E-mail a friendLos Lonely Boys
airdate July 27, 2006
Henry, Jojo and Ringo Garza - Los Lonely Boys - have maintained a family tradition. The San Angelo, TX natives have been writing, singing and playing together since they were small children. They played their first show backing their dad and, after relocating to Nashville, became one of the most exciting acts on the Texas/Southeast circuit. The Grammy-winning band recently released its second studio album, "Sacred," and is also the subject of the documentary Cottonfields and Crossroads, which follows its rise to stardom.
Los Lonely Boys
Tavis: I am pleased to welcome the Grammy-winning group, Los Lonely Boys to the program tonight. The Texas trio is made up of three brothers, Henry, Jojo and Ringo. Their debut CD went multi-platinum in 2005.Of course, you know that. Followed by a Grammy win for their hit single, that I still love to this day, 'Heaven.' The new CD, though, is called 'Sacred.' Later on, they'll perform a track from the new disc. First, though, some of the video for the first single, 'Diamonds.'
Tavis: Ringo, you were just telling me that that video is shot, like, literally on location.
Ringo Garza: Yeah, it's in our Texican Chop Shop.
Tavis: A chop shop.
Ringo: The Texican Chop Shop.
Tavis: Yeah. (Laughs)
Garza brother: It's all legal, man.
Ringo: It's all legal, but...(laughs)
Tavis: (Laughs) That didn't sound legal. I'm not sure you wanna confess that on national television.
Garza brother: No, it's legal, man. It's all legal. (Laughs) (All talking at once)
Garza brother: It's just a name, man.
Jojo: (unintelligible) street.
Tavis: (Laughs) What, what happens in the shop?
Ringo: Bringing rides to life, man.
Tavis: Oh yeah?
Henry: Absolutely. That's our slogan; it's 'Texican Chop Shop, bringing rides to life.'
Tavis: Bringing rides to life. And you guys actually do this yourselves?
Garza brother: No.
Ringo: Sometimes. Well, sometimes, we'll get in there and sand...
Tavis: Tinker, yeah.
Ringo: ...sand something down. And then they'll tell us, you're screwing it up. And then we're, like, all right, (unintelligible).
Tavis: So this is like the Los Lonely Boys version of, like, 'Pimp My Ride?'
Henry: Kind of, yeah. (Laughs)
Jojo: Kind of, only, we like a lot of old school muscle cars, and stuff like that. We like old low-riders, and stuff like that, so.
Henry: And it's actually a place that I worked at before any of the success happened. It was, like, my last job. And it's pretty cool, where one thing to work there, and then actually go back and own the joint.
Ringo: Didn't you get fired, dude? (Laughs)
Henry: No, (unintelligible). (Laughs) (All talking at once) Actually, I didn't get to get paid while I worked there, because as soon as I started, I was working with a buffer, and I turned it on, and I was talking to somebody like that, and I just messed with the trigger, forgot it was plugged in, and it went voom, and it wrapped around my wrist, and I dropped it, and it broke in half. Right in half. So I had to work off...
Ringo: They were, like, you're done.
Henry: And I had to work off a buffer.
Tavis: Yeah, Ringo, I think you're right. He got fired.
Ringo: Yeah, I think he got fired. (Laughs)
Henry: That's all right, I own the joint now, all right? (Laughs)
Tavis: Yeah. (Laughs) How nice is that, to own it now? How did you all develop a love, I wanna come to the music in a second, but I'm fascinated by not just your love for music, but your love for cars, as well. How do you develop - is this part of being in the same family, why you all love the same things?
Ringo: Our dad had a '69 GTO; I remember him saying. So when I was young, it was, I wanted one, too.
Garza brother: But he'd always talk about the...
Ringo: He started it, he started everything.
Tavis: Yeah?
Ringo: The music, and the cars, and that's as far as I'm going. (All talking at once)
Tavis: And you...
Jojo: He'd always talked about the cars he had. He loves the '66 Supersport Impala. That's one of his favorite cars, too. And just hearing him talk about driving fast, and of course seeing the cars, they're just beautiful cars, man. And seeing them all rusted up and stuff, man, it just kind of hurts, man. You're looking at them like oh, man. I'll fix you. (Laughs)
Ringo: It's really great to...
Jojo: You deserve it.
Ringo: It's really great to go a quarter-mile on the drag strip, and...
Henry: Then I got my '72 Cutlass.
Ringo: My brothers, it feels really good.
Henry: I got my '72 Cutlass, man, and that kind of, like, started the whole thing back again, man, with us actually owning a classic car.
Ringo: That was...
Henry: 'Cause it was my car, but it was, like, it was all of ours.
Tavis: So you got a '72 Cutlass.
Jojo: Well, I've got a '66 Chevelle Supersport, and I've got a '72 Chevy pickup that I'm restoring all the way. I got a '69 Camaro that's being restored, as well.
Tavis: Ringo, what, what hast thou?
Jojo: And a '66 - no, I'm just kidding. (Laughs)
Ringo: Huh?
Tavis: What hast thou? What do you have?
Ringo: I have a '67 GTO that I just fully restored, and a '69 Charger RT.
Jojo: It's in that video right there.
Ringo: Yeah, actually. (unintelligible)
Jojo: A lot of the cars in the video, they're all our cars.
Tavis: So you guys are saving a lot of money. You're shooting on location in your shop, using your own props.
Ringo: (Laughs) Yeah. You got it, man.
Tavis: So you're keeping all the money in the family.
Ringo: We got that from our dad, too, to save money.
Tavis: I understand. (Laughs) I wish the studio were set up differently, (laughs) so that I could actually bring your dad on camera. But off to my left over here is their father, Enrique, who I was excited to meet when I walked on the set here a few moments ago to meet you guys. The first thing I wanted to do was to meet your dad. 'Cause I'd heard so much about Mr. Enrique, read about him. Tell me how special it is to have him as a father, because to your point earlier, he really is responsible for all of this.
Henry: Man, bro, it's a tremendous blessing, man. We've been blessed with such a great father, man. And we love him. We love him to death, man.
Garza brother: Dearly. Very dearly.
Henry: We love him so much, because he's the kind of father that didn't keep a blanket over our eyes, and let the world go by. He let us see what was going on full hand, and we lived it together as a family. And that's the reason we are so close as a family. And I think that it comes through in our music. We try to put it through our music.
Ringo: He's a really good, great, he's the best father that, he's our only father. He is our father, I think, right?
Garza brother: My best friend, he's our brother. (Laughs)
Ringo: I think - our mom said he's our dad. (Laughs)
Tavis: Our mom said he's our dad. (Laughs)
Ringo: No, I'm just playing. He's great, man. He's great.
Garza brother: Smack him for that.
Ringo: No, I'm only playing, man. (Laughs) See what I mean? (unintelligible) the youngest brother.
Tavis: What's cool about this, though, is your dad, Enrique, was in a singing group himself with his seven brothers.
Jojo: Yeah, seven brothers.
Tavis: And he was the youngest - Ringo, and you're the youngest in this group. So your dad was the youngest of a group, and they did their thing. But it must be really cool now to, like, follow, this is not just your dad. You're following in some family footsteps.
Henry: It's a family magazine. It's generations of musicians that have been passed down in our blood. 'Cause it's like when we came out of the womb, we didn't have no choice. It was like, hey, you're gonna play music, 'cause that's what you're born with.
Tavis: So your dad put instruments in each of your hands?
Jojo: Oh, yeah.
Ringo: Yeah, but he didn't really push us to it.
Henry: No, he didn't push it.
Ringo: We loved it from the moment we got it in our hands. It was, like, oh, man. (unintelligible)
Henry: I heard him say the story the other day to someone. He goes, I didn't force them to do anything. He goes, they just took to it like duck to water. I just showed them where the water was, and they just went to it.
Garza brother: Wanted to swim.
Tavis: So your dad puts in you all this love for music, but you have to craft your own sound. So how did you guys come up with this sound that when you hear it on the radio now, you know that's Los Lonely Boys. But how did you guys craft that sound that we now know as you?
Ringo: From the influences we had as...
Henry: That's classified information.
Tavis: It's classified. (All talking at once)
Ringo: From influence that we had as children. First is our father and his brothers, and everything he did and showed us. And then from there, it went to Richie Valens, to the Beatles, to Ronnie Milsap, to Willie and Waylon.
Garza brother: Then Santana and Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughn.
Ringo: But as young kids, our father showed us all this stuff, man. The Beatles and everything, I was saying. And we were young kids, we thought he wrote them all. And it was, we wanted to be like our father. We wanted to play music.
Jojo: Yeah, every day growing up was our dad singing those songs. It wasn't hearing the originals on the radio and stuff like that.
Tavis: Oh, that's why you said you thought your dad had written those songs.
Ringo: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jojo: It was just all the time. Daddy was singing, and man, it just...
Ringo: It would come on the radio, it'd be like, "Daddy, he's singing your song, Daddy." (Laughs) He'd be like, oh, no, no, he's a friend of mine.
Tavis: Just a friend of mine I let, yeah.
Henry: I let him borrow them.
Jojo: He let them borrow his songs.
Tavis: Yeah. (Laughs) Tell me about - everybody knows, of course, about the first CD, and congratulations on all the success behind you now.
Ringo: Thank you so much. Thank you.
Tavis: Tell me what makes 'Sacred' so sacred. What makes it so distinctive from the first one.
Henry: Familia. Well, it's first off, familia, family, brothers, and our music, and what we've been doing our whole lives is music. And we find that, our family and our music, very sacred. And doing this album, we felt that a lot even more. Because there was a lot more people coming in, trying to poke the baby while it's trying to be made. (Laughs) And...
Jojo: Trying to grow.
Henry: And trying to grow. So it's got a lot of statements in there, a lot of personal things. Like, it's got a song on there called 'My Way' that's actually talking about (unintelligible).
Jojo: It's directed towards...
Ringo: It's written for all the people that were poking at it. (Laughs)
Tavis: Are you finding it difficult to keep those people away? It's one thing when you become successful, to your point, and everybody wants to try to...
Ringo: Well, we're three brothers, man, so...
Jojo: That makes it easier, being together.
Ringo: Being together, yeah, that makes it easy. 'Cause if we put our foot down and be, like, my brother said so, as well. And then they're, like, oh, okay. Like, all right. (Laughs)
Tavis: You guys still live in San Angelo, Texas.
Ringo: Yes, sir.
Garza brother: Yes, we live in our hometown still.
Tavis: So is San Angelo still big enough for international superstars now?
Ringo: It's big enough.
Jojo: Oh, man.
Tavis: Yeah? (Laughs)
Henry: It's perfect, man. It's where we're from.
Ringo: It's a good place to live, man.
Henry: It's where we're from, man. It's where we're from.
Ringo: It's a great place to raise a family.
Tavis: Now speaking of family, this whole conversation is family. So, I met one of your nephews over here, off camera.
Garza brother: Yeah. Sean Henry Garza.
Tavis: Yeah, John, exactly, who's, like, 13.
Jojo: Sean.
Tavis: Sean, who's 13.
Henry: He's just one of many.
Tavis: I heard. He's the eldest of 17 grandbabies.
Jojo: Yeah.
Ringo: Really, there's 17?
Tavis: That's what your dad told me.
Ringo: Man.
Jojo: No, it is 17, man. It's a lot of fun, yeah.
Tavis: Seventeen grandkids. So are they playing instruments already, too?
Jojo: This guy already - our 13 year old nephew Sean - he plays; he's getting really good on the piano.
Ringo: Man, he can get on the piano, and he can...
Jojo: And he can play guitar already, our dad's been showing him since he was little, just like us. And he sings.
Henry: Yeah, at three years old, he was singing 'Kansas City' on stage with us. (singing) Going to Kansas City. Kansas City, here I come. (Laughs)
Ringo: But I didn't know we had 17, I guess we don't count them until Christmas comes around. (Laughs)
Tavis: Yeah. (Laughs) Well, you know what?
Garza brother: Oh, that hurts. It hurts. (Laughs) (All talking at once)
Tavis: I'm glad you guys are selling a whole lot of records. (Laughs) 'Cause you got a lot of gifts to buy, come Christmas.
Jojo: Oh yeah, man.
Tavis: They are, of course, Los Lonely Boys. The new CD is called 'Sacred.' You gotta love these guys, and you will. And if you haven't heard of who they are, or heard their music, you're under a rock somewhere. (Laughs) But in a moment, a special performance from Los Lonely Boys, out of San Angelo, Texas. They'll perform in just a moment. Stay with us.
From their new CD, 'Sacred,' here are Los Lonely Boys performing 'Diamonds.' Enjoy. Good night from Los Angeles, and keep the faith.
Back to July 27, 2006