Tumble
The Northern California-based group Tumble weaves the trancey bell tones of the African mbira with beefy guitar riffs and edgy single reed melodies to create an intricate, hypnotic whole. Formed in 2014, the trio is Robert Heirendt on the kalimba-like mbira, Sean Kerrigan on electric guitar, and Randy McKean on clarinets and tenor saxophone. Drawing inspiration from world-meets-free-jazz musics of Oregon, Codona, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and composer/performers Wayne Shorter and Thomas Mapfumo, Tumble has mesmerized audiences throughout Northern California and beyond.
Dragonfly, Tumble’s latest album of original compositions and arrangements, will be released by Cure-All Records in October 2024. Dragonfly was recorded over two days in November 2023 at Nevada City’s Ancient Wave Studios by renowned engineer Oz Fritz. Inspired by Fritz’s innovative work with Bill Laswell, Henry Threadgill, and Tom Waits, Tumble was elated to have Fritz at the helm, capturing every twist and turn live in the studio.
Tumble’s second release, Waves, released in October 2019 from Cure All Records, was recorded during bassist Bill Douglass’s three-year tenure with the band (2015 to 2018). Douglass’s bass work anchors the diverse set of music on Waves: propulsive, multi-layered originals by Kerrigan, freer experimental compositions by McKean and Heirendt, and innovative arrangements by the group of classic tunes by Thelonious Monk and Wayne Shorter.
Tumble’s first CD release, Music for Trio leads off with the band’s African-trance-dance take on Wayne Shorter’s hard bop tune Down in the Depths, followed by the mesmerizing Avian Migration and the atmospheric Old Statues Watching. Many of the recording’s highlights were inspired by deep personal experiences: Heirendt’s Saffron Robe pays tribute to his daughter Mei Lin’s Asian heritage and features her on violin, while McKean’s jaunty Callie Mac, inspired by his son Cal’s tap-dancing prowess as a young lad, features him, now grown, on trombone. Kerrigan’s soulful meditation Dark Clouds in the Sierra Madre came to him while on a motorcycle trip through Mexico. The group’s version of the spaghetti western theme Lascialo Andare brings things to a rousing finish.
Sound Cloud link to KVMR interview 4/26/16
About
Robert Heirendt provides the core of the group’s sound on the mbira, the Zimbabwean instrument similar to the kalimba and sometimes referred to as the thumb piano. Heirendt’s interest in African music began in the 1980s when he heard artists like Talking Heads, Brian Eno and Peter Gabriel incorporating elements of it into their own. He already had many years of performing under his belt as a keyboardist with the synth band Challenge the Light, but seeing percussionist Colin Walcott play the kalimba with the jazz/world fusion quartet Oregon, and attending concerts by African legend Thomas Mapfumo, led Heirendt to acquire an mbira. He subsequently studied with Erica Azim, an expert on the instrument and the traditional music Zimbabwe that uses it. Heirendt uses music in his work with children as a therapist with Nevada County Behavioral Health.
Randy McKean met Heirendt through mutual acquaintances, but the two cemented their friendship after multiple encounters at Grass Valley’s Clock Tower Records, in which they discovered their similar musical interests while prowling through the used record bins. Intrigued by the possibilities of combining reeds with the mbira, McKean asked Heirendt to perform with him at a concert at Menlo Macfarlane’s gallery in 2013. The duo became the trio Tumble in 2014 when local guitar fiend Sean Kerrigan, another aficionado of jazz and world music who has performed with Gary Snyder, Ludi Hinrichs, the Belfry Brothers and the Burls, and who has spent extensive time in Central and South America, joined their ranks.
The trio’s musical journey began with Robert teaching his partners a traditional Zimbabwean mbira trance tune. Subsequently, Heirendt and McKean contributed original compositions with echoes of their heroes John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter of Weather Report, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Kerrigan also began to write for the group, bringing in ideas with unusual meters and advanced jazz harmonies that the group helped fashion into intricate compositions through long jam sessions. The trio began performing at venues in Northern California. In Spring of 2015 they decided to document their work with Bruce Wheelock at Flying Whale Recording. Super-genius Myles Boisen later mastered the recording and supplied the cover images. The result is their self-release Music for Trio.
Around the time of these recording sessions in Spring 2015, local bass legend Bill Douglass played with the trio as part of a solo CD release concert of Heirendt’s music Soft Sea Creatures. The musical chemistry among them was superlative, and by mutual agreement, Douglass joined the group. Douglass, who has worked with countless jazz masters, including Mose Allison, Marian McPartland, and Paul McCandless, another member of Tumble’s heroes Oregon, helped refashion the group’s sound yet again with his deep listening sensibility and seasoned musical artistry. During Douglass’s tenure with the group, the quartet returned to Flying Whale and recorded the full-length recording “Waves” which is due for release in October 2019. Douglass left the group in mid-2018.
Bassist and percussionist Rob Holland was a member of Tumble from 2019 to 2023. Raised on ‘classic’ jazz in a musician’s home in Hollywood, California, Holland was a fixture in the Cuban, Salsa and Latin-Jazz scene in the Bay Area in the 1980’s and 90’s, performing with John Santos’s Septeto Leon, Charanga Tumbao y Cuerdas, Pete Escovedo, Jonny Nelson y su Orquesta, Jorge and Marti Sylvestre’s BaTimCo, and many others. His extensive knowledge of the musical styles of Latin America and Africa, gained through musical travels to such places as Cuba and The Gambia, West Africa, enriched this phase of Tumble’s music. This version of the group can be heard on the Robert Heirendt-produced tribute to Bob Dylan’s Self Portrait album.
