Tommy Castro may be the nicest, most down-to-earth Bluesman under the age of 60. He says he wears all black because it makes it easy to decide what to wear and not because of any dark significance or because of Johnny Cash. We were interrupted during our interview on the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Cruise in October more than with any of the other six interviews I did on the boat by people ranging from a guitarist who was having trouble with his instrument to a lady whose 70-year-old relative Pat was celebrating her birthday and just loves Castro. He solved the guitarist's problem, agreed to pop in on Pat, and invited the entire wedding party of another fan to his concert on their wedding day. It's easy to understand why BluesWax readers voted him Best Artist of The Year for 2006.
 
The San Jose, California, native is ubiquitous. He's performed at the Blues Music Awards; toured with Deanna Bogart, Ronnie Baker Brooks, and Magic Dick as the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Revue; and, was front and center for many of the jams on the Blues Cruise, trading licks with Elvin Bishop and a host of other artists. Some of that action has been captured on his just released Command Performance.
 
Jim Gaines producer of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Santana, and Huey Lewis fame) produced two of Castro's Blind Pig albums - Can't Keep A Good Man Down (1997) and Right As Rain (1999). His most recent studio album, also on Blind Pig, is Painkiller (BluesWax 2007 Album of the Year) and was produced by another high-profile producer, John Porter. In our interview Castro talks about coming back to Blind Pig after a foray with 33rd Street Records with Guilty of Love (2001) and Gratitude on his own Heart and Soul label.
 
Always smiling, Castro can handle an Albert Collins guitar solo and hang with Delbert McClinton, Dr. John, or B. B. King. He says he's more R&B and Soul than straight Blues and is humble enough to admit he's spent a lot of his time with Ronnie Baker Brooks learning guitar licks.
 
Don Wilcock for BluesWax: The thing I've always notice about you before was that you kept the same band for so long and everything was so terribly tight, which seems to be characteristic of the West Coast Blues scene. And I saw you in Memphis with the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Revue crew at the New Daisy. What I sense now is that you're in the same boat that I am, you're having fun being with people you love.
 
Tommy Castro: Yeah, life is about change. Music is about change, not keeping it the same. I have no desire to keep everybody the same. Deanna Bogart says, "What's the art in that?" I had a really good band and I would never change people just for the sake of changing them. They did a good job for me and we worked well together and we're like family. I would never dream of changing anybody. We always went along and the music came together, but when people leave for whatever reason, it's okay. Randy [McDonald, Castro's bass player until last year] and I and Keith [Crossen] were working for 15 years and it's not that way anymore. Now it's me and Keith, but I'm having as much fun or more fun than I ever did doing this. The guys that come to me are really good and they're real excited about having the gig. So, they came in at a little bit different time when things are a little bit better for us. So they're just happy as hell to be here and a different kind of energy comes with that. To me it makes me want to play better. I know I keep up. I got to disprove that I can't keep doing this. I can't keep doing the same thing. I've gone back to trying to learn a little bit more guitar stuff easily.
 
BW: Where are you going to do that, with the people that play with you?
 
TC: Well, yes.
 
 
"I think that's the most important thing. It's the song."
 
 
BW: What was it like last night with Elvin Bishop? He seemed to be like a kid in a candy store when he came on.
 
TC: I couldn't believe it. You got to understand, when I was 14 years old, it was somewhere in that neighborhood, I was a senior in high school maybe, and I was playing guitar. I'd been playing since I was 10 or 11 and now I was in junior high school and I was really starting to become a teenager, you know, and hanging out with my friends, jamming with other kids. We were doing shows every chance we got and we'd buy all the records we could get our hands on and when I found Elvin Bishop's group, I mean that was it for me. I liked Cream and the Rolling Stones and I liked Taj Mahal. I liked a lot of Blues-based things that were going on at the time, but when I'd seen the Elvin Bishop Group perform, that was the sound that really made me the happiest.
 
BW: His sense of humor - you know, humor is not as big in Blues as it is in Country music, but he has such a great sense of humor.
 
TC: He does have a great sense of humor and the show is all about fun and joy and you just feel good. He is about a really good time and I picked up on that early on and that was the kind of thing I wanted to do and I didn't want to necessarily play just like Elvin. He did inspire me a lot. That was the thing. One of my early idols as a kid and I even used to dress like him. I even had a red guitar. I couldn't afford a real Gibson 335.
 
 
BW: You were Pig Boy Crabshaw.
 
TC: In my neighborhood, yeah. There was nobody like that in my neighborhood.
 
BW: How did that go over?
 
TC: I grew up in East San Jose, like downtown San Jose, and I was the only guy like me.
 
BW: Were you wearing overalls?
 
TC: I wore the overalls and I had long hair, but sometimes I would wear the flannel shirts and jeans and my hair would be all messed up and I had that big red guitar and I didn't really - I wasn't going out of my way to do that, but I just know when I went to the store to buy clothes, I was thinking along the lines of - you know.
 
BW: What made you decide to go into dressing all in black?
 
TC: That was many years later. That was twenty years later.
 
BW: Did Johnny Cash influence you?
 
TC: No, no! I love Johnny Cash, but that wasn't it. I was just looking for something simple at the time when I was starting with my own band in San Francisco and everybody was just wearing black. Black, black, everybody wore black, and it was cool. Black jeans and black jeans didn't exist before. It was black jeans and black t-shirts that I said, "That's it. I'll wear black jeans and a black t-shirt and it'll make it easy to get dressed each night. I won't have to worry about what I'm gonna wear," and I love that. I didn't have to worry about what happened to my hair. Put a bunch of grease in it and slick it back. Everything was easily done and low maintenance and it became my look, but the thing about being able to jam with Elvin Bishop and sit down and have dinner with him and talk a little.
 
BW: Is that the first time?
 
TC: Oh, we've gotten together before. The Blues Music Awards a couple of years ago we played together.
 
BW: I saw you there, yeah.
 
TC: A big thrill for me. The same thing happens when I see him come out on stage and I thought that Ronnie [Baker Brooks] has the same respect for him. Ronnie got to do a tour with him. Worked about 50 shows on a tour with him one time. So, they got to be friends and Ronnie said the same thing. He feels the same way I do about it, but back to the playing. We did this Legendary Rhythm & Blues Revue, having Ronnie Baker Brooks on the tour. I'm always the only guitar player and so I don't have anything to compare what I'm doing to. I'm just doing my own thing and over the years my emphasis has been more on songwriting and getting the whole thing going on. Like the band, the songs and vocals, guitar, the whole thing, just trying to work on that whole thing. I think that's the most important thing. It's the song.
 
BW: It's not just about you; it's the band and the songs.
 
TC: Yeah, the songs and me and my band coming together and creating good arrangements and good deliveries and good feel, a good performance, all of that stuff, the whole thing. And the emphasis on my guitar playing has really taken a back seat. I haven't found the time or the energy to really kinda work on my guitar playing and Ronnie came along and I said, "Oh, shit!" And I'm gonna have to do this every night. And I started practicing a little bit and Ronnie's such a great friend to me. We spend some time on the back of the bus trading licks, but mostly me learning licks from him 'cause he's a great study of the guitar. He's studied several guys' styles, particularly like Albert Collins to the tee. He's worked really, really hard at all kinds of enhanced his own playing a lot and anyway.
 
BW: Why did you take a liaison from Blind Pig? You did one album with 33rd Street and another album on your own, and you came back to Blind Pig.
 
TC: Well, I'd done four records with Blind Pig. We did good work together. It was one more than I signed up for and a friend of mine told me about this new label that was starting up that was owned by Tower Records. Anyway, we got this offer to do a record for a different kind of label. My old friend Herbie Herbert really helped me a lot in my career early on.