Evan Casás’ musical career began in the wooded hills of Washington, Maine, where at the age of 11 he recorded his first song a-capella into a cassette recorder. Since then, Evan has written and recorded countless songs, released a number of albums, and played in bands with wildly different musical styles — from ska and reggae in Jiving Miss Dazy and The Irates, to the sweet, mournful pop of Dave Gutter/Evan Casás and Please Be Ours.
Evan is the son of Mormon parents and grew up listening to Welsh choir music and The Beatles on vinyl. When he was six-years-old, he taught himself to play the piano in his living room — simply because it was there. He says a turning point in his musical development was when his father finally taught him the C minor pentatonic scale.
In high school, Evan started playing guitar and drums and singing in the school chorus. He also began playing with Elijah Ocean (Loverless, All The Real Girls). Classmates since the third grade, the duo would go on to record eight albums over the course of 12 years with their group Ocean and Casás.
“There, in Elijah's barn loft, is where I cultivated my love for recording. Everyday we would record music onto a boombox, then take the tape and play it from a Walkman that was hooked into the auxiliary input of the boombox, allowing us to overdub,” Evan remembers.
After high school, Evan briefly studied music education and recording in college. He soon realized he preferred to make his own music and had no interest in teaching, so he dropped out and played in a series of local bar bands. But Evan’s constant passion was writing and recording his own music. After three years of recording albums for his friends and family on a Fostex 8-track, in 2006, Evan bought a Mac G5 computer and got serious about recording. He began producing EPs of other people’s bands, like Bass Box and Hamilton County. In 2008, Evan recorded and produced Nothing Under The Sun by Loverless. It was his first full-length record and cemented his reputation in Portland as a serious record producer.
Evan's newest project with Dave Gutter of Rustic Overtones has taken him full circle; he grew up listening to Rustic — now he shares the stage with Gutter in their project, Dave Gutter/Evan Casás. The duo released their first album, The Key To Adore, in the late summer of '09.
Evan is now an audio engineer at Tidal Soundstudios, in Portland, and plays drums, as well as sings backup, in Papadello, a local blugrass/blues/folk trio. He also plays dance-themed shows with a looping station and a number of electronic and acoustic instruments.