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ON THE COUCH WITH: The Hold Steady

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ARTIST INTERVIEW

Access All Areas.net.au: Firstly this is your first Australian release, yet you’ve released two albums in the states, how do you feel about having to start again in a different country?
The Hold Steady - Tad: It’s actually, to be honest, I’m excited about it! I think you would have a better guage at this than I would but are we completely starting from scrach? Obviously with how information is transferred or you can go to e-tunes or Imusic or whatever to get the tune. In terms of technology, if you want to find stuff out there you certainly can and I’m not going to argue with you and we are going to take a step back - whatever – but we’re looking forward to it and putting in the work down there like we did here.

The Hold Steady - Tad: You get to a certain area – you don’t get lazy but you get into a pattern how you conduct yourself… we get to start from scratch and we look forward to it and that’s one of the fun things of playing in a band.

The Hold Steady - Tad: Obviously just getting down there is going to be huge and it should be fun see and I don’t know see how it goes and the people at Inertia are excited about it and they’re great guys and very positive.

Access All Areas.net.au: With your debut album not being released in Australia, is there something on the first album that hasn’t come out of the second that better introduces the band?
The Hold Steady - Tad: Kind of! That’s a very interesting question… Our first record we wrote songs really rapidly where we kind of got together and did songs, practiced them then quickly got in to the studio. I think the first record we were in the studio for five or six days and that’s recorded and mixed, the second [Separation Sunday] took five or six weeks so the process is different and I don’t know on the effect it will have lets not kid ourselves, the record is not terribly different except we have a full time keyboard player on the second record so people might be in to it. That’s kind of an interesting thing to think about and that hadn’t occurred to me before.

Access All Areas.net.au: How did the band come together?
The Hold Steady - Tad: Craig and I were in band called Lifter Puller in Minneapolis and I played bass in that band and I was initially filling in for someone who had left the band and they were finding someone more permanent because I was playing in another band at the time and it was fun to switch instruments and working with the rest of guys and was a really good time and it became a permanent thing. When that band split it was amicable. Craig moved to New York and I moved to Los Angeles and was there a year and then just said f#ck this and I moved back to Minneapolis and I played in post hardcore band and we did a six week tour and then I sort of got back to my girlfriend who was in New York so I started to talk to Craig more and that’s when dance punk was really big and all that bullsh#t and I was like “man what if we put a f#cking band together like this, like a f#cking rock band” and I said I’d be back in Minneapolis in two weeks.

The Hold Steady - Tad: It all came together fast, and the time was right in New York city for us and the kind of band we were, filled the gap and it took off from there.

Access All Areas.net.au: How has the band progressed in the time you've spent together?
The Hold Steady - Tad: I’m sorry, I know I am on the phone doing an interview but you won’t believe this, but Naomi Watts just passed me on Seventh Avenue!!!!!

The Hold Steady - Tad: I think like in writing separation Sunday my girlfriend was pregnant and it was a super emotional period for me, super inspiring and sh#t like that and we roughly had half the record done and we were working with a new guitar player and he was a professional player like he was classically trained and adding him to element was super fun and it was a great way for me to rapidly pick stuff up and sh#t for my writing… when we first started writing songs we worked very quickly and now I try to sit down and do this as a career be diligent like I’m working on something and go at it – when I wake up in the morning, even before brushing my f#cking teeth I play guitar for one or two hours and come up with stuff and then at around 10am I put my daughter down for nap for 2 hours and use that to play too.

The Hold Steady - Tad: We switched drummers half way through the record and we knew we were going to do that but we wrote half the songs with Jed and some with Johnny and they were both drummers but their styles were very different… we concentrate more on our craft and we’re writing another record right now so it will be fun to see how when we’ve released five records how they’ve all progressed.

Access All Areas.net.au: Where did the band's name come from?
The Hold Steady - Tad: Craig came up with it, it was in a lyric in one of his songs and we talked and wanted something Americana and kind of, not necessarily dark, but there’s a certain element - sh#t, I don’t know this would be a better question for him – anyone in band dude always says come up with what you want as long as it doesn’t suck… there’s a heap of bands out there with terrible band names and it’s like why did they pick that so its hard but we wanted to come up with a name that was not necessarily cool but is more like something that doesn’t totally blow.

The Hold Steady - Tad: So Craig showed us the lyric and said what if we called it this and we thought it was kind of cool.

Access All Areas.net.au: How would you describe your style of music to someone unfamiliar with it?
The Hold Steady - Tad: We are absolutely without question a rock ‘n’ roll band… it’s as simple as that and it’s all I have to say because I believe that!

Access All Areas.net.au: You’re touring Australia for the first time in February. When a fan goes to one of your shows what can they expect?
The Hold Steady - Tad: To get totally wasted! No man it’s a good time and we’ve talked about this and I think what separates us from lots of bands that I see now its not like five guys going up and regurgitating sh#t we’ve rehearsed, we try to kind of really play off each other in the band and pay attention as to what everybody else is doing on stage and it’s a really fun thing other wise why bother. One thing some people love and if we get carried away, I think our longest show we played for two and a half hours!

Access All Areas.net.au: Is this the first time you’ve ever been in Australia?
The Hold Steady - Tad: Yeah in fact I just did an interview with someone else. I’m a photographer when I’m not doing this and had to do this editorial shoot and we literally were in a cab to the airport when they pulled the plug so we didn’t go. But I’ve got lots of friends here that are Australian and the industry I’m in you meet a lot of people from everywhere… but everyone that’s Australian totally rules!

The Hold Steady - Tad: I’m not familiar with geography and where everything is… we’re even going to Perth! None of us have been there before so we can’t wait…. We did a tour in Europe and I was f#cking lost. I went in to a pub in France and asked for a beer and they just looked at me. It will be good not to have that language barrier.

Access All Areas.net.au: I know there’s the saying what goes on the road stays on the road but c’mon can you tell us any funny stories you’ve experienced whilst on tour?
The Hold Steady - Tad: [Laughs] Let me see here, what can I share… [laughs] Dude all kinds of shit happens on the road… Oh Bob, our sound guy, cracked the drummers back and the drummer passed out and fell on to a cement table and we thought we killed him.. all kinds of crazy sh#t … oh I’ll tell you a good story and it’s pretty tame!

The Hold Steady - Tad: We were playing a show in San Francisco and we got there a day early and caught up with some friends so we go out on a Friday night, and we were staying at a hotel called the Phoenix which is kind of a rock hotel and it’s cool… so we go out the night before and we go to this bar up the street and it’s one that’s kind of dicey but we go to the bar and then we came back, we did the Noise Pop Festival the next day but the show is in the afternoon and it was sold out but the show is over by 6.30pm and we had a great time and everyone was f#cking trashed so everyone split up, they go off to parties and went back to the hotel room and Bobby passes out there and with all the adrenaline going and combined with whatever else I said f#ck it I’m going to walk up the street to the bar we were at the night before and play pool and it was great, I met the locals and was talking to them and playing pool and it was about midnight when I realized that the adrenaline was over and I am f#cking hammered and I mean I can hold my liquor… I can drink a lot but this time I realized I’m in trouble and I think OK the hotel is only four blocks away. So I am one block out of the bar and I realize that someone was talking to me and it was a chick and I can’t tell if she’s chatting me up or asking for directions and I look up to her and her hand is on my back and she’s massaging me a bit and I’m looking at her and this chick’s all right and then wait a minute, this is a hooker and I was like whoa “no I’m cool” and she’s running her hand up the back of my shirt actually touching me and I’m thinking “OK she’s going to steal my wallet and split”… then I’m looking at her some more and she asks me to go with her to wherever and I’m like wholly sh#t this not only a hooker this is a f#cking man and I’m like “no I’m cool” and trying to get out of there and these two undercover cop cars pull up and as I look up I think of the headline Tad picks up trannie whore and I am looking and the whole block is hooker transvestites and I had got lost didn’t pay attention and this cop asks me all these questions and he could tell I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and he was like “kid get outta here” and me… “ok good idea”!

Access All Areas.net.au: What can you tell us about your new release ‘Separation Sunday’?
The Hold Steady - Tad: It is definitely the best record I’ve ever been a part of, it’s a great rock n roll record!

Access All Areas.net.au: What’s the plan after this album, more albums, more tours in Australia?
The Hold Steady - Tad: Yeah definitely and we’re talking coming back for a tour in the spring!

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

The Pre-history of The Hold Steady:

Based in New York City, The Hold Steady’s base is Craig Finn (vocals and lyrics/guitar) and Tad Kubler (lead guitar). The compatriots formed their creative and personal foundation in Minneapolis, MN 1998, establishing art punk critical favourites, Lifter Puller. Finn left Minneapolis for NYC in 2000 after that band’s demise. He is old enough to have seen numerous performances by The Replacements in their Bob Stinson glory days. He longed to create music that had the same loose energy as the 'Mats, the Grifters, and the Rolling Stones, while keeping alive the literary lyrical focus that he had developed in Lifter Puller.

Enter Tad Kubler, former bassist of Lifter Puller and now The Hold Steady's Guitar player. Tad's classic rock guitar riffage and screaming solos were a perfect fit for Finn's rock ideal. It finally took a shot of inspiration courtesy of The Band’s ‘Last Waltz’ to catapult the new incarnation of their musical collaborations into the barroom bent, banter blessed blow-out that has become The Hold Steady.

Bringing it all together in a bona fide brotherhood of booze-hound bombast, the band is Galen Polivka (bass), Bobby Drake (drums) and Franz Nicolay (keys). Drake is a recent addition and recently relocated to NYC and officially joined, though he has already completed a number of tours with the band. Nicolay is a current member of the World/Inferno Friendship Society, and also played piano and keys on the band’s debut album.

The Hold Steady's new album separation Sunday' is out now nationally on Rogue Records through Inertia. The Hold Steady play dates below nationally: Sydney - February 25th - Gaelic Club; Melbourne - February 26th - St Jeromes Laneway Festival; Melbourne - February 27th - Corner Hotel; Perth - March 1st - The Rosemount; Adelaide - March 2nd - Jive; Brisbane - March 3rd - The Zoo; Sydney - March 5th - St Jeromes Laneway Festival

www.theholdsteady.com

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MY FESTIVAL EXPERIENCE

Cut Copy
We played an amazing festival called T in the Park in Scotland, which was a year and a half ago now, but that was really amazing in terms of being, by far, the biggest crowd we've played infront of, I think it was- we played in the dance tent, and it was the middle of the day, so it wasn't night time craziness, but they packed like 20,000 people into this tent, and it was totally round, it was just the best kind of crowd to be playing infront of, we were really suprised and weren't expecting to get such a big reception, particually in Scotland. We only really had played a handful of shows in Glasgow and hadn't really played anywhere else, so yeah, that's definitely up there.

Ideal Lineup?
We kind of actually had this discussion when we first started playing together, before we even did any shows as Cut Copy, we made up these phoney band names and played a few shows at this pub, sort of on the wrong side of the tracks and a bit run down, you could ring up like the night before and get a gig the next day, so it wasn't really like, you know.. anything amazing. But we booked in, I think a couple of times under false names, just to make sure we could actually play our instruments and do everything before we actually put Cut Copy up on the stage, and I think in that year we sort of had this imaginary- it wasn't like a festival it was kind of the idea of billing this gig where it was us headlining with Sonic Youth, and then Daft Punk would be like the warm up DJs, and that was like our ultimate show, ever! And then we've actually played with Daft Punk at the end of last year so we just feel like we've maybe partly lived that dream a little bit, even though they obviously weren't the warm up DJs for us, but yeah, we've ticked off one of those things at least. All we've got to do now is play with Sonic Youth!