For Ben Nichols — singer, songwriter and front man of veteran Memphis roots rock band Lucero — life has become dramatically different over the last few years, bringing with it a marriage and his first child. As he explains how all this has affected him — personally and creatively — you can hear his daughter in the background running around getting ready to celebrate her 2nd birthday.
That kind of emotional maturity and perspective colors Lucero’s ninth and latest album, “Among the Ghosts,” due out Aug. 3.
After stints on major labels Universal and ATO, the band — Nichols, guitarist Brian Venable, bassist John C. Stubblefield, drummer Roy Berry and keyboardist Rick Steff — self-financed its latest album and will release it on their own Liberty & Lament imprint (which is distributed through Thirty Tigers). The disc arrives as Lucero marks 20 years together.
The making of “Among the Ghosts” brought changes to the band’s working methodology. Lucero’s last three LP were cut at Midtown’s Ardent studio with British producer Ted Hutt (Gaslight Anthem, Old Crow Medicine Show) behind the board. This time, the band elected to move to Sam Phillips Recording Service and co-produce the album themselves with local Grammy-winning engineer Matt Ross-Spang.
“Phillips is actually two doors down from our practice space,” Nichols says. “We’d worked there before, with [legendary producer] Roland Janes back in the day. But this time, we wanted to take a different approach to how we made it as compared to the last few records, and do it in a little bit more of a laid-back Memphis environment with Matt, who’s a Memphis kid.
Rather than work for several weeks straight, the band instead did a series of hit and run sessions between tours: 10 days to start, then three days here, another five days there.
The disc also marks the first project without sax man Jim Spake, who left after several years and records as part of an expanded Lucero lineup.
“Lucero has always been the kind of band that adapts to whatever is available at the time,” Nichols says. “When the horns were there, it was a lot of fun, and we were after that Stax Records soulful direction. But Spake didn’t want to be on the road anymore, so we ended up being back to a five piece — the four original members and [keyboardist] Rick Steff, who’s been with us for over 10 years now.
Nichols notes there is a shared influence and inspiration between him and his younger cinematic sibling. “There’s been some crossover there for sure. With this record, I was making a conscious effort to write from a perspective other than mine. To work on the craft of storytelling and expand my viewpoint — which is not easy. I was looking to a bunch of short story writers, like Larry Brown and Ron Rash, and filmmakers like my little brother. So he definitely influenced me. And, I dunno, I have a feeling it works both ways,” he says, laughing.
With the record imminent, Lucero is ramping up to hit the road. Next week, on the day the album comes out, the band will headline a show at Red Rocks in Colorado. They’ll follow that with a full U.S. tour in the fall. They will play their only Memphis date at the Mempho Music Fest at Shelby Farms Park in early October. A UK tour will follow in December — which means the band will skip its annual Christmas show at Minglewood Hall this year — before heading to the rest of Europe and Australia in early 2019.
Lucero’s “Among the Ghosts” is out Aug. 3 on Liberty & Lament/Thirty Tigers.
For more information, visit Luceromusic.com.