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Brownsville songwriter and podcaster Lorenzo Lopez is getting ready to take The Lorenzini Show on the road, saying he has 40 original songs ready to perform at clubs and venues around the Rio Grande Valley.
The Lorenzini Show is a podcast that airs occasionally from Lopez’s recording studio near the Brownsville-South Padre Island International Airport. During the show, Lopez showcases his music, taking on the persona of Lorenzini alongside fellow host and podcaster Eleazar.
Each podcast debuts an original Tejano/Country song written by Lopez, who estimates he has a repertoire of about 500 songs, all registered with the Library of Congress.
“I write one song per show. I put on one of my originals. That’s the difference between my podcast and the others. The others, they talk about gossip and political things. Me, I talk about my songs,” Lopez said during an interview with The Brownsville Herald.
The Lorenzini Show recently aired its 16th rendition. Lopez plans to complete 20 installments and designate that as season one.
“I made a pledge that I was going to do 20 of them, 20 original songs, as my first season, and I’m hoping that Netflix or somebody like that picks them up. And later on, we could have those 20 and do 20 more and keep it going,” he said during the interview.
Lopez said he’s hoping interest grows in a project he’s doing with the Brownsville Independent School District. Last year Lopez wrote a song for BISD, and entered an agreement that allows the district’s mariachi and estudiantina groups to perform Mi Passion over the next five years during UIL competitions and performances.
“They can perform it for the next five years and the royalties and the merchandising go 50% to BISD and 50% to me,” Lopez said.
Meanwhile, in late August, the Tejano/Country Music Awards in San Antonio named Lopez Songwriter of the Year and The Lorenzini Show Podcaster of the Year. He also won Songwriter of the Year in 2023.
Lopez retired from BISD in January after years working as a sound and equipment man for KBSD, the district’s instructional TV studio. That gig followed his years of working for Brownsville-based El Grupo Mazz and El Super Grupo Mazz as a roadie in the 1980s
“Back in 1979 is when I started working with the Grupo Mazz, with Joe Lopez and Jimmy Gonzalez. I would set up, tear down. And then my brother gave me a promotion. My brother, Joe Lopez, made me the road manager, so I didn’t have to lift equipment anymore. I took care of the hotels, the money at the concerts wherever we were, and I used to pay the, well Jimmy and I used to make the payroll for the band members. The road manager takes care of the hotels, the venues, and then collects the money at the door. Sometimes, where there was a guaranteed deal, we would perform with Selena, and there were artists involved. We would get a cash amount, and I would go and collect that. There would be a guarantee, and I would go and collect that depending on the gate,” Lopez said.
Sometimes, Grupo Mazz would open for Selena. The group wore out three buses touring the U.S., from Brownsville to Chicago, Florida, California and Mexico, Lopez said.
“We did the Astrodome, the Alamodome with Mazz. We toured with the group Bronco. They’re still around. They took us all over Mexico, and when they came over here, we took ‘em here to the U.S. and when they came here, we would record. It was a good 20 years of my life that I spent with El Grupo Mazz. They were good years, and I wrote a few songs for El Grupo Mazz, back then. There were a few country songs that I would do, and I would help my brother and Jimmy in writing the other songs,” Lopez said.
These days, Lopez, spends his mornings caring for his dogs and doing yard work. His wife, Judy, gets him his coffee, and usually a song comes to him in the morning, before afternoons spent in the recording studio.
“He was writing songs since he was like 17, 18. They were migrants, back in California, he would do the time cards, and he would use the backs of the time cards to write the songs. He’s been writing songs since way back when,” Judy Lopez said.
“I wrote a song for my father, and another one for my mom and another one for my brother Raul Lopez, who passed away two years ago. And those songs come from the heart. They are in the latest album, Lorenzini Comes Alive. So, yeah, I tend to write songs about my family. I write about my wife. Thank God, I’m blessed with that talent, the ability to write songs. Usually, it comes to me in the mornings. Judy gives me my coffee, and I drink it and I watch my dogs and if I see them playing around in the yard, and before I know it I’m humming the melody for a song and I go in the studio and I pick up the guitar and I start strumming it. I play the acoustic guitar,” Lopez said.
“I send the songs to Library of Congress in 10s because it’s a little cheaper — $85 for 10 songs. I try to do that once a month,” he added. Most of the songs are in Spanish.
Lopez released Lorenzini Comes Alive on Spotify. The album is AI assisted but with “Original Lyrics, Melodies & Arrangements by Lorenzini Realized Through AI,” the album cover states.
“I’ve been working with AI for about a year now, learning it as a tool for my songwriting. It does what you tell it to do. But of course, you have to ask: I want this type of a guitar. I want this type of a bass and the drums. You can also tell it to do what it wants to do, but then it sounds too mechanical. I ask for my full musicians, the guitar, the bass, and it does that. It works with me. And then it also gives me the instrumental tracks. … It’s called Suno. It’s for songwriting,” Lopez said.
“It works good for me. Also, artists like Hector from the All-nighters. Hector Guzman. He plays the guitar and performs on the Island. He came in with an original song. I let him play it. I recorded it and then I put it into AI and I played it back. He was amazed with the quality that came back,” Lopez said, adding:
“I’m going to do like a tour thing, and when I tour I will be performing between 20 and 40 songs live, in one night, depending on the venue, what they want. Some venues, they only want you for one hour, or two hours or three. And I want to be ready. I’m practicing. I want to be prepared for all that.”
Lopez said he is “looking for musicians to back me up. I need a bass player, an accordion player and a guitar player. They can find me on my Gmail [email protected].”