top photo by Elliot Gould
I was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1980 to John and Gail Castellano. My father is Italian-American and my mother is Jewish-American, so the technical term for what I am is: “Pizza-Bagel.”
I’m a 5th generation musician. My great-great grandfather was a guitar player (at least that’s what we think.) My great grandfather, Frank, was a multi-instrumentalist and my grandfather, Phil, was an upright bassist. He also owned the legendary Brooklyn music store, Bath Music in Bensonhurst along with my grandmother, Marion.
My father, John Castellano is phenomenal singer/guitar player. He was a member of the Chambers Brothers in the early 70s before forming his own bands.
My uncle, Phil Castellano was the bass player in my father’s band. Both my dad and my uncle were hugely influential to me. From my dad, I got a love of American R&B and the desire to be a bandleader. From my uncle, I got a love British Rock and all things tech.
My family moved to Staten Island in 1985. After giving up on my childhood dream of being a Ninja, I shifted my focus to music. I always sang around the house, but once I saw the movie La Bamba, I was determined to learn how to play guitar so I could accompany my singing. My dad got me a private guitar teacher at 8 years old. Once I learned 4 chords I was off to races! My 4 chord vocabulary was more then enough to have an entire set worth of songs from Little Richard, Elvis Presley and Ritchie Valens. I would play gigs at my elementary school, put together bands with my friends, and sit in with my dad’s band whenever I could. Around this time, my dad had an absolutely ferocious club band called Good n Plenty which featured dad, Uncle Phil and Sharon Jones.
As soon as I was able to play chords and sing, I started writing songs. My grandfather taught me about the copyrighting process and my uncle gifted me with my first 4-track recorder, a Tascam 234 cassette recorder. Only 3 of the tracks worked, but it was enough to give me the recording bug. I wasn’t content to have just singing and guitar on these 3 track recordings so my uncle once again gifted me with a drum machine and a bass guitar. This also necessitated bass lessons, so my uncle started teaching me how to play bass. After pushing the broken 4-track to its limits, my uncle outfitted me with a serious upgrade by installing a Fostex E-16, reel to reel 16 track recorder and a Tascam M224 24 channel mixer. It was 1992, I was 12 years old and was fortunate enough to have my own 16 track recording studio in my basement. It was heaven. I started listening to The Beatles religiously and got extremely interested in music production. I recorded several band demos, music for my friends and teachers and even wrote and recorded my junior high school graduating class theme song.
During my teens, everything got accelerated. Thanks to the movie Wayne’s World, I heard Bohemian Rhapsody for the first time. I became obsessed with trying to replicate the production of that record. My dad showed me the “Beano” album from John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton. Hearing this made me want to learn lead guitar. My dad paired me up with blues guitarist, Mike Do Campo, for lessons. Mike took me from 4-chord-guy to lead guitarist. Thanks to his lessons, I was awarded with a soloist award from Berklee College of Music when I was 16. Around this time I also started playing weddings in my dad’s band. Soon after, my uncle introduced me to Yes, which was a paradigm shifting event. I had been playing music for 8 years at that point. I’d been playing gigs with adults and won awards, but hearing Yes broke my brain, and before long, it was all I wanted to listen to.
Now that I was fully invested in Progressive Rock, I tried to find other kids my age who could play it with me. Luckily, I lived not too from two incredibly talented people, Andy Ascolese and Andy Graziano. We formed a band called Speed Of Sound, wore capes on stage (as one does) and muddled our way through prog classics!
I got really interested in the idea of concept albums. I absolutely loved Sgt. Pepper by the Beatles, The Wall by Pink Floyd and Duke by Genesis. For my first ever album, I decided to write and record a solo concept album called Alone in my Basement. I was 17 when I recorded it. The whole thing took me 9 months. I did it with the 16 track synced with an MS-DOS computer running Octave Plateau, an early MIDI sequencer, and a ton of hand-me-down gear from my dad’s band. I released it in 1998. At that point, not many high school kids had released CDs. My grandmother reached out to a family friend, Steve “Woody” La Cerra. At that time, Woody was writing for EQ, a popular audio magazine. My grandmother thought that the story of a kid making a concept album in his basement would make a good article for EQ, so Woody came down and interviewed me and wrote an article about the album for the magazine.
My guidance counselor told me about a couple of songwriting competitions for High School kids. I entered both and won both. I placed 3rd in the BMG World of Expression Competition and 1st in the Songwriter’s Hall Of Fame Competition. The awards ceremony for the Songwriter’s Hall Of Fame was held at the Friar’s Club in NYC. My grandfather, dad and high school music teacher, Lou Mannarino, attended the awards ceremony with me.
Around this time, I had the good fortune of meeting Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal. Ron became my mentor and pushed me further into music production. I acted as Ron’s studio assistant and even got to play in a few bands with him which was amazing.
I decided to pursue music production as a career. My dad disagreed and thought I should go study Jazz guitar. I found a place where I could do both when I went to Purchase College Conservatory of Music in 1999. I studied Studio Production as my major with some Jazz guitar classes sprinkled in to make dad happy. While I was at Purchase I got to study with some amazing musicians and producers including: Joe Ferry, Todd Coolman, Jim McElwaine, Charles Blenzig, Doug Munro, Andy Cardenas and Eric Helmuth. I learned a ton of new skills including digital audio, film scoring, sampling and orchestral arranging. I got exposed to lots of musical genres through collaboration with other students. During my first year at Purchase, I recorded a Prog Rock album with Speed Of Sound, now renamed Progeny. One of the songs on the Progeny album, “Two Way Street,” went on to win a couple of song writing awards.
There were a lot of extremely talented people at Purchase. The most well-known Purchase alumni is probably Regina Spektor. One day, while eating breakfast the cafeteria, Regina asked if I would produce her demo. I was shocked that she asked me and jumped at the chance to do it. The demo slowly morphed into a full length album that became her debut, 11:11.
Around 2000, while I was living in the Purchase dorms, I got a call from Steve “Woody” La Cerra. Aside from being a journalist, he was also the Front Of House audio engineer for Blue Öyster Cult. Woody needed a sub for the upcoming weekend’s gigs. It sounded like an awesome experience so I took the gig. I ended up really hitting it off with the band, and became their default sub for the next 3 years.
Because I was basically a giant nerd who didn’t do drugs, didn’t drink and just worked on music 24/7, I accidentally took too many college credits and ended up completing a 4 year undergrad program in 3 years. Whoops. I was persuaded by my college advisor to stick around for the graduate program. After 4-1/2 years at Purchase College, I earned a Bachelor Of Music degree in Production (Summa Cum Laude) and a Master Of Music degree in Composition. During this time I got to produce a lot of wacky tribute records for CMH/Vitamin records. I also got reacquainted with the Blues through my professor, Joe Ferry. I even got play gigs and record with Blues greats Sue Foley and Michael Hill.
After graduating, Andy Ascolese and I started working on a power pop album. Armed with everything I learned in college, it took forever. During this time I was also gigging with my cover band and subbing with Blue Öyster Cult on Front Of House sound. I got pretty close with Eric Bloom, lead singer in Blue Öyster Cult. Eric and I had a lot in common. We were both into similar movies, shows and video games, so we stayed in touch in between gigs. I invited Eric to come see my cover band play on Staten Island, and that was probably the first time he ever saw me play and sing. Shortly after, I got a call from Eric asking if I could fill in playing bass with Blue Öyster Cult. It was a last minute, emergency situation. I was given 4 days to learn 22 songs. My first ever Blue Öyster Cult show was in Las Vegas in September of 2004.
After subbing with Blue Öyster Cult for a couple months, Eric Bloom and Buck Dharma asked me to join full time. I gladly accepted and became a member of the band!
When I first joined Blue Öyster Cult, we were doing around 80 to 100 shows per year. It was nuts! In the midst of all this, Andy Ascolese and I finally finished our Power Pop album with the release of 2 Part Invention.
In 2006 original Blue Öyster Cult member Allen Lanier retired. Instead hiring a new musician that could double on guitar and keyboard, they asked if I’d be willing to move over to Allen’s position. Again, I accepted and the bass position was eventually filled by Rudy Sarzo.
I was incredibly fortunate to get to spend time with Rudy Sarzo. He became a mentor to me. He encouraged me start a YouTube channel, taught me video editing and got me interested in 3D animation. Rudy was one of the most knowledgeable, disciplined and kind people I’ve ever encountered. The things I learned from Rudy would change my life.
On Rudy’s advice, I started getting serious about my YouTube channel. I posted a split screen cover of ABC by the Jackson 5. This video did pretty well. In 2011, I followed it up with another split screen cover, this time it was a one man version of my favorite song, Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen.
This video went viral and launched my YouTube channel. This landed me several interviews on various news outlets. It even gained the attention of Queen’s guitarist (and one of my heroes) Brian May, who posted the video on his website.
The Bohemian Rhapsody video led to more gigs and more sessions, which was great. I followed this video up with more split-screen covers and some gear tutorials which continued to grow the channel.
Hanging out with Rudy and getting to play a bunch of giant European metal-fests with Blue Öyster Cult got me into Heavy Metal. Especially Dio (Rudy was also the bass player in Dio’s band.) Itching to get back into writing more original music I decided to start working on another album. At the time, I was in a relationship with Ann Marie Nacchio. She had an extremely powerful voice and I was inspired to produce a metal album with her voice as the focus. Joined by Andy Ascolese on drums, Walter Bianco on guitar and Russ Jones on bass, we released MorningStarlett in 2012.
In 2014 I started a podcast called Band Geek with my comedian friend, Jarrett Pressman, as my co-host. The initial concept of this podcast was to have professional musicians discussing their favorite movies, shows and books from Geek culture. Get it? BAND GEEK?
We quickly realized that no one really wanted a show where musicians don’t play music, so we pivoted to becoming a music show where we added some comedy gags and pop culture references.
Something that was always frustrating to me was that I could never get the best musicians I knew to commit to being in a band. Everyone is too busy. The Band Geek concept offered me an interesting workaround. I could have a rotating band with all my friends. We could change up the band depending on what song we were playing. There was no commitment necessary. It was just a fun hang that resulted in a YouTube video. We had amazing guests like: Kasim Sulton, Danny Miranda, Bobby Rondinelli, John Miceli, Tom Brislin, Hanan Rubinstein, Emily Nacchio, Al Carty, Randy Jenkins, Mike Tirelli, Matt Beck and more…
Before long we became known as The Band Geeks. We stopped doing the podcast and pivoted yet again to just focused on being a YouTube band. We did mostly covers, but we’d occasionally throw in some originals. We also did our best to improve the production quality of videos. We would go out of our way to try to get the right sounds for every song. It became a fun challenge.
In 2018 we had keyboard virtuoso Christopher Clark join us as our special guest. I used this opportunity to knock an item off my bucket list, which was to perform a cover Close To The Edge by Yes. I’d never been able to find 4 other people capable of performing this piece of music, but thanks to rotating band concept of The Band Geeks, I was finally able to find the right people for the job. Christopher Clark played keyboard, Andy Graziano played guitar, Andy Ascolese played drums, Ann Marie Nacchio sang and I played bass. The feedback from this video was incredible, but we’ll get back to that.
2019 was shaping up to be a milestone year for me. Blue Öyster Cult signed a multimedia deal with Frontiers Music SRL. This deal included 6 live concert videos and a brand new album of original music! This was the first record deal the band had since 2001! I was tasked with co-producing these projects. This was a huge honor for me. Around this time I also got a random phone call from one of my musical heroes, Jon Anderson of Yes. Someone had sent him our Close To The Edge video and he called me to tell me how impressed he was by the performance and the production. I was frankly blindsided and star struck by the call. I never would have imagined that could happen. Shortly after, I got to meet Jon backstage at a show and he told me that we should play together. Everything was going great, until…
2020 happened. Everything turned to crap. Covid shut everything down. I did my best to turn lemons into lemonade, but it was hard. I was going through a divorce. There were no gigs so the idea of playing with Jon Anderson went out the window. Luckily, we managed to finish all the basic tracks for the new Blue Öyster Cult album before everything shut down, but we had to finish all of the overdubs remotely which was tough, especially considering that not everyone in the band had home studios. We set up makeshift studios and it worked. We were recording and producing each other through Zoom. It was a crazy time. At the end of 2020, we released The Symbol Remains, the first new Blue Öyster Cult album in 19 years! When we started working on the album, I was hoping to get at least one writing credit on the album. I ended up with writing credits on 7 of the album’s 14 songs. I ending up singing lead on 3 songs and I also ended up with both engineering and production credits. It was incredible. The album was also well received by critic and fans.
I had a ton of work to do during the pandemic. Blue Öyster Cult’s manager, Steve Schenck, and I still had to produce all of the live videos. He would come over my house, we’d both be wearing masks (as you did in 2020) and would do marathon sessions to hit these deadlines. I also started doing a weekly live stream show from my house. I spent a lot of time developing the show with multiple cameras, automated lighting, interactive prompts and backing tracks. It was a massive amount of work but definitely worth the effort. Those 3 hour Sunday afternoon live streams I did throughout the pandemic were a lifesaver! I also got to interact with a lot of great people who really encouraged me to play more of my original music.
Over the next few years we released several Blue Öyster Cult live shows on BluRay, DVD, CD, Vinyl and Streaming. The band kept me very busy. I was basically chained to my desk. As Covid restrictions were lifted, touring picked up again. It was the most insane workload I’ve ever experienced.
One afternoon in 2021, while all this is going on, I was regaling my friend, Rob Sprance, with the tale of how The Band Geeks almost went on tour with Jon Anderson. Rob urged me to follow up with Jon, which to my shame, was an idea I was unable to come up with on my own. (Thanks Rob!) I took Rob’s advice and reached out to Jon, and before I knew it, a tour was scheduled!
In 2023, Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks did a mostly sold out 12 show tour in the US of Yes Epics and Classics. The reaction was unbelievable. The idea that Andy Ascolese, Andy Graziano and me: the guys who played this music together as teenagers, ended up 20 years later playing this music with Jon Anderson was simply mind blowing!
After having a blast together on tour, Jon decided that we should make an album together. So from Fall of 2023 to Spring of 2024 we worked on creating a 9 song album called True. Getting to write, produce and collaborate with Jon Anderson on new music was unreal. Simply getting to make this album was enough for me, but as an added bonus it was also well received by fans and critics.
In 2024 we did a second, longer tour with Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks. This time we got to add some of our new original material from True to the set which was great. We ended the tour in our hometown of Staten Island.
As of 2025, I am still touring with Blue Öyster Cult. We just announced tour dates for Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks, and we have a live album coming out in March. I’m incredibly grateful that I get to make music for a living, surrounded by wonderful friends and family. In the future, I hope to release a sci fi musical that I’ve been working on for several years. It’s really cool!
Updated January, 2025