Of heartbreak and horn sections.

Last night my heart was broken.

Before you start offering condolences, it wasn’t my amazing boyfriend who tore it apart.

It was Ben Nichols. Well, more appropriately, Lucero.

Let’s go back in time a bit. I love Lucero. Since I was introduced to them, they spoke directly to my soul. I spent a summer driving up through Northern California playing Tennessee over and over again. Sweet Little Thing, Nights Like These, and Chain Link Fence on a constant rotation until I knew all the words by heart. I link this album directly with driving through the massive redwoods and to the smoky campfires. It didn’t hurt I’d seen Ben Nichols perform live earlier that summer during one of his solo shows.

I can name exactly where a fell in love with each of their albums. When they stopped being just random songs to affecting me deeply. Nobody’s Darlings I was listening to when I first bought my manual car. I was driving down to San Jose for a conference, and my heart skipped a beat when I started to listen Angelee and The War. I proceeded to tumble into pure adoration with this album while sitting outside my hotel on a misty evening. Rebels, Rouges and Sworn Brothers, I was driving down to one of my best friend’s houses in Sacramento for Fakesgiving. That Much Further West, sitting out on back patio in Sacramento enjoying the warm summer evenings, barbecuing and drinking Lone Star beer. And most recently, flying back home to California for the Fourth of July I gazed out the window at the tops of passing clouds and finally their self-titled album playing in time with my heart. It took my breath away to the point of me repeating Raising Hell over and over, the riff at 2 minutes and 58 seconds making it to my top 5 favorite guitar riffs ever list.

I didn’t fall for these albums in chronological order, but instead let them hit me when they were destined to. I’ve touched previously on music affecting you most profoundly during specific times in your life, and Lucero music has indeed done that. You may or may not know that earlier this year I moved to Memphis for a new job. I was venturing into the unknown to a location where the only person I would recognize would be Elvis Presley, and if I were lucky maybe steal a glance at Ben Nichols in his natural environment. Rebels, Rouges and Sworn Brothers was the soundtrack for me uprooting and driving from California to Tennessee, listening to San Francisco as I drove past the city for the last time, serenading my goodbye. The Mountain on constant rotation as I started my life over.

From California to Tennesse. Good Fourtune has not yet found me.

And even The Weight of Guilt becoming the soundtrack and inspiration for my novel which is still unfinished.

So last night, I’m sitting on a picnic blanket waiting. I was just as excited to see them this time as the previous four times.  This band, Lucero, which has moved and inspired me. A new album recently released (and, alas, still not in my collection) with songs I still can’t wait to devour. They come on stage and start with a new song and they are accompanied with  the new addition of a horn section. I was excited. I was thrilled. I’d heard tracks from the new album, and I’ve been a sucker for horns in the past. Everything from Burt Bacharach to random ska bands. Used correctly, horns are amazing. And with their new songs, they are amazing. They add something new and different. And then they started playing the well known track That Much Further West.

And this is where my heart breaks.

It wasn’t until hearing the horns come in, with all their cheesy glory, that my heart sank. It was like the Boston Pops doing Lucero covers. And no, that’s not a good thing. I think you could actually hear my fragile heart breaking, over the horn sections, over the screaming crowd, over my loud tantrums and frustration.

Adding horns has somehow taken out the earnestness of their music. What made Nights Like These amazing was the heartbreak you could relate to. Picturing a broken man singing about the girl who’ll never quite give up the ghost of her past love. And somehow, adding a horn section where it doesn’t belong seems to tarnish the raw emotion.

This is where I need to get specific. I don’t hate the “New Sound” with the horns. I think it’s actually quite fitting and I’m really glad as a band they’re looking to expand and grow. Granted I didn’t anticipate horns in the beginning, but I should have seen it coming considering on the last album I Can Get Us Out Of Here Tonight has uncanny similarities to Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run. Why not fully embrace The Boss? Except Bruce has abandoned that sound. He’s scaled back, now creating song utilizing that indie sound. Something simpler than the E Street Band, because that’s not where music is anymore. But again, I digress. The horns work with their new tracks because they were intended. You can tell when you listen, they were expected and the music was created with a  horn section in mind. Their old songs, however, were created with blood and tears. They had music that played at your heart because of basic nature of it, not the new sensational rendition you hear now.

“Why so much angst?” you may ask. “They’re just horns,” you might say.

Let me put it this way, it’s like when George Lucas decided to re-do the original Star Wars movies. He went and messed up the films that we grew up with, fell in love with, and created fan films dedicated to them. Or was that just me?

It’s like adding too much spice to your food to the point where it’s no longer palatable.

This new horn section on classic old tracks is that young hussy your dad just married with too much makeup. Or that breast augmentation of that 60 year old who now has the rack of a 20 year old stripper.

I had to have my boyfriend take me home. I couldn’t stand to listen to one more song by one of my favorite bands. A band which I saw only a few weeks before play a secret show is what everything I could have wanted it to be. And I danced and sang along to the parts that mattered. My soul just couldn’t take hearing them ruin every song of theirs that’s mattered to me.

I should be used to bands breaking my heart, it’s happened more than once. But for now I’ll be content to listen to their old albums, cleanse my brain palate of the atrocity that happened last night. I will metaphorically sift through the boxes of all our good memories. I’m not sure I’m ready to say goodbye yet, but I’m not sure I can stand seeing them face them for a very long time.

It would just hurt too much.