I'm here with Tony Castaneda and he's been a fixture of the Madison music and activism
scene for more than 20 years.
A former radio host and social justice activist, Tony is the percussionist and frontman of
the Tony Castaneda Latin Jazz Band who has been getting Madison in a jazzy mood since
1998.
Tony is here with us in the studio to talk about his current musical ventures, his weekly
residency at the carnal bar and upcoming projects.
Tony, welcome to Maxing Radio.
All right.
Thank you very much for having me.
This is a beautiful place.
I can't believe how nice it looks up here.
It's so cool looking over State Street on a Saturday night and all this stuff going
on.
It's totally cool.
I just wanted to correct you on a couple of things.
I am still a radio program.
I am.
Yes, I do.
The Thursday buzz on WORT radio, which is a sister kind of radio in this place.
And I've been playing Latin Jazz for, since 1977, 78, actually.
We had another band, it was called Olmeca, that started in the late 70s.
We did Latin Jazz Rock.
We were the Madison's first Latin music band, Latin Jazz Rock band, because of waybath.
You didn't know that, though.
No, that's way before my time.
Way before your time, Jay.
All right.
But anyhow, yeah.
You're still the premiere Latin Jazz guy here today.
So we just heard a lot.
We only wanted it.
So we just heard a little clip from that song Volando Alto, which I know from a very rusty
Spanish, like means flying high.
Were you in that kind of state when you were writing that?
Well, no, I mean, just spiritually, maybe as we were making that, that was from, and it's
interesting that you guys were playing that, because that was actually our last recording
that we did.
And we just forgot to do another one after that until, until now.
But that was like 2007.
That's from our album Mambo, or more there.
And that's available on Bandcamp, if Bandcamp still exists.
Oh, yeah.
So that's how I got that.
All right.
Cool.
Good job.
Okay.
Well, at least it's not on MySpace.
Yeah.
So anyway.
We didn't close our MySpace yet.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I first questioned for you.
Yes.
How did you first get involved in music and discover Jazz?
Well, when I was a youth, like a kid growing up in Racine, Wisconsin, my uncle, Nassio,
was a talented musician.
And he played in, or in, yeah, he was a member of some big Mexican music and Latin music
orchestras.
And this was in the 50s and 60s.
So when I was a kid in about 5th grade, I had two older brothers, and I got some younger
ones too.
But he always wanted to get us into music and playing.
And one of my brothers tried drums, didn't stick with it, another brother.
I think tried trumpet and didn't stick with it, and when he got to me, he got me my
first trumpet.
So I, and I dug it.
I was into it.
I was playing.
I'm a marching band, but I was also like an orchestra type thing.
And that's, that's when I personally started playing a music.
It was trumpet was my instrument.
But the exposure to Latin music, though, came way back there when I was a youth, because
my uncle's band would rehearse in the basement of my aunt's house, because we were kids going
over there, and we'd always, you know, look through the, go down the basement, look through
the door, that we get yelled at and whatever.
And, and yeah, so that was my first exposure, and older brother, who turned me into jazz
though later, when I was a little bit older.
And, you know, but listen, one of the first jazz albums, if you will, I listened to, was
a Cal Jator.
Yeah, Cal Jator.
Yes, Cal Jator.
Sorry, I'm still stuck on your car in the bar.
Yeah, you're right.
We'll get to that in a minute.
Okay, go ahead.
There was eventually a stick with drums.
You mean Kongo's hampey question.
Yes, I don't know.
I just started playing.
Percussion.
And I had one at the house, you know, and of course, Santana was a big thing.
And also was starting to listen when I was in high school to Eddie Palm hearing.
Of course, Cal Jator and that type of stuff.
I had a Kongo beat up Kongo, and I would just play along to that stuff, really.
So, but I really didn't start playing in a band until I moved to Madison.
Yeah, let's get to know some of the other members of the Tony Castanade jazz band.
Because one of them, when you see him, you can't miss him.
He just sticks out right away.
Tell us about your sax player and your main songwriter, Andrew Spano.
Andrew Spano.
Andrew Spano.
He joined the band, well, our current band, we started in 1998.
We formed at the Cardinal Bar.
It was cigar night, as a matter of fact.
And Sunday night's Ricardo, the owner of Ricardo Gonzalez, asked us, you know, to come
and play every Sunday, which we did.
And it was just a trio at the time.
It was Dave Stolar, myself, and the famous bass player, Dennis Oliver, at the time, who
unfortunately got ill and he passed on.
And we took on Henry Bame at that time.
Henry Bame knew Henry Anders through another band to made a box or something, and they're
playing like avant-garde out there jazz type stuff.
So that's how Anders got introduced to the band.
Yeah, on that album, he composed most of the songs, actually.
But he's a great, he's a prolific writer and player, as everybody in the band is.
And Anders, actually, he played with Roscoe Mitchell and a lot of these jazz guys, real
jazz guys.
So, yeah, but the rest of the band, we've kind of gone through a couple of changes throughout
the years.
Dave Stolar, of course, is still with the band.
He's our keyboard player and he's the last original member besides myself, because our
good friend, Henry Bame, who played bass with us for a long time, just left the band
not long ago, several months ago, just had too many other things going on.
So then we started playing with Guitars, Luca Paddenau also, and Arno Gonzalez.
Yeah, I know.
We like to give the drummer some.
Tell us about your Tim Bali player.
All right, Arno Gonzalez.
I met Arno, though, back in the 70s.
He was a founder of the band Olmeca, which I was in at that time.
We were Madison's first Latin band of all, you know, those playing around.
We played at the Union and at clubs and stuff.
But we were the first ones that were actually, you know, played Latin jazz and Afro-Cuban
music, you know, with Kongas and percussion and Tim Bali's.
Arno formed that band.
Then he left for a while in San Francisco for a good 40 years or so.
And he came back maybe 10 years ago or so.
And the first thing I did was I said, well, I don't know, you're in our band.
Playing Tim Bali's, we needed a Tim Bali player.
So, yeah.
So Arno's in the band and now Brad Townsend is our bass player.
And yeah, so it's like a Luca, Patina, guitar, Dave Stoller, keyboards, Anders, Final
Sacks, Arno Gonzalez on a Tim Bali's and Brad Townsend on bass.
And I play a hand percussion, Kongas, Mongols, whatever.
Are we running out of time?
No.
Tony, I wanted to know.
Oh.
I mean, they've been performing nonstop for more than two decades, probably like three
decades.
Tell us about starting the band or just tell us about like really, you've been the
constant over the years.
Like what's your band leader's secret to longevity?
Well, I think it.
Well, really, I think a lot of it is finding people because they all played with us, played
with me for a long time.
Anders, Henry, Dave, you know, we like each other for the most part.
And we go out and we can talk.
We're all agreeable on a lot of things.
Politics is very important.
But our musical tastes, I guess, are sense of humor and it's just a matter of like trusting
you guys and not, you know, everybody gets to contribute and you got to be open.
But yeah, it's, you know, we all know bands that go through changes I love.
I love that our, my guys have stuck with me all this time because I, you know, we, it's
a matter of trust, but it's also, it's a matter of love, you know, for each other and caring
and we're involved with each other's families and, and, you know, after these almost 30 years
of being together, we're grown up together.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So that's it.
Speaking of performing, like a little red bird told me that your band plays a free show
every Thursday night at the Cardinal Bar.
That's true.
And it's, that's another thing that helps.
I think keeping a band together is we, in 1998, we started a regular residency every Sunday
night at the Cardinal Bar, which is at 418 East Wilson Street, downtown Madison.
And we did that for like 12 to 15 years.
I say that because there were some periods when we didn't do it and there was a different
management changes and things like that.
And that's good because you, you just playing together every week.
For one thing, you don't have to rehearse that much rocker.
I hate rehearsing, man, really, you know, you're in a new song during the gig.
We do it.
Exactly.
And that's how we would do it.
Somebody would bring a chart or somebody would say, hey, you guys check this out.
They'd drop it on, you know, listen to this song.
I'll bring the chart on Sunday or sometimes they're just like, hey, do you know this song?
Fortunately, they, a lot of the guys did know songs, but even new stuff and original stuff.
We just try it.
And, you know, after a couple of weeks, you got the song down.
And being jazz, we're able to improvise into, you know, yeah, we know everything does
not have to be known for note, thank God, or in the same tempo all the time, or hopefully
it's in the same key, but sometimes we may.
Yeah, that's, that's, that's, that helps it always helps to have a regular gig.
And we're happy for that.
That's when we started the carnal, but then when the carnal bar reopened, after four
years of being closed, they asked us, you know, on that first week, they're like, well,
we want you to do a residency again here every Thursday, and I like, well, heck, yeah,
we'll love it.
It's good, you know.
And I've heard you have a new album in the works.
Well, yes, we do as a matter of fact, it's, we recorded about five tracks down at audio
for the arts with our good friend Buzz, y'all.
Yeah, we know Buzz.
Yeah.
We know Buzz.
Yeah.
And he's engineering it, which is good.
And we got some more things that we're going to lay down.
It's a mixed combination of some covers, but also some original stuff, too, so.
Right.
Okay.
So how can we keep up with Tony Castanade, a Latin jazz band online?
I think we have a website.
Yeah, I think you do have a website too.
We're not too good at keeping it up.
We need something to do that for us.
Or maybe we should.
I don't know.
We do have a website.
It's a, you know, www.tony Castanade, the other Latin jazz.
And you can go there.
We do have a Facebook site too, which we don't update either.
And you got your own bandcamp.
And we're on bandcamp, which we got.
We lost the password.
I had my, one of my son's, one of our suds, one of my son's set up the thing.
He's in Dallas and we can't find the password.
So there's millions of dollars in our bandcamp account, maybe.
I doubt it.
But one of these days we'll find that password and we'll be able to access whatever.
But yeah, you can go there and look us up in our new album.
It's going to be called Five Minutes to Now.
And yeah.
Yeah.
Keep an eye out for that.
That'll be coming out.
So.
Yeah.
Tony, thank you so much for taking the time to come in and chat with us.
All right.
We really appreciate it.
Okay.
Can I make one announcement real quick, but both of you guys?
Oh, sure.
Wait, you're in charge now because you're at the, yeah.
Sure.
Oh, no.
Yeah.
You mentioned the Dave Benton thing and Dave was a very sweet guy and we all knew him
in the Madison community.
If you've been around it for a long time.
So they're having a little commemoration for him again.
Monday, October 13th at Tenney Park in the Pavilion from three to seven.
However, Paul Black, who was also a great musician around here, he passed about a month
and a half ago or so, and we've been organizing a tribute to him.
And we, we, before Dave even passed on, we had something planned for the Crystal Corner
Bar on the same day, Monday, October 13th, but our starts at seven where there's going
to be some, some tributes to him, you know, spoken word tributes.
And then we're going to have a big blues jam starting about 80, 30 with some of the Madison's
greatest Paul Flippowicz, Andy Ewen, Mell Ford, Tony Cainan, Karen Heim, all these people,
frankly, a bunch of musicians are going to come and we're going to play a tribute, a musical
tribute to Paul Black, same day as Dave's thing, Monday, October 13th from seven o'clock
till who knows how late at the Crystal Corner Bar, of course.
So, yeah.
Hey, thanks a lot for having me down here, guys.
Yeah, we got one more little clip that we're going to play.
All right.
It's called, it's from your track.
I'm for EP.
This is for Eddie Palmieri.
We've had the opportunity to open up for some of the great Grammy winning and play with
them.
People like Jerry Gonzalez, a punctual such as we open up for Eddie Palmieri.
We open up for, you know, it's been an honor to go to, to be able to play and open up for
these guys.
So, these guys are a classic.
So this one is for EP.
This is a Anders van O'Toon.
It's for Eddie Palmieri.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, for EP.
You're listening to Maxing Radio.
We are local music.
