08.13.06

In the gutter with Ben Nichols

Posted in lucero, mucklewain, talk to us - August 13th, 2006 at 11:35 am by Cricket

[We can't always get the coverage we want, but fortunately HCT has agents all over the globe. A few days ago our pal, Ethel, had a conversation with Ben Nichols of Lucero. We'll let her tell the story…—Cricket]

It’s past two on a New York Saturday morning. My clothes are covered in splatters of beer and less identifiable filth. My feet must really be killing me from the pounding they’ve taken for the past few hours, because there’s no other reasonable explanation why I would have chosen to sit on the curb with my feet in the gutter. At least, that’s what I told myself at first. The other reasonable explanation crouches two feet away, and NOW would be the perfect time to ask him some burning, insightful questions. Yet the only flotsam in my whiskey sea brain is “I am sitting in a New York gutter outside CBGB’s with Ben Nichols. This is awesome.”

Nearly twenty four hours later I get a cleaner (albeit no soberer) opportunity. The die-hards of the Lucero fan base have accompanied the band to an East Village bar and pretty much everyone has been drinking since 6 pm, when we all boarded the Temptress for a Lucero concert cruise. Almost everyone is wasted enough to think it’s pretty funny when some joker takes advantage of the two Lucero CDs in the jukebox and plays “Drink ‘Til We’re Gone.” Ben is looking suitably embarrassed as the small crowd starts to sing along, drowning out his jukebox doppelganger, and I utilize the distraction to cozy up to the bar next to him and make my play.

“You know, we were thinking earlier that most of your fans have probably heard some of your songs more often than you’ve sung them.”

“Oh definitely,” Ben responds.

“I mean, you probably don’t pop the new Lucero CD in your player and listen to it twenty times in a row like I would.” Duh. Yeah, nice play. [Excellent. I love it that you're as smooth as we are.—Cricket] [She hasn't grabbed his ass yet.—Mimi]

He laughs in affirmative, but I still feel like the world’s biggest fangirl tool. [I'm sure he appreciates it when the girl fans come out since most of their fans seem to be drunk men.—Mimi] Thankfully, I gave up ever trying to score with Ben Nichols about 2 seconds after the first time I met him.

Not to say he isn’t hot. Hordes of screaming fangirls would rend me limb from limb like so many tattooed Maenads for even suggesting such a thing. No, I just realized upon meeting Ben and the rest of the Lucero boys the very first time that I wanted them to be my friends. I wanted us to always be able to hang out and have a drink and a laugh. I wanted, in fact, all the good times I’ve had with them thus far; being John’s groupie-for-a-night in L.A., stealing Roy’s tiara backstage in Ventura, and even having drunk, shirtless, sweaty Brian hang off me in the front row at CBGB’s. I’ve seen Lucero in five or six different states and every single time I see one of them I feel happy. Not just because I know they’re going to put on a great show, but because I like the boys in the band.

So back in New York City, on a drunkass Saturday night, I find myself in a similar situation to one I’ve been in many times before. It’s the time of night where I am just drunk enough to start pouring my heart out to Ben Nichols in the most stilted fashion possible. Even as I do it, I’m feeling sorry for the guy. I try and rescue my lame ass opening by talking about the songs they played (on a motherfuckin’ boat!) on the boat cruise. Because they played “Hold Fast” (on a boat!) I get into the topic of my favorite songs, and he remembers how I went through a phase of screaming requests for “Hate and Jealousy.”

“You know what inspired that song, right?” I have no fucking clue, and I tell him so. He offers to explain but warns that it will probably ruin it for me.

“I don’t think you can, Ben. I mean,” I say “I mean” a lot when I’m drunk, “You write the songs but we take them and make them our own based on what’s going on in our lives.”

It’s a damn good thing I’ve got this philosophy, because the actual inspiration for the song comes from a line in the movie Red Dawn. From what Ben tells, there’s a character that notches his gun stock for every kill he makes. At some point some other character says “All that hate’s gonna burn you up, kid.” The response? “It keeps me warm.”

I don’t know how it comes up, but Ben reveals a certain love of attending Renaissance Faires. [I hear he thanks his Dungeons & Dragons character in the liner notes of the forthcoming Rebels, Rogues & Sworn Brothers as well. To be dorky is to be human?—Cricket] He claims to have a full suit of armor and a “big ass sword” and he likes to get dressed up and go drink mead. I am, needless to say, dumbstruck, as my own tendencies lean towards such behavior as well. Except I am not a genius songwriter.

Still trying to keep the subject on him, I ask about his family. I’m sure I could find out this shit with some well-placed web searches, but I’d rather find out from Ben that he’s the eldest of a few brothers (2? 3?) and that he hopes to have kids some day. “Two boys,” he says. [Unless he plans to steal them from gypsies, this is actually, from what I hear, a crap shoot.—Mimi]

It is then that I am struck by something I have been noticing the past two nights, but have been unable to articulate. Ben’s hair is going grey at the temples. [I double dog dare you to ask him about this the next time you see him.—Cricket] The first time I ever saw Lucero it was most certainly not. My god, I think, we’re getting old. Me and Lucero. We are getting old together. Ben’s hair is going grey and my ass is getting wider and good lord we’re all still acting like drunken fuckin’ lunatics. I wonder if Ben thinks anything similar, and I really should ask him how long he thinks the guitar playin’ will cut it before he needs to do something else to support a family. But he starts in about his current girlfriend, and how he thinks she’d start a family with him, and I’m distracted by my desire to know how hard it is to keep a relationship together when you spend as much time touring as Ben does. He gives me the answer I already know. “It’s real, real tough, most times.” Sometimes I wonder why I open my damnfool mouth.

I like these little talks that Ben and I have. They’re never really brilliant, and I never come away feeling like I know anything intimate about Ben (although that shit about Red Dawn is pretty mind-bending, huh?) but it sure is a nice way to pass the drunken time. This Saturday, I’d sit and talk to him forever, but I notice Roy has started playing Naked Photo Hunt without me, and there’s no way in hell I’m letting those bastards hit the high score without my help. By the time we’re out of quarters Ben is gone, and I’m another few months and a couple of bottles of whiskey away from asking him all the shit I should have.

[Ben's band, Lucero (and let me clarify, for Brian's sake, that Ben is in Lucero, though it is not Ben's band, but had this been written about any other member of the band, I'd had said the same "John's band, Brian's band, Roy's band"--are you happy now, Brian?) is playing Mucklewain this coming weekend. If you haven't gotten your tickets yet, maybe you should. It could be your chance to stalk Ben and ask him about his D&D character.—Cricket]

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