Post by LS on Jan 25, 2004 1:55:12 GMT -5
Get ready for some 'Texican Rock 'n' Roll'
by Simon Umlauf
From Buddy Holly to Stevie Ray Vaughn, Texas musicians have often been like a bolt of lightning in musical history. Now, three brothers from the tiny Texas town of San Angelo are beginning to strum themselves a spot in the history books.
This month alone, Los Lonely Boys have graced the stages of the Conan O'Brien show and Austin City Limits with their blues-rock blessing "Heaven." With their fusion of Latin rhythms, rock, blues and soul, the Lonely Boys won't be Grammy lonely for long.
The Garza brothers paid their dues on the musical roads between Texas and Nashville. Brothers Henry, Jojo and Ringo epitomize the Vaughn brothers' gem "Family Style." They started playing music when they were preschoolers and joined their father's Tex-Mex conjunto band in their teens.
"Music in our family is something that's been generational," Henry says. "It's in our blood, passed down whether we wanted to learn music or not. My father started playing guitar when he was 8 years old."
As their father, Ringo Sr., grew older and the roads between Texas and Tennessee wore thin, the brothers decided to go out on their own. It wasn't too long before Willie Nelson witnessed their talent at a bar in Austin, Texas, and took them under his wing. Soon after, Nelson invited the "Los Boys" to cut their debut album in his Austin studio, and the rest may be history.
Henry and the brothers can flip through a list of influences from Willie Nelson to Chuck Berry, but the greatest influence was much closer to home.
"Our biggest influence was our dad," Henry says. "We were trying to be like our dad in every way that we played, because our dad played with so much emotion and so much intensity.
"So we put that same intensity into each one of our instruments that we want to play like he did. Our dad was really awesome on stage."
Henry's searing guitar licks are a fusion of Carlos Santana and Stevie Ray, with brother Jojo at bass and Ringo on drums providing a perfect launch pad for Henry's Stratocaster. Their self-titled debut is full of poppy ballads, but the real gems are "Hollywood," with a beautiful flamenco intro, and "Onda" which sounds like an instrumental sequel to Santana's "Black Magic Woman."
If you ask Los Lonely Boys to describe their sound, Henry spins around with apt description.
"It comes from our musical burrito theory, and we call it Texican rock 'n' roll," Henry says, laughing. "Our musical burrito theory is that we are the tortilla, and inside the tortilla, we fill it with all the knowledge we gathered. With: No. 1, our father, and all the rest of the greats from Santana, to the Stevie Ray's, to the Willie's, to the Beatles, to the Everly Brothers, to Ritchie Valens, to Hendrix, Ronnie Milsap -- then we put it into a tortilla, which is us, and we feed it to the world -- and that's Texican rock 'n' roll."
by Simon Umlauf
From Buddy Holly to Stevie Ray Vaughn, Texas musicians have often been like a bolt of lightning in musical history. Now, three brothers from the tiny Texas town of San Angelo are beginning to strum themselves a spot in the history books.
This month alone, Los Lonely Boys have graced the stages of the Conan O'Brien show and Austin City Limits with their blues-rock blessing "Heaven." With their fusion of Latin rhythms, rock, blues and soul, the Lonely Boys won't be Grammy lonely for long.
The Garza brothers paid their dues on the musical roads between Texas and Nashville. Brothers Henry, Jojo and Ringo epitomize the Vaughn brothers' gem "Family Style." They started playing music when they were preschoolers and joined their father's Tex-Mex conjunto band in their teens.
"Music in our family is something that's been generational," Henry says. "It's in our blood, passed down whether we wanted to learn music or not. My father started playing guitar when he was 8 years old."
As their father, Ringo Sr., grew older and the roads between Texas and Tennessee wore thin, the brothers decided to go out on their own. It wasn't too long before Willie Nelson witnessed their talent at a bar in Austin, Texas, and took them under his wing. Soon after, Nelson invited the "Los Boys" to cut their debut album in his Austin studio, and the rest may be history.
Henry and the brothers can flip through a list of influences from Willie Nelson to Chuck Berry, but the greatest influence was much closer to home.
"Our biggest influence was our dad," Henry says. "We were trying to be like our dad in every way that we played, because our dad played with so much emotion and so much intensity.
"So we put that same intensity into each one of our instruments that we want to play like he did. Our dad was really awesome on stage."
Henry's searing guitar licks are a fusion of Carlos Santana and Stevie Ray, with brother Jojo at bass and Ringo on drums providing a perfect launch pad for Henry's Stratocaster. Their self-titled debut is full of poppy ballads, but the real gems are "Hollywood," with a beautiful flamenco intro, and "Onda" which sounds like an instrumental sequel to Santana's "Black Magic Woman."
If you ask Los Lonely Boys to describe their sound, Henry spins around with apt description.
"It comes from our musical burrito theory, and we call it Texican rock 'n' roll," Henry says, laughing. "Our musical burrito theory is that we are the tortilla, and inside the tortilla, we fill it with all the knowledge we gathered. With: No. 1, our father, and all the rest of the greats from Santana, to the Stevie Ray's, to the Willie's, to the Beatles, to the Everly Brothers, to Ritchie Valens, to Hendrix, Ronnie Milsap -- then we put it into a tortilla, which is us, and we feed it to the world -- and that's Texican rock 'n' roll."