C
raig Finn writes songs. He can’t help it, and he isn’t stopping anytime soon. Best known as the frontman for The Hold Steady, Finn has been delivering his detailed, word-addled songs about everyday people and places for more than two decades, a tradition he continues with his recently released second solo album, the eclectic but still-cohesive Faith in the Future.
Far more restrained than the riff-happy Hold Steady records, Faith in the Future is a nuanced, often wistful collection anchored by Finn’s ever-distinctive sing/speak vocals and literate lyrics. Album-opener “Maggie I’ve Been Searching for Our Son,” an evocative tale about a Branch Davidian-like cult, is as moving and memorable as anything in Finn’s now-bursting songbook.
The horn-laden “Saint Peter Upside Down” sounds like Sufjan Stevens at his most sonically and theologically playful. And the 9/11-recalling “Newmyer’s Roof” comes on like The War on Drugs fronted by Jack Kerouac.
CityBeat recently connected with Finn to discuss his ongoing love affair with songs and the writing of them.
CityBeat: You’ve been touring pretty much nonstop for more than a decade. Do you still enjoy heading out on the road? Craig Finn: I almost to a freakish degree do love the touring. I get kind of restless when I’m home for too long. I think it’s become my life. Some of the rhythms of it I just feel have become my natural way. I do like it. I like it more than most people my age. There are a lot of musicians I meet that look at it as sort of a necessary evil, if you will. But I’ve kind of built my life around it. I don’t have any kids. I don’t have a lot tying me down, so I’m always able to go.
CB: How is your writing process different on your solo albums compared to the process with The Hold Steady? CF: With The Hold Steady I really just contribute the lyrics at this point. I don’t write much of the music. The Hold Steady is obviously a big wild Rock band, so when I started writing these songs, and I’m always writing songs, these came out as story songs. A lot of them have a real direct narrative. In a Rock band you’re kind of competing for space, so for my own record I thought it would be cool to really be able to have these stories come through.
And so the producer, Josh Kaufman, and I really talked about making decisions sonically that would support the stories. For instance, that’s why the record is fairly sparse and the vocals are always coming through. Furthermore, there are very few cymbals. The drummer played very few cymbals, just because that gets in the way of vocals. We made a lot of the decisions based on putting the stories first and foremost.
CB: It’s also the most atmospheric thing you’ve ever recorded. There are horns and strings and other subtle elements. There’s a really distinct, cohesive vibe to it. Was that something you talked about beforehand? CF: Yeah, we really wanted to create a vibe-y record, and sometimes those little flourishes were ways to support the narrative, keep something in there that wasn’t people playing through the whole thing. There are these little things to try to create a mood, I guess. There are these little bits that come in and then disappear. That was a way to not sort of overwhelm the story or the songs and just create something small.
CB:
You said something recently about wanting to make the record “age appropriate.” Why was that important to you?
CF: You look at artists you admire — I’m 44 now — they have been able to age gracefully. Obviously the big ones — (Bob) Dylan, (Bruce) Springsteen, Neil Young — but even someone like Nick Cave, who I love. He’s going to get to 65 years old and he can still do what he does. So can Leonard Cohen. And it doesn’t look bad. It’s different when, not to pick on anyone, but when the Red Hot Chili Peppers turn 65, it might not look as good. So I wanted to create a record that was indicative of my age, but felt good and was an extension of me and really truly who I am. I wanted to make sure I didn’t feel foolish performing these songs.
CB: I read somewhere that you had written a song a day for lent. You likened it to going to work each day. Why did you want to see it as a job as opposed to the more romantic notion of songwriting as an artistic endeavor? CF:
As I get older, more and more of my process has to do with putting in time and editing. I get good results if I say, “I’m going to write a song today.” That’s the way I prefer to work now. It might ultimately end up almost unrecognizable from where it started after editing it for a few weeks. I might start writing it at one tempo and then record it as a slow song when it was previously a fast song. Sometimes that approach brings out a new life in something.
CB: It seems like you’d be writing songs no matter whether you were in a successful band or not, whether you were making a living doing this or not. Where does that come from?
CF: I’m not exactly sure. I think my original draw to it was from watching The Monkees’ show or seeing those
Beatles movies, where it looked like they were having a lot of fun. It looked like four dudes who lived together and it looked like a great thing to be part of a band. But at this point, at 44, it ended up being my reaction to my own life. It’s sort of how I make sense of things. Even if tomorrow I couldn’t go on the road for some reason, I think I would still write songs. Songs help me organize my thoughts.
CRAIG FINN performs Friday in the Taft Theatre’s Ballroom. Tickets/more info: tafttheatre.org.
This article appears in Oct 21-27, 2015.