CODY ENGLANDER
Staff Writer
At 8 p.m. Saturday, Tower of Power will perform Oakland soul in the Amphitheater. The American R&B and funk band with a base in horns, previously known as The Motown, has been performing since 1968. 58 years later, co-founders Emilio Castillo and Stephen Kupka, both saxophone players, are still members of the band.
“Everybody that’s ever come into the band, they get into the band because they understand the concept. There’s a certain degree of musicality that you have to have to get into Tower of Power. It’s always been known as a musicians’ band, so the musicality has to be high,” Castillo said in a recent interview with VailDaily. “We clip our notes, and we play things short and we just do certain quirky little things that are ours, as it were. We can’t help but do that. I mean, it’s sweating, you know, your sweat just comes out.”
Tower of Power has traveled the world, performing their own work and backing artists including Otis Redding, Elton John, Santana, the Grateful Dead, John Lee Hooker, Aerosmith, Bonnie Raitt and more.
In the VailDaily interview, Castillo noted how important it was for their music to be distinguishable, especially for newer members.
“There always has to be a voice. The singing has to be very soulful and very urban, although a lot of the great soul music that we love came out of Memphis and Muscle Shoals and Florida, so there’s a lot of Southern influence (as well as) soul music that you hear in metropolitan cities. And then, we always like to mess with the rhythm. We don’t like what’s called a wood chopper,” he said. “We like an interesting beat. So we’re always looking to mess with the beat and make that complement the song and the vocals — and then we have very good horns, and there’s a lot of them, and it’s a signature.”
Their self-titled record, released in 1973, peaked at 15 on the U.S. Billboard 200, even though the road to get there wasn’t perfect.
“I just showed up — because in our first 20 years, we made every mistake in the book,” Castillo said. “But, also, we make the music exactly the way we want it to be. We’re not chasing trends, we’re not trying to sound like nobody else. We want to please ourselves. That may sound selfish, but when we please ourselves musically, the fans seem to love it, and it makes going to work every day really easy.”
