Six Things You Need To Know About…
Lucero
Half a dozen nuggets on these punks at heart with rock’n’roll, blues, country soul and more running through their veins.
Lucero have come a long way in the 20 years they’ve been together. Since playing their first gig – to six people in a Memphis warehouse – the quintet have become one of America’s big live draws. Meanwhile, their ass-whupping rock’n’roll, laced with liberal helpings of blues, punk, country and southern soul, has fed into nine studio albums. For an idea of their style, picture a ruck between Bruce Springsteen, Jerry Lee Lewis and The Replacements – but you’re still only halfway there.
Their latest album, Among The Ghosts, finds the band – Ben Nichols (vocals) Brian Venable (guitar), Roy Berry (drums), John C Stubblefield (bass) and Rick Steff (keyboards) – burrowing deep into the gothic storytelling traditions of their native south. Memphis is in their blood.
Despite being from Little Rock, Arkansas, Nichols feels that Memphis is part of his DNA.
“The rest of the band is pretty much all from Memphis, and I followed a girl here when I turned twenty-one,” he explains. “This city gets into your soul. It’s always been at the intersection of different types of music, from country and blues to punk and classic rock radio. Among The Ghosts was done at Sam Phillips Recording Service, which he opened in 1960. You can’t get much more Memphis than Sam.”
Lucero will always be punks at heart.
Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson and fifties rock’n’roll were formative influences for Nichols, and so too were Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Clash. But the band’s roots remain fixed in the Memphis punk scene of the late 90s.
“Everyone we knew was in a punk rock band,” he recalls. “It was all about getting up there and knocking it out, putting your heart into it. And that’s continued for twenty years. I don’t think we’ve ever figured out exactly what we’re doing.”
The new album signals a break from the past. Among The Ghosts moves away from the firstperson tales that dominate Lucero’s back catalogue. Instead there are rich narratives about hauntings, shoot-outs, death, divorce and the Civil War. “It all used to be strictly autobiographical,” Nichols says. “Every line in every song definitely
happened to me. But now I want to focus on songwriting as a craft rather than just a diary entry. Lately I’ve been reading a bunch of shortstory writers whose tone is very specific to the southern states. I wanted to capture that dark mood.”
Fatherhood has changed everything.
Among The Ghosts is Lucero’s first new music since Nichols’s marriage and the birth of his daughter. As a result, it was made from an entirely different perspective.
“Lucero has been known for writing melancholy, sad-bastard drinking songs,” Nichols muses. “I think some fans were worried that I wouldn’t have anything to write about now that I’m happy in my personal life. In reality, though, it kind of freaked me out to go even deeper and more intense, because now I’ve got something to lose.”
They have useful Hollywood connections. One of the more arresting moments on the new album is Back To The Night, which features a broody spoken-word cameo from actor Michael Shannon (seen recently in The Shape Of Water). Nichols pulled in a favour from his brother Jeff, an acclaimed film director, to make it happen.
“It was such a cinematic piece of music,” he says. “I knew it was a long shot, but I texted Jeff and asked if Mike Shannon might want to do it. Later that night I got a voice memo from him, reading these words I’d written. It was just so cool.” Nichols is driven by a healthy feeling of competition.
Nichols stresses that he isn’t trying to rival his younger brother, whose film credits include Take Shelter, Mud and Midnight Special, but it does keep him on his toes. “It’s very friendly competition,” he admits, “but I’ll never catch up. One of the things I love about writing songs is that, unlike a movie, you’re not bound to any particular plot. Everyone can make their own story from it. As much as I’m jealous of Jeff’s success, the songwriting medium is what really gets me in the gut. It’s what keeps me alive.” Among The Ghosts is out on August 3 via Thirty Tigers.