When Neal Casal passed in 2019, the ripples throughout the music world were widespread. From potential filled pals Kenny Roby, Zephaniah Ohora and John Lee Shannon to legends Bob Weir and Phil Lesh, his resume was rapidly expanding. He was in the perfect spot for the collision between the indie music and jam band scene. With the spaced out sounds of Circles Around the Sun, he literally created a new genre of music. Casal was becoming the “go to” guy across wide musical expanses.
Casal’s longtime friend/manager Gary Waldman kicks off part two with insight into what made Neal so respected on and off stage.
S&B- What was it that made Neal so prolific? With all his own music, how did he shift and start helping other musicians with theirs?
Waldman- I think being a singer/songwriter himself, he understood the struggles. Record deals come and go. Gigs come and go. He knew what singer/songwriters were going through so he became a great asset to them. A great supporting guy. His favorite musician was Keith Richards. Keith knew how to play in a band, and Neal knew how to do that. It wasn’t about him. How do I add to the hole? That was Neal. He wasn’t coming in to blaze a solo. Neal was coming in to figure out how can I help these people. How can I be a part of the ingredients that go into the recipe? He knew how to do that. Neal was incredibly reliable. He’s going to show up on time. He’s gonna have a great instrument. He’s gonna have a great amplifier. He’s gonna listen closely. He’s gonna be sympathetic. He’s gonna sing great. He had that mentality. If his career was only living in LA getting a call from producers and playing on records, he would’ve shown up and done great work every day. That was the thing about Neal. When he was on your session, he came in with a great attitude and great gear. He listens closely. He plays beautifully. It’s always about the song. He’s quick with a joke, and a great team guy. Neal was fantastic at that. That’s one of the things we all miss about him. It would be great to call up Neal to come play on this.Â
S&B- Absolutely. Can you imagine the music we’d have in the world today? Every time I listen to the album, about halfway through I stop and chuckle as I realize this is the person who would go on to create Circles Around the Sun. That style of music is nowhere near anything on No One Above You.
Waldman- There was a parallel life going on in the ‘90’s. Neal was a huge Grateful Dead fan. He was a huge Jerry Garcia fan. We went to many shows and saw Jerry play many times. We saw all kinds of jammy, Deadhead shows. He was a bit of an outsider in that world. He wasn’t gonna be the solo ripping, jam band guy. He was a songwriter, so he developed that bridge into that world. He joined Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, which of course Ryan is a fantastic songwriter and somebody Neal had so much respect for. So,being in the Cardinals, that was a great live band. I don’t know if you ever saw them?Â
S&B- Oh yes. Several times.
Waldman- The last year they were together, that band was phenomenal. They would’ve been an arena headliner, a festival headliner if they stayed together. The guitar jams in that band were phenomenal because Ryan is a phenomenal electric guitar player too. He and Neal were amazing together. Ryan had become a bit of a Deadhead at that time. That was a bridge towards that world.Â
S&B- Once you’re rolling in the jam band scene, the opportunities expand greatly.
Waldman- When Neal got the call from Chris Robinson, it was like we’re gonna play three hours of music a night. We’re gonna write songs, and we’re just gonna go fucking work. He knew how to do it and was ready to do it. When Phil Lesh asked him to play, I remember Neal calling me and saying, I’ve been in my hotel room for two days learning every part of Terrapin. It’s insane. He went in as prepared as anybody could be. He wasn’t like some of the people who played with Phil who were great enough to just wing it. That was not Neal. Neal was prepared. Neal didn’t like going on stage and not knowing the song. He didn’t like to stand there and figure it out. He didn’t like to pretend he knew what he was doing.
S&B- It was around this time Neal broke away from being just a musician. The people he’d impressed with his hard work ethic and just being a great guy started turning to him. Ultimately, that opened some life altering paths for a couple of his proteges. Especially Zephaniah OHora and John Lee Shannon.
Waldman- I introduced Neal to Zephaniah Ohora. Zeph was Brooklyn based at the time. He’s in Nashville now.
S&B- I know him. Like Neal, incredibly overlooked. He was a hairdresser.
Waldman- Yeah and John was too. He was making kind of Merle Haggard style country records and so Zeph and John were a real team. Zeph said to me what do you think about Neal producing my next record? I was like it would be great. Neal was like, oh man. I’m not really a producer. I was like dude no one has done more sessions than you. You know exactly how to do this. He ended up doing it, and he just fell in love with John Shannon’s playing. He just thought John was the greatest young guitar player, and Neal liked to be a mentor. He was just piling up John with records. Have you ever heard this guy, and have you ever heard this guy? He was really trying to give John a bridge of here’s some guys you should learn from. It became a real thing. Neal left a letter when he checked out. In the letter he said to the guys in CATS he wants Shannon to finish up his guitar parts on the new record. He’ll do the best job of anybody. He had already endorsed John to be to be the guy in CATS.
S&B- Let’s look a little deeper at Circles Around the Sun. I remember like yesterday being at Fare Thee Well during set break on night one. I’ve gone to hundreds and hundreds of concerts. None of those had set break music like that. I started telling people to stop and listen. I wasn’t the only one and that was the beginning of CATS. After a couple of lineup changes, it seems like everything worked out as it was supposed to with John taking over permanently.
Waldman- Immediately after Neal died, Eric Krasno played some shows. Thank you to him for stepping in when we needed him. CATS had a tour, and they didn’t want to cancel it. They felt like they wanted to go on and Kras came in and did a great job. I think he played ten or fifteen shows with them. Then, we kind of were in touch with John. Then we were like maybe Scott Metzger wants to play a few shows. Scott did a few shows right out of the pandemic, but scheduling was a thing. After that, we got with John, and John became the man and still is the man.
S&B- I’ve had that magical letter from Neal come up in previous interviews with his friends and musicians. Adam MacDougall, Neal’s bandmate in CRB and CATS tells some great stories of how Neal was mesmerized by John’s playing. While he was his mentor, he was a huge fan.
Waldman- He really was. Yeah.
S&B- Let’s dig further into the Neal Casal Music Foundation. What has it been able to provide since its inception? What are its goals and how is keeping Neal’s memory alive?
Waldman- I worked for 10 or 15 years with an artist named Citizen Cope, who I think a lot of people know about. He was very popular from 2005 to 2020 or so. He knew Neal for many years. He had a charity fund, and when we played shows, we would take a dollar from each ticket and donate it to a local charity. Citizen Cope’s organization was for Native American reservations and he donated a lot of money to them. We would go up to the reservation and give away some guitars. This is all while Neal was still around. Neal and I grew up with a love of Native American history. We were passionate about that and when Citizen Cope was donating to and doing work with reservations, we really thought that was beautiful. After Neal died, I thought we should make a foundation and help musicians in the way we had done with Citizen Cope. When we gave away instruments to young kids, that joy was amazing. The idea for the Neal Casal Music Foundation is to raise money and help musicians that struggle with mental health and physical health from being on the road. Musicians need support and help to be able to do what they do. You’re not living a normal lifestyle. You’re not working 9 to 5. You don’t have insurance. So, the first goal was let’s help other musicians who are in need of care. The secondary part of the foundation was let’s get instruments and bring them to kids in schools in New York and New Jersey where Neal grew up. Over the five years since we’ve been a foundation, we’ve managed to raise enough money to give away almost 100 instruments to kids in schools. Guitars, drums, and keyboards. We’ve given away some horns and a few basses. We will identify a school program and will reach out to them and say hey, we’ve got some instruments. Would you like us to bring some stuff to you? Â
Then we’ve had musicians who have needed some mental healthcare and various other things where we’ve been able to help. Anyone who buys No One Above You, a big part of the proceeds goes back into the foundation so we can continue to do this work and that’s been amazing. We’ve also donated quite a bit to Backline, which is a musician healthcare company that formed after Neal died. They have done amazing work, and they’ve raised tons of money. They help so many musicians, and they’ve been able to infiltrate into venues. I tour manage bands and artists and comedians. Any day you’re backstage, there’s a poster back there from Backline that says if musicians or crew members need mental or physical help, Backline is here to help. We consider them our partner with the Neal Casal Music Foundation. They’re out there on the front lines where we can’t be. I don’t have a bunch of staff members. Especially doctors and mental health professionals, but Backline does so we work in tandem with them. We donate a lot of money to them because they can do the direct work with musicians. It’s been an amazing thing that came out of a tragedy. We’ve been able to help all these musicians via the Neal Casal Music Foundation and via Backline. Also, MusiCares who we donate quite a bit too as well.Â
S&B- Thanks for sharing that and for your work with the foundation. Like you said, something good is happening out of the tragedy of losing Neal. I really believe when you have the god given talent Neal had, there’s a price to pay on the other side. Like many, he struggled with mental health issues. As a close friend, is this something he dealt with back to the days of these first recordings?
Waldman- It was really the last three or four years of his life. I don’t want to say it was a midlife crisis, but when you hit your mid to late forties, you start thinking about what I‘m doing with my life? Those kinds of things. Neal was an only child and came from a family of divorce. That makes you a very sensitive person and if you listen to these early Neal songs and you hear the lyrics, there’s a sad side that’s been a thread through his music. He felt things deeply and as he got older, I think he just got to the point where he was like, what have I done with my life?
S&B- That’s exactly what I’m talking about. He couldn’t step back far enough to appreciate everything he had done and the unlimited possibilities ahead.
Waldman- Yeah. I’d tell him, you’ve done so much. Put out amazing music. Played all these amazing shows. He just got to the point where he started having some depression and he tried to work through it. He talked to people, and he went to some doctors. Neal was not an addictive person. He didn’t have drug addiction or alcohol addictions, but he struggled with depression. He just had a hard time figuring his way forward. There’s other stuff that affected him I won’t go into too much. It was a compounding thing over the last couple years. The stuff that had made him happy, being on a tour bus, being at a hotel, venturing around the world, that stuff started to become like prison to him. We encouraged him and begged him to take some time off. Like dude, you can go sit on the beach for six months, and he just felt like he couldn’t let anybody down. He couldn’t because this person asked him to play on their record, or this tour was coming. He couldn’t say no. He wouldn’t prioritize himself, and that got him in the end. That caught up to him and he just couldn’t find his way out.
S&B- I understand, but hate he couldn’t appreciate his place in the music world. Not only was he at a career high, but it was only going higher. Look at the musicians on Highway Butterfly and you know Neal’s place in the music world. He was so respected and thought of. Obviously, well more than he could understand and appreciate.
Waldman- Yeah, that’s the thing. To me, I just go damn. All these years and now Circles is happening. You’re getting the calls. You’re playing with Oteil. You’re playing with Phil. Everyone is finally realizing what a fantastic musician you are. You’re producing records and you’re playing on records. What a great run you could’ve had here from your 50’s till your 60’s. You could’ve been playing and doing so much. A couple of tours with Circles every year. Playing with this guy and that guy. We did thirty years leading up to this, and here you are, and now is the time to say goodbye? Well, that sucked.
https://nealcasalmusicfoundation.org
No One Above You (The Early Years 1991-1998)
Royal Potato Family