Quote

If you wait four or five years between records, it better be a masterpiece, you know? And if you keep putting them out, you're saying, 'Hey, here's 10 more songs'.

Craig Finn

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Craig Finn
Age: 53
Born: 1971
Born: August 22
Musician
Singer
Boston
Massachusetts
Years
Records
Saying
Waiting
Four
Masterpiece
Five
Hey
Song
Putting
Keep
Wait
Better
Songs

More quotes by Craig Finn

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Being on a microphone nightly has made me better at what I do, made me better able to sing a little bit, but also more confident at trying it.
Craig Finn
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Springsteen on that record started writing less about having your wind in your hair and turning the radio up and more about being dragged down by adult things. Regular people trying to get ahead. A little less mythical and romantic, and more real. It's a really spectacular record for that reason.
Craig Finn
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It's really easy, in a band, to overstate - you feel like everything you do is different than the past. I think this is just another Hold Steady record, but at the same time, there is some evolution. Like, How can we make this chorus bigger? What do we want this to sound like?
Craig Finn
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I definitely hope to continue to release records at an accelerated pace.
Craig Finn
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I really want to write a novel. A few years ago I went so far as to do the cliché thing and rent this house in upstate [New York]. I still have the story, but I got 15,000, 20,000 words in and it was like, This is falling apart. I can't figure out.
Craig Finn
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I've written a lot about drugs and alcohol. I wouldn't say it's because we've gotten bigger or anything, but I kind of feel a little bit done with it. There are other things to talk about.
Craig Finn
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One of the things is my process requires a lot of repetition. I can probably drive people crazy because I'm interested in playing a song twenty times in a row.
Craig Finn
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If we enjoy what we're doing, we shouldn't really need a break. It's fun for us to play music. It's our livelihood, but I don't look at it as a job. It doesn't seem to me to be a problem to constantly be doing this.
Craig Finn
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A conversation with you is a different thing than projecting to a couple hundred people. It's bigger and more animated and it's on a bigger scope, but still in the heart, it's honestly me.
Craig Finn
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Some people I've talked to have had really an interpretation of this record as being nostalgic. But in some ways, when we were writing Stay Positive, I was really obsessed with age. I kept saying it was a record about trying to age gracefully. This record, I think actually was us aging gracefully.
Craig Finn
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People make maps of all the places I've mentioned. I knew that those people were out there. I wanted to create something for them.
Craig Finn
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I'm able to draw outside my own personal experiences. No one wants to hear the song about what I really did today, which is go get coffee and clean my apartment.
Craig Finn
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I think you want to write a song that's like the songs you are into.
Craig Finn
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It's good to have some kind of California in there. It's almost always appropriate. It's appropriate on a sunny day or late at night. If you grew up on the Grateful Dead, which I certainly did, you listened to 10 million bootlegs. But you realize that American Beauty has some really tight, well-arranged songs that aren't meandering.
Craig Finn
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I made a decision at some point to live a nontraditional life. I've become like, the opposite of a consumer. I just want freedom. I don't want stuff. I don't want clutter. I just want to be able to move freely. I want to be good to the people I love. But I don't want stuff. I just want, you know, love and big ideas.
Craig Finn
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Sometimes things reveal themselves to you a little bit. I think it was Joan Didion that said, We write to find out what we're thinking. And sometimes that happens.
Craig Finn
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I am a really obsessive music listener, and I would look for clues.
Craig Finn
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I think making the songs is to put strength in the community in some way.
Craig Finn
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Ironically, when I was playing in my first band, I would deliberately not write down any lyrics. I have a really good memory and I would just keep them in my head.
Craig Finn
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I think the other thing that shaped me a little bit is that I really didn't have any success in music until my early to mid-30s.
Craig Finn