Craig Finn

BIOGRAPHY

Craig Finn is a Minnesota-bred singer-songwriter based in New York City, best known as the singer of The Hold Steady. Finn spent the ’90s leading Minneapolis indie band Lifter Puller, which released three albums and an EP. After relocating to New York, he joined with Lifter Puller member Tad Kubler to form The Hold Steady in 2003. The Hold Steady quickly achieved critical acclaim and a worldwide fanbase with their unique pairing of dense lyrical narratives with big rock guitars. The Hold Steady’s ninth album, The Price Of Progress, was released in March 2023, commemorating the band’s 20th anniversary.

Finn released his first solo album in 2012 followed by three additional solo LPs – 2015’s Faith in the Future, 2017’s We All Want The Same Things, and 2019's I Need a New War – which together coalesced into a sign-of-the-times musical trilogy. Finn’s debut book, a collection of his song lyrics entitled I Can’t Keep Saying Thank You was also released in 2019. All These Perfect Crosses, a double album collecting B-sides and outtakes, was released in 2021 accompanied by a limited-edition graphic novel.

Finn’s fifth solo album, A Legacy of Rentals, was released in May 2022 to great fanfare. “The writing remains the main attraction in Finn’s work,” declared Pitchfork, “and both as a storyteller and a rock songwriter, he has never sounded more in control. From the beginning, he had a gift for meticulous, vivid world-building, and his wordplay has gotten tighter as his subjects have come down to earth.”

Finn’s podcast series, That’s How I Remember It, debuted in 2021 and was followed by two additional seasons. Co-produced and distributed by Talkhouse, the podcast series examines the connection between memory and creativity. Each episode features a discussion between Finn and one creator – including musicians, authors, filmmakers, and more – about the role memory plays in their art. These exclusive conversations reveal the different ways each creator synthesizes their remembered life experience to tell stories about themselves and the world we live in.