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Hold Steady will play the Majestic on Monday, July 21. - Submitted photo

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As Hold Steady guitarist Tad Kubler reminisces about his days living in Madison, his memories start to sound like the lyrics to a Hold Steady song.

"We always used to go to the Cardinal, because on Wednesday night they had quarter beer night," Kubler said in a telephone interview from his home in New York's West Village. "For 25 cents you could get a beer, for a pitcher it was three dollars. It was two-dollar pitchers after that and you had to put a dollar deposit down. We used to go in there broke and people would just leave their pitchers.

"So we would go collect all the pitchers at the end of the night and give them back and take the deposit back. We would go in with three or four dollars, drink a bunch of beers, and then go home with five or six dollars. Those were the lean years, man."

Such woozy teenage exploits are chronicled by Hold Steady frontman and songwriter Craig Finn in songs like "Your Little Hoodrat Friend" and "Chillout Tent." The stories may seem more deeply felt because Finn and his bandmates are now all in their mid-30s, years removed from their salad days.

With a boisterous classic rock sound that many have likened to early Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, The Hold Steady has put out four albums in the past five years (including "Stay Positive," which was released on Tuesday) and gathered a growing cadre of devoted fans.

The group is playing the Majestic Theatre, 114 King St. at 8 p.m. Monday, just up the street from the Cardinal. Kubler, a Janesville native, moved to Madison for about a year after he graduated from high school. He lived for a time on East Gorham near Riley's Wines of the World, and for a time on East Mifflin, not far from Smart Studios.

Kubler said wryly that the year was not a particularly productive time for him, and that the highlight was probably the time he fell through a skylight at a friend's party.

"I rarely worked," he said. "There were a lot of misspent days and nights."

Kubler then went to Minneapolis, where he joined up with Finn in the band Lifter Puller. The Hold Steady formed after that, and the band relocated to New York City.

Since then, the band members have been hard at work recording and touring, slowly gaining exposure and adding to their pool of fans. Kubler said the band enjoys working hard.

"It's the joy of doing it in the first place that allows us to work at the pace that we do," he said. "And we like to stay busy. When the record was finally done, there was that sigh of relief. And then a hour and a half goes by, and you're like, 'What am I going to do with myself?' I'm going to go to a bar, and that's not good either."

The new "Stay Positive" album continues the band's evolution towards a more mature and fleshed-out sound, although the banging piano riffs and Kubler's raucous guitar lines remain at the fore. More significant is Finn's attempt to move beyond high school lyrically in his songs and write about the lives his thirtysomething peers are currently living.

Kubler noted that the band had to address its age at some point, because every music writer in the country invariably mentions their age.

"Every time they mention our name, they'd say that we were old or something like that," he said. "When you see this stuff, you can't not be sensitive about it. I'm not old! S---, I'm 35!

"I'd like to think that I've accrued a little more wisdom now than I had when I was 25, but other than that my life hasn't changed a ton. I still enjoy a lot of the same things. Well, that's not exactly true. I have made some lifestyle changes, or else I'd be f------ dead. But in general, I find joy in the same places. Just more so now."

"Stay Positive" also features a couple of honest-to-goodness guitar solos from Kubler, increasingly a rare commodity in modern rock music, "Guitar Hero III" notwithstanding. He said he relished the chance to stretch out and nab a little of the spotlight.

"It's fun to do, and it's kind of one of those things that allows me to step out a little bit of the shadow of Craig Finn for a minute and a half," he said. "Even on stage, he's spellbinding to watch. There are nights where I'll lose where I am because I'm paying attention to him."

Aside from his day job as a guitarist, Kubler is also an accomplished photographer, having done fashion photography in New York for Saks, Macy's and Target. The Hold Steady's success and hectic tour schedule has kept him from doing much of that lately, but he brings his photo equipment with him on the road, possibly for a book down the road.

"There are very few times in a 24-hour day when I'm not thinking about music in some way," he said. "When I'm taking pictures, I switch gears immediately, and it's nice to have that. You kind of step out of who you are for a second."

Although Kubler is happy being a New Yorker, he hasn't lost his Wisconsin roots. He often heads down to a bar in the West Village called Kettle of Fish that's known as a Packers bar, where he often runs into fellow Badger State transplants he hasn't seen for 15 years.

And he's hoping to reunite with some old high school friends in Madison when he comes here next week -- although that didn't work out so well the last time the band was in town, playing the Orpheum Stage Door in April 2007.

"I had a bunch of friends from high school there that I didn't even get a chance to say hi to," he said. "They got so drunk, they got thrown out before the end of the show. I was kind of bummed out."

IF YOU GO

What: The Hold Steady with The Loved Ones

Where: Majestic Theatre, 114 King St.

When: 8 p.m. Monday, July 21

Tickets: $16.50 through www.majesticmadison.com