Playing the violin was my idea.

My folks had nothing to do with it. I was taking drum lessons at the Bloomingdale House of Music on the Upper West Side of Manhattan when I came home one day and told my folks "I want to play the violin." Nobody in the family played the violin; my dad played a little guitar and piano, and my mom played piano, but violin? I was the only one. It caught them by surprise, but to their everlasting credit they got me a fiddle and started me taking lessons. I learned using the "Suzuki" method—with lots of ear training, which really helped me later on.

My family moved to Northern Virginia, outside of Washington D.C., and there were lots of great music programs for kids both in the schools and after school as well. An aside: school programs and funding for music are getting cut across the nation—I would love to be involved in any and all fundraising and awareness-raising events about the value of music on out public schools—I wouldn't be here without those programs.

After I graduated from High School I pretty much bolted back up to New York City, where I started playing music on the street and in the subway. I get asked all the time where I completed by studies in music: I'm a graduate of the New York City Streets. There is no audience tougher than a New York City street audiences. They've seen it all, and they're all going someplace else. As a street musician, you have to make this group of people stop, listen, and reach into their pockets and give you money. One sour note, one wrong move, and they're gone. You get good, or you get hungry….

It was on the street that I first began to develop and compose my original solo violin music; field testing my song against that N.Y. street audience. Many of the songs that I did then still survive in my concerts today. It was during this time that I was recorded playing Underhill's Waltz on the subway by a reporter from National Public Radio's All Things Considered. They ended up using that recording to introduce a segment on street musicians or "buskers" from around the world. In a humorous twist, they introduced me, on the air, as a Julliard Graduate. Julliard is a marvelous and very prestigious music school. Although I never went there, I have always felt that since it was announced on NPR, I have somehow earned an honorary degree from Julliard. In truth, I was an English major at Columbia University….

I played in a couple bands while I was at school, but I can't find any of the basement tapes anywhere…. We had a lot of fun, though. Sin City, a rollicking jump blues, bluegrass, and swing band was the band I played with the most, and we had some amazing players in the groups, including a guy named David Nachmanoff who is touring the U.S. and the world with Al Stewart (Year of the Cat) and has some pretty great CDs out of his own. You can check him out at www.davenach.com.

One particularly memorable night with Sin City, we were playing as part of the line-up of the Furnald Folk Festival on campus. It was so packed that we had to load the upright bass in through a window. It was a rowdy, beer drinking, college audience and we worked them up into a frenzy. Going on after us was this tiny little girl with a big Guild guitar. When we got backstage, the crowd still screaming, bottles breaking, etc., I came up to her and apologized—it's hard to follow something like that solo. She just smiled and said "It's okay," and walked out there completely fearless. She started with a song totally a capella, and had the whole crowd in the palm of her hand in about 10 seconds. The song was "Tom's Diner," and the girl was Suzanne Vega.

I still smile every time I hear that song on the radio….

A couple years later I was given a wonderful opportunity to play in a Broadway show, M. Butterfly, the Tony Award-winning play, featured three musicians on stage—a pipa player, a guitar/taiko player, and a violin and Chinese percussion player—all wearing blue pajamas and being part of the action during the show (yes, I played Chinese percussion in a Broadway show wearing blue pajamas!). I was subbing for one of the co-composers, Jason Hwang. I filled in for Jason off and on for a couple years, and then filled in a few times when the play went on the road. I was an amazing experience.

Right around the same time, started working with a great guitarist named Fausto Bozza, and we put together a band called Groovalaya. I was kinda like Sin City, except with more jump blues and swing tunes and a little less bluegrass, and I called up my friend and ex-Sin City bandmate Adam Pincus to play bass. We put a CD out, and had a lot o fun gigging around NYC and making the occasional trip down the East Coast. Half cover tunes and half original compositions, this CD is still available and you can order it from the CDs, songs, and Merchandise page of this Web site:

Ever notice how a lot of good things happen at once? Right at the same time my first CD was coming out with Groovalaya, my wife gave birth to a boy named Gareth (heads up: you don't pronounce the "h"). We decided that a change of scenery would be a good idea, so we bundled up the boy and all our worldly possessions and headed out to Seattle.

Sadly my wife and I are not together anymore, but we remain good friends and I see my boy as often as I can. He has been known to jump up on stage with me from time to time….

After arriving in Seattle, I released a CD called Street of Dreams where I began re-inventing the music that I had composed during my time on the street in NYC. This CD is out of print now, but individual songs from the CD are available for download on this site.

I began collaborating with another violinist and gifted multi-instrumentalist named John Schussler and we formed a group called The Guarneri Underground. Having grown up playing violin, and speaking Italian, it never occurred to me at the time that no one would know who Guareri was, or how to pronounce the name. (For the complete story on Guarneri, visit www.guarneriunderground.com.) Beginning as a duo, we began adding players to the mix who included, eventually, a veritable who's who of the Seattle studio and world music scene, including bassist and engineer Garey Shelton and drummer Ben Smith. The group played festivals from Canada to Mexico where we were introduced, variously, as "The Coronary Underground," "The Gurney Underground," and—my personal favorite—"The Granary Underground."

John and I released three CDs together: New World, Captive, and a live record called Bootleg that we made to help cover the cost of making Captive. Bootleg is out of print, but New World and Captive are both available through this site. New World in particular has stood the test of time, and I consider it one of the top CDs I have over produced or played on.

John moved on to a job with Microsoft, and I revamped the Guarneri Underground to include a wonderful vocalist and multi-instrumentalist named Beth Quist who I met while working with the Children of the Revolution. She and I collaborated on a CD that was released nationwide in 2002 called Wander This World. It debuted at #12 on the New Age/World chart, and ended up winning an award from Just Plain Folks (the largest independent music awards program) for "Best Celtic Song" for a song Beth wrote called "Liquid Silver." Beth is currently performing in the latest Cirque de Soleil creation, Ka, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

After realizing that no one could pronounce Guarneri or knew what it meant, I changed the name of the band to The Geoffrey Castle Band and started working with some new friends, Roger Fisher and Mike Derosier from the original lineup of the classic rock band Heart. We recorded one of our shows at Seattle's Triple Door theater. And you can find that on Live at the Triple Door.

It was right around this time that I started getting offers to play solo, and I discovered that I was really into getting back to my solo roots: new material began flowing and a hole new path began to open up in my music. I went and visited my old friend Garey Shelton and he helped me record what became Mist on the Mountain.

Remember how good things happen at the same time? Right around the time I was finishing work on Mist on the Mountain, I got re-married to a wonderful woman named Shannon who, as it happens, is a fabulous glass artist. She's the inspiration for the song on Mist that bears her name. :)

I've left out huge things in this story, like how I ended up doing a set with Jimmy Buffet in St. Bart's, or how I ended up doing a couple shows with Jimi's drummer Buddy MIles, or how I ended up producing a slew of CDs for other artists like Jeanette Alexander, or how I ended up playing on the soundtracks for The Gift for Paramount Pictures, or the A&E special P.T. Barnum, or how I almost got picked to play The Devil in a Pepsi commercial…but this tale is already pretty long, so just suffice to say that I'm glad you've read to the end of the beginning of the Geoffrey Castle story, and I hope to see you at the next show!

The Name Thing

When I was growing up, my name wasn't Geoffrey Castle. In fact, my name wasn't Geoffrey Castle until very recently. My given name is actually Jeffrey Sick. Which, as many people have pointed out, is a pretty cool stage name—except that I don't play in a punk band, or a heavy metal band. When people saw that name, the couldn't help but make some assumptions. It's been amazing to me how different things have been for me since I changed my name. I held onto my last name for a long time, in spite of the fact that my folks had more or less assumed that I would get a different stage name after I started my career in music.

I guess I had a certain amount of pride wrapped up in being a Sick. We're a rare breed, to be sure. A lot of that pride was also wrapped up in my respect for my father, Gary Sick, who was a presidential advisor during the Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations with a specialty in Persian Gulf policy. Remember the hostage crisis? It was part of my home life in high school. He wrote two books, All Fall Down and October Surprise that are both good and worthy reads. He currently teaches a seminar at the graduate school for political science at Columbia University, does speaking engagements, and moderates the Internet site Gulf/2000. He's been featured on all the major networks, PBS, and news radio stations: they bring him in as an expert whenever Iraq and Iran are in the news…which, lately, has been a lot.

So what's up with "Castle" anyway? It's actually a name from back in our family tree on my mother's side, and it came tome because apparently I bear a bit of resemblance to my great uncle Lee, who was, apparently the black sheep of the family and a pretty good dancer….