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Topher Gayle has had fun playing music all his life. He was but a whelp when his mother required him to play piano. He didn't enjoy the lessons, but fooled around with the piano when he thought nobody was listening, improvising even then. In high school, after several years of singing in choral groups, he discovered that boys who played guitar were popular with the girls, and life would never be the same. His first guitar was a Harmony Stella, a $25 plywood box with thick steel cables for strings, and terrible action. Topher played it til his fingers ached and thick callouses formed on his fingertips. In his senior year, Topher took classical guitar lessons, music theory and composition, and built his first serious musical instrument, a classical guitar. He graduated with honors in music in 1974. Toph also joined his classmates in a couple groups, including Far Frummet, a group that featured original folk and rock tunes, that still reunites whenever possible.
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Having had no luck with the girls during his folk-music playing year off before college, Topher enrolled at Boston University, in a Liberal Arts program concentrating in music composition. This time the guitar playing charm worked, and a year later he was married. Four years later he was divorced, enrolled in engineering school, and getting to know the gal who eventually agreed to become his second wife. It seems love and music have always been inextricably entwined in his life.
During Toph's engineering career, he managed to find time to keep playing and writing with Far Frummet, (which had meanwhile evolved into Boston's Famous Last Words). Famous Last Words recorded a 45 RPM Single (you know, the black vinyl discs with the big holes in the middle!) called "Boston Driver" in the early 1980's. Altogether, far too many of these remain in their original boxes... He also jammed bluegrass and jazz on mandolin and guitar at lunchtime with colleagues, playing a number of parties as The House Band.
Topher has so many musical influences he can't think of them all at once. But some of the well-known ones are Freddy Robinson, Freddy King, B. B. King, J. J. Cale, Louis Jordan, Steve Cropper, Taj Mahal, and David Grisman. He doesn't sound like these guys, but he's learned from them.
Toph likes music camps. He taught mandolin and songwriting at the 2006 and 2007 Rocky Mountain Fiddle Camp. At various camps, he's studied with Steve Baughmann, Pat Donohue, Missy Raines, Tom Rozum, John Reischmann, John Knowles, Bill Coulter, David Keenan, Mike Dowling, Chris Grampp, Kristina Olsen and Radim Zenkl. Topher recently served on the board of the California Coast Music Camp.
Topher gives private lessons from his home. He teaches beginning, intermediate and and advanced students in mandolin, guitar, electric guitar, and percussion. He teaches basic technique, practical theory, blues, bluegrass, old-time, and improvisation. He also offers hands-on workshops showing folks how to use computers for recording and writing music.