For more than two decades, Lucero’s blend of country, punk, and garage rock has been earning fans in dive bars, at festivals, and, this year, from behind the screen, including a few well-attended livestreams from Minglewood Hall in the band’s hometown of Memphis. Lucero will kick off 2021 with the release of its tenth studio album, When You Found Me. Frontman Ben Nichols wrote the songs while sheltering in place during the pandemic, and the band recorded the album at the Sam Phillips Recording Studio in Memphis. It’s a relatively scaled-back lineup for a group known to host horn sections or gospel choirs in the studio, but the arrangements are a perfect fit for Nichols’s recognizable growl and vivid narratives.
Today, G&G is honored to premiere the title track, a sparsely arranged number about love overcoming hardship. “‘When You Found Me’ is a song about my family and how they saved me from myself,” says Nichols, whose history of whiskey-fueled late nights is well documented in song. “I think they continue to save me every day.” The song has also become a popular bedtime request from Nichols’s four-year-old daughter, Izzy. “She says, ‘Sing, Dad. Sing me the I’m going to be okay song,’” he says. Her nickname for the tune comes from the bridge—I’m all right baby, I’m all right darling / You got to me in time…I’m going to be just fine—and Nichols is partial to the lyric, too. “It’s my favorite part of the song, and it was the last part that I wrote,” he says. “She kind of latched onto it.”
Listen to the song below. When You Found Me will be released on January 29 and is available for preorder here.
