Love for Neal Casal

As most of you know by now, Neal Casal took his own life yesterday, it’s very sad news and we are devastated.

We had a long lunch with him a couple of weeks ago, he made a long drive here to Los Angeles to autograph the new GospelbeacH release for us, very kindly taking time out of his extremely busy schedule. 

We sat and talked for hours, Patrick and I wanted to talk about his work, but it was almost impossible to get him to talk about himself, he wanted to know more about us.  Neal was a big fan of one of our bands, Handsome Jack, and Patrick proposed that Neal play on one of their records, which would have of course been a huge boost for our band.  Neal replied that he couldn’t possibly do it because Handsome Jack was so good they didn’t need any help!  He didn’t have the slightest inkling of his own fame and talent, seemingly unaware of what his name would bring to the record. We smiled and told him that the band would be THRILLED to have somebody of his caliber playing on their record. He was genuinely surprised that we thought so, but was very excited about the idea of being on the record.  He reacted as though we were doing HIM a favor.  That’s the kind of guy he was, humble and sweet and without a trace of ego. 

Patrick and I both knew that it was the beginning of a life-long friendship, we’ve never met anybody like him and I’m sure we never will again.  There wasn’t a sweeter, kinder person on earth. We were very much looking forward to getting to know him better, and made plans to get together after his upcoming tour, with he and Patrick kicking around the idea of a retrospective of his work.  It’s impossible to believe that he’s gone.

Brent from GospelbeacH told me that one of his last e mails from Neal was saying how much he loved us. We felt the same way. We will miss him greatly.

Suzy Shaw BOMP