Tommy Castro Keeps the Party Loud and Lively with ‘Killin’ It Live’

“Party Time! It’s Saturday night everybody,” Tommy Castro says, introducing his latest live album, Killin’ It Live. It captures Castro at his ebullient best, rocking like Delbert McClinton in a sweaty Texas honky-tonk, his gritty, soulful vocals backed by fiery, blooze-grounded, rocked-out guitar licks.

“Make It Back to Memphis” sounds like it was captured live from a rowdy McClinton concert, down to the Kevin McKendree-style jangly piano. But Castro is getting McClinton’s big road band sound out of a quartet: Bowen Brown on drums and Randy McDonald on bass with Mike Emerson playing the McKendree role on keys and Castro handling lead guitar and vocals.

Castro often teams up with Tab Benoit on tour, and the two knock out a version of Sleepy John Estes’ “Leavin’ Trunk” that’s as rootsy as Taj Mahal’s take on it with the Tedeschi-Trucks band. But Castro kicks it up a notch with a funky version here, wailin’ soulfully like Wet Willie frontman Jimmy Hall, backing himself on guitar tubes screaming as he vacillates between channeling Chuck Berry and Duane Allman, with Emerson burbling happily around him.

This stripped-down iteration of the Painkillers debuted on 2015’s Method to My Madness and have been around ever since, backing Castro on 2017’s Stompin’ Ground as well.

“Gonna go back in time a little bit to our second album, 12 albums ago,” he says, introducing the title cut from 1997’s “Can’t Keep a Good Man Down,” a wiggly thumper propelled by a ZZ Top engine, Castro spewing out frenetic riffs like Billy Gibbons overdosing on adrenaline. It’s all backed by the stellar rhythm section, with McDonald and Brown plowing a groove deep enough for all the cows in Texas to wallow in.

Although it’s a shuffle, there’s nothing laid-back about “Calling San Francisco,” the guitarist bending strings like B.B., wringing out steely licks as Brown backs him like a tail gunner firing off percussive cannon bursts between Castro’s fiery machine gun delivery.

Buddy Miles’ horn-heavy original “Them Changes” clocks in at around three and half minutes, but Castro’s stretches out considerably, coming in a second shy of eight minutes. And on Miles’ original, you get a smidgen of insane asylum guitar starting about three quarters of the way through; the rest of the track is dominated by Miles’ strangling-on-grave-dirt vocal. Castro keeps the vocals minimized to a soulful intro, making it a guitar day trip as he cranks his signature Delaney “Castrocaster” to the max on the shriek setting after giving the band plenty of room to stretch out solo.

Castro and the Painkillers get that great McClinton road band sound once again on “Two Hearts,” from Method to My Madness. Castro’s soulful howls are bracketed by Emerson’s just-busted-out-of-church and crossed-the-aisle organ as it glides along to a honky-tonk two-step tempo.

It’s always party time with Castro, and your invitation to this one allows you to share in the raucous roadhouse throw-down usually reserved for juke joint habitués.