Hold Steady's Craig Finn Revisits Horse Racing for 'The Weekenders'

As diehard fans know, the Hold Steady's first four albums featured Gideon, Charlemagne and Holly, fictional characters that frontman Craig Finn has used to tell his tales of debauchery and religion. The trio is absent -- at least in name -- from the band's latest album, 'Heaven Is Whenever,' but that doesn't mean Finn has completely abandoned all of his old stories: 'The Weekenders' is a new chapter in the story of the couple he introduced in 'Chips Ahoy,' from the band's breakout 2006 album, 'Boys and Girls in America.' So what's new with the narrator and his lover, whose clairvoyance allows them to win big at horse racing?

"I look at it as a sequel -- if these people had this experience four years ago, this is the guy trying to make a reconnection," ," Finn tells Spinner of 'The Weekenders.' "Maybe it's even like [on] Facebook, reaching out to someone from your past. In the song, he says 'I'm pretty sure I wasn't your first choice' and I think he's also saying, 'You're not my first choice either, but hell, if you're not doing anything ...'"

As Finn reveals, the original song was inspired by a visit to a race track. "I was thinking about these get-rich schemes -- 'Well, if only my girlfriend was clairvoyant and she could tell which horse was going to win the race, all my problems would be solved,'" he says. "But people with all the money in the world still have problems, so it's kind of like that idea."

Like the rest of 'Heaven Is Whenever,' 'The Weekenders' shows a stylistic shift in Finn's songwriting that features less focus on specific, literate stories. "I wanted to make a little room for people's own personal experiences," he says of the new songs. "Saying 'Tim went to the store, Tim ordered a sandwich,' there's not much room in there for interpretation. With 'Chips Ahoy,' I was kind of thinking about those characters as if they were real people and I was like 'I wonder what they're up to now.'"

The Hold Steady are currently on a North American headlining tour that runs through October.