Veteran Philly Guitarist Returns to Stage After Child Sexual Assault Conviction

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Philadelphia guitarist Mike Tyler, who used to go by the stage name “Colonel” Mike Tyler, was, in his time, Philly famous. After all, who among us can say that we’ve performed with Pearl Jam, with Eddie Vedder introducing us by name and telling the sold-out HersheyPark Stadium that we were “a good friend”? Who among us can say we were strumming alongside LL Cool J in the MTV Unplugged version of “Mama Said Knock You Out”? Tyler also reportedly played with Prince, Billy Joel, and the Rolling Stones and helmed a number of Philadelphia bands, including the unfortunately-named Touch By an Uncle. In August 2017, that Philly fame quickly became infamy.

On August 17th of that year, the Philadelphia Police Department arrested Tyler, then 58, charging him with rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, unlawful contact with a minor, and sexual assault, among other offenses. Less than a week earlier, Tyler had been visiting a music-scene friend at the friend’s South Philly home and, while there, assaulted the friend’s 14-year-old son while the boy was in his bedroom. The boy told SVU detectives that he repeatedly told Tyler to stop. Following his arrest, Tyler made bail, but was soon rearrested after he published Facebook posts from the dive bar 12 Steps Down when he was supposed to be home on house arrest.

In March 2019, a jury found Tyler guilty of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a minor and unlawful contact with a minor, both first-degree felonies. Prior to sentencing, Main Line-born entrepreneur Wilma Mae Basta took the stand and accused Tyler of sexually assaulting her in 1985 in a strikingly similar manner to that of the boy. This was the first time Basta had publicly made these allegations, and the judge allowed her to do so as part of the victim-impact statement portion of the proceedings. (Basta never reported Tyler to police, and he was never charged with a crime relating to the alleged assault of Basta.)

Tyler was sentenced to seven to fourteen years in prison, and placed on the Pennsylvania Megan’s Law sex offender list for life as a Tier 3 offender — the most serious level.

Earlier this month, Tyler walked out of prison. He wasted no time picking up his guitar: on June 17 he hosted a jam session at the Fire on Girard Avenue. On social media, the Fire teased the show with the line, “He’s Back!!!!”

A flyer for the Mike Tyler jam session at the Fire last week

Fire general manager Lateef White told me that the club was aware of “the violation” when they booked the show but that they didn’t know of any other allegations against Tyler, referring to what Basta had to say in court. Though he said he wouldn’t preclude the idea of booking Tyler again, he said he was going to wait and see what the public’s reaction was. “I’m not trying to get involved in a whole ‘thing’,” says White. In the days following the show at the Fire, some took to social media to say they would boycott any venue that booked Tyler. The club has since removed the show’s advertisement from its Instagram page.

One person who is definitely not ready for Tyler to start playing in public again is the juvenile victim’s father, a musician himself. “Mike literally destroyed my family,” he told me. “He got out way too early. Had I realized he was up for parole, I would have been first in line to talk to the parole board arguing against his release. But I had no idea.” (Through a friend, the victim’s mother declined to comment for this story, and I was unable to reach the victim. For her part, Basta had this to say: “I heard about his release which is sad. I don’t think I have anything left to say about Mike. It was always about standing up for [the minor victim]. I didn’t know [Mike] was returning to the music scene.”)

Philadelphia guitarist and sex offender Mike Tyler in his most recent Megan’s Law photo

I reached out to Tyler for comment on this article, assuming he would be reluctant to speak with me, since I broke the news about his original arrest and continued to cover the case through sentencing, writing several articles including one about the time, amid #MeToo, that he launched his own #WhatAboutUs campaign, which he described as a “movement for all these wrongfully accused people,” himself included.

To my surprise, Tyler was more than happy to talk. In fact, he told me that he had planned to reach out to me, because he enjoyed my June 2025 Philly Mag interview with Joey Merlino, which he read when he was working in the prison library, and he was hoping that I might want to interview him in the same fashion. He explained that he was writing a book and even asked me to edit it and get it into the hands of none other than Questlove.

“It’s called When the Music Stops, Life Got Loud,” explains Tyler. “And it’s about how my attitude in life was before I went to jail and how jail transitioned me and made me see a lot of things in a different way… I managed to start focusing on the good. The good thing is, when you get set down and you have a setback is, if you’re smart, you use it to kind of recalibrate yourself and to review everything. And I have to honestly say that my relationship with God is so intense now. My realization of my talent and my purpose and just, basically—I realized how much I took things for granted as with my…I’ve messed up so many opportunities in my life by just not taking them seriously. Record deals, production deals. My life was, as my ex-wife used to say, as long as you got a cheesesteak and a beer and a bag of coke, you’re fine.”

Tyler claims to be a completely changed man. But he insists he doesn’t have regrets.

“I don’t have regrets,” he says. “I have awareness of the things. You can’t change your past, but you also can’t control your future.”

Tyler and I spoke a lot more about his sobriety, his relationship with God, his former drug use. But I had to interrupt him eventually.

“You talked about the cocaine and the alcohol, and a lot of people can forgive that,” I said. “But you sexually assaulted a 14-year-old boy. Do you think that people are going to be forgiving? Do you think Questlove is going to want to help you with your book?”

“There comes a point in life where if a person transitions their life, if a person fixes themselves, and they also serve the punishment that they were given, they should be allowed to start doing their life,” he replied. “There’s too much going on in this world to focus on a person that conceded his crime, a person that tried to fix himself up or anything else. It’s like, I can’t change the past. All I can do is be a better person right now and just, you know, if you wanna fixate on me then, you know, that’s on you. But I don’t judge and I just let people be what people are.”

Unprompted, he also had more to say about Basta’s allegations.

“They spent two years trying to find other victims and the only person they could find was a girl from 1985 that was a completely other scenario,” he explained. “The thing is… Most people that are convicted of the crime that I did, they’re doing it for sexual pleasure and they’ve been doing it forever. It was a mistake. It wasn’t a lifestyle. It wasn’t an addiction. All I can do, all I can do in this world while I still walk the earth is just present myself as the person I am now.

“I did the time, I did the work, I did the transition, and I’m a new and improved person, and that’s all I ask from people is before you try to pass judgment on me, take a look at me, have a talk with me and just realize that mistakes happen, bad decisions happen. But right now, I’m the strongest I’ve ever been. I’m the healthiest I’ve ever been. I’m the wisest I’ve ever been. And if anyone wants to come at me or attack me, like Jimi Hendrix said, let your bullets fly like rain.”