Tommy Castro & The Painkillers play TACAW on Saturday

For four decades, Tommy Castro has proved that the blues continues to resonate with audiences, especially when it’s fused with a soulful, signature style. The four-time Blues Music Award winner for B.B. King Entertainer Of The Year performs with his band, Tommy Castro & The Painkillers, at TACAW on Saturday, March 15.

Castro was born in California, far from any of the blues-saturated regions like the Mississippi Delta or Chicago; but as a kid, he hooked into The Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton, without initially realizing that they were steeped in the blues. When he began tracing their influences back to the likes of Muddy Waters, B.B. King, and more, he found his passion.

“The more I heard, the more I loved. I’ll never forget when I got my first B.B. King album — I got a live album, and I remember loving it so much, I left it on my turntable for three months. I didn’t listen to anything else,” he said.

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In playing the blues, he incorporates his own voice and stories, blending soul and rock into a contemporary blues sound. Ironically, within the 17 releases throughout the last 30 or so years, he hasn’t cut a traditional blues album, paying homage to his main influence — until he released “Closer to the Bone” last month.

“I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to take a break here from all the lofty songwriting that I try to do?’; I try to go deep and write really good, clever songs and just take a break from that and just make a straight-ahead blues album because I love the sounds. I love the different grooves that traditional blues artists had recorded in the past, so I tried to make a record something like they might have done in the ’50s,” he said. “This is the deeper blues side of me. I know, with these songs, I am at my most authentic.”

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The album turned out to be a bigger, better, and more involved project than he had envisioned, with special guests, such as Rick Estrin, Chris Cain, Billy Branch, Deanna Bogart, Jim Pugh, and The Sons Of The Soul Revivers. They recorded 14 songs and planned to use only 10-12 but couldn’t find any to cut; the 14 tracks barely fit onto the vinyl, he said.

The album fuses Tommy Castro & The Painkillers originals with songs from many of Castro’s heroes and friends, including Johnny Nitro’s “One More Night,” Magic Slim’s “Hole In The Wall,” Ron Thompson’s “Freight Train,” Mike Duke’s “Keep Your Dog Inside,” and Chris Cain’s “Woke Up And Smelled The Coffee.” He also chose obscure songs by Wynonie Harris, Eddie Taylor, Jimmy Nolen, and Johnny “Guitar” Watson.

“These are not the obvious artists people generally cover, and that was most definitely on purpose,” he said.

While the blues has gone through ebbs and flows in popularity throughout the decades — finding a revival after Stevie Ray Vaughan breathed new life into the genre and then opening the door for guys like Castro to thrive once Vaughan passed away — Castro has remained relevant even during the down times, when blues shows would barely draw a crowd in San Francisco.  

“I just put one foot in front of the other. We stayed on the road. We kept making records, and I try to outdo myself whenever I put out a new album,” he said. “I learned from the old blues guys, I worshipped the old blues guys, and now I’m an old blues guy.”

But for him, the blues isn’t about being stuck in the past.

“It’s about feeling something real, right now. And as long as people need that, we’ll keep playing,” he said.

Audiences can expect to hear past favorites, a sampling of prior recordings, and songs from the new album.

“It’s a pretty high-energy blues show. It rocks. We love it when people get up and dance. Our music will make you want to dance. It’s not lazy, slow blues all night. It jumps, it swings, there’s funk and soul and R&B,” he said, adding that the band’s name stems from the power of blues to act as medicine. “The music makes you feel better. If you have the blues, that’s a low-down feeling. That’s not a good feeling, having the blues, so our job is to lift you up and be the remedy to that — that’s what the blues music has always been about, is a release, a relief, and a medicine for whatever troubling strife you might have had in your life.”

And, he just keeps strengthening that “medicine.” His next project includes originals aimed at producing a blues version of Santana’s “Supernatural.”