As a band with a quarter-century of gigs to their credit, Lucero has downshifted their touring ambitions in recent years. These days they’re out on the road for a crisp 100 dates or so, a considerable amount by most bands’ count. But for an act that used to eclipse the 200- or even 250-gig mark, this is a real change. One of those 100 dates is coming up on Friday, Nov. 8, 2024, at The Commonwealth Room, a venue the band says falls into its sweet spot of smaller music halls.
Ben Nichols, the band’s primary songwriter and founding member, said that Lucero’s career has moved into something of a sweet spot. Though the band’s last album, 2023’s “Should’ve Learned By Now,” is nominally the reason the band’s going out on tour now, the group has always been active on the road, whether there was new material or not. And Nichols believes that the sound he and his bandmates have achieved this time out will be crowd-pleasing.
“Right now, we’re a five-piece, a stripped-down rock ’n’ roll band, doing the simpler version of what we were doing 10 years ago,” Nichols said in a recent phone interview. “With our last album, ‘When You Found Me,’ we had a darker, moodier record. Synths are all over that album. A lot of fans came along with us for that. I like that record, it was a fun experiment. But with ‘Should’ve Learned by Now,’ all that is out the window again. We’re back to the classic form of bass, guitar, drums and some keys.”
As has been true for years, Nichols (vocals, guitar) is joined by drummer Roy Berry, bassist John C. Stubblefield, guitarist Brian Venable and multi-instrumentalist Rick Steff. For this round, Nichols notes that some of the extras of recent albums – horn sections, pedal steel players and the aforementioned synths – have taken a backseat to the simpler, straightforward lineup, with a lyrical bent that neatly accompanies the instrumentation. (And there’s more cowbell!)
“I had a couple of songs left over from previous albums,” Nichols said of the assemblage of material for “Should’ve Learned.” “They weren’t quite serious enough for those albums; those had a darker tone, sonically were a little more intense. I had these upbeat, lighthearted songs floating in limbo and needing a place to live. So I wrote the rest of this record with that intention. It’s a fun, rock ’n’ roll record with catchier songs and our old-school, rock ’n’ roll feel. The first song, ‘One Last F.U.’ has got that kind of attitude to it and it wouldn’t have fit on every album. There is some humor in it that’s not appropriate everywhere, but it sets the tenor of the rest of the album. Lyrically, it’s all pretty straightforward, it’s about rock ’n’ roll-type things, relationships and bars and whiskey and regret and guilt and love. It was written to not be too deep and still offer quality rock ’n’ roll.”
Fans are noticing and the press is catching up. “Pitchfork” concurs with Nichols, writing that “After a handful of albums that prioritized southern gothic atmosphere over southern rock riffs, Lucero is back where they started. They’ve been playing barstool blues and ballads for 25 years now, cutting their teeth in the very joints they sing about and surviving even when most bars have replaced rock bands with jukeboxes or, worse, DJs… Like the Hold Steady and the Drive-By Truckers—two other unkillable bands associated with the bar-rock trend of the 2000s—Lucero is still making solid albums that expand their catalogs in unexpected ways.”
While the current tour finds Lucero adhering to the classic idea of an “album release and tour cycle,” the band’s not exactly shy to hit the road at any time, knowing a base of fans will be at each stop, many of them traveling from place to place to catch the group. It’s not uncommon for the band to see fans that have seen them 10, 20, or even 50 times or more, be those shows in their home markets, or at some of the annual events Lucero plays, like their trademark hometown show, the annual Lucero Family Block Party. That one grew from an annual event held in the countryside to one that finds an entire city block in Memphis shut down for Lucero and a cast of exceptional, complementary bands.
They’ve also been regulars at other smaller festivals, events that allowed them to get to know their deepest supporters in a more personal way. Add in the fact Lucero will play rooms in smaller towns and it’s easy to see why they have a following that’s been with them for literally decades.
“The Lucero fan base,” Nichols began, “isn’t the biggest audience. We don’t draw the biggest numbers. But we’ve been going for 25 years now and the folks who’ve been coming to shows have been very loyal. Some of them have been with us since the very beginning. They’re bringing their kids to the show now, which is just wild. There’s no way we should be that old! It’s also encouraging that some of those kids actually like it. The fact that two, even three generations of a family enjoy us, I take as a compliment. It says something about the songwriting, that they keep coming back. It’s pretty simple rock ’n’ roll when it comes down to it, done on an accessible level. It’s pretty easy to come see us. We play at manageable venues and it’s always a very laid-back kind of show. So, yeah, if you like rock ’n’ roll and don’t wanna go to a venue that’s monster-sized, we’re a decent bet.”
Over the years that the group’s been touring, venues have changed, whether it’s the rise of mini-chains (like a City Winery) or larger ticketing agencies taking on the ownership role in some rooms. Nichols notes, “Today things are so complicated that you don’t know who owns what. But we’ve been mostly playing the same venues for 20 years. We might play a 500-seat venue in one city, or something smaller, like 300. In some places, we’re lucky enough to play a 1,000-seat theater. We’re very comfortable with that range and size of venue.”
These days, Nichols is also comfortable in saying Lucero is a well-tuned unit, onstage and off, with a manager, a booking agent and a publicist. Beyond that, they release music on their own label, Liberty & Lament. They keep a tightly-knit road crew. And they’re even working on music videos, as Nichols has become pretty adept at various editing platforms via his trusty iPad, of which he said “I’ve gotten my money’s worth.”
If it sounds as if Lucero has things figured out, a chat with Nichols doesn’t indicate anything different. The band’s goals are clearer than ever, the fans have grown alongside them, and the quirks of the industry are either shaken off or handled in-house.
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