CONCERT RECAP: Giovannie and the Hired Guns Blow the Roof Off of Sold-Out Cook’s Garage Bus Barn

Playing to a sold-out crowd on the second of two nights at Cook’s Garage’s Bus Barn, Giovannie and the Hired Guns went all gas, no brakes to kick off our semester of coverage.

Forming in 2017, the Stephenville-based band has been gaining traction at an unprecedented amount with their blends of country and hard rock, almost grunge at times. They’re another band/artist like Koe Wetzel or Whiskey Myers where while they might have some country roots, they clearly make rock music and they play rock shows. While they had a few regional hits early with songs like Rooster Tattoo and Can’t Answer Why, they finally broke into the mainstream with the song Ramon Ayala, a super fun and heavy song about getting drunk and blaring Ramon Ayala and Selena songs that includes the incredible hook, “I’m just your ordinary f*ck up, there’s nothing special about me.”

As far as I can tell, they’re the first band to play the venue two nights in a row on either stage at the venue and that doesn’t shock me. I saw them at Cotton Fest in April and they drew the biggest crowd in the fest’s history. That show was the first time I saw them live and from that set, I knew it definitely wouldn’t be the last. The crowd they had was the rowdiest of the weekend with beer and beer cans flying from every direction. But it wasn’t just the crowd, the band just sounded so great live as well. Songs that at times felt a little underproduced were so much heavier and lively in the concert setting.

Now, months later, playing to 2,000 people packed in from wall to wall, the band and the crowd both were firing on all cylinders once again. Opening up their show at 10 PM, the band entered the stage playing the intro riff from Pantera’s Cowboys From Hell. Frontman Giovannie Yanez walked on stage, yelled out “LUBBOCK HOW WE FEELIN TONIGHT!” and after a quick buildup, the band opened their show with Bad Habits which immediately sent the crowd into a frenzy. Their opening run continued with Run Away and Pretend which was such a fantastic way to kick the evening off.

The only thing that sort of threw me off from the last show was Yanez embracing the frontman role even more and ditching his acoustic guitar. I’m not sure when he made that change but he seemed extremely comfortable in that role already and embraced it well. It was just strange to not see him beating up an acoustic guitar like it owed him money.

The band’s setlist relied primarily on their latest album, Tejano Punk Boyz and the material from that album all sounded fantastic live. I didn’t really care about the song I Don’t Mind when it was released as a single but the song flipped the room upside its head in the middle of the set. Shout was another song that caught me by surprise live, especially with Yanez’s crowd engagement for the chorus. However, the band is also great at taking songs that are already solid and making them even better live. The biggest examples of that in my opinion are Ramon Ayala and Overrated. Yanez couldn’t even sing the intro to Ramon Ayala because the crowd did it for him, singing almost the entire first verse before Yanez sang the “and this is what she said to me” line. The chorus hit, and the crowd lost their mind, singing louder than Yanez was. Overrated is a song I’ve been waiting for the band to release ever since they played it at Cotton Fest and at this show, it led to another sing-along where I couldn’t even hear Yanez. Oh, also, they did a grunge cover of Pumped Up Kicks by Foster The People which sounded way better than any grunge cover of any Foster The People song should sound. I can’t really comment on it more than that because I’m still trying to wrap my head around how it was so great.

A quick 90 minutes later, the band wrapped up their show with a powerful rendition of their song Change and another giant sing-along for the song Rooster Tattoo. The show was great but it wasn’t without it flaws, mainly, sound issues that plagued the entirety of the band’s main set. I’m not sure exactly what the issue was but every now and then, there would be a pop in the speakers, all the sound would cut out, then it would quickly all come back. While the band didn’t let it bug them too much, it did bug Yanez enough for him to tell the crowd, “I’m so sorry for these issues,” before turning it into a heartfelt speech, saying, “We just try to be perfect for y’all but we’re never perfect because we’re human, everyone makes mistakes. So thank you for sticking through this with us, we love y’all.”

Oh, yeah, Joshua Ray Walker opened the show and I don’t know if I’ll ever have enough good things to say about him as an artist. He has an incredible voice, he’s a really smart and witty writer, and he can shred on the guitar too when he gives himself the chance. Running through a 45-minute set, l originally wasn’t sure how this would go over given his style and Giovannie’s are pretty polar opposites but he was just as great as Giovannie. He had a bunch of songs that definitely had more rock energy too them, mainly Three Strikes, which absolutely ripped, and True Love. I’ve been trying to see him for a while and I’m glad he got to play to a crowd as large as this one.

I don’t know if I could’ve picked a better show to open up our semester of coverage with. I had a blast, hopefully Zach had a blast. Thank you to Giovannie’s PR Team for letting us come out. Thank you to the people at Cook’s Garage for always being great to us. I can’t wait to see what the future holds this semester!