diff --git a/hack/release/build/cross.sh b/hack/release/build/cross.sh
index befd302537..cce93ed318 100755
--- a/hack/release/build/cross.sh
+++ b/hack/release/build/cross.sh
@@ -23,6 +23,11 @@ cd "${REPO_ROOT}"
 # controls the number of concurrent builds
 PARALLELISM=${PARALLELISM:-6}
 
+# trivial go_container.sh command to ensure the volumes are setup
+# before we start running many containers in parallel
+# https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/kind/issues/974
+hack/go_container.sh go version
+
 echo "Building in parallel for:"
 # What we do here:
 # - use xargs to build in parallel (-P) while collecting a combined exit code