Tommy Castro - Live at the Fillmore -

If Castro's record company is augmenting the presentation to keep pace with the times, this San Francisco-based guitarist and singer otherwise delivers a no-frills package that works confidently within the more upbeat end of the blues spectrum. Shorn of explicit scholarship or careful allusions to regional parent styles, this is proudly blue-collar blues rock designed purely for partying. With his short, slicked-back hair and a buffed-up physique clad in black slacks and polo shirt, Castro doesn't resemble anybody you'd expect to find in the smoky juke joints or shotgun shacks of blues lore; his athletic performing style and grinning ebullience likewise seem incongruous if considered in the context of traditional blues' more harrowing, confessional standards. There isn't a hellhound in sight, but then Castro's enthusiastic Fillmore audience clearly couldn't care less.

In fact, Castro and his quartet (covering bass, drums, and tenor sax) flex a sturdy, if generic, blues style that reaches for the same '60s soul economy audible in the early sound of Robert Cray, whose own career began with the sort of pumped-up bar band aesthetic that Castro plies here. Like Cray, Castro's songbook is largely preoccupied with sex and heartbreak, albeit without the lyric invention that Cray and original collaborator Dennis Walker achieved. From a technical standpoint, the show is well shot and cleanly recorded, its surround mix simply adding ambience to the traditional stage mix presented by front and center channels. Those familiar with Castro and the CD version of the same show will note that Blind Pig uses a slightly different song list here; it's worth pondering whether the DVD, which clocks in at just 60 minutes, would have been improved by including the other songs available on CD but not here. --Sam Sutherland ...