Ben Nichols Releases Latest Single to Upcoming Solo Album

Ben Nichols of Lucero Releases Latest Single to Upcoming Solo Album

Sixteen years after his last solo release, The Last Pale Light in the West, Lucero frontman Ben Nichols returns with In the Heart of the Mountain—a haunting, poetic, and deeply personal album that trades distortion and barroom grit for acoustic reverie and emotional excavation. Released via Liberty & Lament, the label founded by Lucero, the album lands on July 25 and is already being hailed as Nichols’ most introspective work to date.

“I’ve never before set out to write a song about mental health,” Nichols confesses. “Although one could say all songwriting is about mental health in one way or another.” That reflection anchors the title track—equal parts love letter and lifeline to his wife—who he credits as a tether to sanity through life’s personal storms. “We can often be our own worst enemies,” he adds, “and having someone who keeps us from getting too wrapped up in the devils and demons of our own making is a truly wonderful thing.”

The album, although not a concept album like his debut solo record, The Last Pale Light in the West, the song titles of In the Heart of the Mountain read as a poem in sequence.

In the heart of the mountain

The darkness sings

A bleak overture

From a Western or a war movie

While the stars disappear

Fading back into the night

I’m in over my head

She’s starlight in the river

The prayer

The swamper’s lament

The devil takes his leave

Each line is a vignette, casting shadows on the Arkansas landscapes that raised him—rivers, stars, devils, and prayers populating a kind of Southern folklore that feels both deeply familiar and curiously surreal. This duality is no accident.

A few years ago, a stranger mailed Nichols a copy of What About This, the collected works of poet Frank Stanford. “Even at the age of 50, I’ve never read much poetry,” Nichols admits. “But there was something alive and dangerous in his words… soaked in Southern tones but not backwards.” Inspired by Stanford’s mythic yet mundane lyricism, Nichols began exploring new terrain in his own writing. The result is a work of quiet power—part folk spiritual, part personal scripture.

Unlike Lucero’s raucous and roaring sound, In the Heart of the Mountain is intentionally spare and intimate. Nichols takes lead on acoustic guitar and vocals, adding occasional electric touches and percussion. He’s joined by Morgan Eve Swain (of The Huntress and the Holder of Hands, The Devil Makes Three) on violin and backing vocals; Cory Branan on guitar; and Todd Beene (Chuck Ragan, Glossary) on pedal steel and electric guitar. Engineered and mixed by Matt Ross-Spang at Southern Grooves Studio in Memphis, the album captures a rustic vulnerability rarely heard in Nichols’ prior work.

“This is the closest I’ve come to making an album completely on my own terms,” says Nichols. “It wasn’t based on a novel or a theme… The only inspiration was that desire to create something that lived in my memories of those rivers, fields, and mountains, in that mythological Arkansas my family called home.”

Though the album won’t be supported by a Seattle stop, Nichols is embarking on a solo tour through the South and Midwest, with sold-out dates in his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas and stops in Tulsa, St. Louis, Cleveland, and more. The tour, like the album, seems less like a marketing campaign and more like a pilgrimage—homeward, inward.

For fans of Lucero, In the Heart of the Mountain may come as a quiet surprise—but for those willing to walk the wooded path with Nichols, it’s a work of rare honesty, mythic depth, and emotional clarity. In a time where noise often outshouts meaning, Nichols has given us something rare: stillness that speaks volumes.

Ben Nichols – In the Heart of the Mountain
Available July 25 via Liberty & Lament

Tour Dates:
(All dates subject to availability – contact us for coverage, review copies, or interview requests)
July 24 – Little Rock, AR – Whitewater Tavern [SOLD OUT]
July 25 – Little Rock, AR – Whitewater Tavern [SOLD OUT]
July 26 – Tulsa, OK – Mercury Lounge
July 27 – St. Louis, MO – Golden Record
July 29 – Indianapolis, IN – Hi-Fi Indy
July 30 – Lexington, KY – The Burl
July 31 – Columbus, OH – Rumba Café
August 2 – Cleveland, OH – Grog Shop
August 3 – Huntington, WV – The Loud
August 5 – Morgantown, WV – 123 Pleasant Street
August 6 – Knoxville, TN – Open Chord Music
August 7 – Greenville, SC – Radio Room
August 8 – Chattanooga, TN – Cherry Street Tavern
August 23 – Denver, CO – The Oriental Theater