This show was initially slated to take place a few days prior (Thursday the 20th, if you must know) but due to…reasons…the band was forced to cancel a few shows in Hamden, CT, and Buffalo, NY, and Titusville, PA, but thankfully the Boston show was able to be slid from a Thursday to a Sunday evening, which means instead of being yours truly’s first Lucero show in five days, it was his first Lucero show in eight days. Talk about first-world problems.
ANYWAY…the rescheduled show marked Lucero’s first trip to Boston proper in just over a calendar year, and it took place back at Paradise Rock Club, the legendary 900-ish capacity venue that’s become a bit of a regular stop on the Memphis five-piece’s fall tours. Due in part to the show being moved to a new date (which, in turn, happened to be a cool and drizzly Sunday night), the show was perhaps a little more sparsely attended than it otherwise would have been, but that just gave the attendees more room to dance and get rowdy as the band ripped through a two-hour, twenty-four song barn-burner of a set.
The band kicked things off with the trio of “For The Lonely Ones,” “Chain Link Fence” and “Sweet Little Thing” as has been as close to a script as you’re going to get at a freewheeling Lucero show. From there, at least a cursory level of attention was paid to a “setlist,” although a look at the printed game plan (see the slideshow below) and a look at the list of songs they actually played reveals numerous deviations from the course. It’s a Lucero show, after all – you can’t go off the rails if there were never rails to begin with!
The band ended up playing a pretty representative sample of tracks from across their near quarter-century career. Four tracks from the upcoming twelfth studio album Should’ve Learned By Now (lead single “One Last Fuck You,” “Nothing’s Alright,” “Buy A Little Time,” and “Macon If We Make It,” the latter of which sounds like the closest thing to a crossover hit that we’ve heard from them in some time) were spread out between such classics as “Watch It Burn” and “Smoke” and “Texas & Tennessee” and, of course, “The War.” Crowd requests are a normal part of a Lucero show and they would have spent four hours playing all the suggestions lobbed at them on this night, but some surprise yesses included “Darken My Door” and “Pull Me Close, Don’t Let Go” and “Little Silver Heart” and “No Roses No More,” the latter of which dates back to the earliest days of Lucero’s career but has become a massive, dual-guitar shred-fest of a song that could easily serve as a cathartic show closer on any given night.
L.A. Edwards once again served as formidable openers on this particular night. It marked the band’s first appearance in Boston, although it wasn’t the band’s frontman and namesake’s first time in town, as he regaled the crowd with a story of a night spent at the very same venue years prior working as a guitar tech for the one-and-only Lucinda Williams…only to have one of her guitars wind up stolen on that very night. (Don’t worry, he tracked it down on Comm. Ave after a few nervous moments. A particular high note on this night found the three Edwards brothers (Jay, Jerry and Luke from left to right in the picture here) gathered around a solitary mic to kick off a soulful rendition of the Townes Van Zandt classic “If I Needed You” before returning to their respective instruments and joining guitarist Landon Pigg to close things out.
The Lucero/L.A. Edwards fall tour runs through the rest of this week, winding down Sunday night in Bloomingon, Illinois. Check the full bitchin’ rundown here, and check out our photo slideshows below!
Lucero Slideshow
L.A. Edwards Slideshow
