MUSIC

Lucero's frontman cycles into LR show

Ben Nichols (left) with Lucero band mate Roy Berry. Nichols will perform a solo show tonight at Ron Robinson Theater.
Ben Nichols (left) with Lucero band mate Roy Berry. Nichols will perform a solo show tonight at Ron Robinson Theater.

Lucero frontman Ben Nichols is on the phone from Telluride, Colo., and the scene he describes is enough to make a desk-bound reporter slightly envious.

"It's absolutely gorgeous," the Little Rock native says. "I'm looking at a snow-capped mountain and there are gondolas flying by right now. It is like something you'd see in Switzerland."

Ben Nichols

Opening act: Jeff Coleman

7 p.m. today, Ron Robinson Theater, 100 River Market Ave., Little Rock

Tickets: $20

(501) 320-5715

tinyurl.com/jftmvtz

Nichols, 41, is in the middle of this year's version of his Bikeriders solo tour, a jaunt that has him motoring from gig to gig on his 2007 BMW 1200 GS motorcycle with his tattoo artist buddy Oliver Peck of Dallas and a crew of motorcycling friends. After this call, they will spend most of the day riding to a gig in Colorado Springs.

"Everybody else is riding Harleys and I'm cramping their style," he says, chuckling.

Nichols will roll into his hometown for a concert tonight at Ron Robinson Theater. Singer-songwriter Jeff Coleman will open the show, which is part of the Central Arkansas Library System's Arkansas Sounds Series.

The solo tours on his motorcycle started in 2011, with a year off in 2013. Nichols says they are the best excuse he could find to get on the bike and ride.

Asked about any disadvantage of touring this way, he says, "It really sucks riding a motorcycle with a hangover."

It's that kind of bravado that has endeared the heavily tattooed, sandpaper-voiced Nichols to fans since getting Lucero off the ground in Memphis in 1998. Since its 2000 debut The Attic Tapes, through last year's fantastic All a Man Should Do, Nichols and his band mates have scrapped their way from basements and barrooms to theaters and larger clubs with loose-limbed, whiskey-soaked, soul-, folk- and punk-tinged alt-country tales of heartbreak, lonesome nights, family, fights and plans gone right and wrong.

"I think people feel a lot of love for him, and his songs speak to a lot of people," says John Miller, Arkansas Sounds music coordinator. "He's a unique talent who captures the synthesis of country, blues, elements of soul, gospel -- Southern music in general -- in his songwriting."

Nichols, whose music has also appeared in the films of his brother, director Jeff Nichols, last played Ron Robinson in August 2014. That was another solo gig, though Lucero keyboardist Rick Steff played with him.

Tonight's show will just be Nichols and his guitar, though. Steff isn't that fond of riding motorcycles. "Maybe I should get a sidecar for him," the singer jokes.

Tonight's show will be "extremely stripped down" with songs covering the breadth of his Lucero career, including tracks from All a Man Should Do.

"I've had a lot of fun playing those songs solo," says Nichols, who graduated from Little Rock Central High School in 1992 and Hendrix College in Conway in 1996. "I like the way that record came out. It has a nice feel to it and I like playing those songs on this tour."

Expect to hear a few tracks from his lone solo release, 2009's haunting Last Pale Light in the West, a seven-song EP inspired by Cormac McCarthy's chilling Western novel Blood Meridian, and perhaps a track from Nichols' pre-Lucero punk-pop trio Red Forty.

The group -- Nichols, Steve Kooms and Colin Brooks -- was only around from 1994 to 1996, but Nichols says it played a pivotal role in his future. "We were writing some good songs and doing some good shows. It was one of the funnest parts of my life. And it was kind of a big moment, where it changed everything and I thought maybe I could actually get away with doing this."

He has been getting away with it for almost two decades with Lucero and isn't slowing down, though he's now a newlywed.

"It's the healthiest choice I've ever made," he says of getting married.

Nichols isn't letting any newfound domestic bliss get in the way of business, however.

"I've still got plenty of sad songs to write," he says in the shadow of the snow-capped Rocky Mountains with his motorcycle, friends and the Colorado road.

Style on 06/21/2016

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