Teye

For the Egyptian name see Tiye (disambiguation).

Teye (pronounced tie-ya, born 1957 as Teije Wijnterp) is a Dutch guitarist, best known for his flamenco guitar work with the Joe Ely band between 1994 and 2000. After his musical career, Teye began building exclusive handmade guitars.

Teye started learning guitar in 1968, and moved to London to pursue a musical career, unsuccessfully. He returned to the Netherlands and played in a number of rock and roll bands, after which he studied classical guitar at the conservatory in Groningen.

Starting in the early 1980s, he begins learning to play flamenco music in Andalusia, and spent the next six years alternately studying in Spain, and studying and performing in the Netherlands and the United States. Teye produces a solo flamenco guitar LP, El Gitano Punky (1988), and studies modern music at the conservatory in Rotterdam from 1990 to 1994. A visit to Austin, Texas, brought him in contact with Joe Ely, who integrated Teye’s flamenco guitar into his country-rock band on the 1995 release Letter to Laredo. Teye moved from Sevilla, where he had been living with his soon-to-be wife Belen Oliva Bermudez (a flamenco dancer), to Austin.

In 1996, then living in Austin, Teye and Belen got married and started a flamenco ensemble in Austin, Teye & Viva El Flamenco,

later called Teye & Belen, releasing a CD in 1999, Viva el Flamenco and one in 2004, "FlamencObsesionArte". He worked with Joe Ely again in 1998, on Twistin' in the Wind.

Teye has established himself as a builder of electric guitars. Befriended with Tony Zemaitis, he also often equipped his guitars with etched aluminum plates on the top, achieving "stunning looks". His Electric Gypsy La Llama was praised by Guitar Player as a "dazzling piece of guitar artistry." An unusual feature on some of Teye's guitars is a "mood" knob, which to a Guitar Player reviewer sounded as a mid-cut control, and "exponentially" increased the number of tones available.