Tommy Castro and the Painkillers might be more of a contemporary blues band with their original songs, but Castro really wanted to make an album that channeled his influences like Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Elmore James and Muddy Waters.
“I love all that old funky stuff, and we kind of do our own thing most of the time, but I just thought it would be really fun to make a lowdown blues record,” Castro said in a call last week, “and then it kind of took on a life of its own.”
The new album, “Closer to the Bone,” came out in early February and features 14 songs — three originals and 11 covers of lesser known songs. Among the choices are tracks by California bluesmen like Ron Thompson and Johnny Nitro, obscure oldies by Jimmy Nolen and Eddie Taylor and “semi-familiar” songs by Ray Charles and Johnny “Guitar” Watson.
“We came up with a really interesting batch of tunes. None of them are the obvious cover songs that you would do on a classic blues album,” Castro said. “I wanted to avoid that. Now and then, a rock artist decides to make a blues album and they always go to the obvious songs: ‘Hoochie Coochie Man’ or any number of obvious blues covers. So we avoided that.”
Some of those tracks should be on the setlist when Castro, 69, and his band hit the Pittsburgh area for a Friday night show at Moondog’s in Blawnox.
And for those hoping for new material down the road, that’s in the works, too.
“Usually I’m very critical of my own stuff. And I had some concerns about this going in because it wasn’t my usual batch of original songs that people kind of expect from me,” said Castro, a three-time winner of the B.B. King Entertainer of the Year at the Blues Music Awards. “I thought, man, I hope people aren’t just thinking I’m lazy and don’t feel like writing. I just didn’t see the point of writing a bunch of new songs with an album like this.
“I am working on songs for the next record already. It’s going to be more of another back to my usual album, another concept in mind. But this one was just planned to be a fun blues project, something I always wanted to do. And it turned out a little bit better than we had been anticipating.”
In a call last week from the road, Castro discussed the finding of obscure songs, the album’s recording and his live shows:
When you were going over those lesser known songs, did you have an even bigger list of possibilities before narrowing it down to these?
Yeah, I listened to a lot of stuff. I got some suggestions from my record label president, Bruce Iglauer, the president of Alligator Records. They’ve been around for 50 years and built actually the top blues label in the country, at least. And a rich history, they’ve recorded so many of the great blues artists of all time. So the president of the label is really knowledgeable about this kind of music especially. He makes different kinds of blues records, more contemporary artists and rock blues guys. And what he really loves is the real deal stuff. He knows a lot about it.
So I said, ‘Hey, I’m going to make this kind of traditional blues album. You got any suggestions of songs? I’m looking for some cool ideas.’ And so he sent me a few ideas. I know another guy, a blues historian friend of mine, Dick Sherman, who’s produced a number of records for Delmark (Records), but he’s just one of these guys that knows everything about every band who ever played the blues along with jazz and gospel and other stuff, too. But I asked him for some ideas. I told him I’m looking for something like this, something like that. He’d sent me a batch of stuff.
I think that’s who I got that Jimmy Nolen song from, “The Way You Do.” I was looking for something with that kind of a vibe. I’d never heard that song before. I am pretty sure nobody else did either. (laughs) I had one guy I know that knew what it was. He said, ‘Is that Jimmy Nolen?’ ‘Yeah! How’d you know that?’ So that was kind of how it went.
Were you shooting for it to sound like a timeless record?
That was what I had in mind. I think I was quoted as saying I wanted to make a record like they might have made back in the day, with a real sort of live-in-the-studio sound and not a lot of technology and modern-day production. We wanted to keep it as funky and old-school as possible. It’s always worth mentioning that we recorded at Greaseland Studios with Kid Andersen producing. … Probably most of the blues albums that have come out in the last five to 10 years were cut there. … It’s a really kind of a crazy, wacky place.
He’s a blues guitar player in a band, and he got a little budget to make a record of his own. He’s an amazing talent from Norway, lives here in the states now, just a completely and amazing talented guy, kind of like a savant or a genius of some kind. He could do anything, play any instrument, but he really digs this style of traditional blues. It’s his bag. He’s renting a two-bedroom duplex in San Jose, California, and he got this little budget to make a record for himself, so instead of going into a studio, he bought a bunch of gear. He started to make his own record, and then he started making records with other people.
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He has about a hundred vintage amplifiers jammed into that place, he got at least a hundred vintage guitars jammed into that place, 50 to a hundred. All kinds of amazing instruments, plus a bunch of vintage keyboards, and even, I swear to God, a full-size grand piano stuffed into the kitchen. You open a cupboard to get a glass or a cup, and there’s nothing but guitar effects in there and all kinds of gear. … Another big part of this record is my collaboration with Kid Andersen. I really give him a lot of credit for the way this turned out.
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How much do you pride yourself on your live shows? You’ve won Entertainer of the Year a few times, so it seems like that’s pretty important to you.
That’s what I do best. That’s what I know. We play out live 150 times a year. We go into the studio about once every two years to make a record. We’ve gotten to be pretty good at making records, but we’ll never be as good at that as we are at playing live. When I started out, I was just hoping to make a living doing gigs in San Francisco. And then, we were doing pretty well there, and I just kind of expanded that to a little bit more of a regional thing. And then from there, we wound up with a record deal and an agent and started touring around the country and other countries. But it was all really, everything that ever came our way was because of our live show. We were starting to sell tickets and draw crowds and get festival dates, and all of that stuff was based on the live show. I still think that’s what really matters, right there playing to the people. There’s nothing like it, especially when things are going well (laughs), which is not all the time. Often enough.