Last year The Hold Steady’s ever-crafty and compassionate Craig Finn released a stellar, canyon-deep album entitled Faith In The Future that graced many Best Albums of 2015 lists. Finn then followed with his equally-worthy Newmyer’s Roof EP, which will be newly-available this Friday with two added tracks via Partisan Records.  With the album and EP, Finn downshifted and edited musically to focus more on keyboards and other instruments than the Hold Steady’s usual (great) electric guitar attack.  Finn’s storytelling has never been more affecting than in these solo recordings, and The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle mien soundtracks the stories perfectly.

Finn recently aired a new song from the EP entitled Screenwriters School, and it has been set on repeat at Chez Lefort, drawing us in with its somber sounds and evocative lyrics. The song tells of an art/screenwriting school experience at which a cop is shot.  As usual, Finn’s lyrics are poetic and haunting. These lines repeatedly scroll through our minds:

“I met this girl and she’s a dancer, she said ‘hit me one more time’.”
“But it’s been heard to discern what’s a dream and and what’s true; there’s an officer down at the screenwriters school.”
“In The Name of the Father, Anatomy of a Murder, Dog Day Afternoon; came here to make movies, not to shoot something blue.”
“My fingernails are falling off, but I keep flipping through.”

And then saxophonist Stuart Bogie perfectly closes with a discordant “taps” to thoughtfully lay the song to rest. Songwriting of the highest caliber right there.

Finn has this to say about the song: “Screenwriters School was a song that we had a lot of fun creating while recording Faith In The Future. It changed a lot while we worked on it, and it ended up somewhat different in tone than rest of the record. When we had to make choices about what would make the record track list, this song got cut because it seemed more like a stand alone track. I really love it and I’m excited people are hearing it now. Stuart Bogie’s sax playing at the end is especially great.”

After listening to Screenwriters School below, check out The New York Times’ capture last month of Finn performing the moving Maggie I’ve Been Searching For Our Son from a recent American Songbook show in NYC. And at bottom check out the new extended EP tracklist.

Newmyer’s Roof EP:

1 “Newmyer’s Roof”
2 “Three Drinks”
3 “They Know Where I Live”
4 “Extras”
5 “Dennis & Billy”6 “Screenwriters School”
6 “Screenwriters School”
7 “Sometimes SheDoesn’t Call Back”