Since their inception in 2015, Giovannie and The Hired Guns have made a blockbuster career out of wildly defying expectations. With a visceral sound that merges alt-metal, Red Dirt country, Latin pop, Americana, and much more, the Stephenville, Texas-based five piece have ascended from playing local honky-tonks to taking the stage at major festivals and arenas across the country, drawing an ardent crowd ranging from cowboys to metalheads to skate punks. As they continue their colossal rise—a journey that’s included scoring a No. 1 radio hit with their smash single “Ramon Ayala” and winning the 2023 iHeartRadio Music Award for Best New Artist in Alternative & Rock—Giovannie and The Hired Guns now return with their new album Quitter: a body of work that pushes the boundaries with even more intensity, matching its explosive riVs and unforgettable hooks with the band’s most brutally honest songwriting to date.
Produced by Johnny K (Megadeth, Sevendust, Plain White T’s), Quitter marks the fourth full length from Giovannie and The Hired Guns (frontman Giovannie Yanez, guitarists Carlos Villa and Jerrod Flusche, bassist/tuba player Alex Trejo, and drummer/pianist Milton Toles) and second LP since signing with Warner Music Nashville through a first-of-its-kind partnership with Warner Music Latina. While the band have always brought a powerful emotionality to their lyrics, the album embodies an unfiltered urgency that has much to do with Yanez’s processing a number of life-altering troubles in real-time, including the death of a close friend and his own relapse into addiction.
The follow-up to 2022’s Tejano Punk Boyz, Quitter finds Giovannie and The Hired Guns doubling down on the freewheeling attitude they first embraced in their earliest days as a band, back when Yanez was working the counter at a nearby pawnshop. “From the beginning I told the guys not to worry about sounding too rock or too country on this record,” Yanez recalls. “We just went in there and had fun and didn’t let anything hold us back, and because of that the album shows the full range of what we can do as a band.” Immediately delivering on that promise, Quitter opens on the galvanizing rhythms and throat-shredding vocals of “Cheap Tequila”: a ferocious yet fun-loving track that speaks an unvarnished truth about their shared life experience. “I wrote that song thinking about us in our younger days, when we were all broke and working these mid-paying jobs,” says Yanez.
Looking back on the making of Giovannie and The Hired Guns’ most personal album yet, Yanez reveals that Quitter helped to clarify his overall mission and vision for the band. “This record made me want to keep putting out songs that are fun and serious at the same time,” he says. “I want to show everyone that it’s okay to feel sad and out of place, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a good time—it’s all a part of being human. We just want to be real with our fans and let them know we’re all diVerent and a little oV-the-wall too. And when they come out to the shows, I try to make them feel like they’re just as much a part of the band as my guys are. We’re all connected, and without them we’d never be where we are now.”