The Hold Steady's Craig Finn is set to realease a solo album, Clear Heart Full Eyes, to be released Jan. 24 on Vagrant Records.
He spoke to Slate.com about his influences and funny enough credits the sports tv drama "Friday Night Lights" as one of them.
There aren’t any songs about anyone in ‘Friday Night Lights,’” Finn said. “But the title is obviously a nod and a wink and a lift to it. And I always loved that part, when they would say, “Clear eyes, full heart, can’t lose.” I thought that was really poetic, you know, for a high school football team. So I was just playing around with that.
“I was also influenced by the fact that I went down to Austin to make it, which is close enough to where the fictitious Dillon is that a couple of times [characters on the show] went into Austin to see bands or something. Also, playing with the words on paper, ‘clear’ and ‘full’ begin with a C and an F like Craig Finn. So that was just sort of playing around with words on a piece of paper.”
There will be a tour (of course) to support this realse. No East Coast dates as of yet but it looks like February is Texas and the Mid West…odd start.