Saturday, August 2, 2008

Stuck Between Station to Station


While the infallible Wikipedia says The Hold Steady are "Brooklyn-based," it's no secret that the band exudes Minneapolis pride. That is no more evident than in their professed love for the Twins. While I am not as versed in The Hold Steady as I perhaps should be, they supposedly reference the Twinkies in a number of their songs. At live shows, they give history lessons on the team and they were recently asked to record a rendition of "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" (see below), which is played at the Metrodome.

First, check out this interview with singer Craig Finn by Ezra Ace Caraeff of the Portland Mercury from May 2007. Excerpt:

I went down to Fort Meyers, Florida, for two games, and had a lot of fun. I was talking to this guy Jim Walsh, who is doing the Replacements oral history and he told me Paul would be down there. I kind of had my eye out looking for him, and sure enough, he was there with his son. I've never met him before, so it didn't seem like the right time to go bother him. It's funny because even before we did "Take Me out to the Ball Game" for the Twins, I was at the Metrodome last year and noticed how great the music was during the games. They played a lot of the Replacements.


Next, if you have patience with buffering, check out this video with Finn and guitarist Tad Kubler talking about the Twins and baseball in general.

The Hold Steady on Baseball!


And finally some tunes, of course:




Photo courtesy of Blue Collar Distro.

2 comments:

Matt Ramone said...

Amazing band. Their new record grew on me in ways I wasn't expecting. I can't believe they got panned by Spin who a few pages before raved about the new Black Kids album. What a world.

True story sort of related. I was listening to the Bruce Springsteen live boxset (ye gods is it good), and in the climax of "Born to Run," when Broooooooooooce sings "tramps like us" I hollered back "and baby, we like tramps!" I'm such a dork.

Alex said...

Hey just keeping updates coming in, since this is the latest post.

Daniel Murphy, recent call up to the New York Mets walks to the play to AFI's Total Immortal...