“Nobody gets in to see the Wizard."
"No way. No how.”
So says the plaque above Tom Kelley’s workbench. Once you get to know Tom a little, you sense a bit of self-deprecating sarcasm there. Once you see his work you might think otherwise.
Kelley builds guitars, mostly styled after Fender’s famed Telecaster and Stratocaster brands. I’ve played guitars for many decades now and always assumed they were made in fancy woodshops, or maybe in Emerald City. But Kelley builds his in his garage. Well, not only his garage. He bakes the guitar bodies in the oven in his Goleta kitchen.