Published: June 17, 2006 04:02 pm      

Starting on a high note

Rockwall resident making strides in music industry

6/16/06 — Jason Castro is a very busy young musician. He is the drummer for a Dallas-based rock band called Keeping Lions and is becoming somewhat of a TV personality.

Regular watchers of MTV can catch the new reality series “Cheyenne,” which follows the career of the young singer/songwriter Cheyenne Kimball.

Keeping Lions had the opportunity to perform at Kimball’s birthday party and developed a friendship with the artist, which resulted in some opportunities for both Castro and his band.

“They fly me out to be on the show every now and then,” Castro said. “I’m getting to be somewhat of a regular.”

He was also chosen to play a part in a music video.

“I was just in her first music video,” Castro said. “I played a little part. I was kind of the love interest in the video. There were two parts. In one scene we’re just hugging and stuff. Then there’s a scene where I’m climbing a hill and she’s at the top of it.”

Castro has high marks for his musician friend Kimball, who is also a North Texas native from Little Elm.

“She is a work in progress,” Castro said. “When she was 12 she won the ‘America’s Most Talented Kid’ competition on NBC. She’s just about to release her first record. She doesn’t even have anything out yet. Last Wednesday was the premiere of her show on MTV. It comes on every Wednesday at 9:30 p.m. She’s just getting bigger by the minute.”

In fact, Kimball will be performing tomorrow at Southfork Ranch for the Kids Count Expo. Keeping Lions will be the opening act.

“I’ve heard there’s going to be about 2,500 people there, but I don’t have a lot of details on it,” Castro said. “That’s at 7:30 p.m. It’s a big deal for us because there are going to be some people coming out from a label to take a look at us.

“Then we’re going to go down to Deep Ellum to do a show at the Curtain Club. That one starts at about 10:30 p.m. We had booked that show before (the one at Southfork Ranch) came up. It’s going to be a busy day for us, but we’re just going to go and do it.”

Keeping Lions has the same manager as Kimball, Eddie Hill, which facilitates a lot of the shared opportunity. In their own right, Keeping Lions is making a name for themselves.

“We’ve been playing together for two years as of this August,” Castro said. “It’s really my first band. I’d been in one little band before that was just some friends that played together, but this is the first serious one. The other members of the band have come from groups that have enjoyed some success. The lead singer had been signed before to an independent label.

“Since we started playing we’ve just been very focused on what we were doing. We pretty much take care of everything ourselves here locally while our manager spends most of his time dealing with the labels. He lives in McKinney but spends a lot of time going back and forth between L.A. and New York.

The recent opportunities represent a payoff for a lot of hard work. Castro is a 2005 graduate of Rowlett High School and attended Texas A&M University.

He would drive from College Station every weekend to practice with the band and ended up moving to Rockwall, where he attends Lakepointe Church.

A lot of opportunity has come his way, but he is aware that there is a lot of work still ahead. In the meantime, anyone wanting to sample the sounds of Keeping Lions can check them out online. The band has a selection of songs available for review at www.myspace.com/keepinglions.