Tommy Castro: Keeping it fresh

By JOHN BENSON

entertainment@vindy.com

“Keep it fresh” is a term that blues guitarist Tommy Castro said is the mantra behind his current Legendary Rhythm & Blues Revue, which rolls into the Youngstown area for a show Thursday at The Cellar. The powerful bill includes not only Castro and his band but guitarists Joe Louis Walker and Debbie Davies.

“The idea behind the Revue tour came from being a regular on the Rhythm and Blues Cruises that have been going on for a while,” said Castro, calling from his home in the Bay Area. “You have all the top blues acts in the country perform, and every night there’s a big jam session in the middle of the ocean on the back deck under the stars that goes on until like 5 a.m. I just thought, ‘Wow, it’s so cool.’ The audience seems to love it when all the different players get together and jam. Maybe we can do something like it.

“So I started putting together a line-up and bringing a few extra people with me and my band on the road and trying to put on a show similar to that. So it’s just a snippet of what happens on the cruise, but we basically do a 30-minute show, and the next artist comes up and does 30 minutes and so on. Then we all get together at the end and jam. We call it ‘Keep it Fresh.’ We try not to rehearse the jam session. We just let it happen.”

Just letting it happen is something Castro has been doing for nearly two decades. With his 1993 debut “No Foolin’,” Castro emerged as a main player on the blues circuit. Though numerous albums have kept him relevant over the years, recently the slide-guitar virtuoso felt a change was needed. The result would be an unfettered approach to his latest album, “Hard Believer,” which was released last summer.

“I’ve been making records for a really long time, and I try to make each one of them different,” Castro said. “I always somehow bring something out of us we haven’t done before. For one thing, there’s some new blood in band and I did some different stuff on guitar. I decided it was time for me to change up my guitar-playing a little bit because I used up all of the licks I knew by now. So I started studying a bit and working out what I could do different on the guitar. I used different sounds and different guitars and effects, which is a path I never did before. So this is different. We definitely cover some new ground.”

Excited about his new direction coupled with the Legendary Rhythm & Blues Revue, Castro challenges music fans to experience this explosive, improvisational-session-like show.

“This tour is for anybody who just likes rhythm and blues and likes to watch musicians jam together with more of an unrehearsed feel,” Castro said. “Definitely people who like to dance, because all of my stuff is extremely danceable music. Really, there aren’t too many people who should stay home.”