band . He had met a keyboard player named Paul Looyenga . Kyle had met another guitarist named Kurt Masteller who had just gotten off the road playing with a band called Jeramiah . Kyle asked him if he wanted to start a band and he was reluctant but said , “ Look , if you can find me another guitarist , bassist and keyboardist by today at 5pm , I will join .” Kyle called all of us and we met Kurt and this became a band called Vaniah . We toured Iowa , Minnesota and South Dakota for a few months playing mostly original material and built a decent following .
[ WM ] Meeting Jim from James Tyler Guitars and going to work with him was one of your early milestones . How did that come about ?
Showing off Tylers at NAMM 1992
[ Rich ] After Vaniah toured around for a few months , we thought moving to the music city , Los Angeles was a good next move . Over the course of a couple years , we all moved out there . In 1986 , I moved out there to attend Dick Grove School of Music in Studio City , CA . At school one day , I was looking through a local magazine called BAM that James Tyler would advertise as THE PLACE FOR BASS . At this point James Tyler was already famous as a repair and modifications guitar tech and builder , but he had a retail store that carried all the major boutique brands for bass players . I went into his shop and ended up buying a Kubicki Factor bass from him and one day I went to visit , and he was looking for an employee and I started working for him in 87 ’. At this point he had gotten out of the retail business and was getting busier building his James Tyler Studio Elite guitars and Tyler basses and decided to close the shop and moved to his garage to go full time only building guitars and basses . We , of course , kept taking care of his major clients like Michael Landau , Dann Huff , Dean Parks , and many more . I began learning all aspects of building guitars but when there wasn ’ t enough work , I would help him with accounting , paying bills and preparing documents for year ending taxes . I worked for him all the way through to 1994 . We were small then and running the office and doing the bookkeeping just became part of my job as well as building .
When Tyler went full time building guitars , it was Rich and Jim in his garage . 46 January 2023