Tommy Castro & The Painkillers: Late Show

Blues fans will be delighted to hear Tommy Castro in two concerts.

Castro’s 1960s-influenced, guitar-fueled blues; his Memphis-style blue-eyed soul; and his Latin-tinged East San Jose funk have thrilled audiences ever since he formed his first band in 1992.

Born in San Jose, Calif., Castro started out by performing in San Francisco’s Bay Area bands. His own band performed on NBC’s “Comedy Showcase” from 1995 to 1998 as the house band, and he released his first album, “No Foolin’” in 1994.

Castro has won three Blues Music Awards: B.B. King Entertainer of the Year, Band of the Year and Album of the Year. His 21st album is “Tommy Castro Presents A Bluesman Came to Town” (1921).

Blues/fusion singer and master of piano, sax, guitar, and songwriting Deanna Bogart started out learning songs by ear from recordings by Muddy Waters, Ella Fitzgerald, Pete Seeger, and James Taylor, among others.

Early in her life, she arranged vocal harmonies for herself and her four sisters. Her first professional gig was with the Barry Sless band Cowboy Jazz, and then she fell in love with Kansas City-style jazz, honing her chops with various bands from that area. For a while she played in the horn section of Root Boy Slim and the Sex Change Band, a blues-rock band with a big cult following in the D.C. area, led by the late Foster MacKenzie III, known as “the Lenny Bruce of the blues.”

In the 1990s, Bogart launched her solo career, touring and releasing 13 albums. Bogart is a four-time winner of the Blues Music Awards Horn Player of the Year, and in 2013 was nominated for the BMA’s Pinetop Perkins Piano Player.

www.tommycastro.com

www.deannabogart.com