Craig Finn

Off Broadway, St Louis, MO

$12, General Admission, We got a spot at the edge of the stage.

In Attendance: Jerry, Carly, Me

We didn’t see The Hold Steady, we saw Craig Finn. He didn’t play any Hold Steady songs, or sell their albums, and only mentioned them maybe once. But The Hold Steady is probably the best bar band in the country, and Craig Finn is their leader, and we saw him play in a bar. The superfan that follows The Hold Steady everywhere (We see him at every show. He noticed that Jerry had gotten a haircut) was standing right by the stage, just like always. And it was packed, and everybody sang along, and Finn danced and twisted his feet around and got into his preachy big-gestured mood, telling funny stories between songs. I can’t think of anything to compare it to besides a Hold Steady concert.

Oh how my life would improve if everything I did compared to a Hold Steady concert. There was one distinct difference: I could still hear when it was over. Pretty sure the last Hold Steady show did permanent damage.

We were right up by the stage, like when we see you-know-who, and I didn’t want to disturb Finn with my camera, which sucks with the flash off. He was so much in my face as it was, I almost got hit with his guitar a couple times. That would have rocked. The place was so crowded that at one point, Finn past a twenty to someone in the audience and ordered a couple Maker’s Mark on the rocks. Finn (backed by a new band of guys cooler than me. A drummer named Falcon, everybody.) played every song from his new album, Clear Heart Full Eyes, and then some, using a story-driven quartet of songs near the end to split the set. It was just Finn and his pedal-steel player, a guy named Randy Ray Jackson, doing songs that were near campfire tales. A spooky song about intruders hitting the front door with a hammer and vandalizing a girlfriend’s car. Stuff like that.

The whole night was fun, but the highlights were New Friend Jesus, which everyone already knew the words to, and Terrified, which Finn taught us on the spot. It’s one of those songs that sounds straight out of the 1970s, in a good way, like rolling up the windows at a drive-in movie, and searching the AM stations until something good comes on. Boy do I love a Hold Steady show.

Grade: A