Lucero 'Actually Give A Shit For The First Time In A Long Time'

Hard-working and hard-living country-punks Lucero are nothing if not an example of tenacity and survival, having survived 20 years and crafted ten albums from what to the untrained eye would be considered the mainstream margins. But for bands like Lucero, who answer to creative rather than commercial concerns, success is measured in different terms, the deep connection they foster with their fans far more important than emptying their wallets.

To their devoted and ravenous following, they’re a band of unparalleled depth and diversity, their music ranging from road-worn Southern rock to folk-tinged laments to barrelling punk and, in recent times, to authentic Memphis soul. Every style they touch is defined by the dive-bar wisdom and whiskey-soaked, gravelly vocals of frontman Ben Nichols, whose world-weary and expressive voice drips with integrity and truth, fostering a connection with fans which resonates so deeply that in 2018 the Memphis mayor officially declared 14 April to be ‘Lucero Day’.

But, inevitably, the hedonism of the road must give way at some point, even for the most rock’n’roll of rock’n’roll bands. Nichols, now in his early-40s, recently fathered his first child Izzy, and it’s his two-year-old daughter who these days is taking up most of his day-to-day life (“I mean it when I say it’s the funnest thing I’ve ever done,” he says). The new demands of fatherhood have meant that Lucero have had to slightly rein back their relentless touring schedule, but the singer seems happy to finally cede in this way to the passing of time.

“We’ve been slowly decreasing the amount of shows we play each year a little bit – we were playing a whole lot there in the middle years – but we’ve been doing it for 20 years now, and over the last five, six, seven years we’ve started to slow down a little bit,” he explains. “There are some other guys in the band who have children as well and we’re getting a little bit older, so at this point in our lives it’s actually nice to have a successful home life and a successful family life which is practically impossible to do if you’re on the road all the time.

"It’s about balance in all parts of your life, whether it’s your career or your drinking, and right now we’ve got a pretty good balance. We’re in a pretty good spot.”

“So we’re slowing down a little bit, but playing live shows is still how we pay the bills so we can’t stop completely: we have no choice, we’ve still got to get out there and go on the road and go on tour, it’s how we earn the living and it’s still fun, we still enjoy it for sure. It’s about balance in all parts of your life, whether it’s your career or your drinking, and right now we’ve got a pretty good balance. We’re in a pretty good spot.”

Lucero have made their way Down Under a couple of times – in 2011 opening for Boston punks Dropkick Murphys and then for Soundwave in 2013 (Nichols also played solo on The Revival Tour in 2010) – but this marks the first time that Australian fans will experience a full headlining set from a band renowned for holding nothing back in the live realm. “I apologise for taking so long to get down there properly,” the singer chuckles, “but I’ve got to admit that the good part is that we’re actually playing better right now than we’ve played maybe ever, actually – I think we’re putting on the best rock’n’roll shows that we’ve ever put on.

“And part of that is that balance I was talking about earlier: we’re at a point where we’re not burning ourselves out and we’ve actually come back around to where we’re really enjoying playing these songs, and really enjoying the process of writing the songs. It’s how music and playing in a band is supposed to be and so often is not, and that means that the shows are better.”

Until now fans hanging for a live dose of Lucero have had to make do with the excellent 4-LP Live From Atlanta set that dropped in 2014, 32 songs culled from three raucous nights which give a genuine indication of just how good this band can be in the flesh. “That‘s a pretty good sample of a lot of the catalogue from the beginning up until that point,” Nichols concurs. “But of course now we’ve got this new album Among The Ghosts and we’ll be doing most of the songs off that record, but we’ll be doing plenty of older stuff too. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover since we haven’t been there in so long, we’ve got lots of songs we need to play down there – we’ll try and play as long as we can! We’re not scared to play long sets in the States, we’ll see how long they let us get away with down there.”

Among The Ghosts is defiantly a return to Lucero’s bar-band beginnings – a potpourri of sweat and whiskey tempered by a more mature lyrical turn by Nichols – but this about-face can really only be given context in terms of the three albums which preceded it.

The albums in question – 1372 Overton Park (2009), Women & Work (2012) and All A Man Should Do (2015) – found Lucero utilising a horn section to dig deep into the Memphis soul tradition, a fascinating and rewarding detour driven largely by the addition of veteran multi-instrumentalist Rick Steff to the Lucero line-up.

“Rick’s a big part of what we do now and really when he first came along around 2010 or 2011 – it was a while back – he’s a keyboard player and he’s been doing it a long time,” Nichols reflects. “At that time we’d really gone the drunken rock’n’roll route about as far as we could take it and we’d been running ourselves down… I dunno, I’m not sure that the band would have lasted much longer if Rick hadn’t come along.

“He brought not just a whole new instrument but also musicality to the band – he’s really the only professional musician, like trained musician, in the band. The rest of us are just making it up as we go along, but Rick really knows his stuff, so having somebody on board of that calibre meant there was this whole new sound we could tap into and a whole new type of song that we could play. He really kinda saved the band when he came along, and ever since then it’s just been getting more and more fun.

"We’re actually trying, we actually give a shit for the first time in a long time.

“We had a horn section for a long time on a number of records there and that was really fun to explore too, especially being from Memphis which has Stax Records which was all that Otis Redding stuff and the Booker T & The MGs stuff and all that soul stuff, it was cool. Memphis has a lot of music history to it: it’s a cool place to be if you’re a rock’n’roll band, it just feels cool being in a band there. I’m not from there originally – I’m from Arkansas, right across the river – but I’ve always respected Memphis, and I don’t think this band could be from anywhere else.

“But that Memphis soul sound was fun to explore for a while, and now we’ve stripped it back down to just a five-piece – guitars, bass, drums and keys – and it’s working for us, I really like this streamlined sound which is on this new record and it’s what we’re playing at live shows now.

“So it’s not quite as all over the place as Live From Atlanta, but I think that’s a good thing – it’s a little more focussed. We’re picking old stuff that goes nicely with the new record, so we’re playing old stuff but there’s a little more thought put into it. We’re actually trying, we actually give a shit for the first time in a long time. I think these new songs deserve it, I like them so much and have so much fun playing them and they’re such a joy to sing that I want them to be good.

“Hopefully I haven’t shot myself in the foot and completely jinxed our sets, talking it up and then we get down there and play horrible drunken crap! Which is totally possible, it’s rock’n’roll so you never know how it’s going to go.”

While they’re now being left in the rearview mirror, that triumvirate of horn-laden Memphis soul albums were far more than a temporary excursion in the Lucero catalogue. “Oh, I’m really proud of them,” Nichols stresses. “Those were all with this producer Ted Hutt who’d worked with The Gaslight Anthem and he was an original member of Flogging Molly way back in the day, he’s worked with a whole lot of people and is a really talented producer. We learned a whole lot from him.

“We’ve never really known what we’re doing – we’re just making it up as we go – and he was the first producer we worked with that got real in-depth and was involved in the songs from the very beginning and all the way through. He got very involved and very detail-oriented, which is something nobody else had done before and we learned a whole lot from that process – it was painful, but we learned a lot.

“1372 Overton Park was a big step for us songwriting-wise and production-wise for sure – that’s the best sounding record we’d ever made in our lives, up to that point. Then I think we were able to dial that in for Women & Work, which is a real rock’n’roll record – there’s nothing deep on there or sad, it’s not meant to be the emotional Lucero, it’s supposed to be the kinda party Lucero. It has those kind of lyrics, and I love it for what it is, and then I thought that was the best-sounding record we’d made. Then All A Man Should Do came along and I think we’d really got it dialled in with Ted, and that record I think is a natural bridge between Women & Work and Among The Ghosts, you can see which direction it’s starting to head.

“Then I think songwriting-wise I really [found] a vein of form on this newest one: I love the songs on those last few records, but there’s something special about these, especially taken as a whole, as an album. There’s good songs on those last three records, but I think there’s a consistency to this new one that the last three records definitely didn’t have. It’s all a process, but we’ve learned a lot over the last few records and I think it’s benefitting us.”

"Not too many years ago it didn’t really matter if I drunk myself to death in a bar, and it didn’t matter what the future held.”

Among The Ghosts is slightly darker in tone that previous Lucero fare, something Nichols has attributed in past interviews to the advent of fatherhood giving him a newfound focus on taking life more seriously. “I dunno, not too many years ago it didn’t really matter if I drunk myself to death in a bar, and it didn’t matter what the future held,” he reflects. “Now there’s more to lose and the stakes are higher and I’m taking things a little more seriously now. I wasn’t sure if that was ever going to happen, and I’m really lucky that it did.

“A lot of old Lucero fans were, like, ‘Oh, no! He’s happily married and he’s got a baby girl, what’s going to happen to his songwriting? He can’t write happy songs, that’s going to be terrible!’ but I think they actually got darker and more serious. Everybody’s nervous when they start a family, it’s a big change and you’re not sure what’s coming, but luckily my wife knows how to be a good mother because I had no idea how to be a good parent. I think I’m doing alright – I think I’m picking it up OK – but it’s scary, and I think there is a lot of that tension on this new album for sure.

“But when I’m away from my family and on the road on tour these are the songs that I want to hear and I want to sing, these are the songs that get me through the long, lonely nights away from my home and my girls. There’s a lot in there – these songs actually mean something, maybe more so than Women & Work and All A Man Should Do even. These songs have a lot of me in them.”

And while Nichols has undeniably invested a lot of himself into the songs on Among The Ghosts, in some ways they seem less autobiographical than usual given that quite a few are presented as third-person narratives rather than his trademark first person ruminations. “True, it’s funny how that works,” he smiles. “I was planning to write more like short stories where they’re not all strictly autobiographical. One might be a soldier writing a letter home, or Long Way Back Home – which my brother [acclaimed film director Jeff Nichols] helped us make a video for – I’m not really sure what it’s about, small time criminals back in Arkansas, I have no idea what I’m talking about in that song.

“I’ve written plenty of songs about how drunk I can be and ex-girlfriends – that’s well-worn territory, and I love those songs and still sing ‘em – but I was trying to push a little beyond that. So the narrators aren’t necessarily me, but ironically with the songwriting process and the position I’m in right now they just naturally a whole lot of what was going on in my life was poured into those other narratives.

“I think that’s the way it should work as a songwriter, you don’t want it to just spill out as a 14-year-old’s diary journal, that’s awful. I’ve got a few songs that are borderline that kind of crap and I appreciate those – they kept me alive in my early years – but I think there should be a little more thought and a little more craft put into some of that stuff, and then they might actually transcend into being good songs and not just pure emotional dribble.

“There’s still emotion in there, but there’s something else that can maybe carry it beyond the simple stuff and make it appeal to more people. Maybe I’m thinking about it too much, but I feel there’s a pretty good recipe that I’ve got going on now with the songwriting, it’s a nice combination of the real emotional stuff and some storytelling stuff.”

“I’ve written plenty of songs about how drunk I can be and ex-girlfriends – that’s well-worn territory."

It seems ever since Nichols’ first solo foray The Last Pale Light In The West (2009) – a dissection of Cormac McCarthy’s epic novel Blood Meridian – that authors and literature have influenced his songwriting as much as other songs and musicians. “Oh yeah, for sure,” he chuckles. “That was the most blatant case of me just working my way through a novel and just cherry picking all the good lines and stealing them and putting them in songs. I guess I should actually have made it a tribute album or whatever and completely claim where all this stuff is coming from, that book had so many lines in it that were, like, ‘Oh man, that would be great in a song, I’d love to write a song around that line,’ and for once I actually followed through and did it.

“I’m real proud of that record, writing that was like writing a research paper for school – a lot of note-taking – but it worked out well. That’s still my favourite novel: I like a lot of Cormac McCarthy’s stuff, but Blood Meridian is special, it stands apart, it’s different. People say I should do another one, but I can’t imagine what book it would be that would engage the same way.”

At this stage we’re interrupted by the arrival of Nichols' true love Izzy, freshly-bathed and ready for some attention from her father, who in her eyes is a play-partner rather than a rock star. “That’s who I hang out with most of the time,” Nichols beams. “We even have a song we play live sometimes called Hello, My Name Is Izzy, just some goofy stuff I wrote to make her dance and I sing it to her when I put her to bed at night. There might be a whole suite of Izzy songs down the track.

“So you’ve got a Blood Meridian concept album, all of this dark family stuff on the new album, and then there might be a children’s album in the next few years, we’ll see. Never say never.”