In which the Hold Steady plucks my heartstrings like an upright bass

Posted by tmushett , Nov, 2008 @ 5:34 pm

If it hasn’t already swept through your town or sold out, do your damndest to snap up tickets to the Rock and Roll Means Well Tour, a happy roots-rock affair co-headlined by barroom heroes the Hold Steady and Drive-By Truckers (dates below). I had the fancy fortune of seeing these guys storm the shittiest venue in New York and manage to fill it with enough noise and intimacy to rival your local pub.

And it is in this spirit of noise and intimacy that I intend drop my pose of flippant assholery for one post. This show, especially Craig Finn & Co.’s set, reminded me of why I dig live music so much. For me, for you, for everybody who can muster any semblance of human emotion, music tangles itself up with memory in very direct ways. Favorite songs don’t end up favorite songs just because of supercool chord progressions. More often (at least for yours truly) it’s related to the fact that “Stuck Between Stations” was playing while I made out amongst my boxed up possessions at the end of my senior year of college, or “Stay Positive” helped keep me pumped and optimistic during a Brooklyn summer without employment, money, or air conditioning. The feelings involved are reconjured in a distilled musical form. All it takes is a few notes to instantly remember an unnameable mixture of nostalgia, affection, regret, and every other wonderful and terrible emotion our brain can tie to a single moment or a certain era. At a show, it’s really just a mass of people remembering their own moments at once. We get to be alone together. No talking, just rocking out and emoting like the herd of fucked up neurotic trainwrecks we are.

Sigh.

Bleh. Okay. Now that I’ve revealed myself for the sap I am, let me try to reclaim my masculinity with some gratuitous swearing. FUCK FUCK FUCK.

Yeah, I didn’t buy it either. Screw it. Anybody in the greater NYC area want to watch Love Actually, drink a couple cosmos, and just cuddle? I am so not kidding.

Rock and Roll Means Well dates via Front Gate Tickets:

11/9 – Boston, MA
11/11 – Toronto, ON – SOLD OUT
11/12 – Munhall, PA
11/13 – Bloomington, IN
11/14 – Chicago, IL
11/15 – Minneapolis, MN Night #1 – SOLD OUT
11/16 – Minneapolis, MN Night #2 – SOLD OUT
11/21 – Seattle, WA Night #2 (ed. note: I have no idea when Night #1 is… if you are in Seattle, investigate and get back to me)
11/23 – San Francisco, CA Night #1
11/24 – San Francisco, CA Night #2
11/25 – Los Angeles, CA

Tags: Concerts, Drive-By Truckers, Sappiness, The Hold Steady, Tour Dates