I saw Lucero play at Emo’s tonight. The opening band was a group called Sleeper Car, these guys were pretty good, I think I’ll check their CD out. Sleeper Car was a good fit for Lucero. They had some alt country elements with a little bit of a southern rock / indie rock sound. Live they were good, I’m curious to hear their studio stuff. Lucero came out and Ben, the singer, sounded rough. His voice sounded like he’d played a hell of a show last night and was paying for it. I wondered if his voice would hold out for the whole show. They played a good mix of their rockin songs and their slow stuff. Ben’s voice worked on some songs and suffered on others. Over all they were great. Just what you’d expect. They took a lot of requests from the audience, Ben forgot lyrics, and they played a few songs that the newer members had never heard. Seeing Lucero is a lot like seeing the Drive By Truckers in that you can tell that there is nothing these guys would rather be doing. They look like they are having the time of their lives.

In other news, I went a full day without smoking. Yesterday I only had one cigarette. Smoking has really gotten to me lately. Smokes are expensive now days. They are too expensive for me not to get anything out of it. I mean seriously, it makes more sense to me to smoke crack. At least with crack you get high. I thought about how long I’ve been smoking today and it disgusted me. Now I’m not making any promises, I haven’t quit I just didn’t smoke the first one of the day, which by the way, is the toughest one to pass up. I know that I’m not 100% committed to the idea because I bought a pack today. I haven’t opened it yet. I was thinking of incentives for me to hold off. I think what I’m going to do is put $5 away each day I don’t buy a pack. This way I can see how much I’m saving. I barely drive my truck anymore so I’m saving a lot on gas. If I can cut out the cigs I can stretch my dollars a lot further. We’ll see though, tomorrow is a whole other story.