Henry (left) and Jojo Garza of Los Lonely Boys.
The Los Lonely Boys seem to relish in whipping a crowd into a rock ‘n’ roll frenzy. They achieved that Wednesday night at the Cascade Theatre in Redding, which is not an easy task. They drove their blues-rock onslaught so hard that the entire audience was on its feet by the end of the hour and 45-minute show.
The band’s bass player Jojo Garza pumped his fists in the air and stalked the stage, almost like a pro wrestler, as he fired up the crowd. At one point during the encore, he threw down his bass and it resonated with a huge bottom end “thud.” I was thinking, “wow, did he just break the thing?” But a few minutes later he had it in his hands again, and the replacement bass he’d briefly used, he gave to someone in the audience.
I got the impression that, even with as many shows as the Boys’ play, this was a pretty good night.
These three brothers — Henry (guitar), Ringo (drums) and Jojo — blast out a huge wall of sound that’s as tight as you could possibly imagine.
The group doesn’t have a huge catalog of songs, but the ones they do possess are effective vehicles for getting the point across. Henry Garza is a scorching rock guitarist in the vein of Stevie Ray or Jimi Hendrix, and his lightning licks were even more creative and progressive than the time I saw him two years ago. Jojo is equally matched as a virtuoso, soloing on bass and supporting the bottom end at the same time. Ringo has the intensity to match his brothers and is a wonderful harmony vocalist as well.
A special treat was watching Jojo reach his hands over onto Henry’s Stratocaster and hearing the two guys play the instrument at the same time. They’ve obviously done it a bunch, but it’s still incredible how seamless it sounds, as if they were both still playing individual instruments.
The audience ate it all up. Personally, I nearly skipped the show, because I wasn’t in the space for a loud, aggressive concert. Loud in the Cascade can be a toxic combination.
But I was swept away by the sincerity of group. There’s some showmanship going on, but these brothers really do give the audience its money’s worth. They believe in the cause.
In addition to their own tunes, they played some killer covers, including the Beatles’ “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” and Chicago’s “I’m A Man.”
They’ve got a new five-song EP coming out in October called “1969.” For more information, visit the group’s website.
