WHEN Henry Garza was a young teen, he was witness to what he dismisses as some “pretty scary” adult situations.
When he was 13 and his brother Ringo was 9, they went into a bar in the most “redneck” part of Nashville, took their amps and instruments up to the stage as everybody yelled “Get those wetbacks out of here!”
Garza, a Mexican-American from San Angelo, Texas, who backed his minstrel father Enrique before flying solo with his siblings as Los Lonely Boys, winces at the memory.
Amid snickering and laughing, they played anyway, kicking off with “Your Cheating Heart.” When his dad started singing Hank Williams, everybody’s faces just looked stunned.
At that point, he realized music had real power. But then a fight broke out while they were onstage. A guy got hit by a pitcher of beer, and it cut his head open. During the ordeal, they never stopped playing, because, the singer-guitarist says, “Our dad always said, ‘Never stop playing, no matter what.'”
The Garza brothers (including Ringo on drums and Jo Jo on bass) often were privy to real gunfights in the hardscrabble cantinas they played throughout the Southwest. Horrified, they once watched from stage as a fellow Tejano musician was shot in a rioting audience.
“And we kept playing even after the shots rang out,” recalls Henry. “But when the cops arrived and started spraying mace, we finally said, ‘Man, we can’t take any more of this.’ Other nights, it’d be like the movie ‘La Bamba’ — we’d definitely get offstage and have the occasional barfight ourselves back in the day.”
Garza, 28, sits on the edge of his hotel-suite seat as he recounts the stories. Muscular beneath his Johnny Cash T-shirt, black jeans and Biker boots, with a ponytail and aviator sunglasses, he looks like someone you wouldn’t want to mess with.
Ditto his kid brother Ringo, 24, the burly tough guy seated beside him. Even without the wiry Jo Jo (who sat out this interview), the Garzas make a formidable force that could probably punch their way through the most violent nightclub situation.
He’s had to resort to brawn from time to time, says Ringo. “Like the time my sister got married and she came to see us play, again in Nashville, and a fight broke out and somebody actually punched my sister in the face. We jumped offstage then, I’ll tell you.”
But that’s not what the peace-loving Los Lonely Boys (who play the Sleep Train Pavilion in Concord on Saturday) are really about, they say.
It’s all about family
They center around family, which started with the ways their hardworking parents raised them, and now extends to grandchildren.
Henry is married with four kids; JoJo, married, father of two. Recently, the trio had three months off after nonstop touring to support its Grammy-winning, multi-platinum Epic debut “Los Lonely Boys.”
Their idea of vacation? “It was the longest period in our lives that we’ve ever had, not doing anything,” says Henry, who spent the time at home with his family.
“There’s nothing better than being with your family,” Ringo adds.
As for Los Lonely Boys, he says, “This is what we do to provide for our families, and if it wasn’t for all the people out there who buy our albums and love our music, we wouldn’t be able to take care of our kids the way we can today. So we are very thankful and grateful for everybody out there who supports us.”
The Garzas’ Horatio Alger tale is a compelling one.
Enrique — who had his own family band as a kid — enlisted his offspring in Texas, later in a contract-seeking stint in Nashville. Their age didn’t matter; Henry already had written his first song at age 4.
“And at age 6, I was already playing bars,” Henry says. “Really knowing what it took to live in this world, by going out and making a dollar to pay your bills and keep going.”
The band’s sound — exemplified by the breakthrough smash “Heaven” — revolved around Henry’s Vaughan-brothers guitar leads and Los-Lobos-gruff warble, and led to the immortalization of two concerts — the “Live at the Fillmore” CD, and the DVD “Texican Style: Live In Austin.”
Follow-up with ‘Sacred’ CD
Now, the trio follows suit with “Sacred,” with the single “Diamonds” (which marvels at the group’s sudden superstardom) and the future hit “Outlaws” (featuring guest vocalists Enrique Garza and Willie Nelson).
If all this sounds worthy of a feature flick, rest assured — it was.
PBS documentary filmmaker Hector Galan turned the saga into “Cottonfields and Crossroads,” which premiered at this year’s South By Southwest music festival in Austin.
Galan, who worked on Hispanic documentaries, heard of the group because they played in Austin a lot, Ringo recalls. “… He really liked the whole story. We told him only a little bit of our lives, but he loved it, so he followed us around with cameras for a few years. He was filming before our first record even came out.”
Although the film still awaits a distribution deal, the Garzas are pleased with it. Henry says of Galan, “He got our lives, condensed into an hour and a half.”
In many ways, Los Lonely Boys provide the perfect soundtrack for today’s cross-cultural era, when Spanglish radio stations are on the rise, reggaeton music is at its zenith, and Mexican immigration has become a hot-button issue that’s divided the nation.
Asked to comment on Bush administration border policies, the Garzas throw their hands up. Los Lonely Boys are not political, they stress. “But first and foremost, you’ve got to look at the kids,” Henry says.
“… And bottom line, you’ve got people who’ve lived here forever, and then all of a sudden they’ve got people saying ‘You’ve got to go back there, even though you’ve been here your whole life.’ And families are instantly separated.
“So we feel really close to this topic, because we are natural Mexican-Americans, we were born here. But our great-grandparents do come from Mexico, and they were on that land long before, working the land. And they didn’t have any green cards or legal papers that proved they were American citizens. But their blood was in this earth, just as much as anybody else’s. And what happened to …” he begins singing, “This land is your land …”
The Garzas have a whimsical way of simplifying things in their lives. They liken songwriting to catching fish — a lot of patience involved, and they know when they’ve reeled in the big ones.
Big muscle-car fans, they’re planning for their retirement already, with a the Texican Chop Shop, a ride-customizing garage they recently opened back home.
As their album title implies, Los Lonely Boys understand exactly what to hold sacred. Henry says, “It’s knowing that you’ve got to work hard to succeed, constantly working together, and never giving up on each other.”
That’s what true familia is about.
“And that’s what we’re trying to show. Hey, you got a family up here that’s succeeded in America! And because we are Mexican-Americans, it made it that much harder for us to do this kind of music. Because you can see already, there’s only been Santana, Los Lobos and Richie Valens. And now us. So we’re proof positive that a beautiful song can change a life in an instant.”
