Lucero, Glossary, Calamity Cubes
Date: August 1st, 2008
Venue: The Bottleneck
Better Than: Walking in Memphis
By GAVIN SNIDER
If the Titanic was a Mississippi riverboat, Lucero would be the house band, playing their hearts out as the ship went down. Their best songs sound as if they’ve been around for years, three minute chronicles of southern life. Rather than resorting to the grandiose solos of Skynyrd or the Allman Brothers, Lucero takes its cues from pop and Midwest punk, playing relatively concise songs with well-placed lead guitar and keys. Despite frontman Ben Nichols’ common themes - whiskey, war, heartbreak, and desperate men and women - his lyrics never verge on cliché. Instead, these themes work in his favor, becoming a kit of parts from which he builds each song. Friday night the Bottleneck was almost full, the stage bathed in an eerie red light, and two industrial fans clanking beside the stacks of speakers, making more noise than breeze. I couldn’t have pictured a better setting.
The Calamity Cubes kicked off the night with a series of rousing barroom anthems hammered out on various string instruments, including banjo, mandolin, upright bass, and an acoustic guitar with a decal of some exotic woman. The frontman summed their music up best. “We’re gonna play true story songs. Sad shit. This one’s about a dead girl.” Harnessing the guttural croak of Tom Waits, his bandmates chimed in with harmonies that broke down into yelps, grunts, and howls. They sounded like a band of drunken sailors, albeit sailors who stopped to tune. Each band member wore a different kind of hat. These guys were country before country was cool.
The kick drum said Glossary, but a few songs into the set it became clear that this band wasn’t going to have to explain any difficult words. They played polished rock’n’roll in the same vein as Lucero, with killer steel guitar, a girl playing tambourine and adding sweet harmonies, and a drummer who sang along with every song. Whenever the drummer is singing with no microphone in sight, I can’t help but think that the band absolutely loves what they’re doing. At every breakdown the band would sway and bend in unison, giving the illusion that we weren’t watching a rock show at all, but some well-choreographed interpretive dance.
For a band whose songs thrive on energy and raw emotion, Lucero’s endless requests for the sound guy during the first few songs - more vocals in this monitor, less guitar in that monitor, no, actually less vocals up here - made for a dismally slow start to the show. This didn’t go unnoticed. Two songs in and two rounds of whiskey shots down, frontman Nichols remarked that they had “played for eight minutes and drank for ten minutes. We know what’s goin’ on.” When the whiskey settled the band hit their stride, tearing through songs that the crowd eagerly shouted out. I haven’t seen a band so excited to play requests since Ghostface came to town.
Just as in their recordings, Nichols’ hoarse voice was the best part of the show. I expected this to be a product of him straining when he sang, but no, turns out the guy actually talks this way. It sounds as if he smoked and drank ‘til he turned it beautiful. About halfway through the set everything went to hell and the pedal fell off the bass drum. While the rest of the band wisely went to the bar for more shots, Nichols and the steel guitar player from Glossary played a few slow, sparse ballads. It was a wonderful change of pace, and by the time they had fixed the drum, the crowd was ready to rock again. Lucero’s marathon set ended just before last call, when Nichols closed the night in the same way, with a long ballad accompanied only by steel guitar.
Critics Notebook: I drove to Memphis on Tuesday to help my girlfriend move into her new place. I had the drive planned perfectly: driving through winding Arkansas roads and low hills, listening to every Lucero album in anticipation of their show Friday. But, as we all know, the best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft a-gley. The moving van only had a radio, and the radio only picked up bad country music and Christian talk shows. We dented the rental car. Fog and torrential rain added an hour to the drive. Actually it wasn’t too much different from a Lucero song.
Personal Bias: We Kansans are simple folk who love sad songs about beer and women.
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