XL COVER STORY

Los Boys are back

Starting over at the middle

By Michael Corcoran
AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Wednesday, July 12, 2006

HOUSTON — Ringo Garza has a weird sense of humor. The Los Lonely Boys drummer was doing a photo shoot with brothers Henry Garza and JoJo Garza in a parking lot in Houston, where the trio was headlining an all-day Fourth of July concert, when he spotted a line of police officers leaning against a wall. "Hey, let's get a picture of me getting handcuffed," Ringo said to the photographers, who got in position for one heckuva photo op. He had decided to goof on his high-profile arrest in January 2005, which threw the band into a negative national light for a few months until the charges of marijuana possession were dropped and the sexual assault accusations did not lead to charges. "Could we get a picture of you guys putting the cuffs on me?" Ringo asked. The cops did not share his amusement and refused, though they did pose for photos.

"You're in Los Lobos, right?" a cop said, and a group of Mexican American bystanders, who'd been capturing the scene with their cell-phone cameras, groaned. "Los Lonely Boys!" they corrected in unison.

"Los Lonely Boys!" It's good to hear the urgency in that name again, as the brothers Garza are back in the game with a new album and a new tour. ("Sacred" comes out Tuesday; the group plays Stubb's on July 22.) It's been more than two years since the trio of blues rockers came out of San Elsewhere, Texas, to charm a nation with "Heaven," its irresistible opening guitar riff a tune unto itself. It was the song of the summer of 2004, leaping from format to format — Americana to rock to country to pop. People couldn't get enough of "Heaven" and the exuberant brothers from San Angelo with all their showmanship and zany banter. Of the 2.2 million copies the self-titled debut sold, "Heaven" single-handedly sold about 2 million of those.

But Los Lonely Boys would've been perfectly happy to have sold 200,000. Heck, after more than a decade in the rock club trenches, they'd have been ecstatic.

"We never set out to make hit records or thought about making music that they might play on the radio," Henry said in the band's tour bus before the July 4 show in Houston. "We're just brothers playing music together, a band of gypsies."

Interviewing the three Garza brothers at the same time is like being the lone defender against a three-on-one fast break; when you lean this way, they'll go that way. Take the middle and they'll pass to the side. They finish each others' sentences, with JoJo, 26, and Ringo, 24, feeding off 28-year-old Henry's lead, just as they do onstage. The flow can be exhausting, but having just awakened (at 3 p.m.), the brothers were a little groggy the afternoon of their July 4 show. Or maybe they were just tired, on the last day of a four-week promo tour, of answering the same questions about how they're going to top "Heaven."

"The label's expectations for the new album are higher than ours," Henry said. "We just want people to like it."

"Tell you the truth, I don't give a (expletive) how well it does," added Ringo. "Everybody keeps asking us if we feel any pressure because the first record did so well. We don't think like that. It's a waste of time."

"We don't want to compete with ourselves," said JoJo.

'Paying the bills'

Los Lonely Boys are set up for a fall on "Sacred" and they know it. If the record, which introduces a horn section and keyboardist Michael Ramos to the trio's blues-rock mix, sells 500,000 copies, it'll be considered a bust in some circles. If radio can't find a "Heaven" in this mix — and they didn't with first single "Diamonds," which has received limited airplay — then some in the music business would feel that Los Lonely Boys were on the way down.

If you never have a hit, you can't be tagged a one-hit wonder. And that's the curse of "Heaven." The song set LLB for life, even if it means playing it on oldies shows 20 years from now. The smash hit, a favorite back-from-the-break "bumper" on sports radio and televised football games, introduced the brothers Garza to pop music's upper rung. They jammed with Carlos Santana, opened for the Rolling Stones and hung out with Paul McCartney, who got a sample of the new album when the Boys serenaded him with "My Loneliness" in his dressing room.

Latino teenagers found new role models in the "Texicans" from the barrio who brought cholo style to the lily-white rock 'n' roll arena. Filmmaker Hector Galan documented that duality as well as the group's rise with "Los Lonely Boys: Cottonfields & Crossroads," which premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March and opens Aug. 11 in Austin. The sudden success of Los Lonely Boys, who've been playing together almost 20 years, first as the backing band to their country-singing father, was the music story of the year. They even had a drummer named Ringo; how perfect was that?

Henry looks back at that time and it seems like a wildly exciting blur. "It happened so fast," he said. "One night we're playing the Saxon Pub, and it seemed like a few days later we're on national TV."

Asked what was the best part of hitting big nationally, the brothers, for once, said in unison, "Paying the bills." Henry added, "To be able to take care of our families. Knowing our kids are going to have it easier than we did."

The worst part? "Leaving our families for weeks at a time," Henry said, as JoJo and Ringo nodded. Henry has three kids, JoJo and Ringo each have two. Here's how much they love staying at home: When they made a songwriting date with Pat Simmons of the Doobie Brothers (a collaboration which produced "Roses" on the new CD), they decided to meet in San Angelo even though Simmons offered to put up the Garzas. At his spread on Maui.

New songs, new resolve

New songs did not come easily to the troubadours who'd spent nearly 18 months solid on tour. When the Garzas went into the Pedernales studio with the first CD's producer John Porter, they had ideas, riffs, half-finished songs, but very few complete numbers. But the brothers cooked when the clock was ticking, with "Sacred's" opening number, "My Way," setting a defiant tone. "Don't tell me how to live my life/ Don't tell me how to pray/ Don't tell me how to sing my song/ Don't tell me what to say," Henry sings, then rips out a stinging lead. His guitar tone melts the marrow.

"There were a lot of fingers in our pie," Henry said, explaining the song's inspiration. Even though the Garzas are listed as co-producers on this one ("We co-produced last album, too, but we didn't get any credit," Ringo groused), they had to fight for their creative freedom. "Some people have a lot riding on us and they were getting too involved, man. That song's about taking control of the music," Henry said. That the album ends with another declaration of independence, "Living My Life," attests to another downside of success. All of a sudden there are all these people who know what's best for you.

For an album that was practically recorded as it was being written, the record sounds well-crafted and follows a thematic thread: be true to yourself and your family. This time, "Heaven" is "Home," "Crazy Dream" is now "Memories." The Garza brothers are more reflective this time out, though Henry's guitar work still scorches.

After receiving the "finished" album and not hearing a hit, Epic sent the boys back to Pedernales to record "Diamonds," a "Heaven"-ly song found on a self-released Los Lonely Boys album from 1996. Henry wrote this first single off "Sacred" when he was 17. "It's funny, but no one (at the label) picked 'Heaven' to be the first single," said Henry. "They picked 'Real Emotions.' It wasn't until after (radio station) KGSR started playing 'Heaven' off the album that anyone thought of that as a radio song."

On Independence Day in Houston, the Garza brothers seemed hungry again, like they had something to prove all over. New songs, new resolve.

"The funniest thing is that we've had to learn how to play some of the songs we've already recorded," said Henry. Brand-new songs such as "Orale" and "One More Day" were assembled piecemeal in the studio.

"It's a rush, man, playing these new songs, waiting for our new album to come out," said Henry. "It feels like we're starting over."

Ringo responded, "We've worked too hard to be starting over."

He has a point. During their two-year run to the top, Los Lonely Boys cultivated a solid fan base by tending to the grass roots. They're tireless meeters-and-greeters, often signing autographs and posing for pictures for an hour after a show. They seem genuinely interested in interacting with kids who become fans for life. Every autograph they signed during the "Heaven" explosion is a potential "Sacred" buyer.

That connection with fans carries over to the band's incredibly active and passionate La Onda street team. Even if radio won't touch the new record, this music will be heard. Having laid the foundation for a long, successful career, Los Lonely Boys can go back to being the group they feel most comfortable being: a band of brothers, rock 'n' roll gypsies just playing music together.

Los Lonely Boys may be starting over in a certain sense. But they're as far from the bottom as they are from heaven.

mcorcoran@statesman.com; 445-3652