Don’t you just hate when life gets in the way of the fun things? It’s taken me way too long to get this written up, and for that I wholeheartedly apologize. So without any further ado, here are my thoughts on what has turned into Lucero’s annual mid-October visit to New York City.
I arrived at Music Hall of Williamsburg a little earlier than expected due to a surprising lack of traffic on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway aka the BQE (if you’re from NY, you know what a surprise it is whenever there isn’t any traffic on this highway). So walking into the venue, to see the room completely empty was a bit startling. At about 8 PM the handful of people in the room were greeted on stage by an unannounced comedian friend of Ben Nichols and the band. (I apologize for not having caught his name but if anyone does know it please leave it in the comments so that I can include it in this piece.) Not surprisingly, standing on a stage in front of maybe a dozen people in a room meant to hold up to 600, led to this sparsity of people to become the focal part of the act. Eventually hitting his stride, especially when he got on the topic of a certain sex act which much to his surprise, millennials have brought to the mainstream, the crowd (or those who were there at least) quite enjoyed the act.
L.A. Edwards, a foursome consisting of 3 brothers plus one, from Nashville by way of San Diego are the official opening act on this tour and they took the stage right at 8:30. With a vocal style very reminiscent of Jackson Browne, lead singer Luke Edwards along with brothers Jay and Jerry as well as guitarist Landon Pigg offered up a really nice opening set laced with soulful Laurel Canyon style harmonies backed by a mix of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers crossed with Dawes brand of rock and roll.
Ben Nichols, Brian Venable, John Stubblefield, Roy Berry and Rick Steff AKA Lucero took the stage shortly before 10 PM and started things off with “For The Lonely Ones” from 2018’s Among The Ghosts. Following this up with 2 fan favorites in “Chain Link Fence” and “Sweet Little Thing” both from their classic Tennessee LP, the boys now had the audience (which had grown into an actual “crowd” by now) singing and shouting right along with Ben at the top of their lungs.
Which brought us to the first of what would be 5 new songs on the evening. As you all have probably heard (or read right here in Dying Scene), Lucero will be releasing their latest full-length LP, Should’ve Learned By Now in February 2023. “Drunken Moon” is a slow burner ballad with actual backup vocals included which the Edwards boys from L.A. Edwards would come onstage to help out with. Ben, while calling them out onstage to help out with vocals, made fun of himself by saying that he’s been called an “anti-harmony” singer since such things are so rare on Lucero songs.
Throughout the rest of the evening we would be treated to “Buy A Little Time”, “Macon If We Make It”, “Nothing’s Alright” and “One Last F.U.” (encore) from the upcoming album. Unlike “Drunken Moon” these other 4 songs are for the most part serious rockers which the band seemed to be having a blast playing. This brings me to one observation which I was happy to see. We all know that 99% of the time we can expect Ben to be…well for lack of a better way to describe it, BEN. And of course this “Ben-ness” often has a direct correlation as to the amount of whiskey passed to the stage from the crowd. This night in Brooklyn was no different than in the past with one exception.
Brian seemed to be much more animated than he has been in quite some time. He jumped into one of Ben’s monologues at one point to say that Lucero had been playing at Music Hall Of Williamsburg for quite some time now, going all the way back to its days when it was known as The North Six. He even started to tell the story of when he played on this stage completely naked, then he came to his senses and held off on sharing the grim details.
In any event, my point is that more so than I’ve seen in the recent past at least, the boys in the band appeared to be having a truly great time on stage. Of course John was his usual campy self on bass and Roy just sat back and had a grand old time beating the hell out of the skins.
It was particularly great to see Rick doing well sitting behind the keyboards with his stately new (to me at least) tied-back ponytail. (Unfortunately, we were not graced with Rick pulling out the accordion on this particular evening, but it was really great to see that he was clearly on the mend from his health issues). Ben even took the time to mention that while this might have been the smallest crowd that they’d thus far played to on this tour, it was by far the most fun and best show (from his perspective) so far.
All in all, it was a fantastic way to pass away an otherwise mundane Tuesday evening in NYC. In what turned out to be a bit of foreshadowed irony, Ben did mention at the end of the show how he was really looking forward to their drive after the show over to beautifully scenic Secaucus, NJ which got quite a cackling of laughter from the crowd. Of course, the irony reared its ugly head the following day when a member of the band’s touring crew had some medical issues and the tour bus was basically sequestered for the next 3 or 4 days in “beautifully scenic Secaucus“.
L.A. Edwards Slideshow
Lucero Slideshow
