CONCERT REVIEW
Tex-Mex brothers Los Lonely Boys fill a sunny Square
After six consecutive weeks of weather that ranged from so-so to bad to just plain ugly, a massive crowd finally got what it had been waiting for: a sunny Square.
For the first time all year, not a single raindrop fell on the Lafayette Square crowd, and fans came out to rejoice. Crowding the stage, statues and surrounding streets, what was easily the summer’s largest crowd thanked Los Lonely Boys for bringing much more than the Texas weather.
REVIEW
WHO: Los Lonely Boys
WHEN: Thursday night
WHERE: Lafayette Square
The sun splashed down on what was a decidedly older crowd than the previous few weeks as the Mick Hayes Band and the Hill Country Revue opened the show. But as the time neared for Los Lonely Boys to take the stage, a wave of youth filtered into the crowd, bringing with it the familiar sights of head bobbing and dancing.
But it took a while for the band to work the crowd into its later frenzy. And that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The brothers Garza — Henry, Jojo and Ringo, from San Angelo, Texas — brought an entirely new sound than the opening acts. Lead singer Henry took to the stage with a carefree grin on his face, grabbed the mic and eagerly yelled, “Que pasa, Buffalo?!” the first of many references to the city Garza spliced between songs.
Tall, skinny and looking at ease with his tinted shades, Garza seemed content to lean back and let the wind blow his hair as his guitar took him for a ride. That first led to love tunes “Staying With Me” and “Oye Mamacita.” But these weren’t the type of love songs a soft-core band plays, they were the soulful, inviting tunes only a band as cool as Los Lonely Boys could perfect.
And what’s more, they seemed — as they did all night — to be having so much fun doing it. After first getting the crowd bouncing, the band launched into “Crazy Dream” before ending the song with an entertaining and unscripted “guitar conversation,” in which brothers Henry and Jojo played riffs to mimic voices between them.
While most of the band’s lyrics are refreshingly simple — it doesn’t take an introspective mind to understand the kind of fun this band is selling — the guitar riffs sound similar but somehow remain unique.
But the band continuously upped the pace by covering Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” and “Voodoo Chile” by Jimi Hendrix, which the Garzas officially made their own by singing of the “Texican Child” near the song’s end.
And then came what everyone knew the crowd was waiting for. All it took was the opening chord of the band’s 2005 Grammy-winning single “Heaven” for the crowd to explode and the fans to — literally, for some — dance in the streets.
The crowd didn’t let up from there, and the band played a couple lesserknowns before ending the set.
Steve Joseph, manager of marketing for Buffalo Place, couldn’t have been happier the skies finally stayed blue. He thanked the staff that, just two weeks earlier, rushed to set up Los Lobos’ set in the Lafayette Tap Room after a thunderstorm and lightning canceled the original show.
“A lot of people worked very hard with perseverance,” he said. “The good people of Buffalo finally got one.”
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