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Los Lonely Boys - Biography
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Los Lonely Boys Biography
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Los Lonely Boys Detailed Biography
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Los Lonely Boys are another entry into the rock & roll family band tree. The Garza brothers -- Henry, Jojo, and Ringo (yes, that is his real name and he is the drummer) -- like the Everlys, the Louvins, the Davies, the Youngs (Malcolm and Angus), and many others, are forging a new sound from the various roots traditions in American music.
Los Lonely Boys are the three Garza brothers: Henry on guitar, Jojo on bass, and Ringo on drums. This remarkable trio of brothers has been making music together since they were small children and now has a decade of professional experience under their belts as well. Los Lonely Boys write, sing, and play music drawn from diverse sources, blending their influences into a seamless style. Weaned on Tex-Mex, country, blues, and rock pioneers like Richie Valens, Chuck Berry and Fats Domino, and such pop music giants as The Beatles, Los Lonely Boys augment those solid basics with red-hot guitar playing, percolating rock and Latin rhythms, and dynamic interplay and luscious vocal harmonies -- all three brothers also sing -- to produce songs rife with engaging hooks, expressive lyrics, and melodic sumptuousness.
The band's self-titled debut album is packed so tightly, it's hard to believe all of this music was created by a trio. Though Henry, the oldest of the brothers, has been hailed as the inheritor of the great Texas guitar tradition epitomized by Freddie King, Johnny Winter and the Vaughan Brothers, he is also the greatest young player in the burgeoning Latino rock guitar style pioneered by Carlos Santana. Backed by tight, intense rhythmic support from his brothers, Henry’s playing makes Los Lonely Boys one of the most exciting new bands to emerge in the new millennium. Ask no less an authority than Willie Nelson, who has called Los Lonely Boys his favorite band and invited them to record this album at his own Pedernales studio.
Henry's middle brother Joey aka Jojo also began playing guitar before switching to piano and then, finally, bass. The family band became complete when younger brother Ringo picked up playing the drums. "When Ringo was nine my dad gave him a drum set," Henry recalls. "I taught him to play it and he learned in like 30 minutes man, it was like it was meant to be. And since Ringo is his real name, that’s freaky, right?!! He's been playing ever since.”
The boys had soon percolated into a musical unit of their own. After the breakup of their father’s band, the boys began backing him at his solo shows. The band played their first show with their father while still pre-teens. "We were backing my dad, because after he left his brothers he started playing in country bands and stuff with other guys, emulating the music of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings and the outlaw gang. My dad’s got kind of that image."
The album's opening cut, "Senorita," sung in Spanish and English, is a perfect example of the group's approach. "My brother Jojo was writing music and I was thinking of some lyrics to rhyme to it," Henry recalls. "I rhymed 'bonita' with 'senorita' and we came up with these chords and just made it into a song, man. We speak Spanish slang all the time in Texas, it's not really proper Spanish, it's more of a street slang. The rhyme was kind of catchy. We've known the traditional Chicano music or conjunto music, tropicale, Latin music. When we grew up our father and all them did that, so we sort of went the other way. It wasn't easy, because people would say 'you don't sound like a Mexican band' and we can do that too but we wanted to do something that was us, something new. That's what me and my brothers did, and now we're bringing it around to where we're recording it and people will be able to hear the way we do it in today's world. I think it's going to go over real well, even in the Hispanic community, because I don't hear anything like that other than Santana."
Though the brothers know how good they are as a live band, they are amazed at how well the recordings worked out in the studio. "We tried to record before and I was never really happy with the way it came out," Henry admits. "But on this album I can honestly say I'm happy with the whole thing, the guitar tone, the guitar parts, vocal parts, the way the whole vibe of the record … I'm really proud of it."
" It's kinda crazy, we're like the Mexican Beatles," Henry concludes. "People always ask us what kind of style we play. I tell 'em it's a cross between Stevie Ray meets Santana, Jimi Hendrix meets Richie Valens, or the Beatles meet Ronnie Milsap. I call it my music burrito theory. What we've done is made like our own tortilla, right, with all the knowledge of all the greats that are out there, I can't even think of 'em all right now, but we put 'em inside the tortilla, fold it up in there, we make our own burrito and we're sellin' it to the world, y'know?”
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