Tommy Castro
Tommy Castro
Tommy Castro (born April 15, 1955, San Jose, California) is an American blues, R&B, and rock guitarist and singer. He has been recording since the mid-1990s. His music has taken him from local stages to national and international touring. His popularity was marked by winning the 2008 Blues Music Award for Entertainer Of The Year.
Castro began playing guitar at the age of 10 and was influenced and inspired by electric blues, Chicago blues, West Coast blues, soul music, 1960s rock and roll, and Southern rock. His style has always been a hybrid of all his favorite genres. He names Mike Bloomfield, Elvin Bishop, Eric Clapton, B.B. King, Buddy Guy, Elmore James, and Freddie King as guitar influences and Ray Charles, Wilson Pickett, and James Brown as vocal influences.
He began playing professionally in Bay Area cover-song bands in the 1970s. In the 1980s, he joined the Warner Bros. Records’ band The Dynatones. Since 1991, he has led his bands, featuring a drummer, bass guitar player, and saxophone. As of 2009, he added trumpet and keyboards to the band. He was signed to the Blind Pig Records label and released "Exception To The Rule" in late 1996. It won the 1997 Bay Area Music Award for Outstanding Blues Album, and Castro also took the award for Outstanding Blues Musician that same year. In the mid-1990s The Tommy Castro Band served as the house band for three seasons on NBC Television’s Comedy Showcase (airing right after Saturday Night Live), bringing him in front of millions of viewers every week.
In 2001 and 2002, B.B. King asked Castro to open his summer concert tours. Castro was invited to join King on stage for the nightly finale.
Castro has released albums on the Telarc, 33rd Street, and Heart And Soul, and most recently on the Alligator label and Blind Pig. His album "Guilty of Love" featured the last recording session for John Lee Hooker. In 2002 he was featured on the Bo Diddley tribute album "Hey Bo Diddley - A Tribute!", performing the song "I Can Tell". In 2007 the readers of Blues Wax (online magazine) voted "Painkiller" as Blues Wax album of the year. It also won the 2008 Blues Music Award for Contemporary Blues Album Of The Year.
In 2009, Castro joined the roster of Chicago’s Alligator Records with his release "Hard Believer", produced by John Porter.
In May 2010, The Blues Foundation awarded Castro multiple Blues Music Award honors for Blues Male Artist of the Year, Contemporary Blues Album of the Year, B.B. King Entertainer of the Year, and with his band, Band of the Year.
(Tommy Castro at Riverfront Blues Festival, Wilmington, Delaware 2012)