Los Lonely Boys

Substance and style come together with this Willie Nelson-endorsed Texas brother act. Los Lonely Boys sound the way bands used to sound: like they live for the joy of playing together. They've created border soul music, with Albert King, Jose Alfredo Jimenez and the Beatles their patron saints.

"A cross between Jimi Hendrix and Ritchie Valens," guitarist Henry Garza suggested modestly last year, and strangely, the big problem isn't that Henry is no Stevie Ray Vaughan. It's that these three Chicano brothers lack the main thing the forever incomparable Hendrix and prematurely sainted Valens shared--youthful pizzazz. The Lonely Boys' dad, Ringo Sr. (Ringo Jr., make of it what you will, plays drums), has been touring them so long that by now they're old pros--assimilated, acculturated, attenuated. So the obvious comparison is also dead accurate: Los Lobos tamed. You want something fancier, call them a cross between Santana and Air Supply. (Grade - C+)