Rich & Royal

2005-11-06T13:43:00.000-08:00

rockefeller

2005-11-06T13:26:00.000-08:00

new logo

2005-11-06T13:03:00.000-08:00

GIGS

2005-06-28T15:00:00.000-07:00

GIGS

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Thursday July 21st 10PM

Court Tavern

New Brunswick, NJ

w/JONES

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Friday July 29 10:30 PM

The Old Bay

New Brunswick, NJ

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Saturday August 27 10:00 PM

Crossroads

Garwood, NJ

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Wednesday August 31 8-11 start (check back)

The Stone Pony
Asbury Park, NJ

More Gigs

coming soon NJ$NY

HISTORY

2005-06-28T14:59:00.000-07:00

Henry Rich and Eric Lybeck started playing music as The Crazy Diamonds while still in high school. Eric - an infant on electric guitar; and Henry - immune to keyboard squawks that otherwise deafened private school audiences, pooled their creative resources. Though they were only fifteen at the time, Henry and Eric constructed the masterpiece, “Hair Like Fire,” which developed a life and cult of its own to this day.

Though the Crazy Diamonds disbanded after high school, Henry Rich and Eric Lybeck have rejoined forces to create the Supergroup RICH & ROYAL. Borrowing the emotion and studio master of their first hit, “Hair Like Fire,” R&R developed and recorded an epic concept album.

Though Medieval in historical context, the story is anything but archaic; Mixing classic rock influences with traditional contrapuntal melodies, modern electronics, and intelligently crafted lyrics. “You shouldn’t get the feeling that you’re getting beaten over the head with a forced premise,” suggests Lybeck. “But you also don’t feel scatterbrained and alienated the way you do listening to a lot of modern music.”

The recording of “Hair Like Fire” proved a grand, but delayed success. Final mixing was finished more than a year after recording began. This was due to the fact the Henry Rich and Eric Lybeck own and work full overtime for a designer breathmint company Oral Fixaton Mints. Rich started Oral Fixation with the hopes of making everyday objects, like mints, exceptionally beautiful. Check out www.oralfix.com for more information.

But Rich & Royal has lied dormant for too long. Lybeck and Rich contacted their old friend, Owen Susman who was in Highland Park’s rival band “Fresh and Tasty” during the Diamonds’ years. Bringing back memories of “Fresh and Crazy,” the kinetic cross-bred project Owen, Henry, and Eric used to play in between gigs in the late 90’s, Rich & Royal realize that they now have the perfect bassist. Adding innovation, soul, and respect where the album chooses calm, frenetics, and architecture, Owen has re-laid the foundations of “Hair Like Fire” so you hear the songs for the first time every time.

Into the picture comes Andy Sapko who was in cahoots with Owen regarding a folk music project. An unparalleled drummer, particularly suited to the style of R&R, Andy brings an outstanding musicality, technique, and taste to the art of drumming. The energy derived from Andy alone is enough to drive any wimpy whining audiences into turbo Rich & Royal fanatics – “Greedies”

Owen Susman

2005-06-28T14:56:00.000-07:00

OWEN SUSMAN :: BASS GUITAR

Full Bio Soon

Andy Sapko

2005-06-28T14:55:00.000-07:00

ANDY SAPKO :: DRUMS

Full Bio Soon

Henry Rich

2005-06-28T14:53:00.000-07:00

HENRY RICH ::

Henry Rich sings and plays keyboards

Full bio coming soon!

Eric Lybeck

2005-06-28T14:48:00.000-07:00

Eric Lybeck :: Guitar

Eric Royal Lybeck, the jack of all trades in Rich & Royal has been playing music since he was ten years old. His early musical development was stunted by four years of piano lessons in which he did not advance past the one finger over twelve colored stickers phase. Somehow, Lybeck managed to learn a bootleg version of Bohemian Rhapsody and wrote one original song that caught the attention of this guy tuning his piano, Fred Patella. Patella, who was an accomplished pianist; was trained by Rudolf Serkin at conservatory, and built pianos from scratch. He took Eric under his wing until the young man finished high school. Though Lybeck could barely get through a page of piano score without ruining half the chords and melodies, Patella did encourage his expressionistic performance and imparted valuable compositional lessons.
Somewhere in the early high school period, at 14 years of age, Lybeck was given a gift of a Beatles fake book for piano. As he became obsessed with the music he would play Rain, I Should Have Known Better and Long, Long, Long thinking these were hit Lennon/McCartney songs not knowing any better. After staring at little dots within a small graph over every chord, he realize these were guitar annotations. He ran next door to this little girl’s house and stole her half-toy classical guitar. He painstakingly made his way through the entire Beatles book with a week or two. Soon he was playing Rocky Raccoon at the poolside and the bikini girls were singing and smiling along. Eric Royal Lybeck was thenceforth a guitar player.
A freshman in high school Eric started going over to Henry Rich’s house to mess around with songwriting and learn from the technical experience of Rich’s father, Beckman whose wealth of equipment was overwhelming to the El Degas wielding guitar wannabe. When Lybeck’s best friend C.J. Swenson picked up a Les Paul, Lybeck suggested he play bass in a band developing between Lybeck and Rich. Mostly Lybeck wanted to get his hands on the Les Paul. With an old friend Munish Bakshi on drums, The Crazy Diamonds were formed. Playing original, if odd music inspired by Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd, the group frequented local New Brunswick pubs, teenage birthday parties, country clubs, and talent shows. While never quite catching on as a live act, The Crazy Diamonds recording some of the most magical and inspired teenage experimental music in Beckman Rich’s attic home studio. Here the definitive versions of Hair Like Fire, Bleeding Zebra, The Diamond Invasion, and Eye of Japetus were laid down

Rich & Royal

2005-06-28T14:11:00.000-07:00

RICH & ROYAL

A SUPERGROUP