Lucero / Bobby Bare Jr. @ Black Cat 10/31/07

so i've seen lucero a couple of times and was really looking forward to this show at black cat.

we got there just as gainesville, fl's own whiskey & co were finishing up their opening set. i think it had something to do with the sound guy at the mixing board juggling his dinner while mixing the band, but they sounded HORRIBLE.

second opener bobby bare, jr., on the other hand, was fantastic. i'd heard some of his stuff before, but don't own any of his albums and hadn't seen him live. i was expecting a kind of subdued singer/songwriter-type of set, and we got a shit-kicking rock clinic from an obviously seasoned band. these guys were incredibly nimble, jumping from deep southern rock grooves to light steel guitar touches. i heard influences ranging from neil young to dinosaur jr. to drive-by truckers. it was really impressive.

against that backdrop, lucero took the stage and just never really hit the highs that bobby bare managed to nail. frontman ben nichols kept complaining that his voice was shot, but his notoriously raspy 3-packs-of-marlboro-reds-a-day pipes sounded just fine to me. if that was ben's voice with a torn-up throat, then i shudder to think of how he would sound when he's feeling well. it's not that lucero didn't sound good, but they just didn't hit the peaks that i expected from them after seeing some fantastic gigs with them headlining.

after a solid first set, ben played a few songs with a stripped-down crew of himself and a couple of bobby bare's bandmates. lucero came back and played a sloppy encore set that actually sounded better than their first effort.

the crowds at lucero shows always crack me up. there's so much more diversity at shows like this than most black cat indie rock gigs. sure, it's 99% white kids like at the indie shows, but you got the ole miss and uga frat boys mixing with tattooed punk kids.