Get Ready... The Hold Steady... Go!

Having just released their third studio album, ‘Boys And Girls In America’, up and coming rock ‘n’ roll aficionados The Hold Steady are all set to unleash a full blown assault on the UK in February.  Gigwise just couldn’t turn down the opportunity to speak to the bands excited and affable guitarist, Tad Kubler, a man imbued with enthusiasm: “We’re super excited to get over there man the response and enthusiasm that we’ve had in the UK has been a complete surprise to us so it should be really fun. A lot of my favourite bands are from the UK like Zeppelin, Oasis…So just being able to go over there and have people come to our shows is what I’m looking forward to. That and the slang that you guys have. I’m a huge Anglophile and such a sucker for BBC TV, Alan Partridge and all that stuff!”

Kubler developed a taste for classic rock at an early age while growing up in the unassuming suburbs of a small town in Southern Wisconsin and once hooked, never looked back, as he vividly recalls: “All the kids were older than me so borrowing their records it was like Cheap Trick, ACDC, Led Zeppelin, Queen, The Who, and stuff like that. So my initial exposure to music was therefore classic rock and it’s something that’s stayed with me since then. Then all of us got into punk rock in our teens, the Sex Pistols, The Clash had an enormous influence on all of us especially a lot of the English stuff like GBH and The Exploited.” Little wonder then that The Hold Steady have an eclectic sound that’s sonically exciting, but etched in the past.

It’s surprising for a band with such an accomplished sound that just last year, The Hold Steady were a relatively unknown band, signed to New York independent Frenchkiss Records. Then came the release of their critically acclaimed album ‘Separation Sunday’ and all hell was let loose. A bidding war duly ensued and the band soon found themselves signed to major player Vagrant. Now America’s hottest property and tipped for big things in 2007 the last twelve months have been nothing short of a whirlwind experience for the band.

Thankfully, Tad remains very casual about their rapid rise to the top: “Putting three records out in three years helped us because we constantly remained in everyone’s mind. The pace that we like to work at as a band people have a lot of respect for and jumping to a little bit of a bigger label, raising the profile of the band a little bit and being able to reach more people helped incredibly. But it’s hard to say and to be honest it’s one of those things that I try not to think about too much because I don’t want it to influence any kind of decisions that we make. But the climate of music right now has been really helpful to us, because we’re just a scrappy rock and roll band that isn’t anything special other than that we just try and write good songs.”

Taking its name from Jack Kerouac’s classic beatnik novel On The Road, ‘Boys And Girls In America’ is a departure from their previous release. Gone is the linear storyline that was instrumental to ‘Separation Sunday’ and in its place constant and overriding themes, encapsulated in the albums title. Tad explains: “Craig read On The Road by Jack Kerouac when he was in high school and didn’t really like it. So he read it again on our last tour and he thought it was great. There’s a line in it where Jack Kerouac’s character is trying to make out with this girl and she sort of disses him, and he leans back and says boys and girls in America have such a sad time together. It talks about how the culture of being a teenager dictates that you’ll go straight to sex without any talk about courtship or real talk about souls. And when he read it, he was like; I can get a whole record out of that quote.