Giovannie and The Hired Guns, one of the most electrifying bands to emerge on the national scene in recent years, have pushed the limits of rock & roll and country to create an unmistakably gritty sound all their own. The five-piece from Stephenville, Texas, rose to new heights with their smash hit “Ramon Ayala,” a 2021 release that climbed to #1 on the Active Rock Radio Chart and the Alternative Radio Chart, marking the first time in more than 15 years that an artist’s first career-charting radio single reached the top spot on both tallies. After garnering a sizable grassroots following on the strength of their electrifying live performance.
Giovannie and The Hired Guns have now signed to Warner Music Nashville just in time for the release of their third full-length, Tejano Punk Boyz: an urgent body of work cementing their status as an essential new force in redefining the possibilities of Texas music. This move was motivated by the enormous success they achieved as an entirely independent act. Tejano Punk Boyz builds on the tremendously infectious kind of guitar-heavy alt-rock that Giovannie and The Hired Guns—vocalist Giovannie Yanez, guitarists Carlos Villa and Jerrod Flusche, bassist Alex Trejo, and drummer Milton Toles—first perfected back when Yanez was working the counter at a local pawnshop. The band collaborates with producer Taylor Kimball (Koe Wetzel, Read Southall Band, Austin Meade) on the 10-track album, just like their self-titled 2020 sophomore effort, to fully harness the band-of-brothers chemistry that makes their live set so electrifying.
Tejano Punk Boyz pushes down on the culture-bending instincts that have long driven the band, blending aspects of everything from Red Dirt country to post-grunge to la musica nortea, in addition to performing songs in both English and Spanish for the first time. With this record, “We didn’t want to hold back at all,” explains Yanez. “Since we all come from diverse backgrounds, we wanted to combine our influences to create something that felt incredibly liberating. As a result, I believe that what we produced is wholly original and unlike anything else now available.
