Craig Finn Holds Steady

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, y'all, before we get started, let's talk about Pushnick. Pushnick is a subscription program available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Subscriptions members will get access to bonus content like extended versions of Our Quest Love and Beastie Boys episodes. You'll also get uninterrupted ads free listening to many of your favorite podcasts like Ours, Revisionist History, Cautionary Tales, and The Happiness Lab. You can try it for free for seven days. Sign up for Pushnick and Apple podcast subscriptions. Craig Finn, the lead singer and songwriter for The Hold Steady, is known for his vivid, literary style songwriting. He often writes about characters going through an existential crisis, what the one saw and the astray in the kitchen. I could tell that it was difficult to bring that sort of subject to Craig Finn grew up in Minneapolis, going to gigs for hometown heroes like Prince and The Replacements. After a stint working as a financial broker, Finn moved to New York City and eventually formed The Old Steady in two thousand and three. This year, the band released their eighth studio album, Open Door Policy, and this time, Finn says he focused on themes related to the trappions of technology and late stage capitalist. On today's episode, Craig Finn talks to Bruce head them about how the Drive by Truckers inspired him to create The Old Steady, about how Springsteen taught him to vamp, and why he feels like it's his duty to not only write about the party, but to write about the hangover. Two. This is broke and record liner notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Richmondson. Here's Bruce Sedlam with Craig Finn. This is a thrill for me for many reasons, but one is that the person who introduced me to your music was my old colleague David Carr at the New York Times. Now, David like you was very funny, which is rare in pop music and rare at the New York Times, i should say. And he was from Minneapolis, and he could never explain to me what was in the water in that part of the world that produced like such a great scene for bands. I mean, everyone points to the cold and the reason to stay inside. I always felt like when I was coming up in the nineties, there were people going to shows regularly in Minneapolis, like attending shows at First Avenue of the big club there that if they lived in another city maybe wouldn't have been going to that many shows, you know. I mean, I just think it was kind of part of the fabric of the city, and I think the city's proud of it, you know, I mean, I think that the city puts forth, Hey where the place where the replacements came from? Who's ker Do, Prince obviously now Lizzo, you know, has some connection to the city which they put forth constantly. It's always been a source of pride for the city. When you grew up. Was there a sharp divide between the black clubs and where Prince sort of made his name and the white clubs for replacements and that kind of thing. You know, there's certainly is a segregated city, But um, I think Prince, you know, really is connected with First Avenue, which is this place that a lot of music has come from, and certainly the place where I saw the shows in my formative years. You know, this is where I saw the replacements and Who's ker Do, et cetera, sol Asylum and Prince, you know in Purple Rain. That's that's the setting of it, and you know, people have often been mistaken that he owned it, So Prince is very much connected to the same club that everything was happening. I'm not sure it's a big enough city to have, you know, massive amount of clubs and have that kind of divide. Everything gets, you know, in some way mushed together just by the size of the city. Yeah, So for you, was it the live scene or was there a particular record, a particular song that you heard when you were a kid that said, yeah, this is it. This is either what I love or what I'm gonna do. I have this thing where I remember seeing someone on TV. I believe this is Ray Charles playing when I was very young. I think it was on Sesame Street and I looked at the screen and I said, I knew Happy Days. I knew Fonzie was cool, right, So I said, hey, Mom, is that guy cool? And she said, yeah, he's cool. And I said, do we know anyone cool? She said no. And I remember at that moment being like, well, this is this is kind of annoying, Like I want to go find something cool. And one of the first things I remember another that attracted me was the Monkey's TV show I mean, this guy idea of guys living together and bursting into songs and having a good time while playing music to music excited me always. But I think the real kind of watershed moment was discovering local things in Minneapolis, And so having these bands in my hometown was somehow exciting and accessible to me and made me sort of believe maybe that I could be in a band too, in a way that led Zeppelin and Aerosmith had not previous. And then when did it start? Feed was guitar your first instrument? Yeah? I started playing guitar. I got to get an electric guitar, and actually a bit of luck, fortuitous luck, signed up for lessons and a guy who was teaching lessons at that guitar store was named Chris Osgood and he'd been a member of a band called the Suicide Commandos, which was sort of the first Minneapolis punk band. They'd signed to Blank Records in like seventy six with Perubu, and he was a fountain of knowledge, you know. He taught me a lot about playing guitar, but a lot about other things too, And he had this fun off like he had a landline, you know phone in his lesson room and when phone would ring, he'd turn up the stereo and then he answered the phone, which is you know, countered a normal logic, and I would always say, what what are you doing? He said, you always want him to make you know, make you think you're having a party. So he had a lot of tips like that, and he turned me onto a lot of cool music once he heard what I was into and kind of got me started on sort of the lifestyle, if you will. So you mentioned the lifestyle. So that brings us to your new album with the whold Steady open door policy. If anybody thought you were mellowing with age with your solo albums, you're right back in the right into the heart of the wold Steadies. I guess worldview a lot of desperate people kind of doing desperate things. Tell me about the writing of this album, the album, I think one thing was different from the last one. You know, we in twenty nineteen we put our record called Thrashing through the Passion. There was a collection kind of a single, so we were putting stuff out as we as we recorded it, really, which is exciting. I mean, the technology now allows you to do that, and we know how to get at our fans right through the you know, social media and whatnot. So we're putting that out and then we ended up kind of compiling them to make a release. And that's cool, but when you're releasing quote unquote singles that way, you're kind of always swinging for the fences. So for this record, we decided early on, let's make this an album, and we we didn't record it all at once. We recorded in two different sessions. But in choosing to make an album, it allowed me, especially as a lyricist, to make some decisions in a way that kind of circle the wagons a little bit, maybe make things make a whole, you know, kind of create a bigger body of work than just a collection of singles. And I think that was that's exciting. I like working that way. I grew up listening to albums, you know, and I think that's kind of what we're good at. I mean, I think that like we've worked with that length of format before successfully and so I think that was kind of fun for us to go back in that we're able to create something that was kind of overarching like that. Do you see it as like there's an arc story arc to the album, or just means that you can take risks on certain songs. The latter I mean, I think you if you're releasing singles, you're never gonna make the weird ending song. You're never gonna say, Okay, that can be a little short song that sets up this next song. So the album allows you to do things like that. But and in a sense it's I don't know that it's a concept record, but I was able to kind of early on identify themes and kind of keep writing at it. And I thought, you know, the things I was thinking about at the time, or things like certainly mental health, but also you know, kind of technology and late stage capitalism sort of how that all ties into it and how that affects the stories on the record. The record was all written and almost done by the end of twenty nineteen. And it's funny because I think back and at the time, twenty nineteen felt like a very heavy year. Yeah, then we had twenty twenty where this record kind of aged like a you know, like in an oak barrel of whiskey or whatever. You mentioned technology. And one thing I think your album grapples with, which I think is hard for songwriters is the effect of technology. You know, I'm thinking and I want you to talk about the song Spices, but that's about the sort of return of an old flame who sends somebody a photo over text. Yeah, I mean I was thinking about like, like, you know, from the years of touring, I just got a new phone, and you know, they transfer all the contacts and there's just people in there, right, you know, I mean, there's just all kinds of people, people I don't recognize whatever, you know that maybe I did an interview, I needed to connect with them, and all of a sudden, any of those people can pop up on your screen. And I was thinking about, Oh, an adventure starting by really anything kind of you know, popping up in this device you're carrying around and saying meet me here, and you know, our ability to transmit images as you say, And that seemed like a very modern start to a story, like it's almost to choose your own adventure or something, you know, the clues pop up on your phone and you're following blindly. That was kind of the idea behind Spices. But yeah, you can reconnect in a second, in a in a couple of keystrokes and contact someone and that's that's unique to our times. And I think the way we communicate, the way we use technology certainly affects all of this, you know, the political discourse, our friendships, etc. You know, I was thinking this in terms of probably the songs you grew up loving. I know you're you know, Springsteen is one of your heroes, mentors, whatever you want to call them. You know, a song like Darkness on the Edge of Town is about somebody telling somebody that if they want to tell somebody else how to find him, they can find him in the edge of town. And it's it's about disconnection in a way. It's about someone's moved on with their life. And I was thinking about that when I was listening to Spices, because I thought, but yeah, but that person can be recalled instantly now, or that person leaves, but you're following them on Instagram. It's like they don't leave your life. Somehow, they don't leave. And you know, there's this also this thing that I was like, I've been amused by lately. Sometimes you'll meet someone right and it's your friends dating someone saying, and you follow you You have a nice night out with this couple, and then you end up following that their date. And this has happened to me several times recently. They break up with this girl or this you know that this partner, and you don't know. So it turns out years later you're still following this person that you had one night, you know, and a nice dinner with. At some point then suddenly you realize that they're not even that connected in my life anymore. There's a lot of that in this album, you know. I think of Unpleasant Breakfast, which is another sort of recalling of a bad relationship. Yeah, I mean I think that was no this nostalgia that we have and and in that case someone you know. Mental health is a big part of this record, you know. I mean I think I always used to I feel like I used to write a lot about partying, and at some point, you know, I'm getting towards fifty, at some point, you know, you realize, like some of this partying is self medication, etc. And the mental health is the other side of this coin. I think I've become way more interested in that. I think that's in that song. Maybe the Denariator is having a hard time just looking back on the before time and you know, saddened or unable to connect a happy memory too because of where it's got to. So tell me what your process for writing is now. Now you do many of your own albums where you do the music and the lyrics. Do you just do lyrics for the whole steady or do you work on the music as well. I would say it's an exception when I work on the music. There are times I've made suggestions, but that's generally the exception. Usually it's on Franz or Tad or Steve bringing something in. And usually these days we'll do a lot more true technology. You know, a lot of dropbox and someone will say, hey, I've got this thing, and it's usually two parts, let's say, and I'll start saying, well, I'll look through my used to be my notebook but now it's the notes app on my phone and see, like, you know, what have I got? I got little things and I'll get something together. But then we'll all get in a room and then that's usually when we start moving things around and maybe someone has an idea for a third part or you know, and we start arranging it. And so there it's kind of the two parts. It's the getting ready and then the togetherness on the last two records. You know, the the producer Josh Kaufman has showed up pretty early in the process and kind of been in been around for at least part of that second process, and pitched in some ideas about arrangement and you know, how we how we might approach things, which has been super helpful and cool. And then is it you go off in a room by yourself and figure out the lyrics or do the tracks they send you have some they tweaked something in your imagination? Yeah, I mean usually I have, you know, a bunch of stuff written down that that are just sort of notes and things I might think of how that might show up somewhere. Oftentimes it's, honestly, oftentimes it's getting the first line. Sometimes the first line is just enough to open up and go with it and see where it takes me. Can you give me an example from this album where the first line really dictated where you went? Yeah, I mean I think, um, that spicy song, you know, She's she sent a picture of a plethora of poker chips spread out on a bed between a mouth and a leg. I thought, wow, like, what what what happens when you get that photo, you know, and the idea of poker chips was kind of funny in a hotel and I, you know, outside of a casino. I sort of felt like that was a that was a funny image and what would it what would it mean? Do you know how a story's going to end when you start the lyric? Not always I'd say fifty percent. And I'm a great tinkerer, like I I honestly sort of am always playing with things, and then when we record it, when we cut the song, I feel like it's done, like I can let go of it my mind. But up until then, I'm especially with the small words and the little you know again, the meter just kind of toying with things. I'll go and U like sort of hunt for the worst lines, like I'll look at you know, I'll write out the song or type out the song and then say like which is the worst line, and then which is you know, if I had to replace one, what would I do? And kind of keep at in that way, and that can change you know, the story a little bit. But there are times I'll start I have no idea where it's going, and then there are times where I know exactly how this ends. Right. There's some part of songwriting that reminds me of doing cross words. It's like sometimes you just that one line you get kind of is that big, big, long one across the middle, and everything sort of falls into place after you at that. She sent a picture of a plethora of poker chips spread on the bed between a mouth and a leg. She said, there's pretty many people already, but still I wish you were here. I hadn't really seen her since the previous winter. She'd been a drop dead number since later last December, but here she is rising again. Happy Easter. You want to go get some beers? How the part tenders were strangling their shakers. It was springtime in the sweet part of the city. It's nice to hit the taverns with familiar companions. I kind of like it when she's laughing at me. That's a bit of spices from the hold Steadies new album, Open Door Policy. We'll be right back after a quick break, We're back with more from Craigfinn and Bruce had Them. You're a literary writer in the sense that, hey, you write a lot, but you have these recurring characters that almost since the start of your career, I think even before the whole Steady, you had certain characters that would recur. They're not name necessarily, but did this character show up in this record as well? You know, I don't think so. I always feel like it's it's in my best interest to scare that. But no, I think this is a new I certainly think they're all living in the same universe, but I think this is a new set of people. I believe that I think things are interesting from about fifteen years ago. And so when I think when this band started and I was in my mid thirties, I was writing a lot about people who were twenty, you know, and uh, that's an age of great confidence and maybe maybe too much confidence, and people can wonderfully get into trouble due to sort of their cockiness. But as I get towards fifty, I think people in their mid thirties are more interesting to me. And I think a lot of the people on this record are those people. And you know, I guess I'm more interested in people who are stuck, you know, in some way, and they may be making bad decisions, but they're not so wild about it, and I think that there's there's something more interesting in those people now to me, you know, I used to really love writing about people who are partying a lot. Now I think I'm more interested in, like, uh, you know, the grandma who's giving that guy two hundred dollars every day, the sort of the codependency of it all, And that's that's fascinating to me. And I think that those kind of relationships interests me a lot these days because though that's that's the fuel that keeps that guy parting, but somehow that's that's deeper and weirder to me. You're associated with these kind of characters partying and up all night, and even though there's a lot of hangovers and people throwing up, there is something still there's a kind of shoddy glamor about it all. Do you still look back on that as kind of a glamorous, exciting time. Well, I think all these things cause elation. Right, you know, you can drink six glasses of champagne. It's gonna be pretty fun that night. It's it's not the next morning. But I don't think it's you know, it's it's hard to deny that there are good times that can come from that, but you know, if it's not repeated every night of your life, for every night for a long period. But yeah, I do think that there is fun and like I said, elation, I do believe it's sort of a duty to kind of write about the hangover too. It reminds me a bit and this is another Minnesota reference. It reminds me a bit of Fitzgerald. Yeah, I mean I think there's there's that. I mean, the waiste, sort of the garbage at the end of the night, sweeping up the cups as sort of a fet Fitzgerald thing, you know, like the bottles on the floor at the end of the show. There is something so distinct about that sound of when you're sweeping up those those red beer cups, makes it sound like nothing else. I used to when we first started touring, I used to always like to take a photo. I used to carry around, like you know, before they're all on our phones, a digital camera and I always used to like to take a photo of the mess at the end of the show after the crowd left. A song I found really fascinating and disturbing and I'm not sure why is prior procedure. Can you tell me a bit about that song? Yeah, prior procedure is actually the song that mentions the lyric open door policy, so it's I don't know a hinge on the whole thing. That song is sort of about someone who's or you know, a couple who's been displaced and are trying to find a place to stay and end up, you know, going to this kind of fictitious crash pad that's hosted by a really rich guy, a billionaire or something, and you know, it's the idea that he's being generous by letting all these people stay there, but he's also kind of controlling the strings, right, you know, he's still in charge, and it's very much a culture personality, and I think that there's sort of a modern kind of an allegory there. There's that seems like the relationship we have with, you know, some of the very wealthy people in this country. I mean, it's kind of a science fiction thing, but it seemed like something that could happen. It reminded me of the case of the He was a venture capitalist who co founded Zappos, the shoe company, and he died recently, but he just seemed to travel around to Vegas in these places and it was just always a party people were always around him spending his money. But this seemed to go on for years that people would just sort of attached themselves and then sort of wander off. And that's that's what it reminded me of. Somehow I made this guy up in my head. But I do remember reading that are the article about that guy, and it seemed like exactly the type of thing I was thinking of, this sort of hedonistic but financial with you know, backing of massive financial success. Because there are so many stories in this and it's so varied, what is the inspiration for these stories? Are there novels you're reading now or is it the newspaper both? I mean I get a lot of stuff from fiction. I always I do like reading fiction. I think in some ways it's meditative to go into someone else's world right in a way that no other form, you know, movies, music and everything else, Like I can kind of have some distraction happening. But if I'm really into a novel, I'm in there, and so those that's a place that inspires stories. I don't know that I can point to an exact story and the record that's influenced by a novel, but it certain gives me something to aspire to that kind of fiction, creating a world that people can inhabit. I also think just taking things in and motion. Travel for me is wildly exciting. Unfortunately, that is something we've lost over the past year. But one of the things I've talked with my bandmates about, you know, not just the travel where you get to go to the top of a mountain, but the travel that you end up having a beer in the Hilton Garden in you know, near the airport and in a small Midwestern city. Somehow that ends up being really inspiring in just its sense of displacement and being observational in those moments. What has the isolation of the last year. What's that meant for your writing? I'm proud to say I've been able to write a ton like I've just been able to crank it out. But I have two sort of a two step process. Number one, putting words on paper. That's been surprisingly easy for me this year. The second part is this any good I can't tell, you know, my sort of ability to criticize myself, my judgment has really gone away in this I think it's the lack of just sorting your normal life compare things too. I mean, I've just have a pile of stuff. Now I'll either get that back or I'll use a producer to help me wade through it. I'm definitely not throwing things out because I'm like, I don't know, Oh, that's interesting. It's just that the judgment has been suspended this year. Yeah, very much so. And I don't I don't know why. I don't know what that is, but that is definitely what I have felt. And I've actually talked to a few people that have felt the same. What has because you are you are a church going Catholic, What is that meant for you in the past year not to have that fellowship. I've gone back and forth with my faith a lot over the past number of years and really my whole life. And uh, I find a lot of beauty in church and and and certainly in the Bible as well as the rituals of a Catholic mass. I have gotten frustrated and increasingly frustrated with the church, you know, and and and especially some of the political stances it's taken repeatedly, but especially over the past four years. So I was at a period of not really active church going when this started. Well, when I say you're a Catholic, that that means you're always battling with the Catholic Church. So yeah, I mean I think that that's probably that's just probably part like I've accepted that part of it. Like I'll probably be back and back and forth from my life. You know, I'm a pretty good run of not going. Were your parents' churchgoers when you grew up? Oh yeah, yeah, the whole family? You know, that's that's where I got it. My father was raised pretty Catholic and you know, still does confession and all that, and that was part of our you know, Holy Days, et cetera. Every Sunday, Holy Days, no meat on Fridays, etc. So all of that was part of my upbringing. And you know, like I said, I still I still find beauty in it. I just have to figure out this identic Catholicism in my head. It is probably only going to live there. It's more muted now in your lyrics than it once was. Yeah, well, Separation Sunday was sort of the high point of that. Our second record, man, that's when I went the deep dive. It does not appear as much on this record at all. I think Saint Francis has mentioned, and that's almost sort of the most secular saint you can think of. There's a movie Brother's Son's Sister Moon from nineteen seventy two that is about Saint Francis that is just gorgeous, and that's almost the I almost think of him as more of a secular hippie figure, and then I do as a hard Catholic saint. But I think maybe it mirrors sort of my own relationship with the church. Probably, and maybe I feel like I've already gone there just wasn't on my mind when I made this record, and who knows it could return. After a quick break, we'll be back with more from Craig fan We're back with the rest of Bruce Hedlum's conversation with Craig Finn. You know, one of my great arguments with David Carr was that David didn't like bands to get old. He liked their you know, youthful, crazy, stage diving origin, and it worried him when they got older. Now, I will say, when the Replacements got back together, David was first in line. You're older now, I don't did you think you'd be in this band this long? Well, I don't have I can't answer that for sure, but I will say that in two thousand and two, before we started the whole study, I went to see the Drive By Truckers at Bowery Ballrooms and it was one of the best shows I've ever seen, and I found it incredibly moving. And they were guys I was in my early to mid I was thirty one, but the guys in the band were mostly a little older than I was, and that it really excited me. It made me want to be in a band again. But what what struck me in that moment was that, Okay, these guys are not playing music that's like the most absolute hip music for this exact minute. However it's classic, and ten years from now it'll sound as good as it does today. And so I think when we started the whold Steady, there was almost an idea that we were trying to create something that was that was a little bit more classic. And I was already in my thirties and I'd been in a Lifter Polar Cut. There was like more of an indie rock band in my twenties. I sort of felt like I'd crashed out at twenty nine and I was trying to figure out what a life in rock and roll would look like, and it may start with making something that is more classic. So well, I can say for sure I even thought about being fifty when I when I started the Whole Steady, I can say that I was trying to see a band that could age gracefully. And I'm happy for that. I mean, I think we created something that that has and does you know rock and roll is um it gets older every year like the rest of us. So I think it's finding or attempting to find a place that isn't all twenty year olds, you know, and stage dives and broken bottles and is it true I heard a story that you were really influenced by the Last Waltz. Yes. In my twenties, I was really kind of connected to indie rock and punk rock, and I almost had a hole in my knowledge where it came to a lot of classic rock. And so as I sort of burned out on indie rock, I started to kind of go back and fill those holes. And you know, it was an back then you could go to a used record store and find a used Rolling Stones record for three dollars and come home and be like Wow, this is better than almost any indie rock band I know, or any of them. But then the Last Waltz was reissued in the early two thousands, I knew nothing about the band pretty much, and I was just really excited by the way they played together and sort of the musicality and the looseness of it. And there's this idea that um in indie rock, there's this almost choreography that I felt like was taking place where it's like, if I play these notes in a row right, and you play them too, It's almost like that game Simon where you're you have to hit things in a you know, in a pattern. Then if we if we line it all up, it'll sound good. But you know, and this sounds really rudimentary or basic, but I just it was exciting to see people play music and listen to each other and react to each other and play with a little looseness. And I remember seeing things like Springsteen at the time, and and and the way that in the middle of the song the band might vamp and he'll tell a story, and I remember thinking, like, I want to do that, Like indie rock bands don't do that. They just plow ahead and play their song. And stop. You know, well, what if in this band, we said, well, I got something to say, and the band kind of went down and vamped a little bit, and I told the story and then we brought it back and that's something we started doing the whole steady and it was really exciting. And again that sounds really basic, but that's just something I wasn't getting out of indie rock. M It's something you'd have gotten out of Ray Charles your first for sure. For sure. I mean all that, all that stuff, And again it's not it's not rocket science. It seems easy, but at the time that's where my head was at. No, I think it's very hard. I've only seen Springsteen once, but he did a the band stopped, he did a big vamp on something, and he talked about what freedom meant when he was a kid, and then they broke into raise your Hand. I think it's it's the old Eddie Floyd's song, and it was just yeah, it was fantastic. Yeah, you know, and you can, and you can in that moment maybe even pull something or that the audience, someone in the audience is doing, or something that happened that day and kind of tie it all in and I mean in that sense you are kind of bringing that that church element to it. You know that the homily or the sermon about something that that the audience really understands in that moment or that week or that day. You've done four solo albums, Yeah, what's that like? Now when you come back to the band, has it changed your songwriting? You tend to do more acoustic, more intimate stuff. I mean, I think that when we came back and made Thrashing through the Passion and those songs that went into that, I think it very much affected me in the sense that I was very excited to kind of yell and be boisterous and be in the whole a loud rock band again. And so you know that in that sense, you're flexing both the muscles. You know, it's like arms day and legs day. You know, you're you're excited to get back to arms day. I think one thing that happened with the solo records is it starting with Faith in the Future, which was in twenty fifteen, is it allowed me to kind of dial in or really kind of focus on something more maybe empathetic. That was definitely turned up in the solo records and maybe continues on in the Whole Steady and in this sort of version of the Whole Steady, which I kind of call him three point Now. I think the last two records have maybe included some of them or the empathy that I was exploring in the solo records. But I also think just anytime you are thrusting yourself into situations that you have some amount of discomfort, new musicians, whatever, you're going to grow. And I think I'm aware of some of the ways I've grown, but I think I've probably grown in other ways that I'm not aware of, just by trying new things and scaring myself a little bit. Where does the empathy come from? You know? At that point in twenty fifteen, I think one of the things happened my mother passed away, and I remember talking to a friend who said who had gone through a similar thing as mom, also died from cancer. And he was talking about how after that, when he got in situations that it would previously annoyed him, you know, like a crowded train or something like that, he felt empathy rather than annoyance. Like he looked at and said, well, look cold, all these people suffer all these people will suffer. They all have their own things going on. And I guess I really understood what he meant. And I think some people will find that from having kids. I don't have any kids, so but I think that there was in that experience something that put me in touch with something you know, more human and you know, more understanding of everyone. M you seem very sympathetic of your characters on this album. Yeah, I mean I think that. I guess maybe the older I get, the more people I know that I draw on where people haven't you know, have either slipped away or things haven't worked out for them exactly how they intended. Obviously, there's uh decisions and all that, but there's also, you know, some amount of luck, I believe, and so I am I look at I look with some with love, and I want the love that I have for these people to come through in some way. It does remind me a little of Springsteen's latest album, where he talks about all the people in his original band have died that he's the last one left, and what a strange thing that is. You know, you've worked with a lot of musicians. Does it surprise you that you're still going and probably a lot of those people aren't going not as musicians at least. Yeah, I mean I think that there's I mean, there's certain things that have served me well. I mean in some ways, like you know, organization and you know, work ethic are helpful and you know, I want to communicate clearly with people. I think those are things that are kind of underrated and don't always naturally exist with musicians. To be honest, I think that you do look back at this age and say, wow, you know there's people who have left your life. And I mean even in twenty twenty, some because of COVID, some because not. At the end of the year, I made a list and I knew twenty people who die and some were like you know, friends, parents, But that's a big list, and it struck me that probably as you get older at that list gross right or I mean, this was a strange year, but that list is unlikely to get too much smaller going forward. So what is next for you and the band? You've always been a very hard working touring band. I hope that when shows come back and are safe for people to attend, we will be playing them. But at the same time, it's it's a lot of weight and see just like the rest of the world, and we're going to do our best and again to bring technology into it. Luckily, we are able in some ways able to interface and understand the reaction to the record that we just put out. That's seems like a very special record internally to us. So people seem to really like it, and that's that's very gratifying. Okay, well, thank you so much. This has been just wonderful. Oh, thank you for having me. Thanks to Craig Finn for breaking down his songwriting process for us to hear. Open door policy and our favorite hold steady tracks had to Broken Record podcast that you should have. Subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcasts, where we can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter apt Broken Record. Broken Record is produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrel, Cartin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineer and help from Nick Chafee. Our executive producer is Meal of That. If you love this show and others from Pushkin Industries, consider becoming a push Nick. Pushnick is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and uninterrupted listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushnick exclusively on Apple podcast subscriptions. Broken Record is production of Pushing Industries. Our theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.