The Hold Steady and Drive-By Truckers meshed their separate rock styles into one collective celebratory guitar-heavy romp Wednesday night at the State Theatre.
This was the sixth night of the double-headlining "Rock and Roll Means Well" tour. The venue housed 540 people, 30 shy of selling out, and the crowd was on its feet throughout the show.
Despite The Hold Steady's and Drive-By Truckers' similar blue-collar attitudes toward music, some members of the audience were obviously there just to see one band or the other. Several people in the crowd shuffled in and out of the concert during both bands' sets.
Adam Plucinski (freshman-bioengineering) came into the show as a Drive-By Truckers fan, having never heard a song by The Hold Steady, but left as a firm fan of both acts.
"Both are really good, but there's a good groove all around with The Hold Steady," Plucinski said.
As the crowd waited for the show to start, the stage and theater filled with a cloud of smoke machine-produced fog. When Drive-By Truckers took the stage, green and blue lights cut through the mist, with only the band members' silhouettes visible.
The Truckers promised the return of the "triple axe attack," as the band calls it, in contrast to last year's acoustic show, and return it did. For the entire set, jagged, overdriven guitars arced from the haze onstage like the sound of rusty screws. It was a racket, with the guitars intertwining and seemingly fighting for dominance, but it worked perfectly for the band's style.
The group draws comparisons to iconic Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, probably because of both bands' three-guitar configuration. However, the Truckers' music is bathed in a sense of ominous foreboding that sets it apart from Skynyrd. This is post-Southern rock, colored by poverty and death, and so it strikes an emotional chord that one might not expect from a band that emphasizes the big, dumb classic rock cliché of three lead guitars. John Neff's baleful slide playing on "Sounds Better in the Song" was a perfect example of the emotional depth of the Truckers' set.
Patterson Hood introduced the band's Bush-bashing "Putting People on the Moon" with a nod to Tuesday's election.
"Just 'cause Obama won last night don't mean there ain't a lot of work left to do," he shouted to an appreciative crowd before the Truckers launched into the tune.
Hood also dedicated "Tails Facing Up" to the first person he met in State College, "Ted," who was ostensibly Lulu's Nightspot concert organizer Ted Swanson.
Bassist Shonna Tucker instructed the crowd to "grab somebody and dance with 'em" before she took over vocals for one song, "I'm Sorry, Houston," a slow ballad reminiscent of Stevie Nicks. It helped to even out the vigorous set list.
Buddy Holly doppelgänger Tad Kubler, lead guitarist of The Hold Steady, played with the Drive-By Truckers for several songs, bringing the total of electric guitarists on stage to four.
Following Drive-By Truckers' set, The Hold Steady took the stage with a rousing clap and monologue. The band's set, replete with bouncy, melodic riffs and lead singer Craig Finn's sprechgesang, or talk-singing, resonated with their fans. Finn doesn't sing so much as talk, backed up by the band's muscular classic rock-esque riffing. Finn's sardonic lyrical delivery and barrage of non sequiturs blended smoothly with eccentric keyboardist Franz Nicolay's jumpiness.
Sampling from all four of the band's albums, the band played multiple tracks from its critically acclaimed July release, Stay Positive, including "Constructive Summer," "Sequestered in Memphis," and the title track. The group's music, like that of the Truckers', was extremely story-based. Many of the songs focused on life in the Midwest, describing the fun and hardship that Finn had endured during his time in Minnesota.
Whether or not the crowd favored one band over the other, the exuberant show served as a pleasant reminder of the possibilities of rock beyond modern radio.
