Tommy Castro and the Painkillers to play Empress Friday

By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

The last time Bay Area blues fixture Tommy Castro played Vallejo’s Empress Theatre was in October 2009, when he joined Roy Rogers and his band.

Castro has been trying to get back ever since.

He’ll get his wish Friday when he takes the stage with his newest band, the Painkillers.

“The house was packed,” Castro remembered of that 2009 show, “and I said to my agent right after that, we need to get the Castro Band — this was before the Painkillers — we need to get a gig at that room. Finally it happened.”

It happened with a different band because Castro wanted a leaner sound. The Tommy Castro Band, a longtime area blues juggernaut, had a large lineup that included horns, but its namesake was looking for a more basic sound.

“It was blues, but it leaned toward songs that could use a band like that. It was rock, but it leaned toward lots of solos from the different players,” Castro said.

“It was cool, but it was time for a change.”

He didn’t have to go far to see how the sound he was after could be achieved with a slimmed-down lineup.

The duo of Lightnin’ Malcolm on guitar and Cedric Burnside on drums “was incredible! It was just killing me,” Castro said. And his good friend on the blues scene, Tab Benoit, “puts on a helluva show with just the three of them.”

The Painkillers formed in 2012. Randy McDonald, bass player from the Tommy Castro Band, joined Byron Cage on drums and James Pace on keyboards, with Castro handling guitar duties as usual.

His goal with the new lineup: “Get to the heart of the matter, kind of get to the root of it all, which is me singing my songs and playing guitar, with a reasonable accompaniment,” he said.

Friday’s show, he said, will feature a lot of his work from over the years, but with the newer sound.

“We started out as a four-piece band, but instead of a keyboard player, there was a saxophone player,” Castro said. “It’s not too different from our early-days stuff, except for instead of a sax player we have an organ player which adds another dimension.

“It’s a different sound for me,” he said.

But there’s new material, too, that is geared toward the leaner lineup. The band’s new album isn’t ready yet, but Castro wanted to release something immediately — so the Painkillers are releasing a two-song, 45-rpm vinyl record: “Greedy” and “That’s All I Got.”

Vinyl?

“People have discovered vinyl again,” Castro said. “I think what’s really going on is people who grew up on CDs and all this digital sound stumbled across their dad’s record player and went ‘Wow! That sounds great!’ It’s got a whole new trend of young people buying records.

“It’s one thing if you remember records, and you were kind of forced into the new format of CD. A lot of people had to go there because that is all that was being released,” he said.

“Maybe everybody likes the convenience of that. It is more convenient. Downloading music instead of going to the store, it is more convenient.”

“When it comes down to it, if you want to put in a little more effort, and you put a real record on a record player, the sound is so much better!”

If You Go
Tommy Castro and the Painkillers play Friday at the Empress Theatre, 330 Virginia St., Vallejo, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $20. Visit empresstheatre.org for tickets and information.