A desk in the bedroom is where he writes music.
‘We don’t have a ton of space, so we keep it kind of sparse,” Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn says of the one-bedroom railroad apartment he shares with his girlfriend, Angie Bentfield, in Greenpoint.
The lack of nonessential furniture, along with 10-foot ceilings, gives the 600-square-foot rental a lofty feel. Upon entering the oversized eat-in-kitchen, one can see straight through the cozy living room and Bentfield’s office/wardrobe to the couple’s bedroom. And light floods in from both sides of the apartment.
The sparseness also leaves room for what’s important, like the Paul Westerberg shrine Finn, 40, prominently displays in the living room.
“I met Paul Westerberg, and he ripped this page out of his notebook and said, ‘See if you can make a song out of these.’”
Finn took them home and tried to write something, but it didn’t take him long to realize: “I’d rather put them in a frame.”
Also part of the shrine is an original photo of Westerberg’s band, the Replacements, circa 1984, when, as Finn explains, “They were too wild and couldn’t stay still.” So the photographer had to resort to a little trickery to get the shot.
“He told Westerberg he had something upstairs for him and got them all in the elevator and snapped the photo there,” Finn marvels.
It seems appropriate that a poster from Finn’s own band hangs on an adjacent wall, since he founded the Hold Steady in Brooklyn in 2002 to bring back the sound of bands like the Replacements.
With lyrics by Finn and music by Tad Kubler, the Hold Steady play a kind of straight-ahead rock but infuse it with savvy literary references. Finn took the title of their 2006 breakthrough album, “Boys and Girls in America,” from a line in Jack Kerouac’s quintessential coming-of-age novel, “On the Road.”
“At the beginning, we’d really go crazy because I think we thought it was all going to be taken away from us,” Finn explains of his indie-rock band’s early days, when it was typical to see the group down a bottle of whiskey during a show. “Now, we know we’re going to be doing this for a long time, and you kind of just want to feel OK tomorrow.”
The Hold Steady are still very much together, but that hasn’t stopped Finn from recording his first solo album, “Clear Heart Full Eyes,” which will be released Tuesday on Vagrant Records. He wrote the entire album from a tiny workspace in the bedroom, using just a MacBook and a beat-up acoustic guitar.
“It’s a little quieter and a little more Americana [than the Hold Steady],” Finn explains of the album, which was recorded in the studio of Mike McCarthy (who produced Spoon and Patty Griffin) with veteran Austin musicians. “I’m kind of a lightweight musician. I’m more of a lyric writer, so it was intimidating for me to stand up in front of these guys with their cowboy boots and pedal steels and say like, ‘OK, show me the song.’ ”
While in the studio, McCarthy’s 1958 console record player caught Finn’s eye. He’d left his vinyl collection (700 to 800 LPs, by his estimation) in his parents’ Minneapolis basement when he moved to New York 12 years ago, but he hasn’t stopped thinking about it.
“That would be the one thing on tour that would be a cool time-killer,” Finn says. “You’re always walking by record stores. When we went on tour with the Drive-By Truckers, they had this mini-turntable in their bus. They would always go record shopping and play records for each other after the show.”
Finn snapped a photo of McCarthy’s console and sent it to a friend in Rhode Island. To his surprise, the friend went out and bought him one for his 40th birthday.
The massive unit, more a piece of furniture than simply A/V equipment, arrived recently, to Finn’s joy. But Bentfield, 33, is less enthused.
“I just don’t think people should give as gifts a piece of furniture,” she explains. “Plus, I don’t want a bunch of dusty records around.”
Bentfield, who also hails from Minnesota, started dating Finn in 2006, and they moved in together in May 2009, under not-so-ideal circumstances. When Finn was on tour in the UK, Bentfield explains, “My roommate had acquired bedbugs, and I needed to get out of my place.” This was the very first place she saw.
“She moved her portion of stuff in — we were living apart, dating at the time,” says Finn. “She already lived in Greenpoint though, and the Hold Steady rehearsed here, so I was spending a lot of time in the neighborhood. I was pretty happy when I got here, but it was sight unseen.”
The cozy, second-floor walkup sits on what Finn calls “the adult side” of McGuinness Boulevard.
“On this side, it’s certainly quieter, and there are less bars and less Sunday morning vomit on the street,” he says. “Angie used to live on Franklin and Greenpoint, and it gets pretty wild over there.”
CRAIG FINN’S
FAVORITE THINGS
* His acoustic guitar
* The console record player
* Posters of the Hold Steady
* An oversized Life magazine cover from the 1930s
* The shrine to the Replacements, including framed Paul Westerberg lyrics and an original photo circa 1984