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Article published Mar 30, 2007 Friends in low places: Lucero boys bring the rock out of Memphis
By Steve Wildsmith of The Daily Times Staff
Ben Nichols knew since he was a teenager growing up in Arkansas that rock 'n' roll was his future.
A way out, a way up, a way to get down ... there was salvation to be found across the Mississippi River, he thought, at the place where electric guitars howled out of Beale Street juke joints like packs of hungry dogs, a city where Elvis Presley's mansion stood as testament to everything rock could do for a poor boy from a small town.
He just never figured on Lucero being the vehicle for those dreams. In the beginning, Nichols told The Daily Times recently, it was just a way for him to make some music, earn some scratch and have some fun.
"When we started, we never thought we'd be a real band, and even through our first couple of records — 'The Attic Tapes' and the self-titled record — we weren't planning on ever leaving Memphis," Nichols said. "It started off as an experiment for me to write country songs, these really slow and soft songs, but as we evolved into an actual band, other influences crept in. And on top of that, sometimes you don't feel like playing the soft stuff, so the sound had to evolve to incorporate more things and ideas.
"I had been in bands in Arkansas since I was 14, and around the age of 19 or so, I just decided to stop trying to make them good and just let them be. I strived for simplicity more, and that's when my songwriting, I feel, started to go in the right direction and started to click and work. That was six years before Lucero ever existed, and that's the moment I personally intended on being in a band and doing it for real."
A former member of several Memphis-area punk outfits, Nichols first formed Lucero with guitarist Venable, and shortly thereafter, bassist John Stubblefield and drummer Roy Berry came into the fold. Slowly, the crowds at the band's shows grew, the tour schedule lengthened and the range of out-of-town dates expanded. And it took the whole band by surprise, Nichols said.
"I was struggling to put together a band, and it just kind of happened by accident," Nichols said. "Brian had never been in a band or played guitar before, and even though I had intended on doing this as a career for a long time, I didn't know Lucero would be the actual vehicle for it. Some of the very first songs we wrote wound up on 'The Attic Tapes,' and I think the songwriting still holds up really well. I think that's the one thing I'll give us credit for; we're not the best players and we're kind of drunken idiots, but I think we've got a few good songs in our catalogue."
With 2003's "That Much Further West," the band landed on the national map. Rolling Stone selected the album for its "Hot List," describing it as "the country album the Replacements never made." After the almost-obligatory label problems, personnel changes and living gig-to-gig on meager earnings, the guys sought legendary Memphis producer Jim Dickinson to record "Nobody's Darlings," released in 2005. Last year, the band returned with "Rebels, Rogues and Sworn Brothers," an album with more of a soulful sound thanks to piano and organ work by Rick Steff, the band's newest member. There's a Springsteen-like vibe to a lot of the songs, and the keys add a layer of yearning and desire to Nichols' whiskey-scarred vocals that seem ideal for drinking all night in some backroads tavern where the mood is too bleak and the lighting too dark to notice that the girl at the bar reminds you of the one who just broke your heart.
"Rick made a huge impact on that record, and things are starting to sound the way that I hear them in my head," Nichols said. "With Rick, we met him not too long before we started recording 'Rebels, Rogues and Sworn Brothers.' We had four of the new songs written, and he came over to practice, started playing the piano and just fit into that slot perfectly. I was like, 'That's what we've been missing; that's what I've been hearing in my head all along.'
"I guess it is more of a rock 'n' roll direction that we've been headed toward. I think it's always been there; it's just being accentuated a little more now. We get a lot of comparisons to Bruce Springsteen, and that's never a bad thing, but I see us more as a Replacements-type of band. We're never going to be huge; that's not the role we play, but if we're lucky enough, maybe we can leave some kind of mark. I mean, The Replacements influenced a ton of bands and were extremely important, but they weren't Springsteen."
That's a far cry from the band's early days playing the Memphis club Hi Tone, when Nichols and his bandmates were just surprised that people showed up to hear them play.
"There are markers and goals that you reach for; maybe you think, if I can play to a hundred people every night, that would be great,' and then one night we looked around the Hi Tone and realized there were a hundred people there," he said. "They knew the songs and they'd come to see us. That makes you think, maybe this is actually working. All along the way, we've had little things spur us on and inspire us a little more. It's been a slow-growing process, but it's been little things along the way that have helped us keep it together and move forward."
Right now, Lucero is planning to head overseas to London and Italy in a couple of months; the guys just returned from a 10-day tour of Spain. It was interesting to say the least, Nichols said with a laugh.
"In Spain, most of our fans were older dudes — these older rock 'n' rollers, and they loved us," he said. "We saw some beautiful Spanish women, and we occasionally got a wink, but I didn't see enough of them, that's for sure. Not that we could have talked to them anyway; we're almost helpless on the road in America. We're really helpless when we're in a foreign country and we don't know the language."