Tommy Castro Interview

by Rick Landers

Anchored by his love of the blues, Tommy Castro sticks to that hallowed ground plowed by B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters and the musical pioneers that migrated from the remnants of southern plantations to Clarksville and the clubs in Chicago.

The Tommy Castro Band has been wowing audiences with its fusion of blues, R&B and rock since the early 1990s when they won San Francisco's "Bay Area Music Award for Best Club Band" two years in a row. Band members include Tommy Castro (guitar/vocals); Randy McDonald (bass); Billy Lee Lewis (drums); and Ketih Crossman (saxophone).

Later, Castro and crew ran as the house band for NBC's Comedy Showcase for three years. And the King of the blues himself, Mr. B.B. King called Castro's "Gratitude" album, "...something really special!"

In 2001, Castro was invited to tour America with B.B. King, Buddy Guy and John Hiatt, just around the time the band released "Guilty of Love" that included a very special cameo appearance by John Lee Hooker.

TCB's new CD "Soul Shaker" on Blind Pig Records made its debut at #2 on Billboard's blues chart.

Tommy Castro's the real deal - a bluesman with heart and soul.

Your new album, "Soul Shaker", has been called "the most artistically successful album of Castro's career". Did you hear about that?

Tommy Castro: [Laughs] Yes I did! And I was very happy with that! We feel the same way and have been working in that direction, trying to define our own music within the whole Blues genre. When you're, quote" a blues' guy in the blues world, it's a little bit harder to do. People expect certain things from you -- they have their own ideas. Other types of music are more wide open. Our music has always been a combination of blues, the core of our music, soul, R&B. As far as soul, we derived most of our stuff from that old classic Stax sound. And we're all huge James Brown and Ray Charles fans.

There's some rock in there too.

TC: Oh yeah. There's the rock element -- we all grew up on rock and the Rolling Stones are still my favorite rock 'n' roll band. So, we're well steeped in Little Richard and Chuck Barry and that's where we get our music from, along with B.B. King, Buddy Guy and the traditional bluesmen. But we live in 2005 and there are a lot of different things to write songs about, different grooves. We also have a bit of gospel music in there too. I think as we've matured we're now writing better songs and choosing better music to play.

One of the great songs on Soul Shaker was written by our sax player, Keith Crossan. It's called "The Crossanova" and has a kind of strange '60s spy film hook to it -- an Austin Powers feel where you can imagine him singing and dancing in the street to it. I came up with the lick during a sound check, stumbled on to it and liked it. I just kept noodling with it during sound checks. So, finally we sent him off to do something with it.

He's always written great instrumentals, nice melodies, since our early days. He took it and made a song in one night, just before our last day of tracking in the studio. He stayed up until midnight with a boom box and a guitar and his flute. It was late and he didn't want to keep his neighbors up playing the sax, so he used the flute and we all liked the way it sounded.

I'm not a big flute fan, but it sounded right. Keith has his own thing and has quite a history as a San Francisco-based musician and spent a lot of times in coffee houses and played whatever he needed to play, so he's got that flute and he's good with it. All of us end up one way or another contributing to the music and I make sure that all the band members get the credit they deserve on our albums.

Is that a vintage Stratocaster you're playing?

TC: Yes, it's my 1966 black Strat. I needed to find a guitar with the tone that suited me and that's the one. It suits my personality or maybe I've used it for so long we just feel right together. I don't have a big arsenal of guitars. I do have a 1969 NOS Stratocaster that I bought from the Fender Custom Shop when the '66's fretboard broke into pieces from use. It wouldn't stay in tune after several fret jobs and got so thin -- so, I had to put it away and give it a rest. I put a vintage pickup in the neck position of the '69 and it's got a nice rosewood freeboard that I like. Still it doesn't have the same tone as the older one.

I got pretty lucky though. Our sound engineer secretly had the '66 restored by a great guitar tech in Santa Cruz. They guy replaced the neck with a nice chunk of rosewood and tightened up everything. It's back at work -- great guitar.

I bought it from an old friend of mine, Johnny Nitro. He and the Doorslammers are one of the tightest blues groups in San Francisco. Nitro is sort of like the granddaddy of blues guitar in San Francisco. All the young guys started out watching him and he's a generous guy, so they end up jamming with him and he's always willing to show them the ropes. He did that with me early on. Nitro was the guy! I remember in his apartment he had a bunch of guitars and ended up putting them in pawn shops around town. So he had this stack of pawn shop tickets at his place and when he needed money he'd sell it. With the '66, he had a guy ready to buy it but I wanted it real bad, and intercepted it. He needed the money and fortunately I had it -- that was 15 years ago.

What else have you owned?

TC: I really haven't had a lot of guitars like a lot of players. My first guitar was an old f-hole cowboy guitar made by Harmony. It was cream colored and had frets like railroad tracks and I had a hell of a time wrangling anything out it -- those were tough.

Next I went to a local pawn shop and bought a generic Japanese guitar for twenty-nine bucks. It was cheap with chrome pickups and chrome pick guard and was a terrible guitar. Then there was a great little Fender Duo-Sonic -- two pickups -- that was cream colored with a nice tortoise shell pick guard. After that I wanted a Gibson sound, so bought a copy of a red Gibson ES-335, like Elvin Bishop's ES, only a cheap copy [laughs].

We didn't have a lot of money when we were kids. My poor mother, I didn't realize just how poor we were but she somehow managed to buy me that guitar. I did play a '70s Les Paul for a while and after that I bought the old Stratocaster from Nitro. And there's a yellow Stratocaster that Jeff Beck once owned that Neal Schon gave me. It's got a real slinky whammy bar that gets wild when you barely touch it. I wouldn't part with it even though I don't play it. I do have a Mexican Strat that I put gold lace sensors on -- it's sitting around the house

I plug into vintage 1965 Fender Super Reverb with four tens. It sounds great and I've been recording with it for years. I'm a little lazy I guess because I can't be bothered trying out different sounds. I've settled on the Super Reverb and now identify with the sound I get out of it. In the studio I have used a Vibro-King and sometimes a Telecaster, but mostly I stick to my regular gear. Okay, maybe I have a little arsenal.

A few years back you hooked up with guitar greats B.B. King, Buddy Guy, John Hiatt...how did that come about?

TC: < We were on our fourth CD at the time and with the Blind Pig label. The first year we did half the tour with B.B. King, Susan Tedeschi and others.. The next year we went with B.B. King, Buddy Guy, and John Hiatt. I think it happened in the usual way with our agent offering us up for the booking and the promoter liked us personally and thought we'd been around long enough, hitting the streets, to develop a good sized audience in every little town in the US. He thought we were ready. It helped us a lot as far as putting us in front of a larger audience. It was great for our career and a very cool gig.

What was really cool was that B.B. King was the first blue originator that I ever heard of as a kid. I found one of his albums and put it on my turntable -- for months - and never took it off. I wish I could remember all of the licks I learned back then! And he's the nicest guy I'd ever met. We'd talk after the shows about everything. I don't care whatever happens to me now. Nothing in my career can ever top that!

You also played with Stevie Ray Vaughan's side kicks -- Double Trouble.

TC: Man, those are great, great guys, great players. Before I'd heard of Stevie I was a big Johnny Winter fan and Tommy Shannon (bass) played with Johnny. I'd play "Be Careful with the Fool" that's a staple on Johnny Winter's Black album, before I knew it was a B.B. King song. It was very cool.

If you listen to the record, it sounds like a guy playing guitar bass lines. I always thought it was a six-string -- fast. Well, I sit down with Tommy and he's starts playing this riff on his bass and I'm like -- oh, it was you!

Tommy Shannon, Chris Layton and Stevie Ray Vaughan were a real power trio and they're all legends now.

I understand that there's a Tommy Castro Cruise Line?

TC: Ha! Might have to start one...that'd be great! We've been part of a Blues cruise called The Legendary Rhythm and Blues Cruise for a few years. This past January we were there with about 60 other live acts. The boat starts in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and heads out to sea. The boat's huge and handles about 1,800 guests. I've often thought, can't I just live on this boat, it's got everything I need. You've got to try it, it's an amazing thing. It's not cheap, but definitely worth it. It always sells out -- every year.

It's basically an Americana format with a lot of great artists. This year the cruise included Taj Mahal, Little Charlie and the Nightcats, Dr. John, The Derek Trucks Band, the Phantom Blues Band, Susan Tedeschi, Zac Harmon -- too many to recall at the moment. There's always a bunch of songwriters from Nashville who show up and they all play guitar too. So we find ourselves in the jam sessions. And one songwriter, Al Anderson, who also used to be with NRBQ, is always stuck with filling in the leads at the acoustic jam sessions -- he's a great player. When everyone's jamming, they all back away when someone needs to take a lead. Everyone pushes Al to do the solos. Nobody else will take one! So, Al rolls his eyes like "me again?" and then blasts away - he's terrific.

A few years back you started your own "Heart and Soul" label.

TC: It exists [laughs] -- it's an experiment of sorts and we may use it again sometime in the future, but for now we have no projects especially now that we're back with Blind Pig records for "Soul Shaker". After looking at a number of offers from other labels, we went back to Blind Pig since, all things considered, it was the best arrangement for us. We know them, we like them personally and we get along great.

I took a little departure from them, but they were cool about it and we remained friends. We got four or five other offers and we weighed the money, distribution capabilities and other things, but most of all we know who were dealing with and decided to go with them again. And they're all over the record promoting it, getting it loaded on download sites and they have us doing interviews every day on tour. It's a terrific label.

When you need to get back to your roots for inspiration, who do you turn to?

TC: Ray Charles, Buddy Guy, Otis Redding -- that's what I listen to all the time, so I'm always inspired. A guy I hadn't heard of until recently is terrific. His name is R.L. Burnside. He's amazing -- you should check him out. He's one of those old front porch guitar players who just rocks. The kids love him.

The Tommy Castro Band literally romps around the Blues, reels in R&B and occasionally invades rock 'n roll territory. How do you describe your music?

TC: That was it [laughs]! One guy called our music Blue Collar Rock and Soul and that seems to be a good fit too. I like that - romps around the blues!

Having fun on this tour?

TC: Oh yeah, we're having a great time. This time of the year people want to get out of the house after being cooped up.

One of the next things we're doing when we get home is making a live video for HDTV and I think PBS. Blind Pig Records will put it out for sale. Music videos seem to be getting a lot more popular. Our old "Live at the Fillmore" video is now on Netflix!

The new video will be called "Live at the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company" as part of a series. A friend of ours, a producer, from the time we were the house band for HBO's Comedy Showcase helped us with this opportunity. This should be really good exposure for us. I hope so!

What's loaded up in your tour bus CD player?

TC: I don't really know. All we've been listening to is a blues station on satellite radio.

Elvis had a ring with TCB on it...was he a Tommy Castro fan?

TC: Ha! I certainly hope he's still a fan!

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Related links

Tommy Castro Band: www.tcband.com
Blind Pig Records: www.blindpigrecords.com
Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise: www.bluescruise.com