Lucero

Memphis, 1998, and a decade of driving

Lucero formed in Memphis in 1998 around the singer and guitarist Ben Nichols, the guitarist Brian Venable and the drummer Roy Berry. The band's own description of what they do — a synthesis of soul, rock and country with a Memphis accent — has held up better than most self-definitions, largely because the touring never stopped long enough for it to date.

The early discography reads like a group working out what it was in public. 'The Attic Tapes' arrived in 2000, self-released. A self-titled record followed on Empty Road Music in 2001, 'Tennessee' on Madjack in 2002 and 'That Much Further West' on Tiger Style in 2003. Each one landed on a different small label, which is the usual sign of a band that toured harder than it negotiated.

The line-up settled into the one that still plays: Nichols and Venable on guitars, Berry on drums, John C. Stubblefield on bass and Rick Steff on piano, organ and accordion. Steff's arrival is the reason the later records sound less like a bar band and more like a Memphis one — the keys carry a lot of the melodic weight that the guitars used to fight over.

The records that did the work

'Nobody's Darlings' came out in 2005 on Liberty & Lament, the band's own imprint, and is the record the current tour is built on. 'Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers' followed in 2006 on the same label. Then came the major-label chapter: '1372 Overton Park' on Universal in 2009, which brought horns and a bigger studio into the picture, followed by 'Women & Work' in 2012 and 'All a Man Should Do' in 2015, both on ATO.

From 2018 the band went back to running their own label. 'Among the Ghosts' arrived that year, 'When You Found Me' in 2021 and 'Should've Learned by Now' in 2023, the last of them cut again with the Memphis engineer and producer Matt Ross-Spang. Pitchfork's notice of the 2023 record picked out the humour in the writing and Berry's drumming, which is a fair read of a band that had spent two albums getting steadily more sombre and then decided to stop.

Alongside the albums there is a body of film work — music for 'Mud', 'Hellion' and 'Stronger' — which has kept Nichols's writing in front of listeners who would never buy a country-punk record.

Two solo detours in one year

Much of 2025 belonged to Nichols rather than to the band. Early in the year he and Steff issued a duo record, 'Lucero Unplugged', pulling Lucero songs down to voice, guitar and grand piano, with a few rarities among the more familiar material.

In July 2025 came 'In the Heart of the Mountain', Nichols's second solo album and his first in sixteen years. He self-produced it; Ross-Spang recorded and mixed. Cory Branan played guitars, Todd Beene pedal steel, and Morgan Eve Swain violin. Nichols has said it is the closest he has come to making a record entirely on his own terms, written without outside input.

The songs draw on growing up in Arkansas, on marriage, on family deaths, and on the collected poems of the Arkansas poet Frank Stanford. Glide's review called it a haunting, slow-revealing set and singled out 'Fading Back Into the Night', the lead single, the harder-edged 'I'm In Over My Head' and 'Swamper's Lament', a fiddle-led murder ballad drawn from family history. It is not a Lucero record and does not try to be, but it explains the tone of the quieter portions of the band's current sets.

Where the band stands now

There is no new Lucero studio album on the table. What there is instead is an anniversary campaign the band announced themselves in October 2025, under the heading 'Celebrating Nobody's Darlings … Again!', pairing a vinyl re-press of the 2005 record with a tour built around playing it in sequence.

That tour ran through March 2026 — San Antonio on the 6th, Tulsa on the 10th, St Louis on the 12th, Chicago on the 17th, Cincinnati on the 19th, Nashville on the 21st — and several dates sold out. The anniversary billing has carried on into the rest of the year rather than being retired after one run.

An eighteen-date autumn stretch opened at WorkPlay Theatre in Birmingham on 29 September 2026 and runs through the 40 Watt Club in Athens on the 30th, Haw River Ballroom in Saxapahaw on 2 October, the Stone Pony Summer Stage in Asbury Park on the 4th, Richmond's Broadberry on the 8th, the O+ Festival in Kingston on the 10th, Buffalo's Town Ballroom on the 14th and Louisville's Mercury Ballroom on the 16th, finishing at the Barrelhouse Ballroom in Chattanooga on 17 October. Flogging Molly's Salty Dog Cruise out of Miami follows from 25 to 30 October.

December means Memphis. Lucero Family Christmas returned to Minglewood Hall on 13 December 2025 with Amigo the Devil and River Shook, with a pound from every ticket going to the Memphis girls' football charity 901 Girls With Goals — the closest thing the band have to a fixed address in the calendar.

The show itself

The Chicago date at the Vic Theatre on 17 March 2026 gives the clearest picture of the current format. Doors at half past six, Otis Gibbs on at half past seven, Lucero on stage at a quarter to nine and off at twenty to eleven — one hour fifty-five minutes, no interval.

The first twelve songs were 'Nobody's Darlings' in album order, opening with 'Watch It Burn' and closing on 'The War'. That sequence forces out material the band had largely retired: 'Anjalee' had gone close to two decades without a live airing before this tour. The second half was a catalogue set rather than a hits set — 'For the Lonely Ones', the 'Downtown' intro into 'On My Way Downtown', 'Texas & Tennessee', 'Smoke', 'Among the Ghosts', 'Buy a Little Time', 'Nights Like These' and 'Tears Don't Matter Much'. The encore ran 'Drink 'Till We're Gone', a cover of Ewan MacColl's 'Dirty Old Town' and 'Here at the Starlite'.

Support has varied by market. Gibbs has done most of the run; the Madison Theater show in Cincinnati on 19 March 2026 added Jeremy Pinnell to the bill. The staging is unchanged from any other Lucero show — five players, no production to speak of, the keys doing the arranging. Venues on the autumn leg sit mostly between 500 and 1,200 capacity, which is where this band has always worked best.