Trying to Hold Steady on the Righteous Path

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2002 to 2006 was my golden age of music discovery. I was working as a music writer at SF Weekly, I got multiple CDs to review every week, and I lived around the corner from Amoeba Music, where I traded my rejects for even more CDs. I was in my 20s, so I easily attended multiple shows per week at San Francisco’s noisy network of venues. Most of the music I scouted during that period is still in my rotation, but none as heavily as Drive-By Truckers and The Hold Steady. 

Aside from DBT, the only band I have seen 40-plus times is The Hold Steady. I discovered Drive-By Truckers in 2003, attended my first DBT show in February 2004, and discovered The Hold Steady in 2005 when my friend Phil burned me a copy of Separation Sunday on CD. I remember listening to it obsessively in a studio apartment on Fulton Street, where I briefly lived after breaking up with a toxic boyfriend. 

Old Enough to Know Better

Everything about “The Deeper In” makes me a little uncomfortable.

Mundane MayhemNancy Einhart

I’m not sure when my first Hold Steady show was, but I vividly remember being at Slim’s in 2007 with Phil, watching awestruck as the crowd spilled up onto the stage during what felt like an ecstatic rock-and-roll rave church.