Lukas Nelson returning to area after opening for Tedeschi Trucks Band
Fans attending the Tedeschi Trucks Band’s concert at TD Garden in Boston last month may have been surprised by the opening act, whose scorching one-hour set was a delightful blend of soul-rock with twang, as Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real won hundreds of new fans. No doubt, the classic love-gone-wrong song “Forget About Georgia” may have reminded fans he is Willie Nelson’s son, but the rest of the music, tunes like “Ladder of Love,” “Die Alone,” or the closing “Set Me Down On a Cloud” proved that Lukas Nelson and POTR are a potent rock ‘n’ soul band with their own singular sound.
Lukas Nelson and POTR swing through the region this week for a pair of shows, Sunday night at The Strand Theater in Providence, Rhode Island, and Tuesday night at Royale in Boston. (The Strand Theater is located at 79 Washington St. in Providence, that show begins at 8 p.m., and tickets are priced “$26.50-$36, available through Etix. Royale is located at 279 Tremont St. in Boston, and that Tuesday show starts at 8 p.m., with tickets available through Axs for $30, or by checking boweryboston.com. For more information on the Boston show call 617-338-7699).
More: TD Garden gig gives Tedeschi Trucks Band plenty of room to spread its wings and soar
More: Concert review: Norwell's Susan Tedeschi delivers 'invigorating' show for hometown crowd
“That TD Garden concert was a fun show,” said Lukas Nelson from a tour stop in Asheville, North Carolina, last week. “We’re hoping some of those people come back out to see us this time. We’ve known Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi for a while now, and it was a great honor to be able to be up there performing. Susan is a great human being and an amazing musician, and of course Derek is such an incredible guitarist, so we were just happy they asked us to open for them.”
Icon's son had local influences
Even if his previous work experience includes stints with Neil Young, and opening for B.B. King, did Nelson feel a little bit timid playing his guitar with those six-string titans at the TD Garden?
“I don’t think daunting is the word I’d use to describe it,” said Nelson. “Derek, Susan, and (special guest that night) Warren Haynes are all people we look up to as influences. I just tried to use the occasion to do what I do best, which is not what they do. I consider myself a songwriter and a singer first, and not just a guitar player, so it wasn’t like we were in competition at all.”
Seventh album released
Nelson and POTR just released their seventh album, “Sticks and Stones” on the Thirty Tigers label in mid-July, and Nelson produced it himself. It’s not like he hasn’t had plenty of experience in the studio and had lots of opportunity to learn his way around a recording studio. From 2015-2019 Nelson and POTR served as Young’s backing band, a period in which they recorded and released five different albums, two studios disc, two live albums, and a soundtrack album.
And in 2018, Nelson wrote music with Lady Gaga for the movie “A Star Is Born,” and also served as sort of musical coach for Bradley Cooper, while he and POTR also performed in the film as Cooper’s character’s band. Nelson got a Grammy that year for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media. And one of his previous albums was produced by Dave Cobb, widely acclaimed as the best producer for Americana music anywhere. Nelson had his eyes and ears open at every one of those stops.
“It is true I always felt like I had a good ear for the music I wanted to make, so producing our record was a natural step” said Nelson. “Making sure you have a great engineer is half the battle, and then you want a good room, and good energy in the room. Of course, you want to have great musicians first and foremost. But I also knew exactly what I wanted this time, which was a sound as close to our live shows as possible. And we knew how to get there.
“Sometimes you want a sound, but you don’t know exactly how to get there. Then you have to rely on people who have a certain expertise on how to get there. You might not have the right equipment, or instruments, so it can be important to reach out and collaborate at times. It is actually nice to have other people to bounce ideas off. But for this record, the band and I did know exactly what we wanted, and it was just a matter of capturing the sound, and I think we did it pretty well.”
Videos offer an escape
Nelson and POTR are among many artists today who have fun making videos to illustrate their songs, and the video for the title cut “Sticks and Stones” for example, is both intriguing and has a sense of humor. And many fans will focus on the video of his duet with Lainey Wilson, one of country music's hottest stars right now, on "More Than Friends."
“Making videos is really more about adapting to the world we live in,” noted Nelson. “Most musical acts now are doing multi-media input, because people are so used to watching videos, and scrolling through and clicking on things. With modern attention spans, it is important to have videos representing your music, or else you’re excluding a certain swath of the population who look for that.”
New label a good fit
“Sticks and Stones” is Nelson’s first album with Thirty Tigers, a kind of alternative-country/Americana label that seems to gravitate to outsiders and seems perfect for him.
“The ownership of this label has a seriously great team at every level,” said Nelson. “But the best factor is that they don’t take a percentage of your sales for every this and that. With most labels, you either get a 360-degree deal, or else. In this day and age, I can’t justify giving a percentage of everything I do to a label for minimal service. Thirty Tigers is not like that; they have a great business model.”
The changing face of the music business also finds many acts veering away from the traditional album format, simply releasing a song or two whenever they feel like it. Nelson has ambivalent feelings about that.
“There is freedom in that new approach of not tying yourself to albums,” he said. “Albums tend to have to be thematic. If you have a story to tell that is cohesive, and works that way as a piece of art, like Pink Floyd’s 'Dark Side of the Moon,' for instance, that’s fine. But if you just have a bunch of songs that are not related to each other, there is a benefit to just releasing a song here or there. We are exploring all our options on that, as we navigate this new musical landscape.”
“Sticks and Stones’ did have a cohesive theme,” Nelson quickly added of his new album. “I had worked out a story to it, kind of biographical, about a guy who is heavy into partying, then goes downhill all the way to a homeless metaphor. But in the end, he realizes what is really important, and songs like “Ladder of Love” have him finding his way back to what matters and finding peace at the end. So, it does tell a story and works that way as a traditional album format.”
Tour winding down
We mentioned that “Ladder of Love,” a pell-mell country-rocker, could be the epitome of honky tonk.
“We are certainly all into honky tonk, and I wish we could make an album of all honky tonk,” Nelson said with a soft laugh. “Right now, we are two-and-a-half months into a three-and-a-half-month national tour, so I need some time after this to relax and figure out what our next project will be. But I like that sound, that Chris Stapleton type of vibe, and upbeat feel like the song ‘Sticks and Stones.’ I think ‘country soul’ is a good way to describe our sound, and we have a rhythm and blues/country foundation for sure. But we are looking forward to getting up there to Boston and Providence, where we always seem to have good fans.”
New music from Mark Cutler
Providence rocker Mark Cutler – formerly leader of The Schemers and The Raindogs, and now the driving force behind The Same Thing Project – is bringing songwriting for fun and therapy to the masses and has a new single just out. “The Island” was a Cutler song he had recorded solo and acoustic, but his California friend Neil Cabana took it and added a full band. The end result has a textured guitar-rock sound reminiscent of Tom Petty’s music, while the provocative lyrics deal with feeling isolated in the midst of crowded modern society. Cutler continues to be one of New England’s most compelling rock songwriters, and this tune is yet another example.
This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: See Lukas Nelson and Promise of the Real in Boston and Providence
