Lucero Takes a Rowdy Victory Lap for ‘Nobody’s Darlings’

Lucero at The Basement East, 3/21/2026
Photo: Victor J. Reed

Nashville may be Music City, but even the most loyal Nashvillian knows that Memphis, our beloved musical neighbor to the southwest, is also rich in music history. From Stax Records’ singular output to a deep blues legacy to Three 6 Mafia’s powerhouse Dirty South hip-hop to Big Star’s pioneering power pop and beyond, Memphis is damn proud of its musical exports, and for good reason. You can add Lucero to the long list of groups doing right by Bluff City’s musical legacy. For nearly three decades, the purveyors of rollicking alt-country have kept up a grueling tour schedule and released 12 studio albums. Their sold-out show at The Basement East on Saturday served as a bit of a victory lap for the road warriors, who are celebrating more than 20 years of their 2005 record Nobody’s Darlings.

Before Lucero took the stage, singer-songwriter Otis Gibbs opened the show by educating the crowd on an important piece of Memphis history. Gibbs shared his ode to Memphis legend Sputnik Monroe, a 1950s professional wrestler and civil rights activist who integrated Southern wrestling audiences. A star of the circuit with a substantial draw, Monroe refused to go on unless Black ticketholders were able to sit in any seat they chose at Ellis Auditorium. “Listen to me people, let me speak to your soul,” Gibbs sang. “There’s more to Memphis than rock ’n’ roll / And there's more to history than what we’ve been told.” The song appears on Gibbs’ 2017 LP Mount Renraw; since then, he’s released three more albums, with the latest being last year’s The Trust of Crows.

Before kicking off the headlining set with the defiant “Watch It Burn,” Lucero frontman Ben Nichols reflected on two decades of Nobody’s Darlings. “We re-pressed [the album] on vinyl and we thought, ‘Well, hell, we’ll play the whole thing front to back, for better or for worse,’” Nichols said. “I’m not saying it's a good idea, but it’s what we came up with.”

The set list gave the band an opportunity to revisit songs that haven’t made it into heavy rotation, such as “Anjalee.” Nichols noted that the band hasn’t played it live in nearly 20 years, quipping, “If I fuck it up, it’ll just be more authentic — more 2005.”

Ahead of “Bikeriders” — which was inspired by Danny Lyon’s book The Bikeriders, a collection of interviews with the 1960s motorcycle club the Chicago Outlaws — Nichols gave a shoutout to his little brother, filmmaker Jeff Nichols. The younger Nichols, a filmmaker whose CV includes Take Shelter and Mud, also directed 2024’s The Bikeriders, starring Austin Butler, Jodie Comer and Tom Hardy. “I’m not saying that I wrote the movie or anything, but this next song gave him a good jumping-off point to work from,” Ben Nichols joked.

The searing “Sixteen,” anthemic “Nobody’s Darlings” and drinking song “And We Fell” closed out what Nichols called “the tasteful half” of the record. “Shit gets a little weird on Side B,” he said.

Nevertheless, the second half of Nobody’s Darlings includes what Lucero does best, from the breakneck country-punk of “California” and whiskey-soaked ballad “Hold Me Close” to the gritty “Noon as Dark as Midnight” (which A$AP Rocky sampled in his 2015 single “Holy Ghost”). Side B also features two unflinching stories of the realities of war: “Last Night in Town,” written after Nichols met a Marine in Little Rock, Ark., spending his last night in his hometown before shipping out to Iraq, and album-closer “The War,” written about Nichols’ grandfather and his experiences fighting in World War II.

After wrapping up their performance of the album, the band played a mix of fan favorites (“On My Way Downtown,” “Texas and Tennessee,” “Nights Like These”) and deeper cuts Nichols described as “just for me.” By the time they closed with the buoyant “Tears Don’t Matter Much,” a slice of power-pop perfection that feels tailor-made to close down a bar after a bleary-eyed night out with friends, the crowd was practically levitating.

Lucero kept the rowdiness going with a two-song encore, which kicked off with “Drink ’Till We’re Gone.” “Here at the Starlite,” a tune from their 2002 album Tennessee about neon-lit heartbreak at a 24-hour diner in North Little Rock, Ark., was the perfect sign-off from a Memphis band. Even looking back over multiple decades, Nichols and company didn’t miss a beat.