Songwriters and frontmen from two of the most revered bands in 21st century American indie rock will share the stage this summer at The State Theatre.
Craig Finn and Patterson Hood will bring their “Devils in the Details” tour to State College for an 8 p.m. show on Saturday, July 11, during Arts Festival weekend. The State Theatre date is one of just 10 for the tour announced on Wednesday.
Similar to their initial run last November, Finn, best known as the frontman for The Hold Steady, and Hood, the co-leader of Drive-By Truckers, will trade songs and stories on-stage, accompanied by multi-instrumentalist Ben Hackett.
“I’ve been friends with Patterson Hood for almost twenty years now, and we’ve done a lot of cool things together. But possibly my favorite adventure with Patterson was the Devils in the Details tour that we did from Seattle to Texas in November 2025,” Finn wrote Wednesday on social media. “The shows were loose, fun, musical, and truly special. Now, I’m very excited to announce that we’re doing it all again in July 2026 in the Twin Cities and on the East Coast. These are guaranteed to be a great time, and I’m so excited to be playing in this format again. I might even bust out some new songs for the occasion.”
Tickets go on sale to the general public at 10 a.m. Friday, May 1, with State Theatre member and artist presales currently underway.
Minneapolis native Finn formed The Hold Steady in 2003 after moving to New York following the dissolution of his band Lifter Puller. In the ensuing years, he became the “poet laureate of the burnouts, washouts and losers,” as Nashville Scene once described him. With Finn’s often speak-singing voice spinning narrative tales in a group indebted to heartland rock, punk, The Replacements and Dylan, The Hold Steady became “America’s greatest bar band.”
Outside of The Hold Steady, Finn has released six solo albums. His most recent, “Always Been” was released in 2025 and features backing from members of The War on Drugs and Kathleen Edwards.
Muscle Shoals, Alabama-born Hood co-founded Drive-By Truckers with friend and fellow guitarist and vocalist Mike Cooley in 1996 following their relocation to Athens, Georgia. Their third album, 2001’s “Southern Rock Opera” and its two followups in a period when their lineup was joined by Jason Isbell established DBT as the standard bearers of alt-country and new Southern rock over the following two decades.
Hood’s songs coupled with the band’s muscular rock have painted nuanced character studies of the American South, from tales of moonshiners and tornado survivors to hard-luck men and women on the fringes to Lynyrd Skynyrd and “the duality of the Southern thing.”
He has released four solo albums, including last year’s “Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams.”
Finn’s and Hood’s bands previously visited State College together on a co-headlining tour stop at The State Theatre in 2008.
The Finn and Hood performance is one of several recently announced shows at The State Theatre.
Among them, bluegrass greats The Travelin’ McCourys will perform on July 9; Tusk: The Classic Fleetwood Mac Tribute visits on Sept. 25; and long-running Grateful Dead tribute Splintered Sunlight takes the stage on Oct. 2.
They join a previously announced schedule for the theater’s Friedman Auditorium that includes The Steel Wheels (May 3); Samantha Fish (May 20); Hot 8 Brass Band (May 22); The Wood Brothers (June 18); Béla Fleck, Edmar Castañeda and Antonio Sánchez (June 26); EagleMania (July 18); Joe Cocker tribute Mad Dogs & Englishmen (Aug. 6); and St. Paul & The Broken Bones (Sept. 22).
For The State Theatre’s full lineup, including shows in The Atiic, movies and more, visit thestatetheatre.org.
