Image by Michael Boyd
The Hold Steady and Drive-By Truckers teach Chicago the real meaning of Rock + Roll
November 14, 2008, at the Riviera Theater
By Sarah Collins
Published: November 16th, 2008 | 11:50pm
Frat party. It’s not the crowd one would expect for the hyper-literate Hold Steady, but looking around the Riviera on November 14, it was all I could see.
By the time the Drive-By Truckers took the stage, people were packed in to the Riv to the point where negotiating through the crowd with three Bud Lights in plastic cups was quite a feat. It didn’t stop the mostly middle-aged male crowd from doing it, but it took a bit more finesse to keep from spilling.
The Truckers seemed to notice none of this as they played their relaxed southern rock over the conversational chatter. Singer-guitarist Patterson Hood sang with his head thrown back and his smile wide as he ripped through new songs like “The Righteous Path” and “Self Destructive Zones” as if he’d been singing them for years. The band stuck to a setlist heavy on Brighter than Creation’s Dark (New West), and it was hard to miss old songs while watching singer-bassist Shonna Tucker sing “I’m Sorry Huston” with the kind of sad sweetness that makes the band so compelling.
The Drive-By Truckers are a band that could — and have — played in any environment, so the bad sound and bad manners at the Riv didn’t even faze them. They still played with the kind of love that only true musicians can play with. It’s easy to see why Craig Finn later said that seeing the Truckers play made him want to start a band again.
That band Finn himself started headlined the sold-out show, which drew more than 3,000 fans out on a cold November night to sing along to every word. The atmosphere changed as soon as the Hold Steady took the stage, flipping from frat party to fans like a switch.
The band opened with “Massive Nights” off of 2006’s Boys and Girls in America (Vagrant). Singing with all the enthusiasm of a little boy whose rocknroll dream had come true, Finn hopped around the stage, fumbled through the Jitterbug, and acted an endearing fool, which only made the crowd love him even more as they struggled to shout out every word.
It’s hard not to stay positive with the Hold Steady — the band’s live shows are little short of a love fest, just friends sharing singing duties between the stage and the crowd. The set was a solid mix of old, new, and newer, and fans didn’t miss a beat, from “The Swish,” to “Navy Sheets,” to a new and nameless tripped-out song about Gideon.
By the encore, the room was high on endorphins and it finally was time to for the showgoers to learn why this was the Rock + Roll Means Well tour. The Hold Steady came back out and tore through “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” and, with Hood’s help, recreated a rocknroll fantasy, during which Finn used a beer bottle slide and guitarist Tad Kubler played a double-necked, cherry red guitar. It was easy to see Finn’s point when he said, “There has never been a band, I think, that loves rocknroll as much as we do,” before rocking through a cover of Boston’s “Burning for You.” The Hold Steady is, first and foremost, a band of music fans. They know what fans want and they give it to them, almost two hours full of boozy rocknroll.
It was easy to agree when Hood yelled out, “That’s what we mean by a unified scene!” after a Hold Steady–Truckers hybrid version of “Let There Be Rock” off of Southern Rock Opera (Lost Highway). By the time the show ended with a loose and easy version of “Killer Parties,” high-fives were flying and grown men were hugging one another and singing along.
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For more photos from this show please visit Venus Zine's Flickr page.
Issue #35
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