Mansfield's Dean Kastran goes full Cyrkle in half-century music career

MANSFIELD — Dean Kastran has the enviable, lustrous hair one would expect to see adorning the head of a 73-year-old rock star.

Which is good, because that’s what he is.

Still.

Chatting over coffee at Relax a few days ago, a week after performing in three sold-out shows in Florida as the new bassist for The Cyrkle, Kastran couldn’t stop smiling.

Clearly, it’s not the continuing magical, musical mystery tour he would have imagined when he helped form the Ohio Express in 1967, one year after graduating from Mansfield Senior High School.

“It just wouldn’t have computed … would not have calculated. But back when we started, if you had told me (Ohio Express) would play on American Bandstand and perform in Carnegie Hall, I never would have imagined that either,” the soft-spoken Kastran said with a laugh.

Jumping into The Cyrkle (a spelling offered by John Lennon), a band whose 1966 hits included chart-toppers “Red Rubber Ball” and “Turn Down Day,” was not a tough decision to make for Kastran in 2021.

The recent Sunshine State shows in Clermont, Boca Raton and Daytona Beach were proof Kastran made the right call to accept the band’s invitation to join an experienced lineup that includes original lead singer Don Dannemann.

“Everybody in the audience is my age … maybe a few years younger … a few years older … unless they bring their kids to experience it. You know, a lot of people with walkers and wheelchairs,” Kastran said.

“It’s such a hoot. The joy of it all is not so much playing or being on stage, although that’s always an enticement and allure to those of us who do it,” Kastran said.

“(It’s) watching these people enjoy their old music, knowing that not all, but some of the original members, are actually participating. They’re not just going to see a cover band show,” he said.

MUSICAL LIFE: Kastran graduated from Mansfield Senior High School more than a half century ago, learning to play bass guitar after Beatlemania roared ashore from Liverpool into the United States in 1964.

Kastran and his friends — including Tim Corwin, Dale Powers, Jim Pfahler and Doug Grassel — helped launch the nationally successful garage band Ohio Express in 1967, a band that performed hits like “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy,” “Down at Lulu’s,” and “Chewy, Chewy.”

That’s a fairly well known story around Mansfield, a city which also produced The Music Explosion around the same time, a band that recorded hits like “Little Bit O’ Soul” with the local residents Jamie Lyons, Don Atkins, Rick Nesta, Bob Avery and Burton Stahl.

Mansfield’s contribution to the garage-band, bubblegum music era is well documented.

What’s likely not as well known is that in the last five decades, Kastran has never really stopped performing, even while serving two years in the military and working his day job at The Gorman-Rupp Co., where he retired in 2013.

That devotion, and the relationships established over a lifetime of music, has landed him a spot in The Cyrkle, another 1960s act that is back to playing in sold-out venues around the country.

Through Powers, Kastran met Pat McLoughlin, a longtime Columbus musician and podcaster, who successfully reunited The Cyrkle in 2016.

McLoughlin formed The Gas Pump Jockeys, a Central-Ohio based oldies band and later added keyboardist/vocalist Mike Losekamp, a previous member of The Cyrkle.

It was McLoughlin’s idea to contact Dannemann to discuss the idea of putting The Cyrkle back together.

When that band needed a bass player, McLoughlin reached out to Kastran, who quickly accepted the ongoing gig.

For all intents and purposes, The Gas Pump Jockeys become The Cyrkle when joined by the 78-year-old Dannemann, who lives in Middletown, Del.

“Don will fly in and join us for Cyrkle gigs,” Kastran said, adding the lead vocalist hasn’t lost any of his live performance chops. “He’s every bit as spry … as I.”

BACK ON TOUR: Kastran, who also continues to perform locally in smaller venues across north central Ohio as part of EKG and Semer & Kastran, said The Cyrkle shows are family events for the audiences — and the band.

“When Pat asked me if I was interested, I was beside myself because I had already met these guys, had known them for years. You get into a band with guys you don’t know and anything can happen,” he said.

“(Cyrkle) members are all stand-up guys. Their wives travel with them to gigs. My wife (Marilee Seitz Kastran) was definitely on board with me getting involved,” Kastran said. “She comes to all the shows.”

His initial shows with the group were in October 2021 in New York and New Jersey, followed by a November show in Indiana.

After a break for the holidays, The Cyrkle did the shows in Florida and have shows booked March 31/April 1-2 in Michigan and Memorial Day weekend at the “Abbey Road On The River” music festival in Indiana.

Often, The Cyrkle performs a 20-minute set as part of a larger “Stars of the 60s” show that includes other ’60s bands like Jay and The Americans, Peter Noone’s Herman’s Hermits, The Vogues, The Brooklyn Bridge and rising do-wop performer Chris Ruggiero.

For someone who has played the bass for nearly 60 years, Kastran admitted playing with The Cyrkle helped him focus musically.

“There are a lot of musical situations where I can just ask, ‘What key is this in?’ and then just follow along. I know enough chords on guitar that I can see where a guy’s hands are going and can fake my way through it.

“With these guys, I am committed to learn to play it right. There is a bass lick at the beginning of ‘Turn Down Day’ and you can’t fake your way through it.

“You have got to be exact and you have to hit all the right notes. It shows up twice in the song and you just can’t screw that up,” Kastran said.

The Cyrkle’s normal venue has been large, beautifully restored theaters, not unlike The Renaissance in Mansfield, according to Kastran. A horn section backs the guitars, drums, keyboards and vocals.

“It’s giving me chills just sitting here talking about it,” Kastran said. “It’s just phenomenal. So naturally I want to get the (bass) parts as close as I can to represent the band and the song the best I can.”

PACKED SCHEDULE: Kastran’s gig schedule is packed, a fact easily noticed as he flips through his iPhone calendar.

Shows with The Cyrkle and The Gas Pump Jockeys take priority, but he continues to perform with friends Dennis Eggerton in EKG and Roger Semer in Semer and Kastran.

It’s also not as pressure-packed as the old days. That’s when recording industry “shenanigans” taught Kastran and his bandmates many valuable lessons by the “shrewd businessmen” who ran the record companies and got rich off the musicians’ talents.

“Honestly, if those (businessmen) walked in here right now, Dale and I always say this, we would run up and thank them for the opportunity because we got such an education. It was such a good time … we learned so much and it’s stuck with us all of our lives,” Kastran said.

“We did tour shows with The Who. There was a lot of good stuff that touring around the country gave us … there was a lot of bad stuff, too. But it was a process of getting to where we are today.

“Every time you turn a decade, you wonder. I remember being in my 20s and somebody saying ‘Do you think you will still be playing when you’re 30?’ But I was. In my 30s, we’d say, ‘Gosh, when I turn 40 … I remember when my dad was 40 … will we be playing music?

“Then we just kept playing through my 40s, 50s, 60s … it’s just never really stopped. I don’t know how many dates we’re doing this year,” Kastran said.

Finishing his coffee, Kastran expressed amazement over the blessings God has placed on his life, both in music and in general.

“It’s nuts, really. I won’t say (music) is what keeps me going. I have a lot of other, wonderful things in my life that keep me going, like my wife and four kids and 13 grandchildren.

“I have copious other reasons to keep going and to live and stay busy. But I gotta say … it’s pretty mind-boggling to think I still have so much music still going on.”