We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Joe Castro a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Joe, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

As of today I can count 30+ years in the music business. Some how I’ve always managed to earn enough money to pay for my bills. Like any other job there’s been ups and downs and there were times when I was forced to get a second even third jobs to fulfill the monthly budget, but one thing I couldn’t avoid is to always be around music projects either singing, writing or producing. I learned early in my music career that if I wanna to live by it I would have to work on multiplying the gift God gave me. So I did. I started as a singer, then learned to play keyboard, then to record my own tracks, then producing to others, and finally composing and writing songs and that as a matter of fact gave me the highest recognition yet, I was nominated for the 2013 best Brazilian song at the Latin Grammy awards. I don’t have many regrets in that specific part of my career but one for sure is, I would definitely work to create and release more of my own songs. When you spend time and effort singing cover songs it’s like you are working for the artist and not for your self, unfortunately I realized that a little late in my musical career but that’s ok I forgive my self lol.

Joe, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

So I was born and raised in Brazil. My music in the begging was mostly based on the songs my parents listened to. They were “Brazilian country music”. Songs that talked about the land, love, animals, and drinking. My mom specifically liked Spanish classics like “Solamente una Vez” and “Quizas, quizas, quizas” those boleros were the hottest thing back in Her days lol. In 1992 me and my oldest brother moved to the US and that changed our musical lives. We were introduced to a whole new world of a great variety of music styles and great songs. I continued working with music while my brother got a job a salesperson (by the way he is Rich now!! Lol) but for me a I wanna to succeed in music so I kept on learning and growing my music talent getting to know all I could.
Because of that my musicality was catapulted and soon I was hired to work in many different places and to work with many different artists specially In Brazil. Some of them are Bruno & Marrone, Zezé DiCarmago & Luciano, Marcos & Belluti. All multi platinum artists, Grammy awards winners. Great people from which I learned a lot. Today I’m still singing and producing. I’m based in Orlando, FL performing twice a week at Boteco do Manolo Brazilian Restaurant on International Drive, and I do some private parties for the Brazilian families and corporate events. I perform alone with my keyboard and other gadgets (iPad, backing tracks, etc) normally 3 hours show. The performance include Brazilian’s top 50 hits, old Classics, samba, pagode and some American’s flashback songs everybody loves it!

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Back in the 90’s there were a lot of dinner shows type all around orlando and Miami. They had a whole band, dancers, technicians and all of them were being able to work together and they were getting paid for what they learned and got good at it. Folks would come to this dinner shows and enjoy the music, the culture, the food and that was fun and rewarding to all. Now a days the most restaurant owners don’t care about that anymore. From my experience and in the field I’m at, restaurants are not willing to take more the a musician or two the most. Live music it’s becoming expendable, unfortunately. That’s something I would like to see changed in our community.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

To be able to give back to the community, influence in a positive way, show a little be of our culture to more people. All that inspires me to continue!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @joecastro_orlando
• Other: Spotify: jales e Joelson

Image Credits
Photo by: Bruno Burnett