A brief chat with Lucero

Yellow Scene: You were just here with Riot Fest – how was that experience?

Brian Venable: Interesting. I think it’s one of the better festivals for us, age-wise. We did Warped Tour a couple of years ago, and there were a lot of bands we’d never heard of. Warped Tour was a lot of, “woo, my daughters would love this.” Riot Fest has a lot of bands that probably should be broken up, but a lot of good bands too. Getting to see Bob Mould, the Cure, Hot Snakes – things like that were great.

YS: Do you guys like coming to Colorado?

BV: Yeah, it’s one of our feel-good cities and it’s probably our first feel-good city. In the old days, we used to play Double Entendre, the record store in Denver. We put 250 people in there when we were playing to 12 people everywhere else. Colorado has always been a little bit ahead of the curve with us. If you’re feeling a little bit too big for your britches, you go to Iowa City or Bakersfield, CA, and play to nobody. If your ego needs a little stroking, you go to Louisville, KY, or Denver.

YS: For the newbie, describe the sound.

BV: I describe it as just rock ‘n’ roll. Now, they want to put a tag in front of everything. We liken ourselves to your Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Huey Louis – it’s good old fashioned rock ‘n’ roll. Being from the south, we catch a southern rock tag from time to time but if we were from Detroit, we’d be called something different.

YS: What can we expect from these sets?

BV: Man, I don’t know. We have three days in a row. What happens is, if it goes according to the past, one night we’ll be pretty shaky. We’ll get our bearings. The next night is usually just fall down drunk. The third night, everybody will be acting crazy. We have a lot of songs and we try to stretch them all out. You don’t want to play the same set three nights in a row because there are people who come multiple nights. We’ll dig a little deep, and play some standards.

YS: What’s next, after this tour?

BV: We’re kinda done until March. Next week, we do our Memphis and Little Rock Christmas shows. We’re working on a new record, so from January we go to work every day at the studio.