We Are All The Hold Steady

by Gregg Chadwick

Review: The Gospel of The Hold Steady: How a Resurrection Really Feels 

by Michael Hann and The Hold Steady 

Craig Finn and The Hold Steady

The Hold Steady, described by many as the world’s best bar band outside of E Street, releases a new book on July 25, 2023 that delves deeply into the stories behind the band and its loyal fans. The physical book is gorgeous. The story of the band and their passionate fans blazes across the volume from the first page to the last. Over two hundred expertly composed photographs capture The Hold Steady on stage and off with a proper smattering of confetti strewn floors.  

The history of The Hold Steady is told through interviews with the band members and those who were there behind the scenes. From their Midwest roots to their adopted Brooklyn home, the members of The Hold Steady open up about the struggles and triumphs of creating, performing, and promoting their music. Lead singer and lyricist Craig Finn opens the book with a heartfelt introduction. “The Hold Steady didn’t change my life, it is my life.”, Craig writes. And then says, “And if you’ve read this far, it’s likely yours too. Our songs are mainly fiction, but they try to be very honest at the same time. So, at the end of each show, we say and scream and shout all together a benediction: “We Are All The Hold Steady!” 

The Hold Steady

In The Gospel of The Hold Steady, we hear from the members of the group as they describe the birth of the band. The Hold Steady’s origin story is built on the ashes of Craig Finn’s earlier band Lifter Puller and the Minneapolis, Minnesota indie music scene. After Lifter Puller broke up, Craig moved to New York. Bassist Galen Polivka, whose old band had played with Craig’s band in Minneapolis, had also moved to New York and sowed some early seeds for The Hold Steady by exclaiming to Craig at a club in NYC that “If you want to start something musically, I’m in, and I’d love to play bass for you.” Drummer Judd Counsell joined the early phase of The Hold Steady along with guitarist Tad Kubler. Craig writes that the music they had in common was Thin Lizzy, AC/DC, and Zeppelin. Craig explains that “Being Midwestern was something that made us unique.”  After gigging in Brooklyn and NYC, The Hold Steady was ready to record their first album Almost Killed Me and keyboardist, writer, and university lecturer Franz Nicolay joined the band. Their inaugural album was released in March 2004 and the word began to spread. Drummer Bobby Drake flew out from Minnesota to replace Judd Counsell on the upcoming tour. The Hold Steady brought their mix of beautiful loser Midwest tales, infused with Brooklyn Indie, and garnished with Classic Rock riffs to the “not so wholesome heartland” of America.  

The voices of the fans – The Unified Scene – are also found in the book. The last chapter gathers a collection of personal stories from fans that describe what The Hold Steady means to them. 

Rob Sheffield writes that “Every fan has their own stories, their own songs, the favorites we cling to like patron saints.”

Craig writes in The Gospel of The Hold Steady, “that a rock band is in a race against time.” We  join Craig and the band on their existential quest as they struggle to find meaning and joy through their insightful lyrics and raucous music. The Gospel of The Hold Steady is the perfect companion volume for this quest. 

Highly Recommended!

The Hold Steady is Craig Finn, Tad Kubler, Galen Polivka, Bobby Drake, Franz Nicolay, and Steve Selvidge. Since forming in Brooklyn in 2003, they have released eight studio albums. Their debut album, The Hold Steady Almost Killed Me, was named one of the 100 best albums of the century by Rolling Stone.

Michael Hann is a writer and editor based in London who contributes to the Guardian, the Economist, and Uncut. He also wrote Denim and Leather: The Rise and Fall of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. 

Einstein's Taxidermy: Julia Elliott's "The New and Improved Romie Futch"

by Gregg Chadwick

Julia Elliott's new novel, The New and Improved Romie Futch, takes us on a Southern adventure that seems inspired by the absurdly picaresque world of John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, the cyber/ historic cosmography of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, the dangerous science of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the obsessive hunt of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, and the eerily foreboding scape of Don De Lillo's White Noise, blended with the environmental warning of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, all played to a soundtrack by the pioneering electronica musician Delia Derbyshire. 

Romie Futch lives in an alternative yet still contemporary South Carolina, where hipsters seem to have swarmed South from Brooklyn and East from Portland to mingle and clash with characters that still haven't moved far from their High School glory days. Romie Futch is one of these down at the heels locals.  Romie's ex-wife haunts his dreams and waking memories while creditors are poised to seize his house. Romie has become an expert at avoiding his less than booming taxidermy business with a daily regimen of internet distractions and it must be 5 o'clock somewhere beverage choices. Challenged in pecuniary matters, Romie decides to answer an ad searching for well paid research subjects for the mysterious Center for Cybernetic Neuroscience in Atlanta, Georgia. 

Elliott's novel shifts locales here in a Tardis like fashion as Romie finds himself in an eerie world of lab coats and human experiments. Memories, always untrustworthy, erupt at inopportune times as Romie and  his fellow test subjects gather nightly at dinner to spar with their new neuroscience-enhanced cognitive abilities and burgeoning artistic powers. The neurally enhanced taxidermist, vows to return to his hometown and finally pursue his long dormant dream of becoming an artist. Life and the lingering effects of the neural experiments on him and his fellow guinea pigs intervene as well as the shadowy form of a seemingly mythical thousand-pound feral hog that has been terrorizing Romie's home county. 

Julia Elliott's language is rich and well played - at times darkly humorous, but also poignantly life affirming. Elliott's story is deftly crafted like Delia Derbyshire's haunting theme song for Doctor Who, originally composed by Ron Grainer, but transformed by Derbyshire into a futuristic swirl of spliced snippets of sound. Julia Elliott's The New and Improved Romie Futch is a literary swirl of Southern Gothic and dystopian Science Fiction that helps us laugh at our own foibles even as we try to create a better future. Highly recommended.




Julia Elliott’s The New and Improved Romie Futch goes on sale on October 19, 2015.
Her fiction has appeared in Tin House, the Georgia Review, Conjunctions, Fence, Puerto del Sol, Mississippi Review, Best American Fantasy, and other publications. She has won a Pushcart Prize and a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award. Her short story collection, The Wilds, was published by Tin House Books in 2014, and she is currently working on a novel about Hamadryas baboons, a species that she has studied as an amateur primatologist. She teaches English and women’s and gender studies at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, where she lives with her daughter and husband. She and her spouse, John Dennis, are founding members of Grey Egg, an experimental music collective.

Lust, Lecherousness, and Love

by Gregg Chadwick

Peter Clothier's scurrilously witty new novel "The Pilgrim's Staff" explores lust, lecherousness, and love through the voices of two men from two disparate centuries. David Soames, a contemporary figurative painter living as an ex-pat in Los Angeles, receives a curious package in the mail from an English cousin. Wrapped in layers of tape and memory is the two hundred year-old journal of an English gentleman, who begins his tale with the words,"I am no Rake!" "Rake" is a wonderfully antiquated word that refers to a man caught in the snares of immorality, particularly concerning the charms of the opposite sex. 

William Hogarth

A Rakes's Progress:3

The Rake at the Rose Tavern

62.5x75.2 cm oil on canvas 1734

Collection Sir John Soane's Museum, London

Writing this on the 10th of November, in a coincidence worthy of Clothier's novel, I am reminded that the 18th century English painter William Hogarth was born on this day in 1697.  Hogarth's pre-cinematic series entitled "A Rake's Progress" immediately comes to mind.  Reflecting his own deep history in the arts as both writer and arts administrator, Clothier deftly weaves artistic concerns into "The Pilgrim's Staff." In Clothier's novel both men richly voice their own sexual histories with honesty and quite a bit of humor that echoes the satirical artworks of fellow Englishmen Hogarth, Thomas Rowlandson, and George Cruikshank. 

Clothier's "The Pilgrim's Staff" is not a mere romp. The novel also explores the destructive potential of family legacy and the clouded history of power, abuse, and sexual slavery in 18th century Imperial England as well as in our contemporary world. "The Pilgrim's Staff" is a book about sexual pleasure and also a cautionary tale that reminds us not to lose the love as we lust. Highly recommended!


Notes on Peter Clothier and "The Pilgrim's Staff"

Peter Clothier learned about masculinity the British way: boarding school and Cambridge--and spent twenty years in recovery in men's group work. 

Previous books include two novels, a monograph on David Hockney, and a memoir, While I am Not Afraid: Secrets of a Man's Heart. His recent book, Persist, was acclaimed as the "ultimate survival guide for any creative artist." 

Find out more at: http://www.thepilgrimsstaff.com

Shout Out to Peter! I am honored that my painting, The Embrace, and my studio are featured on your cover. Bravo on your new book!

Slow Looking With Peter Clothier

by Gregg Chadwick

Peter Clothier Leads A One Hour/ One Painting Session
photo by Joanne Warfield

Peter Clothier's important new book Slow Looking: The Art of Looking at Art guides the reader seamlessly through the history, process, and ideas behind his One Hour/One Painting sessions.  Clothier's development of One Hour/One Painting  began with the realization that along with most museum or gallery visitors, he increasingly spent more time looking at the information label on the wall than at the artwork itself. To combat this habit, Peter began to spend an hour silently and inquisitively gazing at one work of art. Much influenced in recent years by Buddhist thought and practice, Clothier combined elements of meditation and contemplation in these sessions and found more profound and rewarding experiences.  

In a One Hour/One Painting session, Peter Clothier invites small groups of participants to sit in front of a single artwork for a full hour in a gallery, museum, or studio environment.

Clothier recently hosted One Hour/ One Painting sessions during the Diebenkorn: The Ocean Park Series exhibit at the Orange County Museum of Art and at the LA Louver Gallery. Peter, also, held a session (see video below) in my Santa Monica Airport studio. Clothier began as he usually does with a brief introduction describing the hour to take place and then gently guided the participants by explaining the principles of closed-eye breath meditation,  how to relax and refresh the eyes, and provided encouragement to rid the mind of expectations and pre-judgments. For me and most of the participants that evening, the hour moved quickly as Peter led us through alternate closed and open-eyed moments. As Clothier explained, "this was individual work without initial discussion or interaction and allowed each participant to experience the artwork as fully as possible, without interruption." At the end of the hour, however, Peter invited responses and a rich discussion of the experience followed. 

Peter Clothier's Slow Looking: The Art of Looking at Art is written in clear, supportive language that illuminates art and meditation.  Clothier seeks to achieve a harmony of mind, heart, and body in his life and writing and Slow Looking provides rich examples for us to learn from and follow. In the book, we are encouraged to seek a pure visual experience with art through a beneficial process of contemplation, stillness, and serenity. Slow Looking also provides access to an audio and a video demonstration of a One Hour/One Painting session that invites readers to try it out for themselves.  Highly recommended!

Video Demonstration

Made along with participants at Gregg Chadwick's studio in Santa Monica, this video was filmed live by David Lowther.  It provides a full length example of Peter Clothier's One Hour/One Painting sessions and demonstrates the techniques involved in this guided meditation and contemplation.

Past venues & subjects for Peter Clothier's  One Hour/One Painting events :

1. Pasadena Museum of California Art—“The Matterhorn from Zermatt,” Edgar Payne

2. LA Louver—“ Echo Home,” Joe Goode

3. Laguna Art Museum—“Spring Day,” Clarence Hinkle

4. Lora Schlesinger Gallery—“I’ve Been Dating Recently,” Michael Beck

5. William Turner Gallery—“Sun Biscuit,” Ned Evans

6. Gregg Chadwick Studio—“ A Balance of Shadows,” Gregg Chadwick

7. LACMA—“Montauk Highway,” by DeKooning

8. MOCA—“Untitled,” Mark Rothko

9. The Getty—“Christ Entering Brussels,” James Ensor

10. OCMA—“Untitled Works,” Richard Diebenkorn

11. Hammer Museum—“Dr. Pozzi at Home,” John Singer Sargent; “Trees in the Garden,” Van Gogh

About Peter Clothier:

Peter Clothier has a long and distinguished career as an an internationally-known art writer, novelist and poet and describes himself as "an aspiring Buddhist who looks at art, books, and the vicissitudes of life." Clothier enjoys a world-wide following for his blog, The Buddha Diaries and is a contributing blogger in The Huffington Post. He lives and works in Southern California. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Artscene, ARTNews and other publications. He also hosts a monthly podcast entitled "The Art of Outrage," on ArtScene Visual Radio.

Peter Clothier's latest books are Persist, Mind Work, and Slow Looking.

More:

What Can Be Seen by Deborah Barlow

Peter Clothier's "The Buddha Diaries"

Peter Clothier's Website