Casalties Keep Piling Up For The Last Time...

The king is gone but he's not forgotten, this is the story of a Johnny Rotten Neal Casal. A small fanbase he might have had, too small one would argue, but loyal they are, so it is mighty fine to see that they will be served with an archival release these days. A compilation of early songs and demos, No One Above You (The Early Years 1991-1998) will be out tomorrow, so I thought it's time to get going and wrap up my archival series on Mr. Casal. Which means it's time to welcome Casalties 3, this volume covering Casal's career from about 2005 to this death in 2019 and the posthumous releases that make up the last four songs here. If you think, 'wow, that's quite a bit of time to cover', especially since Vol. 1 covered three years (1995 to 1998) and Vol. 2 seven (1998 to 2005), you get a clearer view on how Casal's career shifted in its last decade and a half. 

While Casal was playing with Ryan Adams as part of The Cardinals, he stayed active as a solo performer, issuing No Wish To Reminiscence (2006) and just after the break up of the Cardinals in early 2009 Roots & Wings, which was written and recorded while still part of and touring with the group. But in the last decade of his life and music career he preferred dissolving himself in different bands, being part of the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, indie supergroup Hard Working Americans and psych rock outfit Circles Around The Sun, as well as playing with Beachwood Sparks and off-shoots GospelBeacH and Skiffle Players. Add to that a ton of studio work, adding guitars and sometimes harmony vocals to everyone from James Iha to Lucinda Williams to Mark Olson, and Casal clearly kept very busy. Except on his own music. 

I picked up 2010's Sweeten The Distance, his tenth and last solo album, from a bargain bin a year or so after release. I played it, and thought to myself 'really nice', as one would with a Casal album - lovely vocals, solid melodies, impeccable if classic arrangements - but I also thought to myself 'these songs all sound variations on others of his, this album sounds like he is a bit 'written out'. I didn't know how right I was, sadly. The songs on Sweeten The Distance would be the last original songs of Casal published during his lifetime. The fact that his musical friends and companions reworked "Everything Is Moving", written in 2012 or so, and a handful of other tunes from Casal's solo demos is a testament to how beloved Casal was among peers. But the fact that for the last nine years of his life, no more originl music was forthcoming is also telling. Was this a factor in Neal's decision to end his life? I don't want to speculate. But it's sad that such a gifted singer-songwriter had nothing to tell in those last years to a small but faithful audience, and was fine in hiring out his guitar-playing skills to a ton of groups and projects. 

Highlights of this collection include two rather unsual covers: a kick-ass version of Terrence Trent D'Arby's "Wishing Well" that he contributed to an 80s tribute sampler -  taken, like almost the entire first half off odds'n'sodds cllection All Directions - that album's lovely title track and the last song he published in his lifetime, "Property Of Jesus" from an obscure tribute album to Dylan's Christian period (jeeez, the ideas for tributes sometimes...). There is also a beautiful acoustic rendition of his own classic "Too Much To Ask", as well as an acoustic reading of Beachwood Sparks' "Old Manatee" (of which the person who posted it had no recording date or info, so I seqeunced it for flow rather than date). The instrumental "Grimes' Surf Story" he did with his future Circles Around The Sun colleague Adam MacDougall was running a rather unreasonable five and a half minute and featured long sections where you mainly hear the latter, so I edited that down considerably just to get an idea of the track, and to not interrupt the flow of this collection, which - like the first two volumes - is more or less chornological.  

So, this concludes for the time being my posts on Neal Casal, but you never know. There might be more coming from this fabulous artist in the future, if I can dig out more stuff. In the meantime, enjoy Casalties 3 (and maybe No One Above You) and bathe once more in that luxurious, lovely voice and guitar-picking of Neal Casal...

PS. here's the trailer for No One Above You

You Better Call Somebody, There's A Lot Of Casalties Here!

Alright, alright, Billy Ray Cyrus was maybe a bridge too far, let's go back to some certified value from a beloved commodity, shall we? It's been a good long while that we had some Neal Casal on these here pages, so here comes part two of the three part series or rarities and stray tracks that I have assembled. Casalties Volume One chronicled Casal's early days, from songs cut before his dbut album to 1998's Basement Dreams. Volume Two, our One Buck record of the day, jumps right in at that moment, as a matter of fact there is one escapee from the Basement Dreams sessions, "Junkyard In The Sun", preceded by ripping rock'n'roll opener "Twilight On The Floods", a stray track issued on a couple of music magazine compilations. 

From there we move on to a couple of collaboration projects: a duet with Angie McKenna (released posthumously),  tracks from an album Casal recorded with Kenny Roby (including a beautiful live take on "Maybe California") and from an EP he did with Shannon McNally. I chose the songs on which Casal sings lead, is sharing lead vocals or otherwise prominently featured. And the back half is then comprised of live tracks, covering the period from Anytime Tomorrow (probably my favorite Casal album) to No Wish To Reminiscence. Tracks are sourced from various live concerts (or live in the studio for the album-closing "You Don't See Me Crying"), as well as odds-n-sodds comp All Directions. 

I don't think I have to tell you what to expect: very fine mostly acoustic music, beautifully played and sung, as per usual for Mr. Casal. If you still haven't been converted, by this blog or another place, then dive into some further Casalties for that sweet 70's Westcoast vibe that Neal Casal could conjure so magnificently and effortlessly...

Neal's Back: Wheel Out The Casalties...

It's been a good long while since I posted some Neal Casal here at One Buck Records. Time to change that. In the text accompanying my compilation introducing the man's music I already said most of what I wanted to say. Casal was a major talent, and deserves to be more widely known. So consider this new series of Casal albums my humble contribution towards this goal. Having followed Casal's career seriously, if not religiously, I still managed to pick up most of, then all, of his solo studio albums. However, that still left room to hunt for stuff that fell through the cracks, or hid in the margins. Casualties of circumstance, you could say. Or, rather, Casalties of circumstance. Ahem.

So, Casalties will the a three album series of rare and stray tracks, outtakes, demos, live tracs, contributions to tribute samplers and the like. Basically a big smorgasboard of goodies that aren't on any of Casal's regular studio albums. These albums heavily draw on the two rarities collections he issued - Field Recordings for Glitterhouse in 1997 and All Directions in 2006, as well as albums or EPs he did in collaboration with Shannon McNally and Kenny Roby. The albums will proceed chronologically, with Vol. 1 covering Casal's recording beginnings up to Basement Dreams. 

The first thing any listener will notice is that even for the stuff that didn't make albums or was somehow otherwise marginalized, is that the quality control is really high. Simply put, there's nothing bad on these albums, even the more experimental stuff that didn't make it onto Basement Dreams usually has something interesting going on. Speaking of Basement Dreams: That album was re-issued on Fargo in the 2000s as a special edition with a bonus dis full of unreleased stuff. This unreleased stuff will make up the back end of Casalties Vol. 1 and spill over onto the beginning of Vol. 2. The front half of Casalties Vol. 1 is essentially drawn from Field Recordings, plus "Black Honey", recorded for a Graham Parker tribute album. 

Casalties Vol. 1 should serve as a nice reminder of how, after years spent on the margins of the music business - among other things, as the guitar slinger for Blackfoot - fully formed Casal's music arrived once he got to record it. The album also shows how malleable it is. "Best To Believe" and "Angels On Hold", recorded like the whole Rain, Wind And Speed album essentially as solo acoustic numbers, they are here in full band versions, and arguably the better for it. Basement Dreams highlights and beloved Casal classics like "Highway Butterfly" and "No One Said A Word" can be heard as live versions here. All surrounded by a number of outtakes and demos that could have easily - and in some cases should have - been issued at the time.

Ready for a deep dive into the treasure trove of Neal Casal's hidden gems? Well, ready or not, here we go...

Americana's forgotten golden boy: Remembering Neal Casal

My first tentative step into the music blog world as an author was a guest piece for Farq's Fake Memory Foam Island about Neal Casal. The piece has since gone the way of the dodo, but it was a little mawkish anyway and I spelled Neal's name wrong throughout. Also, being a pure consumer (a real 'youse bums' type character) at the time, I didn't provide any music to go with the words. So, once more I'll try to put into words what the man and his music mean to me, and why you should know him. 

First off, Casal was a musician's musician and a rock'n'roll lifer. Starting as, of all things, the guitar slinger for one of the latter day versions of Ricky Medlocke's Blackfoot, Casal soon tried to catch on as a solo musician, doing the kind of mix of rock, pop and country that once came out regularly out of Topanga canyon. If you love classic Jackson Browne or the Eagles, then Casal was your gig. Like fellow grandsons of Topanga, the Beachwood Sparks (with whom he collaborated and toured), he kept the flame of the west coast sound of the 1970s alive at a time when the music scene at large didn't have any use for it, or him. Had he been born twenty years before, who knows. But in the mid- to late 90s this kind of music, fabulous as it was, was always destined to be for a niche audience. And a niche audience it was. He could be a concert attraction in Europe and in Japan, but in the U.S. he was only ever a talented sideman, backing up Lucinda Williams, Willie Nelson and others. His highest profile gig as a sideman was probably as part of Ryan Adams' backup group The Cardinals. As a lifelong Grateful Dead fan, it also felt natural to form the jam-band Circles Around The Sun and compose the set break music for the band. Hell, in his last years, with long heir, full beard and small glasses he even started to look a little like Jerry Garcia. Certainly a long way from the young Adonis you see up there, from around the time of his debut album Fade Away Diamond Time.  

When I said that Casal was a rock'nroll lifer, that's probably why his death by suicide hit me so hard. He wasn't supposed to go out like this. He was supposed to, even at retirement age, shuffle down with his guitar case to the local watering hole and play his and other people's songs for shits and giggles and beer (or Mountain Dew) money. That's how I envisioned Casal to spend his retirement. Alas, we can't choose the endings we like, and Casal chose his, unwisely.  Listening to some of the interviews he gave, you do hear someone extremely uncertain and somewhat rudderless. His restlessness as a child, when his parents moved all over the U.S. seems to have led to a certain restlessness of spirit. Far be it from me to speculate about the reasons for his decision to end his life, but there seemed to be a hole where a home - spiritual, physical, what have you - should've been. "I am just a shadow on your wall / one day you won't think of me at all" are the first words you'll hear on this album, from the last song he ever finished. That's why I wanted to end this compilation with his cover of Gram Parsons' beautiful "A Song For You". In "Everything's Moving" he fears that no one will remember him, nineteen songs later he sings about hoping that "tomorrow we will still be there". 

In some ways, Casal's music is clearly reminiscent of those that came before him, but unlike his compatriot Adams Casal never slid into pure pastiche. Instead, his albums sound like artifacts from another time and place. Though he was born in New Jersey and passed his childhood all over the place, like those Detroit/Texas/Nebraska-sourced Eagles, there is something quintessentially Californian about his music, from its deserts that some of the dustier, pure country numbers evoke to the ocean drives that the sun-kissed songs from Anytime Tomorrow bring to mind. Unlike four fifths of the state's official Californian dream merchants he was an avid surfer. There is also a clear Byrds influence on tracks like "Too Far To Fall" and the tellingly spelled "The Gyrls Of Wynter" (whose title mightjust be a nod to Big Star). And, equally if not more important, Casal had one of the sweetest voices in all of music.  

That voice sings no more, and never will again. But the man leaves behind a rich legacy, not only in the nine albums he published, in the contributions to other musician's albums and tours or his numerous musical collaborations, but the countless stories of his camaraderie and kindness. Casal was by all accounts one of the nicest men in the music business.  

So, compiled by yours truly, twenty songs showing what Casal had to offer. Listen, like, become a fan. Or don't. But everyone wins if you do.