Rock the Butte

BUTTE — “You guys want me to rock out one time?” Geoffrey Castle shouted from the stage Friday.

The crowd answered immediately with loud, raucous cheers.

“You guys want me to rock out, let me hear you scream!” Castle replied.

Even louder cheers were his answer.

So Castle set to work, thoroughly rocking out. And while his audience wasn’t the traditional rock show crowd, made up as it was of elementary school children (even if they happened to be elementary schoolers who apparently very earnestly wanted to rock, that’s OK, Because Castle isn’t exactly your traditional rock star. He rocks out on a violin and does it solo. His only accompaniment on stage is an array of digital effects pedals and samplers.

“When I was growing up, there was no school of rock violin,” Castle told the kids during a break in the onstage action. He had to make it up as he went along and it taught him something he wanted to share with the students AT Butte Elementary School.

“Just because you might have an idea that nobody ever thought of before doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea,” he told them. “Each and every one of you potentially might have an idea that could change the world.”

Having shared with the kids his rendition of the Temptations’ “Papa was a Rolling Stone” and War’s “Low Rider,” and tossed out at least one Harry Potter reference. Castle then left the stage, letting the kids get back to gym class and math lessons.

Afterwards, he said that he does 300 shows a year, a lot of them in schools. Rock violin is a full-time job for Castle.

“I love doing those shows for the kids,” he said.

Based in Seattle, Castle got his start at around the age of his young audience on Friday, taking up violin to play in his elementary school orchestra.

“I kind of had the idea that I wanted to do something different with the violin when I was a senior in high school,” he said.

He said when people come to him these days and tell him they want to buy an electric violin, he immediately tells them that’s the beginning not the end. The next step is to figure out what kind of digital effects to bring onboard.

“You have to make choices of what you want to put with it,” he said.

In his case, he has two samplers that provide him an infinite number of loops. He lays down loops as he goes on stage, building up what becomes his backing track.

“I’m basically making a record every time I do a performance,” he said.

He described it as a tightrope act, with very little room for error.

“My intonation has to be spot-on,” he said.

He said he’s probably played in Alaska twice a year for the past eight years. He’d coupled his Butte performance this go-around with a show at Blues Central in Anchorage, scheduled for tonight. He said he’s played the Egan Center and Platinum Jaxx. And he plans to come back soon. Indeed, his first 15 minutes off stage were spent planning a possible fundraiser show for sometime down the road with school staff. He’s got a website, too, geoffreycastle.com.

This most recent trip to Alaska, he said, almost didn’t happen. He injured his shoulder pretty badly taking a spill when a chair slipped out from under him as he tried to climb down off a stage.

“The physical therapist didn’t think I could do this,” Castle said; however, “I’d be damned if I was going to cancel my trip to Alaska.”

He said his favorite time to visit is autumn.

“Those fall colors — I was driving through a post card,” he said.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at Andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.