Lakeport >> Daniel Castro’s first guitar wasn’t the guitar he spent nights dreaming about. It wasn’t a Fender Stratocaster. In fact, it wasn’t even a real guitar. Its strings were made of fishing line and its body was cut from plywood. But the makeshift instrument marked Castro’s first foray into the world of music.
Castro’s older sister, on the other hand, did have an actual guitar, which Castro was constantly stealing. Ever the good big sister she taught him his first riff, a chord progression from a Jimmy Reed tune. “And then she gave me two B.B. King records and I was a goner from there,” Castro recalled.
After years of begging, Castro’s parents purchased a St. George electric guitar (amp not included) from Sears for Castro and his older brother to share. Now that he finally had a guitar, Castro sat down and got to work.
He destroyed many a record teaching himself to play guitar. When he was young, he spent days picking up the needle of the turntable and placing it back so that the same lick played over and over again. A practicing musician would do that until they were good enough to copy the lick. “I remember just ruining five or six copies of one record. The grooves would go deeper and deeper on the record,” Castro recalled. “That’s how we all learned.”
Once a musician had the technical aspects of a song down, that didn’t mean they were finished, no matter how good they thought they were. They had to spend another decade or two discovering their own sound. “What you’ve got to do is, you’ve learned how to play the lick but you’ve got to spend the next 15, 20 years owning that song,” Castro explained. “And finally after all these years, if you’re lucky then your voice started to come out in yourself and that’s how you make it your own.”
Though Castro held a deep love for blues from the beginning. He favors the style for its raw and emotional sensibilities and even its simple nature — most songs are only three chords, after all. “That’s not the gist of it, the gist of it is what you do with those three chords,” Castro said. “As Hendrix said once, blues is easy to play but hard to feel. The simplicity and the honesty of it is what really grabbed me, the truth of it.”
Castro began songwriting not long after he constructed that first plywood guitar and he’s spent the last few decades perfecting the art. “The craft of songwriting is something that takes a long time, especially if you really want to convey honestly a story you want to tell,” he said. “Which is the beauty of songwriting, you tell a story and other people relate to it.”
Castro never had trouble finding talented blues musicians to work with in the bay, but once he began to pursue his original music, things got a little tricky. Many of his former band mates couldn’t commit to learning new material, so Castro had to strike out on his own. Fortunately, he found Johnny Yu, the band’s current bass player. The two sat down with a drum machine and practiced Castro’s material for months on end. Eventually they picked up a drummer, David Perper. “They’re not only great musicians but great brothers, good people with good hearts,” Castro said.
The three have been the Daniel Castro Band ever since. They perform at Library Park in Lakeport tomorrow night for the final show of the 2015 Summer Concert Series.
The Daniel Castro Band may have an overarching blues vibe thanks to influences like King, but their music is much more than that. They infuse their sound with Americana and roots as well. But Castro was quick to point out that music is constantly up for interpretation. “You always perceive yourself as one way and the music you play as a certain way but other people perceive it a different way,” he explained. “I wouldn’t say our music is straight ahead blues. There’s different elements.”
There are many aspects of his music career that Castro enjoys, but being up on stage in front of an audience might just be the most fulfilling experience of all. “What I love is the communication with the audience and making that audience the other part of the band,” he said. “We’re a three piece and so the goal is to bring the audience in and make them the fourth member of the band. When you have that, it’s unstoppable.”
The Daniel Castro Band takes to the gazebo at Library Park at 6:30 p.m. tomorrow night. Castro said the crowd should be prepared for the “beauty and honest power” of the blues. “When we come to the stage, we’re gong to give them the best of what we have,” he added.
Jennifer Gruenke can be reached at 900-2019.
