Lucero at the Bowery Ballroom

Ben Nichols

Country-rock jam band Lucero formed in 1998 in Memphis, Tennessee. Caught between rock and country, the band played punk clubs due to a lack of proper venues for mixed-genre artists. The band toured hard and with time crafted a niche audience. Lucero's 10th album, Lucero: Live from Atlanta, is a double-CD, career-spanning retrospective of 32 songs recorded over three nights in Atlanta’s Terminal West. Lucero is presently comprised of vocalist/guitarist Ben Nichols, guitarist Brian Venable, keyboardist Rick Steff, bassist John Stubblefield and drummer Roy Berry.

On this By The Seat Of Our Pants Tour, Lucero headlined three nights at the Bowery Ballroom and opened for itself, starting each night by playing an acoustic set of deep cuts and songs not often performed live with the full band. On the first night, the set list for the first half of the show was scribbled on a flat brown paper bag, and the looseness on stage made one wonder if this set list was more fact or fiction. Between sets, several band members smoked and chatted with fans outside the venue. The second set rocked more and featured horns. The attraction was not the individual songs, however, but the spirit in which they were delivered. Nichols' deep, gravelly vocals led the charge and the party began. Nichols sang heartfelt songs with vivid, panoramic tableaus of life, love, partying and taking the road. Lucero rocked and twanged accordingly, seldom defining a clear boundary, as if the band was comprised of anti-pop bohemians. The band demonstrated its flexibility, successfully fusing its alt-folk, alt-country, alt-punk and alt-rock sounds.

Visit Lucero at www.luceromusic.com.