Last night, The Hold Steady played at The Southgate House in Newport, KY. On tour for their latest album, Boys And Girls In America, they played for an hour and a half. They started by playing some of the newer songs. Then they threw in quite a few crowd favorites from their last album, Separation Sunday.
When I first heard Separation Sunday, I was immediately drawn in to this band. Craig Finn's vocal delivery is a steady attack of descriptive stories of debauchery. I imagined their live shows were drunken good times. And The Hold Steady drank more on stage last night at The Southgate House than any band I've seen - with Guided By Voices coming very close. Bobby Drake was drinking from a bottle of Jim Bean while playing the bass. Tad Kubler was drinking from a bottle of Jack Daniels was playing guitar. And there was a case of Budweiser cans that Craig Finn ripped through, spilling some on stage and cracking them open to spray on the audience. I would love to see a drunken showdown between GBV and The Hold Steady. Let them both drink and play and see which band passes out first.
When I first heard Boys And Girls In America I liked the songs, but thought they would all sound better live. With their past albums, The Hold Steady seemed to have written great albums that told imaginative tales. With this album, the band seems to have written rock anthems. As Finn said on stage, "These guys just playing some great music and talk over top of it." And someone behind me yelled out, "It works!" The songs from the new album were better live than they were on the album. "Chips Ahoy!," "Party Pit,""You Can Make Him Like You," and especially "Southside Girls" all seemed to get the audience to scream along and enjoy every minute.
The band was all over the stage. Finn had a camera that he used to take multitude of pictures of the audience. When the lead singer was taking pictures of an audience member who taped the words "The Hold Steady" onto the back of his jacket, guitarist Kubler said he left his camera in the van. The packed Southgate audience was hanging on the band's excitement level. For the final song of the night, Finn reached his hand out and started pulling people on stage. Soon the stage was full and the main floor was still quite packed. For someone in the crowd on stage, Finn screamed out the final vocals.
The band played an amazing show. They also announced that Cincinnati is home to the first Hold Steady tribute band called Chalemagne In Sweatpants. Supposedly they only have 3 songs down so far, but they were in attendance to learn how it was done from the masters. I'm looking forward to seeing The Hold Steady again. And I hope Charlemagne In Sweatpants are playing out soon.