Hold Steady places


.	Location	Song	Album	Context
.	Bay City, MI	Sweet Payne	Almost Killed Me	"Gideon's been living up in Bay City Michigan. He's been working at the Michelin." Blue collar city with about 37,000 residents. Later in the song, Gideon is said to be living in South Minneapolis.
.	Beverly Hills, CA	The Swish	Almost Killed Me	"Pills and powders baby, powders and pills. We spent the night last night in Beverly Hills." The appropriate opening lines of a song about parties, drugs and celebrities.
.	Bowdoin, ME	Chillout Tent	Boys and Girls in America	"She drove down to Bowdoin with a car full of girlfriends." The female protagonist's Bowdoin College education contrasts with her hook-up's background in petty crime.
.	California	Hot Fries	N/A	"Some borderline whore asked me how I'm liking California. I just cried." In THS songs, bad things happen in California, but Craig Finn said the following in a 12/4/06 Pitchfork interview: "I really like Los Angeles, so that's also really attractive. I love being out there. New York is a tiring place to come back from tour to, and L.A. is so relaxed."
.	California	Modesto Is Not That Sweet	N/A	"I heard that kid from California turned out to be an asshole." Continuing with the theme of bad things in California.
.	Colorado	Girls Like Status	Boys and Girls in America	"He was dreadlocked in the dorms and in the Colorado corn."
.	Chicago, IL	Chicago Seemed Tired Last Night	Separation Sunday	"Chicago seemed tired last night. They had cigarettes where there were supposed to be eyes."
.	Dallas, TX	Don't Let Me Explode	Separation Sunday	"We didn't go to Dallas, because Jackie Onassis said it ain't safe for Catholics yet." One of several relocation sites debated by the song's narrator. In a May 2005 interview with The Village Voice, Craig Finn said, "Catholicism is a big part of everything I do."
.	Denver, CO	The Cattle and the Creeping Things	Separation Sunday	"I heard Gideon saw you in Denver. He said that you're contagious."
.	Denver, CO	Don't Let Me Explode	Separation Sunday	"We scored big in Denver and we thought it might be best to go hang around in the Upper Midwest." It's never been clear to me whether the run-in with Gideon in Denver mentioned in "The Cattle and the Creeping Things"was related to the big score in "Don't Let Me Explode," but it seems like a safe assumption.
.	Denver, CO	Milkcrate Mosh	N/A	"Went down in the Denver slums and she woke up in the Rocky Mountain dawn."
.	Edina, MN	Hornets! Hornets!	Separation Sunday	"Almost died up by Edina High." A suburb southwest of Minneapolis, pop. 47,000.
.	Hollywood, CA	Curves & Nerves	N/A	"Holly went to Hollywood. It looked nothing like she thought it would." Holly proceeded to act in movies called "North Dallas Foursome" and "Revenge of the Pervs." Continues with the theme of bad, dark things happening in California.
.	Hostile, MA	Hostile, Mass.	Almost Killed Me	"He woke up deep in Hostile, Massachusetts. ... Charlemagne in sweatpants and you and me in Hostile, Massachusetts." This is a fictional town, but I myself consider Massachusetts a relatively hostile place.
.	Lynn, MA	Hostile, Mass.	Almost Killed Me	"I looked deep in his eyes -- I saw Lynn, Massachusetts." A blue-collar former mill town north of Boston, pop. 89,000 afflicted by crime in recent decades and subject to large-scale fires in the early 1980s.
.	Los Angeles, CA	Don't Let Me Explode	Separation Sunday	"He said what about Los Angeles. She said, 'We never really made it that far west.'" One of several cities mentioned in Don't Let Me Explode.
.	Massachusetts	Banging Camp	Separation Sunday	"She says, 'I kind of dig the awkward silences because I grew up in denial and went to school in Massachusetts." Finn graduated from Boston College in 1993.
.	Massachusetts	Curves & Nerves	N/A	"She said, "Hey, if that's Gepetto, tell him I'm not here yet. Tell him that I ain't done with my beers yet. Tell him that I'm up in Massachusetts."
.	Michigan	Sweet Payne	Almost Killed Me	"We got so high some nights, Michigan looked just like a mitten." Michiganders think that their state looks like a mitten even when they're not high.


.	Minneapolis, MN	Party Pit	Boys and Girls in America	"And so we walked across the Grain Belt Bridge, into brand new Minneapolis." The band's body of work is packed with scenes set in Minneapolis, but only two other songs -- Sweet Payne and Hornets! Hornets! -- mention the city by name.
.	Mississippi River	Your Little Hoodrat Friend	Separation Sunday	"True love gets troubled by still water and washed up in the Mississippi River."
.	Mississippi River	Some Kooks	Boys and Girls in America	"The Lord takes away and the Lord delivers, washed it all off in the Mississippi River." Note that the baptism imagery tracks with the Narranganset Bay reference below.
.	Mississippi River	Stuck Between Stations	Boys and Girls in America	"We all come down and drown in the Mississippi River."
.	Mississippi River	Stevie Nix	Boys and Girls in America	"She got high for the first time in the camps down by the banks of the Mississippi River ... She didn't tell a single person about the camps down by the banks of the Mississippi River."
.	Modesto, CA	Modesto Is Not That Sweet	N/A	"You had stars in your eyes but Modesto's not that sweet when you only know one guy and he disappears for days at time." Again, jerks live in California.
.	Narraganset Bay, RI	Some Kooks	Boys and Girls in America	"The sheets stain but the sins wash away naked bodies in the Narraganset Bay." Note the baptism imagery.
.	New Orleans, LA	Don't Let Me Explode	Separation Sunday	"He said, 'What about New Orleans?' She said, 'I don't think you understand what that means, all those hangers on, the girls lifting up their shirts when the cameras come on. We were trying to stay away from those kinds of scenes." In a November 2005 piece in Entertainment Weekly, Finn stated, ''We've never played New Orleans, and I feel like now [since Hurricane Katrina] we're never going to get the chance.'' The band eventually played a show in New Orleans in December 2006.
.	New York, NY	Chicago Seemed Tired Last Night	Separation Sunday	"When St. Theresa came to Holly, I wasn't even at that party. I'd already moved out to New York City." Finn moved from Minneapolis to Brooklyn in the summer of 2000.
.	Osseo, MN	Your Little Hoodrat Friend	Separation Sunday	"Your little hoodrat friend got me high though. We were seventeen and stuck up in Osseo." Osseo is a town northwest of Minneapolis with a population of about 2,500.
.	Pensacola, FL	Killer Parties	Almost Killed Me	"Pensacola parties hard with poppers, pills and Pepsi." Florida seems to be the site of the songs' most extreme decadence. In a fall 2006 interview with The Fader magazine, Finn said, "Florida is crazy. You can see some crazy stuff go on. There was this dude who was hanging out, it seemed like he was hanging out a little too long, he was just asking me some questions and all of a sudden he leans in close and goes, “I can get you any drug you have ever heard of in ten minutes, right here.” And I was like, “No thanks…oh actually, do you have any weed?” And he just pulls it out of his pocket, it wasn’t even bagged, he just has weed. And I was like, “Oh OK, do you want some money?” And he was like, “For this? Nah.” I guess it was too small of an amount to bother with. I was like, “OK, could you please go away?”"
.	Philadelphia, PA	Killer Parties	Almost Killed Me	"Philly is full of friendly friends that will love you like a brother." In Killer Parties, Philadelphia and Virginia (which "really is for the lovers") contrast with Pensacola's hard partying and the tres speedy killer parties of Ybor City, Florida.
.	Shaker Heights, OH	The Swish	Almost Killed Me	"Tights and skirts baby, skirts and tights. We used to shake it up in Shaker Heights." Shaker Heights is generally viewed as Cleveland's ritziest suburb.
.	University of Minnesota	Stuck Between Stations	Boys and Girls in America	Not explicitly mentioned in the song, but at the time of his death, John Berryman taught at the University of Minnesota. The song notes that "he loved the Golden Gophers," the school's mascot.
.	Virginia	Killer Parties	Almost Killed Me	"We found out Virginia really is for the lovers." See the prior notation concerning Philadephia.
.	Western Massachusetts	Chillout Tent	Boys and Girls in America	"There was a stage and a PA up in Western Massachusetts, and the kids came from miles around to get messed up on the music." A girl from Bowdoin, ME and a local boy overdose and hook up at a music festival in Western Mass.
.	Ybor City, FL	Most People are DJs	Almost Killed Me	"Hold steady, Ybor City. You're up to your neck in sweat-drenched confetti." In a 2006 interview with The Fader Magazine, Finn said, "Last year we played in Ybor City, which I namedrop a lot. I’d never been there before, I just liked the way it looked and sounded. So when we went down there it was fun because all these hardcore Hold Steady fans made sure they got to the show, and all of a sudden it was kind of a crazy show. ... I liked it more than I thought I would. Everyone said it was kind of cheesy, it was like a Cuban section of town that they remade, it was cool though. I think the show was so good that it colored my opinion of the whole place."
.	Ybor City, FL	Killer Parties	Almost Killed Me	"Ybor City is tres speedy but they throw such killer parties." Ybor City, a suburb of Tampa, is also home to the invariably lame Outback Bowl.
.	Ybor City, FL	The Cattle and the Creeping Things	Separation Sunday	Holly says to an unnamed man (possibly Charlemagne), "Tell me how you got down here into Ybor City."