[0]I first encountered Nick Castro’s music under the banner of the collectivist musical project Children of Ghaud, which had Nick and fellow freak music enthusiast and San Diego record store clerk Josh Quon as its twin centers-of-gravity. What was clear from the dark, introspective recordings issued as the CD Kinder des Gottes was a keenness to experiment with instrument, sound and form; as elements of folk, rock and psychedelia were thrown into an imaginary particle accelerator and warped into new and intriguing substances. Clearly, here was music on a journey of discovery rather than at a destination, and here were musicians to put on a watch list for future misbehavior of similar dimensions.

I next encountered Nick’s work in mid 2005, when a CD titled Further From Grace arrived in a package of promotional materials from the estimable Strange Attractors Audio House label. In stark contrast to the open-endedness of the Children of Ghaud material, an ensemble including various members of Espers and neo-folk luminary Josephine Foster were now assisting Nick in realizing one of the tightest and most exquisitely arranged folk albums I had ever heard issue from any period, including the mighty 1968-1973 heyday of British progressive and psychedelic folk. It’s the kind of album that refuses - and is in fact demeaned by - easy reference points in the present and past, existing as a sui generis masterpiece of new acoustic music, and a model for what might fly in the future to replace to already tattered and stained flag of “freak folk”. British, American and Middle-Eastern traditions are respectfully drawn together, and it’s difficult to imagine improving on any decision made on the record. Brian McTear’s production at the Miner Street studios in Philadelphia, - always excellent - reaches new heights on Further From Grace also, as he perfectly synchs Nick’s West Coast sensibilities with the East Coast ensemble he chose to work with on this occasion.

Subsequently, I realized I had missed Castro’s fine 2004 solo record A Spy in the House of God - a fine tab of acid-folk with experimental leanings which seemed in retrospect to be the missing link between the Children of Ghaud recordings and Further from Grace, but that may have purely been a function of having heard the works out of order. It’s a fine and inventive record, with opening track “Jack of all Seasons” having a lost-in-time mellow hippie vibe that recalls the brilliance of Gary Higgins’ 1973 LP Red Hash (now thankfully reissued by Drag City), and other tracks coming across as being fueled by molecules stronger than THC. In any case, you could play it back-to-back with the Incredible String Band’s 5000 Spirits or Layers of the Onion and not feel any incongruity.

Intrigued by all of this beauty and strangeness, I got in touch with Nick for a chat on behalf of Deep Water.

DW. What are your earliest musical memories? What kinds of music were you exposed to as you were growing up and what kind of has that had influence on your musical path so far?

NC. I think it was mainly what my family was listening to at the various times of my youth which in their case was a bit of everything. It seems impossible for everything one hears to not become a part of them somehow. I mean, sounds you hate can be just as influential as ones you like. So having folks like mine, who listened to so many different kinds of records, I was able to work out which things I liked and which I didn’t. I think it’s important to hear bad music as well when you’re a kid though, so you can see which notes not to play or sing.

How did your active interest in music begin?

I have been fascinated by music and sound for as long as I can remember and there were some musicians in my extended family as well as a few instruments around my house growing up that I always played.

Did you receive formal musical training in any way - are you self-taught on the guitar? What did you do to break away from formalism and adopt your own style, and if self-taught, who were you templates?

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I took a few flute and piano lessons growing up but nothing serious or formal in any way. I picked up guitar on my own when I was 12. I had a Hondo copy of an SG that I thought was the coolest thing ever. When I first got the guitar I was listening to a lot of Jimi Hendrix, Doors, Beatles and other typical middle school rock stuff so I was soon trying to find old small amps and fuzz pedals with other friends of mine and we soon amassed these hodge-podge set-ups of the cheapest old gear we could find. I was always pretty interested in theory though, so I was reading books all the while and trying to figure things out. I had been playing piano from really young so I kept that up as well. Until only recently I always thought about music in terms of a piano but now guitar seems to be what comes to mind. I never felt like guitar was my main instrument until a few years back either. I haven't owned a piano for quite some time now so I have consequently spent a lot more time recently on a guitar.

What music was most influential on you in your mid-to-late teens?

Probably anything from the 60s, but mainly soul, blues, and jazz records. I was playing in garage bands but secretly entertaining notions of becoming a jazz piano player. I soon realized that that was futile and I stuck to guitar instead. By my late teens I was getting far more into records I thought were weird. Anything that was off and kind of damaged was what would be on my turntable. Consequently, I was listening to a lot of Beefheart, Residents, Velvet Underground, Red Crayola and the like.

What were your earliest musical projects? Was the Children of Ghaud improvisational project the first?

I consider Children of Gauhd to be my first truly collaborative musical venture. I played in lots of rock bands before that and a few society jazz combos but CoG was the first thing where I felt totally free. Prior to that I always felt like I was relied upon for far too much in bands I was playing in whether it was to write out music for those who couldn't write [their music] or to write parts for other people. I guess the irony is that now I write out so many of the parts of a record myself by choice, but back then it felt like a thankless chore. Once I joined CoG though I made the decision to play with folks who needed minimal instruction and could add their own sound to whatever they touch. It’s much easier and gets me the sounds I am after in the end.

How did the Children of Ghaud project happen?

I was working in a record store in San Diego with Josh Quon who was the other half of the core duo of the Children of Gauhd. We were trading a lot free jazz and psychedelic records at the shop and we just started playing together after that. We were really into excess and making the whole production of everything over the top so we had a lot of fun just being wacky and goofy. We soon started taking apart old acoustic instruments and putting them back together in twisted designs. We also started sub-mixing everything through delay boxes and trying to blends sounds together through their echoes. Anything that we thought we could do we would try to do and see what happened. It was very liberating after having spent years in “rehearsals” or “band practices” and learning parts.

On the Children of Ghaud CD, a track like “Too Many Children” seems to be coming from almost a Germanic place. I hear elements of Can and Neu, and also some influence from Joy Division, who of course were themselves influenced by these “Krautrock” sources. Am I way off beam there?

Well I never listened to Joy Division until after that song because so many people made that association but I was listening to a lot of Kraut and psych at the time and doing all of the things young kids do to accompany their journeys.

Compared to “Too Many Children”, which is quite structured, the extended “Drops of Water” seem to be trying to extricate themselves from formal constraints - the sound is quite organic and unprogrammed. Was this process a conscious part of the journey of the CoG material?

There wasn’t anything conscious about CoG. We were just making music for ourselves and not thinking about it in terms of how it would be received. We never really discussed anything about the music, we were busy joking about everything in the world and fiddling with pedals and microphones. We would always just begin to play and then start layering over that in sometimes random orders until we felt like it sounded done. There was the short bursts of, “stick this thing in the piano strings”, or, “maybe we can bow this” followed by yes or no but I don’t really recall recording useless things, we always found a space for what we were doing., especially within the always changing confines of our recording equipment. “Too Many Children” for example was the only thing we ever recorded on a computer and therefore has a very full sound because when presented with the opportunity to use so many tracks we thought, “let’s use all of the tracks”. Most other things were recorded to tape machines, mastered onto VHS or similar machines and then made digital once the process was complete.

Do you consider the following Spy in the House of God recordings, having a predominantly folk base with some free/improvisational aspects, as a break from CoG processes entirely or an evolution?

I think I feel the same way about music now as I did then. That everything can be done at anytime. I think it is almost silly for people to be so genre specific when the influences around us are so vast. CoG really helped me to understand the connections between musics and how they are so similar while being so different and they could be visited at the same time or in almost any configuration. In CoG we felt like so many things just sounded so nice together why not use them that way without thinking about it past that as a trick or technique. It just sounds cool when you play a tamboura and a banjo together, or when you play a drum with pebbles on it.

Why the move to Nick Castro as more of a solo artist? Was it just time to move to solo works (albeit still collaborative) in some respects?

Not at all. I had to move for other reasons and I very badly wanted to keep CoG alive but Josh had other priorities as well and it just wasn’t feasible for him to continue with 150 miles between us. We did try to play some shows as CoG later one but only a few that I remember. One was as recently as about a year ago and Wendy Watson joined us as well as our friend Dan Bryant I think. Dan ran a great space in San Diego called Voltaire that I played at a lot when it was still happening all of the time. It was a collective art-space that was literally raided by police and shut down. A real shame. The San Diego Police are far more vicious than people think. They will shoot you, it has happened to artists we know there and it's pretty freaky.

[0] Can you tell me about how the Spy in the House of God record came about, its personnel and recording?

The record is me, except Wendy appears on two songs, “Zoey” and “If Your Soul Could Sing”. Well, Zoey herself made a short appearance on the song called “Zoey” but that is another story! Anyhow, the album is still on the label that CoG started and that I still run with Wendy and the title alludes to everything that was going on at the time for me.

I had just moved to LA and in the move realized the magnitude of the collection of instruments Wendy and I had amassed so it just seemed natural. I was planning on making a record anyway so I figured, “why not use all of this stuff”. In the end I did, I forget the exact number but I played around 30 instruments on that record. The main ones were guitar and whistles of course, but also oud, saz, liuqin are on there, along with lots of different percussion including dholak, daf, cajon, and muyu blocks. Everything made its way on there somewhere.

We had a studio space in East Hollywood in a pretty bad part of town on a fourth floor, but with a great view of the city. Especially at night - so I would often have the curtains open on these giant windows and use the dining area in the kitchen as the control room and the studio part as the live room. I got the first half of it done there until I got tired of being chased around the neighborhood by thugs and we moved to a far more mellow area. That's where I finished the record but just prior to me moving in a small airplane crashed into the corner building just a few feet away from our place and there was this horrendous construction noise six days a week and that really slowed everything way down.

How important was the Million Tongues Festival appearance at this time?

It definitely was a blast and Steve Krakow is a doll for having me. That was part of a national tour that I completed most of by myself until Wendy flew out to meet me and finish the last part. She was at the Million Tongues also but I don't think she played that night.

“Jack of All Seasons” seems to have become a bit of an instant classic, and a great way to open this CD. Is there a story behind this track?

Not that I remember, I was under a lot of different...uh...influences at that time so things tend to get hazy. I think it was just another song about infidelity. It just happened to be catchy so folks dug it.

Looking back on this record, how does it sit with you now?

I didn't listen to it for a long time because I had grown tired of hearing it, but just recently I’ve been reviving old songs from it and doing new versions of them for live shows. I almost always play with backing musicians now so the live shows are getting closer to the album sound. We’ve been lucky and had some really great players sitting in with us and it’s just so much fun to be playing with all of your friends. Usually the line-up will change depending on what city we're in and that is one of the best things for me.

I believe that we share a love of the UK folk label Village Thing. What is your favourite Village Thing record (or favourites if you want to extol the virtues of more than one)?

Well, I'm not an expert on Village Thing but it would be so hard to pick a favorite. It would probably either be Ian A. Anderson's The Vulture is Not a Bird You Can Trust or the Sun Also Rises record. But then it is a sin to leave out Wizz Jones, Tucker Zimmerman, Al Jones, Chris Thompson, Lackey and Sweeney. It’s just an amazing, amazing label ran by an amazing guy. I might be wrong but I hear that Anderson is actually a little embarrassed about some of those old records he did. I think they’re just so beautiful and so real. He is one of the very few (or maybe only) white guys who can play real down-home blues and not have it sound like a bad imitation. He actually sings it how a white guy would sing the blues and it is perfect. I think he realized, through respect for the music, that he is not a black guy from the south and therefore shouldn’t try to sound like one and in turn interprets the music in his own way thereby making it more authentic.

Have you heard Anderson’s group The Hot Vultures with Maggie Holland? Other amazing people like Martin Simpson and Al Jones sit in with them. I love it. Great white blues.

I haven't heard that one, but will check it out on your recommendation… [0] How did you assemble the group of musicians that ended up being dubbed The Poison Tree?

It all just sort of fell together. I was planning on using Helena and Otto and everyone else was just around and interested so it seemed like fun. I knew everyone already and thought they were all such great players that I knew whatever I threw at them would sound good and I was really happy with everyone's playing in the end.

Can you talk a bit about the recording of the album Further From Grace, and how (or if) your intent was different from Spy in the House of God?

Further From Grace was a studio album as opposed to a home album, and it was the first to have other folks handling instrumental parts. I also didn’t have nearly the amount of time when doing it, so I had to work in a very immediate and final way. On Spy in the House of God I could take as long as I pleased and spend endless time meandering around in front of the microphones. No one was paying by the hour for me to be there. More than anything though, I was thinking about recording Further From Grace as my pop album. I wanted it to be hyper-realistic and tight sounding. In that way I guess it was a reverse thinking from Spy in the House of God in that way. Instead of drowning everything in echo and reverb I tried to keep things closer to the front.

The album seems to be touched with its fair share of grace, so why the title?

It’s mainly an old joke between friends about the romantic nature of religious iconography juxtaposed with the fact that we're all agnostics. It was a kind of extension of the first title in that sense. I do really love the ceremony and tradition attached to religion though, and therefore have this fascination with it. Sort of a fearful fascination I suppose.

How did the arrangement with Strange Attractors come about?

I sent the music to Chris and he offered to release it. It really was that easy. I was at a point where I didn't think I could do anymore with the second record than I did with the first and I wanted to get some help. Chris has a great label and after doing a lot of asking around the unanimous verdict was that he a stand-up guy and to be trusted so I went with him and it's been great ever since.

I believe you are recording (or have recorded) a follow-up to Further From Grace. Is there anything you’d like to disclose about it at this stage?

The new album will be released as Nick Castro and the Young Elders in June of 2006 on Strange Attractors and will be followed shortly after by full USA and European tours in June, July and August. I’m really excited about all of the people playing on it: Chris Guttmacher on percussion, the wonderful Ryan Kirkpatrick on Gamba Double Bass, as well as some other great musicians playing harps, flutes, winds, etc. It is a much darker record than Further From Grace, and much more stretched out. It is in the mixing stages now and will be a nearly full West Coast production as opposed to Further From Grace which was all done in Philadelphia. We also have a tour coming up in April with In Gowan Ring where we will be debuting many of the songs from the new record.