make money, but you like ate cereal and sat in beanbag chairs. So I knew a lot of people that were doing gigs like that.
And I moved on a Friday and I started on a Monday and I didn't have the job when I moved.
I mean, it was comical what we were talking about. One was that we weren't going to play any shows. You didn't want to, why? Because I surmised, perhaps correctly, that when you move the gear, that's when the trouble starts. Wait, what does that mean?
You know, like once you get like, I mean, I think it was like, okay, so you know, like in Lifter Puller, you go out and you like, you want to be in a rock band, but you know, you start out your rock band and you end up learning a lot about your band. because it breaks down a lot, you know? And, like, suddenly, like, all your time is, like, auto repairs, you know?
And I'm like, well, this wasn't exactly what I imagined it. Once you get, like, move the gear and get it in a van and go play a show, then that's when the fighting starts.
Yeah. So I was like, well, if we just, like, drank beer on Tuesday nights and played, wouldn't that be, like, the most fun part of it? And then, you know, no pressure. But, of course, that wasn't going to work. So the second someone asked us to play a show, we're like, Okay, yeah, you know.
It's called Mr. Ass. Mr. Ass? Yeah. And they were doing this thing at Arlene Grocery, and they were like, do you want to do, like, bumper music? Like, get a band together. Do, like, bumper music. It'll be like, you know, when we're changing sets, you'll play, like, Back in Black. No singing. So I was like, Yeah, that sounds fun. That's something to do. So we go and do that.
And are they doing, like, improv sketching? Yeah, yeah. So they're doing improv. A scene ends, and then you guys will play, like, 30 seconds of back and forth. Yeah, and then they, like, you know. So we did that twice. And the second time, they were like, hey, do you guys have any songs? You could just warm up the crowd, play a song.
And I showed the guys Knuckles, which ends up being the first Hold Steady song we ever had.
I've been trying to get people to call me Freddy Knuckles. People keep calling me Ride Set Fred. And it's hard to keep trying when half your friends are dying. It's hard to hold it steady when half your friends are dead already.
And so we played that. And that was, I guess, the first Hold Steady show. But then after two of those, we were like, yeah, you know what was the most fun part about that is when we played our own song.
We just combined them and called it a record. But it was really started with demos. And it didn't feel as easy.
I think I knew that there was a power in keeping it light or something, you know, or keeping it, you know, if you take whatever the opposite of desperation is, I think people really react to that. And so we were kind of like, whatever, you know. I mean, that was always my thing about how the whole study was going to operate, at least at the beginning. It was like,
Every time we have 10 songs, we'll call it an album. In that way, you're not recording 25 songs and being like, which are the best? And how do we perfectly sequence them? And how do we make our masterpiece? Like, no, we got 10 songs. Want to hear them?
Well, we were—I mean, we were the antithesis of something, you know? Like, a lot of the music that was happening there was really syncopated and pretty tight.
And we were kind of this big sloppy bar rock band. And I think people were kind of like weirdly refreshed by it. And it took pressure off in a way that like, I don't know, maybe at that point in my life, I just didn't need pressure on the art.
So with The Hold Steady, I thought, we just, like, play these shows around town, and we do this bar rock. But eventually, the bar started filling up, you know?
And the thing is, is when you're in New York, the press is inherently national, you know? Like, in Minneapolis, you were hoping for, like, you know, I mentioned the local weekly. Yeah. But then all of a sudden, it's in Rolling Stone, and then, you know... Booking agents want to talk. Labels want to talk. And then I remember we decided to make our second record.
And the Village Voice did an article on it. And then we got word that they were putting us on the cover. And it was the first time a band had been on the cover in a long time, a decade or something. And that was really experienced as a turning point. Felt like that's kind of when all of a sudden things kicked into overdrive. And we became the Hold Steady as a real band.
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