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MUSIC: From studio to stage on a Flamenco beat by: Michael Corcoran It was just supposed to be a gift for their parents, a little musical keepsake from sons who had gone off in a rock route but wanted to show they hadn't forgotten the traditional Spanish music they were raised on. Guitarists Rick and Mark del Castillo holed up in Rick's home studio in Austin early last year to make a flamenco guitar-fueled album, and when they needed accompaniment -- a little bass here, some drums there -- they called up friends and laid down the tracks. "Brothers of the Castle" was intended to be an all-instrumental album, but when Alex Ruiz came by one day and showed some lyrics he had written, the project had a new singer. "We had no intention of starting a band," Rick del Castillo says. "But when all the elements came together in the studio it was obvious that we had something. It just clicked." Del Castillo played its first gig in August at the Vibe and since then has become one of the most buzzed-about bands in town. The racially mixed crowds of young and old come early for the Tuesday night sets at Momo's to lay claim to tables in front of the action. Off to the side, dancers twirl to the gypsy beat. But not until the group has warmed up, skronking and rattling like a high school band in the locker room waiting to take the field. "This is not music that you can just start playing cold," says Rick, who did a series of finger exercises before the band opened a recent set with a thumping "Don Nicolas." Twenty years as a rock guitarist, 10 of those in national touring hard rock band Akasha, may have given Rick the stamina to play night after night, but the dexterity required to play flamenco guitar is a new challenge. "There's no feedback to hide behind," he says. Add Mark, who moved to Austin in 1996 after dropping out of Texas A&M, and Del Castillo has a torrid twosome of flying fingers to soar over the big beat of drummers Mike Zeoli and Rick Holeman and the four-stringed rumble of bassist Albert Besteiro. Although their interplay on the nylon strings is almost telepathic, the del Castillo brothers had never been in a band together until starting the one that bears their surname. "I'm eight years older than Mark," Rick says. "When he was coming up as a teen-ager, I was already out on the road." Akasha relocated from Brownsville to Memphis in the late '80s, and after they broke up, Rick moved to Seattle for three years before settling in Austin in 1995. Though Del Castillo is often compared to the Gipsy Kings, differences are the percussive thrust and the wiry vibrato of Ruiz, who on the new "Mi Gitana" sounds a tad like Bryan Ferry. Having sung in Austin's crunchy Picassos, Ruiz is another rocker returning to his Rio Grande Valley musical roots. "We're not trying to concentrate on one sound," Rick says. The band has already started recording a new album that more accurately reflects its musical diversity. One of the new songs, "The Yiddish March," is a klezmer number with castanets. The title track, "Vida," follows a heavy guitar riff down the flamenco path. Then there's "Barrio Blues," more B.B. King than Gipsy King. "The first record was mainly Rick and Mark: We were basically just hired hands," says Holeman, who came to Del Castillo from popular Christian Latin rock band Salvador. "With the new songs, we all have some creative input. With all six of us contributing, the music's really going someplace cool." For a band that played its first gig only six months ago, Del Castillo is, indeed, going places. And the strategy of opening for established rock acts, such as Patrice Pike, Lisa Tingle and Dahebegebees, provides awestruck converts at every stop. "I've never been in a band before where the response was so instant, so overwhelming," Rick says. When the group played on John Aielli's KUT show in September, the phones lit up. When it played the Pecan Street Festival the next weekend, it stole the show. "During our set I saw a big line off to the side and I was wondering what everybody was waiting for. I thought maybe someone was giving something away. Then I realized, wait a second, they're lining up to buy our CD." The group's CD sold out of its first pressing that day. Not bad for a band that came together just so they could give one away. Del Castillo plays every Tuesday at 9:30 p.m. at Momo's Article posted from Austin American-Statesman - Thursday, February 7, 2002 |
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