From 2005: The Hold Steady breaks out with 'Separation Sunday'

Scene 1: Soundcheck

Craig Finn is starting to sweat through his Twins T-shirt as he runs around the empty Bowery Ballroom. Among the items on his to-do list is checking on the arrival of his favorite Minneapolis rapper, Brother Ali, and his favorite Edina residents, Mom and Dad.

"I think they might've been on the same flight," Finn said, flashing a dry smile. "Wonder what they'd talk about?"

One thing Finn didn't have to worry about was filling up one of Manhattan's best-loved rock clubs two weekends ago. The Hold Steady's release party for its second CD, "Separation Sunday," was oversold, with close to 700 attendees. A month earlier, the band had a meeting "to figure out how to even get a respectable amount of bodies in here," Finn recalled.

"A lot can happen in a month," he said.

With the May 3 release of "Separation Sunday" — a disc loaded with lyrics about the Twin Cities — the band that plays classic-rock without any ironic retro gimmickry was greeted with an onslaught of equally unpretentious press in Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Spin, the New Yorker and the Village Voice.

The Voice piece was especially huge. Finn and his boys were the first New York musicians on the cover of the NYC alt weekly in five years. Playing off the album's religious themes, the headline read: "We Believe in One Band."

"A friend of mine who's totally into the New York music scene put it into perspective when he said the Beastie Boys never even got the cover of the Voice," said guitarist Tad Kubler, one of three former Twin Citians in the band.

Tellingly, though, the band had to do a second photo shoot for the Voice to produce a cover-worthy shot. These guys aren't exactly poster-boy rock stars. The Voice story refers to a blog comparing the bespectacled Finn to Charles Nelson Reilly (also a comment on his nasal, stammering vocal style). It might have added that Kubler looks a bit like Jeff Daniels in "Dumb & Dumber" (not a comment on his intelligence).

Said Village Voice music editor Chuck Eddy, "Not every band in New York has haircuts like the Bravery [the most stylish band of the moment]. But the Hold Steady didn't get the cover because they do or don't have that haircut. They got it because they put out the best album so far this year."

Scene 2: Pre-show party

The hip Bowery neighborhood bar Lolita feels like a good midpoint between Manhattan's trendiest hangouts and its working-class swill spots. Never mind that it's just around the corner from Teany, a tea bar owned by the Voice's last local cover boy, Moby.

As Kubler and drummer Bobby Drake sit in a corner, Hüsker Dü repeatedly pops up from the bar DJ's Apple laptop.

"I miss Minneapolis, but obviously this is great," Drake said of his role in the band. Son of longtime Children's Theatre actor Gerry Drake, the former EndTransmission drummer left for New York six months ago with the promise he'd have a band to play in, "and they'd help me get a job," he recalled.

With four out of five still holding down day jobs, the Hold Steady's members obviously weren't expecting such a hype storm with this record. And why should they? Finn's and Kubler's former band, Lifter Puller, also made great albums but never got past cult status or small punk-rock clubs.

"We wouldn't be where we are now in Minneapolis," said Kubler, who grew up in Janesville, Wis., across the street from Cheap Trick's manager's kids (read: free records galore).

After the 2000 breakup of Lifter Puller, a band he joined midway through its tenure, Kubler played in roar-rock band Songs of Zarathustra for a while. He eventually followed his girlfriend to New York and reunited with Finn, who said he moved there "to get away from being that guy in Minneapolis from Lifter Puller."

Like Finn and Milwaukee-born bassist Galen Polivka, who started the Hold Steady in 2002, Kubler was dismayed by the electroclash/disco-punk sound that enraptured New York three years ago, with bands such as the Rapture. Hearing a classic Thin Lizzy riff or an Angus Young guitar solo — Kubler's strong suits — was like getting a juicy T-bone in a vegan restaurant.

That contrast, along with the fact that New York has more rock critics than Minnesota has dairy farmers, has helped the Hold Steady climb higher than Lifter Puller ever did. "But you can't discount the reputation that Lifter Puller had in New York," said keyboardist Franz Nicolay, the only longtime New Yorker in the band.

Said Kubler, "One thing the Hold Steady took from Lifter Puller: As long as you have a guy like Craig who's writing great songs, you don't have to reinvent the wheel musically. I suppose that's more a Midwestern thing than a New York thing."

Scene 3: The show

It's only two songs into the Bowery performance, and it already looks as if Finn is going to talk too much. "I hate to turn this into the Academy Awards," he says before going down a list of people to thank. His parents, watching from a balcony table, are first.

At the Hold Steady's Triple Rock shows in March, Finn yammered about the Replacements, Soul Asylum, cable TV and a lot else that defined his teen years. It turned out this was all a set-up for the new CD.

Except for the thank-you barrage, though, he mostly kept mum at the Bowery and let "Separation Sunday" speak for itself. The band played the album straight through, augmented by a horn section and even a backup singer: Nicole Wills, a '60s scenester who sang the "School House Rock" children's ditty "Elbow Room" (she's a family friend of Kubler's). When Wills sings "welcome back, welcome back" in the CD's rah-rah closer, "How a Resurrection Really Feels," it's like hearing your mom's voice from the other end of a dark tunnel.

The Bowery show was as ambitious as the album. Recorded over 28 days instead of the six spent on last year's debut, "The Hold Steady Almost Killed Me," its dueling guitars and piano and organ melodies sound more geared to geezer-rock station KQRS (92.5 FM) than college outlet Radio K (770 AM).

Dave Gardner, the former Selby Tiger who co-produced the album, said: "Those guys made me listen to the first Billy Joel record before I came out. I was like, `You're kidding me.'"

Like other Twin Citians at the Bowery, Gardner didn't have to imagine the places name-dropped in the songs, such as City Center, or Nicollet and 66th. But knowing the sites doesn't seem to matter. After the show, a guy from Pittsburgh tells Finn, "It sounds like we did the same things you did growing up."

A concept album with woozy, rollercoaster pacing and a purposeful story arc, "Separation Sunday" involves a teenage girl named Holly who falls in with a wrong crowd. She has run-ins with druggies, hoodrats ("chicks who dig gangsta types," says Finn) and a pimp named Charlemagne. All the while, her religious upbringing nags at her.

In short, it's about being a teenager with nothing to do but get lost, and maybe be found.

As Finn later explains: "There's that time when you're old enough to get your hands on alcohol but not old enough to have a place to drink it. So you spent a lot of your time driving around, listening to classic-rock radio, and a lot of times ending up at places like the banks of the Mississippi, where it was always kind of scary. You never knew who was going to be around. There might be a fight, or a bust."

At the Bowery, Finn was put in the uncomfortable position of singing these songs — with seedy details of teenagers getting high and losing control — in front of his mom and dad.

"I think Craig has a very good imagination," Barbara Finn coolly said after the show.

Scene 4: The day after

The L Train's first stop across the river from Manhattan, Brooklyn's Williamsburg section is dotted with four-story apartments, small groceries and unassuming cafes. It's the `hood of choice for New Yorkers who think small spaces are a fair trade for big ambitions.

Sitting in a booth at one of those cafes, a few blocks from the apartment he shares with his wife, Finn has visibly settled one ambition: playing an unforgettable show with his new band in his new hometown. "Getting a crowd in New York is a lot harder than it is in Minneapolis," he brags.

Not a guy who likes to dwell on irony — "A kid once told me he thought I was being ironic by wearing my Twins shirt, and I wanted to cry" — Finn realizes the great irony of "Separation Sunday." It made him the toast of New York, but it's really about his time in the Twin Cities.

He also realizes that people back home might consider the album a tad disingenuous. A 1989 graduate of Breck High School — which locals know is where smart kids go — Finn, 33, didn't exactly lead the troubled gutter-teen life that's spilled out on "Separation Sunday." You say Edina, I say money.

A smart kid, however, knows how to take literary license.

"I read `On the Road' again recently, which I thought was so totally cliched when I was 17," Finn said. "This time, I sort of remembered that Kerouac wasn't really taking part in a lot of what goes on in the book. He was recording it. There's really a big difference."

In other words, he hopes people distinguish between what's real and really imagined on "Separation Sunday." A lot of the characters are composites of people, some maybe exaggerated by the insecurities of teendom. Many of the stories really happened, but usually to other people.

The most autobiographical part seems to be the religious struggle. Finn grew up in a devout if not-too-strict Catholic home, but like a lot of Gen X-ers, he's been turned off by the politicizing of religion. "There's a sense of beauty and peacefulness about going to mass that doesn't have anything to do with the religious right or birth control," he said. "You get that in your head and heart, and even when you don't go to church, it still gives you that sense that everything's going to be OK."

Before leaving the restaurant, Finn goes down the checklist of who's still in town from the Twin Cities. Brother Ali slept at his place last night. Mom and Dad are on for dinner. "They've been to New York a lot, so it's not like I had to get up at 9 a.m. to take them to the Statue of Liberty. Thank God," he said.

When the idea of moving back to Minnesota is raised (his wife, Barbara, is also from here), Finn doesn't hesitate.

"Yeah, we probably will," he says, not mentioning anything about his band or what New York has done for him. "When they build that outdoor ballpark, I'm there."

He definitely wasn't being ironic.

Local motions

"Where you're from is not where you were born, but where you went through puberty," says Craig Finn, who based the Hold Steady's new CD, "Separation Sunday," on his teen years in Edina. Added Finn (who was born in Boston): "It's like you fall apart when you're a teenager, and you have to put yourself back together."

Here are songs that should hit close to home for many Twin Citians.

"HORNETS! HORNETS!"

"I guess the heavy stuff ain't quite at its heaviest by the time it gets out to suburban Minneapolis/ We were living down at Nicollet and 66th/ With three skaters and some hoodrat chick/ Drove the wrong way down 169/ Nearly died up by Edina High."

Finn's comment: "I didn't go to Edina High, but one of my friends who did was in the state hockey championship. They had these great virginal cheerleaders who come out of nowhere yelling, `Hornets! Hornets!' A great visual, I thought."

"YOUR LITTLE HOODRAT FRIEND"

"She said City Center used to be the center of the scene/ Now City Center's over, no one really goes there/ Then we used to drink beneath the railroad bridge/ Some nights the bus wouldn't stop/ There were just way too many kids."

Finn's comment: "We wound up over in St. Paul a lot, which always seemed wilder." He laughs. "There might be a scary heavy-metal guy at the party or something like that."

"STEVIE NIX"

"She got high for the first time down by the banks of the Mississippi River. Lord, to be 17 forever."

Finn's comment: "A lot of this record, and this band, is based on growing up on classic rock. When you're 16 or 17, you want to spend as little time at home as possible, so you spend it driving around listening to the radio. Back then, there weren't any alt-rock stations. So it was classic rock, 92 KQRS. To this day, I can sing every song on classic-rock radio, and I never liked a lot of it."