 Courtesy: Missing Piece Group From jam band Toast to contemporary country and Americana, Jerry Castle has ventured down various musical avenues. With his latest album, Not So Soft Landing, the singer-songwriter is changing course once again - this time delving into ethereal, atmospheric rock - in large part due to time spent utilizing sensory deprivation tanks, an experience which has impacted not only his songwriting, but other areas of his life as well. In advance of the album's June 24th release, Castle took the time to talk in depth about his experience in the tank, how it shaped the album and more. I’ve heard of sensory deprivation and floating, but have never met anyone who actually experienced it. What spurred your interest? I started doing it because I had been working on meditating, like sitting around with my eyes closed, and was doing a pretty poor job of it. I didn’t feel any more relaxed or chilled out, but then I was listening to the Joe Rogan podcast and he had talked about the meditative state and sensory deprivation and the ways they helped him creatively. So I googled it and found out there was a place ¾ mile from my house and I thought, “It’s so close, of course, I should try it.” I have to tell you though, the first time was pretty miserable – it’s very unnerving to be that isolated with your thoughts, floating in Epsom salts in the complete dark where you can’t see your hand in front of your face and you can’t hear. I had a really hard time with the incessant chatter in my head and of course, you inevitably think, “I wonder if anybody died in one of these.” So I went and read more about it and heard another podcast where someone had floated and said their first time was miserable but it got significantly better because you know what you’re walking into, so I went back and did it again. Since then, I’ve floated a lot especially during the writing and recording of the record. The Theta state - experiencing the actual feeling of completely letting go and nothingness – is really key. It takes about twenty minutes to get into that state and then you probably stay there for another twenty minutes [the entire float is ninety minutes] and the rest of the time I learned that I could kind of drive it a little bit rather than being victim to whatever thoughts came up. In terms of writing, I could bring up a song I’d been working on and think about it almost like a puzzle trying to solve itself because there’s none of life’s clutter in the way. Floating has not only helped me with songwriting, but has definitely influenced my whole life. I’d say anyone’s analyzation of me prior to floating was that I was a pretty Type A person and floating really helped chill me out. I’ve been guilty of trying to control every single thing I do and the reality is you do have to have the drive to do things, but that’s not always the healthiest way to get the best results; I try to enjoy the ride a little bit more.  You mentioned that it has an impact on your songwriting, how then did it influence the record?
Songs are like puzzles; ask anyone who writes a lot where a song comes from and most people won’t know or they can’t verbalize it. Floating made me feel like I could tap into that a lot more. The first song I was writing at the time was “Sunday.” I had started writing it on a Sunday and I had a float on Tuesday, and I kind of brought the song into my mind and the lyrics and melody just came in a blast. I was afraid I was going to forget them, so I jumped out of the tank, got my phone out, hummed the line into my iPhone and wrote the lyrics down. But as I continued with the floating, I found that I could retain stuff longer in the tank. I literally had songs where I went in [a float], came up with an idea and wrote the song as a result of the floating. I also had some that I started outside of the tank and finished, as a result of floating, during the recording of the record. A lot of the production and overdubs were influenced by ideas I came up with while floating as well. I would say that the odds are very strong that when next record comes around floating will play a big part in it. This record though, is definitely different, more atmospheric, from your previous records. If you listen to songs from Desperate Parade, I think I was headed in this direction, but I don’t think those ideas were ever fully realized. Then I turned around on the next record and went right back to roots music with banjo, pedal steel, and the whole bit. It’s funny, I started to play shows in support of the record and am currently trying to figure out how to implement the old stuff into a two-hour set. That's what I'm working on right now. The album begins with the arena-ready “Ride” and closes with your rendition of Blind Melon’s “Change,” both of which seem pretty positive, hopeful. Was that intentional to bookend the album with these two songs? “Ride” was actually the very last song written for the record. I had recorded the entire thing and it was during mixing when my producer said, “We don’t have anything that feels like an opening song on this record.” So I booked some sessions to record and sent him two songs, but they weren’t the right ones, so finally I did a float and yeah, just came up with it from there. “Ride” has a dual meaning for me - on the surface, it’s about going on the road and starting the ride of the record while the other meaning came from floating. There are some pretty psychedelic things about floating, it’s not all fun and games - you see colors and some deep thoughts come up that could be hard to process. You never know which direction a float can go and that’s part of the ride. In terms of “Change,” the last record I had done a Buffalo Springfield song, “For What It’s Worth” and decided I was going to do a cover on every record. The plan was to do a Grateful Dead song because they had a little more of that psychedelic effect, but it didn’t fit with where I was trying to go for a closer. First I was thinking about doing “St. Stephen,” but that didn’t fit; then I thought about “Loser,” but that was too much of a ballad, so I scrolled through Facebook and came across a post of Blind Melon’s “No Rain” and I instantly thought of the night [Kurt] Cobain was found dead and Blind Melon performed “Change,” [on Letterman] which was a song that I really connected with during a period of my life. So I went and watched that video and got the chills, and of course Shannon [Hoon] sang like nobody else. He had one of the most unique voices so it was a matter of how to make the song my own because there was no way I could emulate him at all. And you definitely did it justice. There’s another song I wanted to ask you about the story behind, “Medicine?” “Medicine” was the first song in its entirety that came from a float. I got the idea in the tank, hummed the melody and wrote all of the lyrics from one float. I went home, picked up the guitar and it was written lickety-split. The character in the song is one I created. He’s this small town, All-American guy: a sports hero who drives a Mustang, but he’s a guy with a heightened sense of self-awareness who grows and evolves. And as a result, the people in his life want him to take drugs to be more like them, because he seems too far out there. Any of the great innovators were all considered to be crazy at some point, and this song is about a modern day person being that way and how it makes everyone uncomfortable and as a result they want to try to make him more like them. Finally, I always like to know, is there one recent release that you can’t stop listening to? This one isn’t super recent, but My Morning Jacket’s Waterfall. I was really excited to work with Bob Ludwig, who mastered this record, so I went through the records he recently mastered and Waterfall was one of them. It’s been a record that for me that, over the past seven months, just keeps unfolding. They must have been on some sort of journey when they wrote it because they really tapped into human behavior and experience. I also like some of the songs off of Chris Stapleton’s record a lot too. He taps into sadness like Willie Nelson is so great at doing. For more information visit his official website Find him on Facebook and Twitter
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |