Last night’s Lucero show taught me a couple of things. The first thing is that I am apparently an old bastard now and the front row at a show might be a little too much for me. Be kind to me on that one as my ego (read: belief that I am Peter Pan) is a little sore along various other parts of me. The second, and more important. thing is that sometimes changing a thing that you love can make it better…

This tour has been reviewed all over the place and it seems our boys opened the show pretty much the same as they have been with Sounds of the City followed by That Much Further West and it was a damn fine opening. The Jim Spake re-work of That Much Further West to include horns, Todd Beene (Glossary) on the pedal steel, and Rick Steff on keyboards was my first taste of what proved to be a different Lucero show than I am used to. I can’t really describe how it’s different, other than the obvious horns and such, so I will just describe it in the best way I know know: it’s like they managed to cram more Lucero into a Lucero show. They started off with rockers from 1372 Overton Park and tossed in some of the classics that had been reworked to include horns like That Much Further West, Chain Link Fence, and a few more. Then moved on to older stuff while the horn section took a break so it was just the boys, Todd Beene and Rick Steff. In a few songs it was just Ben and Rick on stage and Ben belted out The Last Pale Light In The West, Mom, and The War. The the band came back, all of them, and it was back to hard rockin’ Lucero with some amazing re-works. Ben flat out refused to play Hearts on Fire for us but did throw the Texas crowd a bone with Raisin’ Hell and pulled out If Only You Were Lonely, no horns, with Todd Beene playing pedal steel. The show ended a little early, and if you know our boys that means they only played for two hours, when some frat boy morons started getting too rowdy over by Rick and John C. They were over the top and had slammed into Rick a couple of times and John C. had swept them back with the neck of his bass, his new bass, and motioned for them to cut it out but when one of them put hands on the stage manager John C. was having none of it. He smacked four of the fuckers on the head with his bass and flipped it around and held it like a bat to back them off. It was a pretty amazing show of prowess with the bass if you ask me. So here’s a lesson to frat boy morons, you know who you are, don’t fuck with Lucero’s people. Just don’t. If you do you will have to face John C. Stubblefield, the bass assassin, and in his own words “I will jump in the air and shit in your air. And you can quote me on that“. Ben sang one more song, solo, while the mess got tidied up and managed to abruptly end the show without the crowd complaining too much.

In the immortal words of the Beastie Boys: You think this party’s over but it’s ready to begin. As any friend of the boys knows the real fun at a Lucero gig is often after the show, sometimes before if you get there early enough, and last night was no exception. I got the chance to talk to most of the band about the new album and the tour and really shed some light on how this album and this tour is different. I can tell you this much: it’s not because they signed with a major label. The only money the label put into anything was into marketing. The tour bus, the horn section, the new merch, and everything else is financed by the band. The “interviews” below are from various points in the night and some are paraphrased a little bit as we never got a chance to sit down, bust out a recorder, and do a formal interview session.

I asked Ben about the new album. the tour, and life in general…

INTERVIEWS BELOW THE CUT

Nine Bullets: So, aside from the sound, how is this album different?

Ben Nichols: Well even the way I wrote the songs was different. I handed in the demos for the album and the record company came back and asked for more demos. I told them I usually write most of the finished product in the studio and they told me to go back, write more, and hand in more demos. It made me work on the songs longer and I guess harder than I have to, at least before we were in the studio, than I have in the past.

9B: And the songs aren’t as autobiographical as your older stuff are they?

BN: The Last Pale Light In The West kind of changed the way I write, it was changing before a little bit with songs like Bikeriders but yeah this album was inspired by different things that the some of the others.

9B: So you are in tour bus is it nice to have the label backing you for this tour?

BN: The label didn’t pay for the bus. We did. It just makes sense with twelve people at each show. The Dodge wouldn’t have held us all.

9B: So you aren’t getting support from the label?

BN: We got a marketing budget but they haven’t even paid for the whole record so far.

9B: What is it like touring with the new instruments?

BN: It’s really great. Rick, Todd, and Jim really make the show.

Nine Bullets: So Roy what do you think of the new album?

Roy Berry: The production is just great. The mix is so much better. You can actually hear the drums on this one. On the other ones I sound like I am playing underwater or something.

9B: So what’s it like touring with the full horn section and stuff?

RB: I like it. I mean I have to be more on than I used to be. I can’t be sloppy because you can really tell. It’s really fun having the horns around. There’s one song, and I ain’t gonna tell you which one so it will surprise you, where we all stop playing and it’s just the horns. I think that’s my favorite part of the show and I’m not even playing during it.

9B: So how’s your side project, Overjoid, doing?

RB: I think I’ve, shit, recorded 40 songs or so this year. All of them are up for free on Band Camp except the ones I am trying to put on vinyl. No-one listens to it but I love doing it so I’m gonna keep doing it. There’s this thing where people upload samples and a bunch of people use the same samples to do stuff and I’ve kind of been doing that. It’s a little different because everyone is using the same stuff but it’s pretty cool. I have some old stuff as well from way back when with a lot of samples like preachers and stop smoking stuff. It was fun to do but it sounds like crap because I had to take a CD from the recorder, put in a player and yeah the quality’s not that great.

9B: So how was tonights show for you?

RB: It was time to be done. I may be too drunk to play drums…

Nine Bullets: You are playing a larger venue than you ever have in Houston. How’s that feel?

John C. Stubblefield: Well it’s larger but the ceiling is low and the sound on stage is weird. We’ll have to see how it goes.

9B: What is touring with this full band like?

JCS: It’s about damn time is pretty much how I feel about it. We’ve earned this and it’s nice.

9B: How is the tour going overall?

JCS: Man it’s great. The crowds are cool and it’s fun to play with all the instruments on stage.

9B: So a tour bus?

JCS: Yeah man it just made sense. With a van you are stuck right next to your bandmates all day, sometimes for twelve hours or more, and it’s just not comfortable. All of us are drinking less this tour and I think it’s because we are in the bus. When you’re packed in together like we were in the vans when you get out at the venue all you want to do is drink and get the van off of you. Before we would get a couple of hotel rooms, sleep for literally five hours or less, and drive to the next town. Some days you didn’t want to get back in the van at all. Now we have twelve people so it would four or five hotel rooms for how much fuckin’ money? For only four or five hours of sleep. So we looked at it and for only a little bit more we have a place where we can really sleep and be comfortable.

9B: So the old loft in the back of the van wasn’t the best digs?

JCS: Well, especially back east, you would crawl up in there with your nose an inch from the roof, wrap up in your sleeping bag with only your face showing and it would get so cold the condensation from your breath would freeze on the roof and when the sun came up it would start dripping on your face like chinese water torture. The bus is a lot nicer.

9B: You swing that bass around pretty good when you need to don’t you?

JCS: Fuck those assholes. I warned them over and over to cut it out or at least tone it down. Then they started pushing my stage manager. You don’t lay hands on my people. I had already picked out the instigators so I stepped over and whack, whack, whack, whack gave them all a knock then I picked it up like this and would have hit someone if they didn’t back the fuck off. One of them tried to apologize but you don’t get to say sorry after go that far. Fuck them.

9B: You did say something to crowd though…

JCS: Yeah it always sucks when a couple of assholes ruin it for everyone but I couldn’t play anymore after that. So I said I was sorry a couple of bad apples ruined it for everyone.

Nine Bullets: Man that was a great show.

Brian Venerable: Thanks it was a lot of fun.

9B: So how’s that baby doing?

BV: He’s good. 13 months old now. He’s moving around holding on to things but not quite walking yet.

9B: I bet it’s hard being on tour and not seeing him.

BV: Yeah, I flew home for fourteen hours so I could take him trick-or-treating for Halloween.

9B: So how was recording this album different for you?

BV: The producer, Ted Hutt, was hard. He never let us do it just once no matter how good it was. We could be perfect and he’d say “Now I want you to try it this way” and we did. It was rough. I drank in anger.

9B: Well it shows through. The mix on this album is really clean and everything sounds tight.

BV: Well he had five whole albums of the same songs to choose from. It’s the first Lucero record I can listen to not as a Lucero record. I mean I can put it on an listen and not be like “oh that part…ooofff” so it was worth it. It was hard but it was worth it.

9B: Other than the production quality how is it different from your other records?

BV: Well this is a whole album, and we haven’t had a whole album since That Much Further West. We put out collections of twelve or so really good songs but nothing that was a record unto itself. This is a whole record so to speak.

9B; What’s the tour been like for you so far?

BV: It’s been good. With the bus it’s a lot less stressful between shows and it gives us someplace to go and get away if we need to. And the whole band is great. We are touring with a lot of people and they are all fun to be around and fun to play with. The horns really add a lot to the show.

Nine Bullets: So how did you approach re-working the older songs to add in the horns?

Jim Spake: Well horns shouldn’t be a burden in a song and they shouldn’t take a song over so I listened to the songs and just suggested adding a little horn here, some keyboards here, some pedal steel over here and so on. The additions should highlight the original song and not change it. They should make it more of what it is.

9B: That’s pretty cool.

JS: Yeah it’s pretty much the same way I did the songs on the album. Just added something here and there to make the songs more…

9B: What’s it like touring with Lucero?

JS: Man these guys are amazing. They get along so well. It’s still crowded on the and they know how to keep everyone from getting stir crazy. They’ve been doing this a long time and are good at it. I guess you can’t play 200 shows a year in a van if you can’t get along. I’ve toured with some pretty big acts in my day that couldn’t get along like these boys do.

9B: You do have some impressive credentials to your name.

JS: Yeah I’ve played with some cool dudes. I was in Austin at a show and Mojo Nixon recognized me. It’s been so long since I played with him I was really amazed he remembered me. He’s a cool cat.

9B: He just released a good chunk of his catalog for free on Amazon a while back.

JS: Really. That’s cool. I wonder how he dealt with all the different labels he’s been on…

9B: And you played with Alex Chilton?

JS: Yeah but the stuff we did was kind of dodgy.

9B: I had never heard of him until I heard the ‘mats song…

JS: That’s right about when I was playing him. The stuff we were putting out wasn’t that great and The Replacements were singing about him…

There was a lot more to my conversation with Jim but it devolved into a conversation rather than an off the cuff interview. We talked about tenor and bari sax (I played bari in stage band during high school), some big names we wished we’d gotten to see live, Alex Chilton being a bastard, and lot more.

I got to talk to Todd Beene as well but not any length and it’s a shame because Todd is a damn cool guy and his pedal steel skills really make some of the older tracks a little more amazing. There were a couple of times during the show where it was him, Ben, and Rick playing an old track and it was like I was hearing it again for the first time. His work with Glossary is awesome and getting to see him play with Lucero has only increased my respect for him. I wish I had had time to talk to him more but I also learned that aside from the front row not being as fun as it used to be I apparently get tired much earlier. I left the venue around three in the morning and had to tear myself away from talking to Brian to get out that early. I promised Roy I’d do something for him and have to get back with Ben on something that some of you readers might really dig…

In closing this tour is not just another Lucero tour. The boys are diver in a different way than they have been. They are well rested and prepared for the shows. Sure they are still the boys we know and love but there’s a new energy there and a feeling like I got six or seven years ago at their shows. It’s almost if there’s been an internal revival. I don’t care how many times you’ve seen them you need to get off your ass and see them on this tour. Don’t miss it…

These tracks are from this tour but not from last night. Credit for these goes to D.C. Live Tracks. (You oughta pay him a visit)
Lucero – Sounds Of The City (full band live)
Lucero – That Much Further West (full band rework with horns live)
Lucero – Mom (minimal band Ben, Todd Beene, Rick Steff)