Holding Steady
A weekend that cost quite a bit more than forty bucks
This past weekend was the ninth edition of the Hold Steady doing a four-night stint at the Brooklyn Bowl in Williamsburg, and I believe the sixth that I’ve attended in person. (There was a virtual version in 2020, streamed to fans stuck at home due to Covid lockdowns.) As is usual for these, I went down early on Friday for the sound check event they run for the fan club:
As you can guess from those numbers, I’m a big fan of the band. Though not necessarily by the standards of the average sound check attendee, many of whom have seen the band multiple dozens of times (this was just my tenth show, counting the livestream), and make the trip to NYC four all four shows. This is not as crazy as it might seem, since they do something like 25 songs a night, and there are only a half-dozen or so you’re guaranteed to hear at every show (“Your Little Hoodrat Friend,” “Stuck Between Stations,” “Chips Ahoy,” “Massive Nights,” “Constructive Summer,” “Sequestered in Memphis,” “Entitlement Crew,” and “Killer Parties” to close the night). There’s a guy on the Facebook fan group who keeps stats on this, but in a typical four-night stand they’ll play north of sixty different songs at least once.
This year’s sound check had a theme of “Teeth Dreams Re-imagined [expansive hand gesture].” It’s the tenth anniversary of their least-beloved album (whose reception Craig Finn described as “If you thought you didn’t like Heaven Is Whenever, just wait until you hear this…”), so they played most of the tracks from it in a very different order:
I have a somewhat complicated relationship with this album: on the one hand, I recognize that it’s not their best work (the absence of Franz Nicolay on the keyboards is keenly felt), but it arrived at around the same time as the edits for my third book, Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist, so provided a key soundtrack as I powered through the revisions. (Also in this playlist are the Afghan Whigs record Do to the Beast and The War On Drugs classic Lost in the Dream.) So I will always have a soft spot for a lot of these songs, and consequently rate the record as a whole a little higher than many other fans.
This “re-imagined” version replaces a couple of tunes (“Wait a While” and “Runner’s High”) with B-sides from that era:
These happen to be two of the very few Hold Steady songs I don’t actually own— I can’t seem to find legit digital copies of them for purchase (it doesn’t help that these are not especially Google-able titles…). I think they’re good— definitely better than “Wait a While”— but don’t have the same relationship to them.
Anyway, the sound check versions were cool to hear, with the caveat that Finn is always a little more subdued in that context (understandably— it would be next to impossible to reach the level of energy they have during the real show in that atmosphere). They also did a bit of Q&A (not quite live; the questions were sent in in advance), and it was interesting to hear how ambivalent the band themselves are about Teeth Dreams. I do agree with Finn’s comment that the final version sounds more “hard rock” than “rock and roll,” probably to the detriment of the material.
After that I hung around the Brooklyn Bowl for dinner and some beers. I don’t really have anything to say about opening act the Good Looks— the vocals were kind of indistinct to me way in the back of the room, but they generally had good energy which is what you want in an opener. Then there was he traditional milling around before the lights went down and they played Boz Scaggs’s “Lido Shuffle” (a good warm-up “Whoah-oh-oh-oh!” for the crowd) and it was time for the main event:
This is a really solid set list, aside from not ending with “How a Resurrection Really Feels,” my favorite of theirs. That’s a bit of a fake-out, too, since “Spices” includes the line “If the band ever plays the resurrection, it’s at the end of the show,” and thus the two tend to appear together on set lists. (A secondary fake-out: while waiting to enter the Brooklyn Bowl, we could hear them running through two songs (“Esther” and “Unpleasant Breakfast”) that didn’t get played until Saturday night…)
I was a little surprised to see them say that this was the first time they’ve played “40 Bucks” live. It’s a leftover from the Stay Positive era, and a sneaky great tune:
One of those that when it comes up on shuffle play, I end up humming for the rest of the afternoon.
The main attraction, though, is just being in a room with several hundred other people who also know all the words to all the songs, and will shout along with the rousing choruses. That’s very cathartic, and definitely justifies a trip down to The City. Which is why I keep coming back, almost every year…
On a less band-specific level, some notes about the trip in general:
I ended up taking Amtrak down from Albany, which has the nice feature of dropping me off at Penn Station, a few blocks from a big collection of good Korean restaurants (a cuisine I like a good deal, but don’t get very often). Though most of them don’t open until 11:30 or 12, which meant that I spent a good while wandering around in the cold on Friday morning before ending up at a Korean-Chinese fusion place named Octo. The lunch set there was surprisingly large, but a good basis for the rest of the day.
I took the subway over to Brooklyn, where I was staying at the Moxy hotel, a pretty decent walk from the Brooklyn Bowl (there was a special rate for the night associated with the show). I was briefly worried about trekking 20-ish blocks after midnight, but a bit of scouting of restaurant options allayed that concern— that neighborhood is full of places that don’t close until 3am, so the streets were still pretty busy at midnight.
Saturday my train back didn’t leave until 1:20pm, so I had a lazy morning around the hotel nursing a bit of a hangover, and then on a whim opted to walk across the Williamsburg Bridge, along with several hundred joggers. It was a gorgeous early-December day, and the view from the bridge is terrific (though doesn’t photograph well because of all the safety fences). Having made that walk, I continued on foot back up into the 30s, where I got another Korean lunch at Tosokchan NYC. I am not 100% certain what I was eating (and, of course, the menu they have on their website doesn’t match the one I ordered from), but it was really tasty, exactly what I was after.
The train back went very smoothly. On previous trips I’ve sprung for business class on Amtrak, but they were sold out last week when I finally decided on taking the train, so I was in coach this time. This was basically okay— better than an airline seat— but not great, particularly on the way down when the train was completely full. My knees weren’t absolutely jammed into the back of the seat in front of me, the way they would’ve been on a plane— a good thing, because I skinned my left knee pretty badly slipping on black ice last week— but there was a pretty limited range of positions where I wasn’t touching some part of the seat, and the tray table was a complete no-go. Next time I do this, I’ll book earlier…
And that is pretty much that. If you like this and want to know right away the next time I go to a rock show, here’s a button:
And if you want to quibble with my reviews or point me to a good place to get digital copies of the Teeth Dreams alternate tracks, the comments will be open:
Bummed I had to miss it this year. Would really have loved to hear the Teeth Dreams remix.
Records & Tapes is hard to find, but what’s the other one? I think I have Saddle Shoes on something I got from the band … maybe with a vinyl preorder?