INTERVIEW: Los Lonely Boys on how their family’s past informs their future
Photo: Jojo Garza, Henry Garza and Ringo Garza make up Los Lonely Boys. Photo courtesy of Matt Lanke / Provided by Reybee Inc. with permission.
Los Lonely Boys, a band consisting of three brothers from Texas, have been offering their unique rock ‘n’ roll to fans for more than 20 years. Henry Garza is on guitar and vocals, while Jojo Garza is on bass and vocals. Rounding out the trio is Ringo Garza on drums. They have released a number of well-received albums over the years, including their latest, “Resurrection,” and they have a long songbook of original tunes that get added to their set list as they tour around the world. Perhaps their most well-known song is “Heaven,” which comes off their self-titled debut from 2004.
Right now, the brothers are touring around the United States, including a memorable show on Saturday, Feb. 22, at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas. They pick up again in March with dates in Washington, Minnesota, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Colorado, California and other states.
“It’s the beginning of the year,” Jojo said in a recent phone interview. “Everything seems to be going pretty smooth thus far. We’re the kind of cats that we like to be optimistic about things, so we’re just believing and hoping that it’s going to be a great year for us.”
When Jojo and his brothers tour around the States, they have a foundational set list that they bring with them, featuring many songs off the early records. Jojo said this leaning on the early days of Los Lonely Boys is simply because that’s what the fans have asked for over the last two decades.
“It seems like that’s what people really want to be hearing,” he said. “Over the years we learned that. Just because we would play new things and stuff like that, and most people would be like, ‘Play the old stuff.’ Or, ‘Play some Skynyrd.’ I’m just kidding, man. Basically we just tried to accommodate. Night after night we’ll add something or take something away. I think that’s kind of normal with all groups, man.”
In the early days, when the guys were being shepherded by their father, the late Enrique Garza, they would play the clubs around Austin, and Jojo remembers those years being filled with tons of energy and a no-holds-barred attitude when it came to gigging.
“For us, at that time, we were ready to get on any stage,” he said. “Our mentality was you weren’t going to want to follow after Los Lonely Boys got off the stage. For us, it was just pedal to the metal. We were a lot younger then, too, and so we were just there to display what we felt was necessary for expressing who we were at that time. When we started getting those gigs, man, it just felt good to us. I remember just kind of in my mind going, I’ve just got to give it everything I got, and I know my brothers felt the exact same way. And it’s still that way, but after you establish yourself, you don’t really have to get up there and, I don’t want to use the word show off or anything, but you can kind of relax a little more because you know people are there for your show. It just makes it a little simpler to get out there and really just relax and have a good time with everyone. But those shows back then, they were full of energy. It was all brand new. It was all fresh. It was something that people had never really seen.”
Jojo’s first instrument was not his current instrument of the bass. He began on the guitar, tried a few other instruments and then transitioned to the bass. Some of these choices came as a result of his brothers and parents.
“I did start with guitar because that was our dad’s primary instrument, and so he taught us all some guitar, foundational things, the chords, simple boogie-woogies and things like that,” Jojo said. “I remember Ringo had went to live with our mom. She lived in Amarillo, Texas, at the time, and I had already been playing a little bit of guitar. We had a keyboard there as well, so we learned a little bit of keyboard … piano parts and stuff, nothing major. I didn’t really get into the piano until I was in my early-20s, but as far as the bass goes, Ringo went to live with our mom in Amarillo. Our parents had separated, and Henry and I at that time were teaching each other drums because our dad had acquired a set of drums. And so we pretty much taught each other to play basic 4-4s and things like that and playing along with some of the songs on the radio. Ringo and I, we wound up switching places. And he came back with my dad, and I went with our mom. And when I went there, she bought me a classical guitar, so I had a guitar still with me. And when I came back, Henry had taught Ringo how to play the drums, and for Ringo, it was just a natural thing for him. He had done some guitar and some bass, piano, but not as much as the rest of us, and so when he got on the drums, it was just like a duck-to-water kind of thing.”
Jojo added: “And then Henry, my dad and Ringo had been playing a place called Rodeo Red’s … and when I came back, they had a show that night. And they took me out there with them, and I watched them do their thing. … My dad basically said, we need a bass player for this band that they were in. And Henry was of course the oldest brother, so he stuck to the guitar and started turning into a solo guy and doing all that. So basically my dad had an extra guitar, which I believe was a SG90, and he strung it up with four strings, ran it through his Fender Bassman, turned all the bass up, all the treble down and said, ‘You’re a bass player now.’ That’s how that happened.”
These early memories still stay with Jojo and seem to warm his heart. The brothers lost their father in summer 2024, and the pain is still present. They also lost their mother several years ago. “We lost our mom around 10 years ago, and it still feels like yesterday,” Jojo said. “So you can imagine it’s just unreal right now here at this point.”
Another memory that Jojo likes recollecting about his family and the music business is how they received the name Los Lonely Boys. Jojo was quick to say that Ringo is the main reason for the name, but like much of their history, the story begins with their dad. When the brothers were young, their father wrote them a song called “Lonely Boy.”
“So we were singing that from the time we were little bitty fellas, man,” Jojo said. “One of those gigs after I had come back from Amarillo, we got serious. Our dad said if we were going to get serious about it, we needed a band name. We were coming up with other names. Henry was saying the Rattlesnakes, and I said like the Four Aces. We were coming up with all these other names, and Ringo just out of nowhere said, ‘The Lonely Boys.’ And then our dad said, ‘Let’s add Los to it so people would recognize that we’re Mexican American.’ The rest is history.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Los Lonely Boys are currently touring around the United States. Click here for more information.
