Family at the core of Los Lonely Boys' success

Music is in the blood of Jojo Garza and his brothers, Henry and Ringo, who together make up Los Lonely Boys.

“We grew up playing music that was taught to us by our dad,” he said ahead of the trio’s performance in Rio Rancho. “We were in a very musical family.”

He said his dad was in a band with his brothers, and their maternal grandfather was in a band with his. His mom was also a skilled dancer and singer.

“That was the family work. We eat and drank water and sleep and breathe air, and music was just as normal as all the rest of those things.”

Garza said they started by learning to sing and play guitar, then moved on to the basic beats of the drums, some things on bass and some keyboards. Henry, he said, wrote his first song when he was 4 years old. “Music was definitely there, and it was something we wanted to do,” he said.

When the brothers decided they really wanted to make a go of it around 1990, their dad encouraged them to find a name for their trio. “our dad wrote a song for us when we were little guys called “Lonely Boys,” and we came to a point in our lives where our dad said if we were going to be serious about this, we needed to come up with a band name,” Garza said. “Ringo blurted out, ‘The Lonely Boys,’ and our dad said ‘Los,’ you know, to implement and show that we’re Mexican-American as well.”

Los Lonely Boys emerged on the scene in 1996, and their 2004 self-titled album reached double-platinum and included the gold-certified hit “Heaven,” which won a Grammy for Best Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.

To Garza, though, the fame seemed a bit surreal. “We still see ourselves in a regular light, you know. We’re just guys that had a hit song there and a couple other ones after that that were in the top 10,” he said. “I still never felt like we hit it big or anything like that, but the fact that we’re able to share the stage and cut tracks with the likes of Carlos Santana, Willie Nelson; we sat backstage with Paul McCartney and sang a song with him … When we’re standing there receiving the Grammy, looking at Faith Hill and Tim McGraw and Beyonce and Jay Z and Alicia Keys and JLo and Steven Tyler and John Travolta, I mean, you’re looking at all those faces you’ve been seeing on TV and videos and things for a long time and you’re like, for me, — and I think for my brothers as well, we’ just like, ‘What are we doing here?’”

But for Garza, the best memory of that night once again comes back to his dad. “One of the most beautiful things about that evening is when they called our names, our dad was the very first person to stand up in the audience. There’s a picture out there floating around of him standing up with both arms in the air, and he’s just really, really happy for the achievement we made, and the reason we weren’t standing is because we weren’t sure they said our name.”

Even without the accolades, he said, music would still be a part of their lives. “It’s not to say we had aspired to do any of that, really,” he said. “We had learned to play music. We were going to play music regardless, and you know, we were just trying to write songs, share them with people and be able to pay the bills and eat, and everything else happened, I guess, due to the old saying, ‘If you work hard enough and you believe it strong enough that things can happen.’”

What makes music a special artform, he said, is “it just allows you to find ways to be able to relate to everyone else, because there’s something about art, or the arts, if you will, that everyone seems to find a connection with, especially something like music.”

Garza said it’s a universal language and a key “to people’s hearts and people’s minds and people’s lives as well as letting people into ours.”

“We eat food and drink water to supply our physical need for survival … music is like invisible food for a portion of ourselves that we really can’t see. … It’s a very special gift, and Los Lonely Boys are just some of the human beings that were given the ability — we’re really vessels for something greater at work, and it’s just how perceptive are we to it, or receptive?” he said.

Garza compared the process of creating music to carpentry, where you start out with basic tools such as a hammer, nails and wood. “It’s what you do with those tools that makes music your own,” he said. “It’s really a special thing to be able to take a few chords and things that music has to offer and be able to come up with music that defines you, in a sense.”

He noted that listening to music from the likes of Bach or Beethoven “sounds like 1,000 nots are being struck, but in reality, it’s just octaves being repeated and utilized differently.”

“It’s what you do with music that makes it unique, and so with Los Lonely Boys, because there’s been some many great musicians and great music before us, we were able to have an array of examples of how it was utilized and to create many, many great songs that we’ve all heard in our lifetimes,” he said. “And for Los Lonely Boys, I think that branding it Mexican rock and roll is another way that people can really identify what Los Lonely Boys are. … I think it’s got to do with being Mexican-American. It’s got to do with being American and Mexican alone, and you know, implementing all they different styles that we’ve learned over the years.

“Mexican rock and roll itself was created to remove the idea of styles and genres and show that music cannot be set by boundaries or contained into one simple book or one jar or something, because it’s an endless thing that music is still, even to this day, just constantly being created by many people as well as Los Lonely Boys,” Garza added.

But after awhile — in 2019 — the brothers decided to take a break from it all.

“At some point, you definitely got to take a step back and catch up with everything, or let things catch up,” he said. “For Los Lonely Boys, it wasn’t any different. It was a moment for us to reflect on the things that we had accomplished, because we had been working really, really hard for a very long time. … It just came to a point where the threads were coming off the tires, so to speak … and so we had to put a halt to it.

“We were just at this point in our lives, in this crossroads, I guess you could say, where we were definitely felling accomplished and wondering sort of what was next and just really needing a doggone break,” he added.

Then, in 2021 a fateful call brought them back out.

“We had come back because The Who had given us call, our management a call. … They called us and asked if we wanted to play a few shows through Texas and Oklahoma and some other places,” Garza said. “And so we were like, ‘Well, what a better return, you know, than to open for The Who?’ such a great classic rock and roll band. And so we said, ‘All right, let’s give it a shot,’ and we had those jitters again and everything sort of felt fresh and new, and so here we are now with our latest release called ‘The Resurrection,’ which is out now.”

The trio is now preparing for a stop in Rio Rancho, where they will be the special guests of the Turnpike Troubadours at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 9, at Rio Rancho Events Center.

Garza said the crowd can expect a mix of the old songs and some of their new stuff. “We’ll be spreading the love and the message of music and unity of people through our music. You’re definitely going to be hearing and seeing familyhood … You’re going to see an expression of truth of the creator of all things in existence that he appoints.

“We all have a message to give someone else, and so you’re definitely going to receive that along with a great time we’re going to have,” he added. “We’re there to have fun, and we’re there to share the evening with other beautiful people.”

Garza also shared his love and appreciation for New Mexico as he talked about the upcoming show.

“New Mexico has been like a second home to us and has welcomed us very, very well and treated us with very much acceptance and love,” he said, “and so we’re always excited to go back.”