Los Lonely Boys "Fly Away"

Jesse Barnett of Right Arm Resource is our guest blogger this week. He spends his days on the phone with radio stations across the country, advocating for records he believes in. While PJ is on vacation, Jesse talks to you about 5 new songs he thinks radio, and you, will love.

“The time has come when we must leave you, sorry we are but we must go.”

Bet you didn’t see a quote from the Casper theme song coming, did you? I’m like that.

Next week you’ll have PJ back, flaunting his encyclopedic knowledge in front of you like an SNL-era Dennis Miller emceeing the Newport Folk Festival. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my posts for the last few days as much I did writing them. At the very least, I hope I turned you on to some great new music.

For my last entry of the week, I’m picking a band I’ve had a lot of experience with. Back in 2003, my former assistant was the promotion guy at a little record label named Or Music. At a conference for non-commercial radio programmers in Louisville, KY, the label held an early morning showcase for a couple of their artists. It’s not common to have early morning artist showcases at conferences, you can imagine, because the coffee hasn’t quite kicked in yet.

When Los Lonely Boys took the stage in a too-small room, their harmonies, guitar antics and unique brand of “Texican Rock And Roll” was all anyone needed to get their hearts racing for the rest of the week. It’s rare to have a conference performance that everyone collectively points to as ‘the moment,’ but this was indeed one of them.

That performance was the beginning of a long successful road for brothers Henry, Jojo and Ringo Garza (yes, a drummer whose real name is Ringo. You can’t make this stuff up sometimes.) The single “Heaven” from that self-titled debut album rose to the top of the airplay charts and the disc went multi-platinum.

The band followed up with two more original studio albums, Sacred in 2006 and Forgiven in 2008, as well as an ep of covers from 1969 and an acoustic live disc.

Now on their own label, the band is back with Rockpango, their first original studio album in three years. A Spanglish word coined by the band, Rockpango translates more or less to “rock party,” and that’s exactly what the 11-track collection is. The first single, “Fly Away,” is everything you love about Los Lonely Boys, especially those crazy-tight harmonies that can only come from spending an entire lifetime (or three) singing together.

Relix has the exclusive first listen for the single. Check it out here:

Relix - Audio - Artist Exclusives - World Premiere: Los Lonely Boys "Fly Away"

Read a little more about Jesse in this previous post, and visit his site at Right Arm Resource.