The Hold Steady studio diary - Stay Positive - #3

It’s easy to kick the record company when you are a hired gun. But when the record is done, the band is stuck dealing with the label over post-production issues that will affect the life of the record.

Going into Stay Positive, I wanted myself and the band to have a distraction to deflect any pressure the band might feel going into this important record. Boys And Girls In America really helped make a bunch of noise in our country and certainly in England. I wasn’t worried about bonding so much as people second guessing too much on this record.

I remember the first days of B&GIA. The guys were really loose. And y’know what, they’d all been in bands before and had experiences making records. Bobby Drake was maybe the person who might have been a bit on edge, needlessly so. Drummers always have the most pressure to start a record. They are the foundation that the rest of the music rests upon.

I remember setting up a practice area on the other side of the studio with a PA and instruments. It would be easier to rehearse songs without using headphones and without beating up our perfectly tuned drums. It was a great way to freshen up on the arrangements and the parts and then move over to the recording side and get some kick-ass takes.

One of the first things Bobby did as we were cutting tracks was bite me on the leg. Not so much a mad-dog-take-a-piece-of-meat-out-of-me bite. I just remember listening to a take and turning around to give a thumbs up, and then I felt something tugging at my leg. When I looked down, it was the Drake! Another time I was working on Pro Tools, sitting like a computer programmer, when I heard a bunch of noise behind me and next thing I know, Bobby is sitting on my shoulders. It was kind of a Spider-Man move, if you know what I mean. I did what any self-respecting idiot would do at that point: I challenged the rest of the band to a chicken fight and ran around for a few minutes. Pictures were taken, laughs were had.

Anyway, that’s my point about loose. People relaxed. Spontaneous things happening. Not worrying about minutiae or things that you have no control over. So on this record, I thought it would be good to have everyone focused on something other than the record. Little did I know it would be “The Beard Off.”

In February 2007, the band and I went into the Magic Shop to record a song for the Dylan biopic, I’m Not There. The song they picked was, “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window,” a cool, single-only release from around the Blonde On Blonde era.

During that time, I was sporting a huge beard that would have made Fidel Castro or ZZ Top proud. The nicknames “Johnny Jihad” and “Talib-Agnello” were thrown around me liberally. The ability to grow facial hair came up, and it was decided that Bobby and I would show up at The Magic Shop clean shaven to see who could grow a beard fastest. But it was not to be, the day came and due to extenuating circumstances, one of us was not shorn.

Fast forward to January 3, our first day at Water Music. I immediately resurrected the idea of the Beard Off with Bobby, and he was down with it. The next thing I hear from behind me is Tad saying, “I’m in too!” Next was Craig, “Sure! What are we doing?” And last but not least Franz. Galen, sensing the amount of raging beard testosterone in the room decided to beg off. So our rallying cry for Stay Positive became, “Don’t Shave!”

Here we had it. Beard Off ‘08 was about to commence. We had cameras ready and daily line-ups all the way through mixing. The Unified Scene chimed in once pictures of facial progress were posted on the band’s website. Everyone had a favorite. It was a fun distraction that was a cool sidebar to a great recording experience.