An acoustic and intense return to songs from the Memphis band’s 25-year history.
Though the vogue for Unplugged albums may have peaked in the 90’s with multi-platinum selling versions by the likes of Eric Clapton and Nirvana, there seems to be something of a revival of late. A trip to the local open-mic night will yield opportunities to hear all manner of genres played to the accompaniment of an acoustic guitar or fiddle. With no live music possible during the pandemic, perhaps it was the success of so many home recordings that reminded us of the benefits of a stripped-down format, allowing the human voice to express raw emotion and the lyrics to shine through loud and clear.
In recent times the ‘Unplugged’ format has been revived by Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga, Twenty One Pilots, Mark Knopfler and even Liam Gallagher. Joining these ranks comes the new double album from Ben Nichols and Rick Steff, two members of the five-piece Memphis band Lucero.
With all 20 songs recorded in a single day under producer Matt Ross-Spang, singer and primary lyricist Nichols plays guitar alongside long-time pianist Steff to recreate a selection of crowd favourites and less well-known tracks from their 25 year back catalogue. These two have played many acoustic shows together, despite the band itself being one of the hardest working on the scene, often playing 250 shows in a year.
These have mostly been in the USA so that Lucero may not be familiar to a UK audience. Formed in the late 1990’s, their first venture was ‘The Attic Tapes’, released in 2000. Appropriately, it’s a track from this that opens their ‘Unplugged’ album. With a few gentle chords it’s straight into ‘In Lonesome Times’, Nichols’s whiskey-soaked voice right in front of the mix and sounding even more pained than on the original recording.
That pretty much dictates the pattern for the remainder of the album. Lucero have been described as a Stax-inspired southern rock soul band and from 2009 a horn section was used intermittently. To give an idea of how this translates to a simpler format of just voice, guitar and piano, it’s like hearing Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out’ accompanied by just piano during his solo shows on Broadway in 2018.
According to the band’s website, their previous release, 2023’s ‘Should’ve Learned By Now’ bridges the “old Lucero” with the “new Lucero” and this reimagined collection seems like a smart way to fuse the styles together and find new depth in songs that may have been overlooked or become over-familiar. As with many similar unplugged offerings, the absence of other instrumentation allows the songs to reveal their essence and take on new life and with ‘Lucero Unplugged’, Nichols and Steff will delight their many followers and perhaps find a new audience.
