Jojo Garza went fishing and only caught a fingerling. But that’s fine with him. The bass player for Los Lonely Boys spent a recent spring morning like many others: with a line in the water in his native San Angelo, Texas. “It’s meditative,” he told CITY by phone after returning to his truck. “There’s nothing like it.”
Garza will be busy soon, hitting the road with his brothers — guitarist Henry and drummer Ringo — for concerts across the country. One of them will be at Parcel 5, where Los Lonely Boys will perform for free on June 26 as part of the Rochester International Jazz Festival. The 9 p.m. show was originally scheduled for 2024, but family tragedy compelled the group to cancel several dates.
That’s why, Garza said, this summer feels special: “It’s supposed to be a really good time. Hopefully it just ain’t too hot.”
CITY: Los Lonely Boys were scheduled to play here last summer and then a lot of family things came up. I’m sure that time was really challenging for you guys.
Jojo Garza: We were definitely looking forward to it, man, and then our dad had a heart attack and a stroke, and then we wound up losing him a couple months later. But you know what? He raised us to play music. He taught us everything we know and he always told us that if the world is pushing, you pull. We definitely miss him a lot, man. We lost our mom about 10 years ago also. It’s not something you really get over. When circumstances like that happen, family comes first. But we can’t wait to get back out that way.
CITY: You play so many different styles, from Latin rhythms and roadhouse blues to Zydeco music, especially on the 2024 album “Resurrection.” Were those new songs written for the album, or did you revisit older tunes?
Garza: “Natural Thing” was a song we had for over 20 years, and we had never recorded it. There wasn’t a song for Ringo [to sing on the album], and we were like, I think it’s time to release that song. He did a fantastic job singing it. “Painted Memories,” like you were saying, definitely has a Zydeco feel. But for us, we call that a Tex-Mex thing because it has the traditional Mexican musical instruments — accordion as well as bajo sexto [a 12-string instrument tuned an octave lower than a guitar]. That’s a sound we grew up on. That’s the reason we came up with the term “Texican rock and roll,” because people kept asking us what genre we classified ourselves as. Los Lonely Boys are about putting all the different ingredients together into the Lonely Stew.
CITY: With Henry on guitar and Jojo on drums, how did you gravitate to bass and, specifically, how did you start playing the six-string bass?
Garza: We were all raised playing guitar. That was our dad’s primary instrument. As we got older, man, it just started to turn into this thing where we were slowly becoming a band because of the multiple instruments that were in the household. I left [to go live] with my mom, and when I came back, my dad and my other two brothers were already gigging. After that night, I was like, “Hey, I would like to play, too.” My dad had an extra electric guitar that he took two strings off of, tuned an octave lower and put me on one of his extra amps. He said, “You’re the bass player now.” Eventually, I acquired a six-string bass, and believe it or not, when I grabbed it, the years of learning the traditional conjunto guitar called bajo sexto made it like I had already known the language of it.
CITY: What do you remember about those earliest shows when it was just the three of you?
Garza: Honestly, man, it was sort of rough. But a lot of the songs from the first album were songs that we were actually playing then. We had created what was called a “power hour” because everywhere we were playing, we were playing for an hour. We were big fans of Stone Cold Steve Austin at the time, too, and, and so we would go in with that mindset that we were the baddest dudes in town. You didn’t want to step in the ring after Los Lonely Boys got in.
CITY: I’m very pleased to hear that the Texas Rattlesnake played a role in the development of Los Lonely Boys.
Garza: To this day, he’s still a really good brother of ours, man. That was all thanks to a man by the name of Diamond Dallas Page. We had hung out a few times, and one night he looked at us and goes, “Guys, I know you love me, but who’s your guy?” We didn’t really want to tell him because we were just trying to show love. But we said, “Stone Cold.” He introduced us, and the rest is history. Stone Cold actually came down to one of our hometown shows here at a place called the RiverStage, introduced all the bands and was cracking beers on stage and getting the crowd hyped up. It was a really cool time.
CITY: You’re the one who yells, “Vamanos!” at the top of “Heaven,” right? Did that start during the live show? Or did you do that for the first time in the studio?
Garza: It did happen in the studio. I was just messing around and I even told them to cut it. They were like, “No, man, we’re keeping that!” After Henry’s great guitar intro, it was just something that adds another mark to the song.
CITY: We’re talking about a song that’s now more than 20 years old, one that led to a lot of success, including a Grammy. How has your relationship with that song changed since 2004?
Garza: When you have a song that identifies you to people, at some point, it feels repetitive. But we realize that that has a great purpose. It’s a great way to be identified. We used to play it earlier in the set, and then it turned into this thing that has to be played at the end of the set. We want to keep the crowd sticking around. But when you’re identified with something like a song as powerful as “Heaven,” man, it’s something that you kind of use. What did the uncle tell Spider-Man? “With great power comes great responsibility.” It’s like that on stage with that song. We know that it holds great power, and for us, too. That is probably the biggest way that people identify Los Lonely Boys, and we embrace that. We’re thankful for that. It just goes to show people that when you have belief in something, it can go beyond your own expectations.
Los Lonely Boys performs at Parcel 5 on Thursday, June 26 at 9 p.m. The show is free. More info at rochesterjazz.com.
Patrick Hosken is CITY’s arts reporter. He can be reached at patrick@rochester-citynews.com.
This article appears in Dec 1-31, 2024.
