Held
In Reverence
Real Detroit
Weekly - by Daniel Yowell
It's
not all that surprising that Joe Naylor started his own
guitar company. Growing up with a mom who taught classical
piano lessons and a dad who played bassoon in the Ann
Arbor symphony, plus two guitar-playing older brothers,
you might say it was in his blood. "I took classical
piano Iessons for four years," says Naylor, "which
I didn't like."
What
Naylor did like as a kid was rock 'n' roll. One of his
brothers would sometimes "forcefeed" his guitar
playing to Joe and his two younger brothers. "He
would lock us in a room and make us listen to him play
along to Hendrix and Cream and the Who, all the classic
rock gods," Naylor says. "If we tried to leave,
he would kick us back onto the couch." Despite being
held captive, Naylor admits that he thought it was pretty
cool. "We would sneak into his room later and turn
his guitar on and just watch it feed back," he recalls
with a grin.
Today,
Naylor runs Warren-based Reverend Musical Instruments,
a five-man operation (including Joe and his wife, Kristen)
that produces custom guitars known for their neo-retro
look and patented, semi-hollow design. For inspiration,
Naylor looked to some of his favorite vintage guitars—Fender,
Rickenbacker and Silvertone—and combined some of
their design elements with his own concepts. Sonically,
the Reverend guitar is truly unique. "It has a lively,
responsive tone," explains Naylor. "Our patented
body construction uses a combination of wood and plastic
in such a way that you get the tone of wood, but the consistency
of plastic. So every Reverend sounds great; you don't
have to pick through a rack of them."
Not
only was Naylor a music lover at an early age, he was
also technically inclined. With a knack for building model
airplanes, Naylor had a strong grasp of applied physics,
drafting and design by the time he was in the seventh
grade. He would later receive his bachelor's degree in
industrial design from Western Michigan University while
repairing guitars part-time. Naylor then traveled to Phoenix,
Arizona to hone his skills at the Roberto-Venn School
of Luthiery; what he saw when he arrived wasn't quite
what he'd expected. "One look at the place and I
wanted to leave," Naylor remembers. "lt was
a couple of tin huts in the middle of an open lot in a
bad part of town. But after I saw some of the guitars,
I decided to stay. I learned a lot of the basic techniques
of guitar-building, and I was exposed to what world-class,
hand-built instruments are supposed to look like."
Returning
to Kalamazoo in 1987, Naylor started his first guitar
company and began designing what would become the Reverend
semi-hollow guitar. in the early '9Os, he changed his
focus to amplifiers and moved the business to Detroit,
before selling it to his partner and founding Reverend
in '96. Naylor came up with the name while flipping through
a blues magazine. "When I saw the word reverend,
I believe it was in an article about Reverend Gary Davis,
I knew right then and there that that was it," Naylor
recalls. “It's a blues reference, and it's a name
people never forget. And it refers to being held in reverence,
which I hope my products are. It's not any sort of Christian
thing."
Whereas
Naylor had previously built high-end boutique amps, he
founded Reverend with the intent to serve a broader market.
As he puts it, A chicken in every pot, and a Reverend
in every garage ... or, in every garage band." Reverend
guitars are competitively priced at $559 and up, and less
expensive, solid-body models are on the way. Also in the
works is a new line of amplifiers.
All
is well for Reverend, and with Naylor's three children
already getting into music (-they all play 'Smoke on the
Water'," he says), it looks like the family business
has a long future ahead of it. Notwithstanding some brief
interest in "that boy band with the kid with the
tarantula on his head," Naylor approves of his kids'
tastes in music. "I taught them well," he declares
proudly.
AXE
MAN
Strummin': Sure,
Naylor loved classic rock as a kid, but he didn't
actually start playing the guitar until college. "Punk
exploded, and that's when I decided I had to play.
It suddenly became more viable," he says. Today
Naylor only plays original music, but he's really
into the White Stripes and Andre LaFosse.
Sippin': Naylor
enjoys nothing more than a glass of Jack on the rocks
when he's playing the ol' six string.
Shapin': The appeal
of Reverend's look crosses many genres, catching the
eyes of musicians who want to make a statement. A
variety of country, blues, alternative and classic-rock
guitarists play Reverend guitars, including Kid Rock,
John Fogerty and Rick Vito. |
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