...of the Hold Steady and Drive By Truckers' two night stint at the Showbox SoDo in Seattle:

-The place was about half-empty. Tonight is supposedly about to sell out. A few possible explanations: People would rather go out on a Friday given the choice, or they would rather go to this show when it's 21+ and they can drink throughout the venue rather than be penned in the back, or maybe more people would just rather see the Drive-By Truckers headline over Hold Steady (as will happen tonight) than the other way around (as happened last night).

-About the drinkers being confined to the back of the room, it made things kind of weird whenever Craig Finn spat out some climactic, sing-along lyric about drinking. This was apparent from the very first song, "Constructive Summer," on which Finn commands the crowd to "raise a toast to saint Joe Strummer," then ad libbed, "come on, get 'em up!" The enthusiastic crowd dutifully raised their hands, but of course, they had nothing with which to toast. (Also, there are kind of just a lot of Hold Steady lyrics that seem kind of awkward sing-alongs for the all-ages set; maybe I don't give the kids enough credit in terms of self-awareness and perspective, but what always struck me as great about Finn's narratives about fucked up kids is that he has enough remove, both in years and as an omnipotent storyteller, to lend them some poignancy.)

-I mentioned how at Wednesday night's Of Montreal show the sound at the SoDo was as good and loud as I'd ever heard it. Last night the sound was not so hot. The bass guitar and kick drum were too loud and muddy, and the guitar was weak when it should have been triumphant, although the vocals and the keys sounded fine. That can't be an easy room to run sound, and it's probably a lot easier to dial in a good mix when the room is full of people, rather than a mostly exposed concrete box.

-I don't know whether to attribute this to the Drive-By Truckers or the SoDo or the Hold Steady, but damn there were some serious meatheads and their bronzed cowgirls counterparts out last night in the bar section, air-guitaring, jabbing at each other and spitting drinks, freak dancing during the Hold Steady. Not to get all HRO about shit, but "Is the Hold Steady mainstream?" I know the band plays some pretty big summer festivals and all, but I always thought a big part of their appeal was that Finn's songs were about losers, hoodrats, misfits, and other outcast fuckups. I guess any old drinking song, regardless of its subtleties and sarcasms, is good enough for the bros.

-Despite the ambience and the acoustics, the Hold Steady played a pretty great set, including "Multitude of Casualties," "Chips Ahoy," "Sequestered in Memphis," "Massive Nights," "Party Pit," "Stevie Nix," "Stuck Between Stations," "Guys Go For Looks, Girls Go For Status," "Your Little Hoodrat Friend," "Stay Positive," "Slapped Actress," an encore of "First Night," and several others. Finn changed up the odd line here or there, throwing little treats out for the dedicated—the last line of "Massive Nights" became, "The chaperone said, 'I though you were saving yourself for the scene'," and one chorus of "Slapped Actress" became, "Some nights it's just entertainment, and tomorrow night it's work." Cute. He also did a couple endearing monologues, one explaining the name of the "Rock and Roll Means Well" tour: "a smarter man than me [Mike Cooley] once said, 'Rock and roll means well, but it can't help telling young boys lies.'" Another was about how, after quitting Lifter Puller and moving to NYC in 2000 to "be a writer or something" but instead just spending two years drinking, Finn saw tourmates the Drive-By Truckers at the Bowery Ballroom and that's when he decided to start another band.

-Of course, the other endearing thing Finn did was geek the fuck out onstage, dancing and grinning and flailing from the microphone like it was electrocuting him every other line. I realized last night that, not only are Finn's gestures theatrically outsized, they also really put the camp in "the camps down by the river." For instance, for the line in "Stuck Between Stations" about "the night that we thought John Berryman could fly/but he didn't so he died," Finn straight up turned his arms into airplane wings. For the line, "Don't tell the DJ's, they already suspect us," on "Slapped Actress," Finn made a record scratching motion with one hand and "scratched" "already" into "a-a-a-a-a-a." For the line about doing a jitterbug, Finn did the goofiest approximation of dancing this side of a junior high. If you're not really invested in your rock stars being cool or having to take them seriously (and you shouldn't be), then it's all good fun.

-Overall, though, between the small crowd, the drinking pen, the d-bags, the bad sound, and the work-night reserve, I found myself explaining to my guest, who had never seen the Hold Steady before, that this wasn't really the best introduction to the band that he could have hoped for. We ended up leaving before the end of the encore. Hopefully, he'll still spend some time with the records.