So it's only a week and a half before I see Craig Finn's show in San Francisco. For those unaware, he is the lead singer of the Hold Steady and recently released his first solo album, which I've been listening to pretty obsessively since it came out. Where do I start with Craig? Every story has to begin somewhere and not surprisingly this one started out at the local library. I happen to really like libraries. Anyway. Whilst browsing the library's CD collection, I came across the Hold Steady's "Stay Positive" album. I had heard of them by this point, but was not familiar with their music. So I popped it into my car's stereo on the way home that day and well...I loved it. I can't recall how many times I played "Sequestered In Memphis" and "One For The Cutters" in the following days. Let's just say it was a whole lot. I was hooked (and feeling stupid for having just discovered them recently).
In the months that followed, I bought pretty much everything by the Hold Steady that I could get my hands on. That, of course, led to me joining the band's forum (officially called "The Unified Scene" after a lyric from "Stay Positive") and then all hell broke loose - I collected live bootlegs posted on the forum at breakneck speed. The people on the forum were genuinely nice and something of kindred spirits to me. And just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, I wanted to see what the guys in this band looked like (aesthetics are important to me in music) and when I saw Craig Finn, I knew I was in trouble. He's my type of guy to a T - nerdy, disarmingly charming, literate and an amazing songwriter. While the Hold Steady's music is really wonderful (Tad Kubler is fantastic), it's Craig's lyrics that put it over the top for me. Any guy who writes lyrics like, "She said, I was been seeing double for three straight days/After I got born again/It felt strange but it was nice and it was peaceful/And it really pleased me to be around so many people/Of course half of them were just visions/But half of them were friends from going through the program with me" is automatically swoon-worthy to me.
Since joining The Unified Scene forum, I have watched pretty much every Craig Finn interview I could get my hands on, and bought their live album/DVD combo ("A Positive Rage"). I found Craig to be positively adorable. Then I discovered he was a big baseball fan (along with being a lapsed Catholic and stoner), talking about his team, the Twins, every chance he could get. Just recently he was interviewed about what song he would want to hear every time he walked into a room and his answer was The Replacements' "I Will Dare". Well, stick a fork in me, because I'm done. Seriously.
Craig finally put out a solo album at the end of last month and as expected, I was pretty impressed with it. Instead of sticking with the bar-style rock of his band, he decided to go the alt-country route. Now, alt-country has had a special place in my heart for quite a long time now. Uncle Tupelo, Whiskeytown (and most solo Ryan Adams material), Old 97's and Wilco (mostly"A.M." and "Being There" era) are among my very favorite bands. So you put Craig Finn with a pedal steel guitar and I'm there.
To put it mildly, I'm pretty damn excited to see his solo show on the 21st. It happens to be at the same venue where I met Jason Molina of Magnolia Electric Co. before their show and he gave me a birthday shout-out during the set - so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I can meet Craig then too. I can only hope.
Below is a link to a recent mini-show Craig did, courtesy of NPR:
http://www.npr.org/event/music/146574150....ert?ft=1&f=1039
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