R.I.P. Robert Lucas

ILLUSTRATION BY LUKE MCGARRY

Robert Lucas has arrived in the Great Beyond that his voice was always straining so painfully for. And this makes us sad—it maybe even amounts to tragedy. But Lucas’ aftermath ultimately boils down to what we get at the end of every blues song—silence, and a moment to contemplate what it all means.

Lucas was only 46 when he died of a reported drug overdose on Nov. 22, which means he was only 32 when I got to know him for a little while, in the days when he was gigging at seemingly every club or dive bar around with his self-referential band, Luke and the Locomotives. That’s young for a musical genre that’s based on life experience and world-weariness, and perhaps kind of odd for a guy who came out of Wilson High on the tony east side, but it was evident in my earliest conversations with Lucas that he’d already achieved a qualifying pain quotient.

“Basically, I got into music—into the blues—because I wanted to be good at something,” he admitted one March day in 1994 during an interview with me for the Press-Telegram. We were sitting on the edge of a planter on Pine Avenue, outside what was then the Bank of America and is now the defunct nightclub, the Vault. “I’m dyslexic, and I wasn’t a good student. All I was good at was partying and getting into trouble. I figured if I was going to be a screw-up and hang out in these places, I might as well get paid for it.”

By the time I met him, Lucas was the regular Thursday night house act at the also-defunct Hillside Club in Signal Hill, working on his fifth studio album and preparing to compete in a harmonica blowdown against some of the best harpists in the business. But he spoke quite humbly, almost reverentially, toward the blues he was working to master.

“I’m still a young man in this music,” Lucas acknowledged. “I’m still developing a personal style, a signature that can be recognized within the rules that must be followed when you make traditional music.”

Lucas taught himself the harmonica by listening to the radio and records.

“I love rock music, which at the time I was exposed to it was heavily blues-based,” he said. “Led Zeppelin, Cream, Canned Heat and Hendrix were on the radio as commercial music.”

Lucas overcame some rather stubby fingers—his hands were like bear paws, kind of matching his physique—to learn the guitar, taking early lessons from the great Bernie Pearl. He got his professional start by playing harmonica in Pearl’s band.

After a time, a band called the Confessors brought him on as a front man, where Lucas honed his performing skills as a guitarist, harp player and vocalist. In 1985, he formed his own outfit—Luke and the Locomotives—and got his big break by winning the Long Beach Blues Festival Talent Search that year.

Lucas bounced around a lot after that, from the Locomotives, to solo work, to a couple of stints with the legendary Canned Heat. That was him belting out “Let’s Work Together” in a recent Target commercial.

“The thing with me is, I don’t like to be pinned down,” Lucas told me on that spring day in 1994. “I like blues from Robert Johnson to Robert Cray. I like to be a little greasy, because once you commit to a clique, then you’ve got to compete. I just like to play good music. And I know I do that.”

Yes he did, and although it was beautiful, it never sounded easy. Lucas sang in a voice from a place deep inside him, a place that’s probably inside most of us, a place maybe even he didn’t know—a place few of us dare to go. It was congestive and reedy, but also don’t-look-back rollicking, as exhilaratingly worrisome as taking a beat-up old car on a cross-country joyride. The simultaneous power and vulnerability of Lucas’ voice embodied the kind of courage that comes from those who are carrying on after suffering failure. Lucas was pretty damned inspirational, maybe because he reminded us that we’re all just carrying on and probably damned, too.

MUSICAL TRIBUTE TO ROBERT LUCAS BLUE DOG TAVERN 4111 N VIKING WAY | LONG BEACH 90808 | BLUEDOGTAVERN.COM | 562.429.8935 | SUN 5PM | FREE

Tags: CANNED HEAT, Long Beach, Luke and the Locomotives, Robert Lucas