The Hold Steady performed “Sideways Skull,” a track from their recently released The Price of Progress album, on Late Night With Seth Meyers on Wednesday.
Frontman Craig Finn peered out into the void while hectoring a typically verbose narrative about meeting another band, drinking Newcastle, accepting a woman’s schoolyard insult-flirts (“She’d like me better if I didn’t wear glasses”), and watching a band of burnouts in Beatle boots. About two-and-a-half minutes in, the throbbing bar-rock riffs give way to a quiet piano line before Finn & Co. wind things back up. In the last verse, he namechecks the new album offhandedly: “I said I’ve got a band too/We’re called the Price of Progress.”
In addition to releasing the new album, the band is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. The group kicked things off in Brooklyn in February, earning a rave review from Rolling Stone. “The whole night was an emotional knockout, even by the Hold Steady’s standards,” the magazine wrote. “It was a cathartic celebration of long-haul perseverance and fellowship.”
The group is also marking two decades with a new oral history book, titled (again verbosely): The Gospel of the Hold Steady: How a Resurrection Really Feels. The tome, which the band coauthored with Michael Hann, chronicles their formation in Minneapolis through the present with interviews with all of the band’s past and present members and people who have worked with them over the years. Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield contributed an essay to the book, which includes more than 200 photos and images.
The band will be on the road for much of the year.
The Hold Steady tour dates:
April 27 – Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios *
April 28 – Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall *
April 29 – Portland, OR @ Revolution Hall *
May 12 – New York, NY @ WFUV Highline Bash
May 13 – Boston, MA @ Roadrunner ^
June 3 – Austin, TX @ Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater #
June 30 – Chicago, IL @ The Salt Shed †
July 1 – Chicago, IL @ The Salt Shed †
July 2 – Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle
September 2 – Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN @ TBA
September 22 – Jersey City, NJ @ TBA
September 23 – Philadelphia, PA @ TBA
October 7 – Las Vegas, NV @ TBA
November 29 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Bowl ***
November 30 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Bowl ***
December 1 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Bowl ***
December 2 – Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Bowl ***
* We Can Get Together
# w/ the Mountain Goats
† w/ the Mountain Goats and Dillinger Four
^ w/ Dinosaur Jr. and Come
*** Massive Nights 2023
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