Learn to Play Songs with Robert Lee Castleman
There's not much that can prepare a listener for the songs of Robert Lee Castleman. It's commonplace these days to talk about music that transcends genreóso much so that the phrase is all but devaluedóbut nothing else will do for "Like Red on a Rose." Like Alison Krauss, who told CNN late in 1999 that she had built her "Forget About It" around the Castleman penned title track, is an artist whose work, much like the man himself, defies easy description. At a time when music is increasingly sorted by its most immediately obvious characteristics into rigidly defined and guarded formats, that's a bold approach, but one listen to this profoundly original set makes it clear that it's the right, and indeed, inevitable one. Listen carefully: you are about to hear something new!
The child of a career military man, Robert Lee Castleman grew up on the move. As a young man, he worked for a guitar workshop (National Guitar Workshops / WorkshopLive) and knocked around in folk clubs and bar bands while he wrote his first songs. Along the way, he became friends with Pat Bergeson, his collaborator on the "Crazy As Me" album. He moved to Nashville to pursue songwriting more seriously. A connection to Chet Atkins got him the title cut on "Sneakin' Around," a 1991 Atkins/Jerry Reed album (it also got Bergeson, introduced to Atkins by Castleman, a job with the legendary guitarist), and an early harbinger of his unique melodic sense can be heard on Atkins' 1994 CD "Read My Licks." Castleman was invited to play rhythm guitar on his "Somebody Loves Me Now," a track that has the same kind of enigmatic undercurrent as "Like Red on a Rose." Still, it's characteristic both of the man and of the contemporary Nashville music scene that the first steps toward the creation of this album weren't undertaken until years later, and then almost by accident, when Robert Lee attended a party to celebrate the birthday of the recently-married Bergeson's wife, Alison Krauss.
"Pretty much everybody had gone home," Alison remembers. "I had heard about R.L. for a couple of years, but I'd never heard him. There were four of us left, and there was a guitar sitting there, and he picked it up and we made him sing. He started singing these songs and it was just incredible; we were sitting on the couch and I thought to myself, this guy's better than anyone I've ever heard. I felt like I was at a concert or somethingóit blew me away. I just wanted to know, 'where's he been my whole life?' "
"Only Alison's sense of decency kept her from calling me up at 2:00 AM," says Rounders Ken Irwin. "But she did call the next day, and I flew down shortly thereafter and was treated to a private listening around the dining room tableó just Pat and R.L. playing guitars. It was pretty incredible." With Krauss's encouragement, Irwin's enthusiasm and the commitment of Bergeson, it didn't take long to hammer out the plans for an album; indeed, perhaps the most remarkable thing about this story is that, had it not happened, R.L.'s music might not have gotten the chance it so richly deserves.
We should be thankful that it has, for there is so much to admire, to enjoy, and most importantly, to be moved by here. Both by himself and with partner Melanie Spradlin, Robert Lee Castleman has created a set of songs that speak to us in a voice of great depth, eliciting a complex mingling of excitement, familiarity and mystery that has few precedents. Alison puts her finger on this unique attribute.
Jon Weisberger
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