Los Angeles, CA (October 16, 2025)—Growing up in Michigan, CJ Vanston was a latchkey kid, entertaining himself after school by watching TV comedy shows until his parents got home. “I became a scholar of comedy,” he says, “but I never thought I’d be a comedy producer.”
One day, when he was 14, he was riding his bike home from school when he spotted a National Lampoon magazine at the drugstore. “I bought it and immediately read it—I could take you right to the tree that I sat underneath—and this whole world opened up to me. I went, ‘Who are these f**** crazy people?’ I got to the end of an article and thought, ‘I’m going to remember this guy’s name.’ It was Christopher Guest.”
Fast-forward and, after a period playing in cover bands in Michigan followed by 10 years living and working in Chicago, Vanston moved to Los Angeles, where one of his first auditions was for the Eagles. He turned the gig down when they insisted that he shave off his beard. But there were no hard feelings, and when the band’s Don Henley ran into Married With Children actress Katey Sagal at a party and she mentioned she needed a keyboard player, he recommended Vanston.
“She’s a fabulous singer and a fabulous person,” Vanston says. Sagal sent him a tape cassette of 17 songs. “Being an overachiever, I demoed every song,” he says, writing the arrangements, handwriting charts for the band members, recording every instrument and mixing all the tracks. “The demos could have gone on a record.”
The band’s drummer, renowned session man Russ Kunkel—who had portrayed the ill-fated Eric “Stumpy Joe” Childs in This Is Spinal Tap—was impressed with Vanston’s talents and offered to introduce him to two people. The first was engineer and producer Greg Ladanyi, a connection that led to work with Dolly Parton, Toto and many others. “The second was Christopher Guest, the guy that I sat under the tree reading the article about,” Vanston says.
Inside The Recording Sessions of ‘Spinal Tap II,’ Part 1
Spinal Tap first performed on a TV sketch comedy special, The TV Show, in 1979, with Russ Kunkel on drums and Loudon Wainwright III on keyboards. That led to the mockumentary movie in 1984 and a performance on Saturday Night Live to promote it. The band had done relatively little since, but were due to re-form for a concert at a Shure party during the 1991 NAMM Show in Anaheim, Calif.—and they needed a keyboard player.
“It was just one night,” Vanston recalls, “but I said to myself, ‘Nobody else is ever going to play keyboards for this band ever again; I want this gig so bad.’ It was Russ Kunkel that got me that gig.”
The rest, as they say, is history. Vanston has been the band’s musical director, keyboard player, arranger and co-writer ever since. He’s worked on the band’s last three releases—Break Like the Wind (1992), the Grammy-nominated Back From the Dead (2009) and now, also as producer, The End Continues—and has played every live show, including appearances at Carnegie Hall, Wembley Arena and Glastonbury Festival. He has also composed the soundtrack for several films written and directed by Guest, among them Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show and A Mighty Wind.
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“The comedy that I learned about when I was a kid, that I never thought I would have any use for in my career, has been invaluable,” Vanston says. “That’s why I’ve kept the gig. I’m a pretty good musician, but getting the humor has been a huge part of why I’ve been here for 34 years.”
