Fresh from a long tour, Tommy Castro has just settled down in his San Francisco residence to accept a phone call. Hindered by his back injury, interviews are one of the few things he can accomplish without inflicting too much pain.

He lays down to relax and explain his current situation.

“It was a little problem that started about five years ago, the combination of real extensive traveling, sitting in a van and late nights,” he says.

The injury, coupled with Castro’s energy-expending live show, makes for a difficult challenge in keeping a full force level.

“We try to put on a high energy kind of show,” Castro explains. “That’s just who we are. Standing up on tables, crawling around on the bar.”

Certainly, Castro has had his share of fun on the stage but the motivation for it all came from his brother.

“I started playing when I was 10. My older brother was a guitar player,” Castro says. “A bunch of his friends had a band, and they would play dances. They got together and would copy the songs they heard on the radio, and then, I got interested.”

It wasn’t long after when Castro began hooking up with his own friends and copying songs they heard off the radio.

“There was a lot of good blues, rock music, and that’s the stuff I liked,” Castro says of his influences. “Eric Clapton, Cream, Taj Mahal, Johnny Winter and of course, The Rolling Stones. I liked that, as opposed to the psychedelic music and heavy metal. The blues stuff just appealed to me.”

While in his late 20s, Castro was struck with a major wake-up call. After playing with a few bands and having his first taste of musical success, it hit him.

“Every band I got involved with would always start to do better. Finally, it hit me one day — I am supposed to play music. It hit me like a ton of bricks,” he says. “I asked myself, ‘Why have I been avoiding this?’ I was going to have to make a commitment.”

Following a short stint with his band, the Dynatones, Castro decided to go out on his own. So began the search for the other members of the Tommy Castro Band.

“Everyone from my band is from the San Francisco area. I just picked the best guys in my mind at the time,” he says. Castro finally settled on his current members, all of whom have a long list of experience with other bands.

As Castro explains, the current lineup has gelled nicely. “We use the talents of everybody around us to make the best possible sound. I am better when I use the talent of other people around me,” he says.

Hard work and dedication paid off for Castro, and soon after playing roughly 350 gigs per year, Castro and his band began to spark the attention of record labels.

To help put the band on the map, the band finally decided on Blind Pig Records, a blues label based out of San Francisco. They would later ink a three-album deal and tour nationally with such acts as the Robert Cray Band, which Castro is opening for in Des Moines next week.

“He’s got one of the best R & B voices of all time,” Castro raves about Cray. He adds that the two bands have much in common, and whenever they play together, it’s a class act.

One of Castro’s highlights is a show he and Cray played at the House of Blues in Chicago, where he says they were treated like “rock stars.”

In the near future, Blind Pig will release a DVD and a live CD of one of the band’s performances.

Although fans enjoy the band’s album, it doesn’t compare to their energetic live show.

“I’ve got thousands and thousands of hours live to my credit and only a fraction of that in the studio,” Castro says. “Most of my guitar solos on the record were caught live.”

Blues will soon be taking off, according to Castro. With young stars like Johnny Lang and Kenny Wayne Shepherd and veterans like Eric Clapton and Bonnie Raitt keeping the scene alive, Castro believes that blues will be more compatible with a wider audience.

“I think it’s going to continue, turn more and masses of people onto blues,” he says. “It’s becoming a huge part of pop culture.”

With opening spots coming up for bans such as Delbert McClinton and the Allman Brothers, it seems as though Castro’s band has nowhere to go but up.

Then what are Castro’s goals?

“I’d like to see the band going the way it is now,” he says. “Get some more radio play for our records so we can continue to go out and do shows with class acts like Robert Cray. Eventually, one day, to ride around in a bus instead of a van.”

Maybe then, his back would truly heal.