NEAL CASAL
Much-admired US songwriter and guitarist
(1968-2019)
THE turning point of Neal Casal’s life came on his 13th birthday, when he received a guitar and a copy of the Stones’ Exile On Main Street. The product of a broken home, he’d endured an unhappy, itinerant childhood. Music became a salvation. “It was a world I could get lost in and make my own rules for,” he said in 2004. “I had no identity at all before I found music. It handed my life to me completely.”
Energised by the Stones and the Grateful Dead, Casal began exploring other avenues into blues, country, R&B, soul and straight-up rock. After a stint as lead guitarist with Southern rockers Blackfoot, his rootlessness manifested itself in the solo career he started in 1995 with Fade Away Diamond Time, reaching an early peak on 1999’s exquisite Basement Dreams. The same restless impulse led to the formation of psychedelic jam-rockers Hazy Malaze, who issued the first of their three albums in 2003. When JP Bowerstock left Ryan Adams’ Cardinals in 2005, Casal was brought in as guitarist, harmony singer and piano player, becoming a vital element of releases like Easy Tiger and Cardinology.
Casal was constantly in demand. In 2010, he accepted an invitation to join the Chris Robinson Brotherhood, eventually juggling his time with session work and membership of Hard Working Americans, The Skiffle Players and Circles Around The Sun. News of Casal’s death elicited a wealth of tributes from friends and collaborators, among them Adams, Robinson, Jason Isbell, William Tyler, Hiss Golden Messenger, Ryley Walker and Shooter Jennings.