Lucero's Tennessee Album Art
As soon as I busted out of art school, with a highly desirable and profitable degree in "Media Arts & Animation" I was on the prowl for a job to utilize all the skills I'd gained over the last three years of my life, and thanks to the college's "job placement" department I soon was deposited in to an interview, and subsequent employment at a company that in 2004-ish, was, um, making "adult" oriented content for cellphones, which amounted to really low-res videos and ringtones that you'd be utterly embarrassed, and rightfully, so, if it went off in the grocery store, or say, Sunday church services.
It was a grind, to say the least, but hey, I was "making it" or, what the fuck ever.
One of my coworkers was kind of a hipster doofus, but a nice fellow and he shared with me a ton of music since we had a lot time to wait while videos rendered.
He says to me, he says, "have you heard Lucero," to which I replied "I surely haven't."
"Peep this," I'm sure he didn't say but still transferred the files over.
Now this. This was something else to my ears.
Sad bastard, country love songs with a punk rock attitude and influence.
I was fucking hooked.
I whiled the days away, awash in low-res porno, listening to Lucero, pounding energy drinks (a job "perk") as the clock tick, tick, ticked away the working day.
I always thought, they were the band only I knew about. None of my friends listened to them, and I didn't know of anybody else who did, aside from my coworkers. Until...
When my future wife and I started to date, early on when I still lived in Boulder, a good 45 minutes away from her, we'd spend nights on end text messaging and one night I shared some of the earlier, sadder, love songs from Lucero...
And she was enamored with them. It was a beautiful shared moment and one I will always remember and will endlessly make me smile.
Since then Lucero has been our thing, and I wouldn't have it any other way. We've seen them live at least six or seven times. We even saw them play for free in a burrito joint. She stands in front of me and I hold her and we close our eyes and swing back and forth, singing all the lyrics to all the songs.
It's magical.