Jason Castro On 'Only A Mountain'

You know, never say never. I really like a lot of those songs, too. You never know what project I’ll be working on, what we’re going for, some songs are never dead, they’re always there and able to come out in a different formation. I don’t know, no plans to record, no plans not to record.

Most of my songs are inspired by pretty much my life. I’ve been telling people lately that this album is a snapshot of the last few years of my life, in the sense that when I write songs that’s kinda all I have to pull from. I always draw from my experiences and my stories and hope that my stories can help somebody along their journey. There’s one song on this new record that was a first for me, it was a song called “Same Kind of Broken” that was inspired directly by my surroundings, like where I was sitting when I was writing this song, and that was really ‘cause I’ve never done that before, but, you know, inspiration comes from anywhere.

I’ve gotten to perform with some of my favorite artists, but if I could perform with anybody, I think my dream sort of would be to be out with Switchfoot. They’re probably my favorite band at the moment.

That’s tough to say without the calendar in front of me, but I know actually I’m going to Pennsylvania in two weeks, I know I’m going to Redding, Penn., I believe. I have to check back and see where that is, but hopefully we’ll be coming somewhere near, and I’ll be singing all new songs. “Only A Mountain” will be one of them, and I believe another song I’ll be singing is “Good Love” and then I’ll also be singing “Hallelujah.”

Hmm…can I steal a song title? One of my favorite songs is an old Tom Petty song called “Learning To Fly.” I feel like that is a really great picture of life, you know, making mistakes, having high moments, low moments, but learning along the way, learning to be who you’re meant to be.

I would consider a duet, because I love duets, and I actually have one on this new album that comes out January 15, which I think fans will love. It’s the song I mentioned earlier actually about being inspired by my direct surroundings, it’s a song called “Same Kind of Broken” and I recorded it with a new artist called Moriah Peters, and I think it’s great. I love duets, and I love simple songs especially when they’re really stripped down, you know, just the acoustic and our two voices, and I really love that sort of thing. I’m glad you asked and make sure to check it out!

Well, "Only a Mountain" was actually an idea from one of my co-writers that I’ve been writing a lot with—I wrote a lot of songs with a good friend of mine named Seth—he brought the idea to me, and I loved it, I just love the message. I think that always is the challenge as a songwriter to try to say something new, or trying to say something in a way no one’s heard before. That got me really excited about this idea, and especially the message behind it—about having faith we chose this as the leading single for my album because I feel like it really sums up a lot of the last years of my life has been about, and the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that all the struggles pay off, all the things that I think are such big deals in the moment, they really aren’t in the big scheme of things, and that’s the biggest thing I’ve taken away in these last few years, when you have faith and when you see the big picture you can rest in peace and know that these challenges I have are only momentary. God’s on my side and this is all gonna work out and so, that’s how I wrote the song.

I cannot begin to say how thankful I am and really, you feel so blessed. It’s nothing special that I’ve done other than a poor attempt at being obedient to what God wants me to do, and trying to love people as I go, and I’m just thankful that God decided to use me, and as long as I can, I’ll keep doing this.

I’m having a joint CD release party and a fundraising event where all the proceeds are going to support victims of Hurricane Sandy, through the MusiCares Foundation, which I’ve worked closely with for a large amount of time now, and it’s going to be a fun evening, and I’m going to play a short acoustic set and then we’re going to watch the debut episode of American Idol. It’ll be a really fun night and all going to a great cause. It’s always fun when you can combine an event with good causes and everybody wins.

Well, I grew up in a musical family, my dad played a guitar and all five of my uncles played guitar, so I grew up around music. My first instrument was the drums. I kind of always wanted to be different, and I figured everyone else was playing the guitar, so I won’t do that. But once I got into college, I started playing guitar and I fell in love with it, the power of a song, I never really listened much to lyrics before. I was all about the drums, so it kind of opened up my world, and I just fell in love with it. I wanted to be a songwriter, a singer, and write songs that could move people, and I tried out for American Idol shortly after starting to sing. I’d only been singing for about a year and had only performed a few times in public, so it was really scary at first, I felt like I didn’t know what I was doing, so I tried it and see what happened, and thankfully it worked out.