Eric Tingstad

Eric Tingstad "The Before Time"
Eric Tingstad shares the following:

I was born December 16, 1954 in a suburb of Seattle, WA. It was a big day around the house as my parents were already celebrating Beethoven's birthday and the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. My earliest musical memories were of my mother playing classics on the piano and of my father playing an eclectic mix on the hi-fi. Clare de Lune and Fur Elise were blended with the Kingston Trio, Earl Bostik, Ravi Shankar, Hawaiian Music, The Flower Drum Song and Edvard Grieg.

I first became interested in the guitar at 8. And since I always figured I could build what I needed, my first guitar was one that I made with fishing wire and a block of wood. Heavily influenced by the popularity of the Beatles and the attention paid to the older boys at church camp, I realized that the guitar was THE ultimate attention seeking device. For my 9th birthday, I received my first guitar. It was a 4 string guitar with a broken neck that my dad had pulled out of the dumpster at Sears Roebuck and glued back together. Next came a six string folk and a $25 electric from Woolworths paid for by the paper route.

Through the aforementioned church, my parents had friends who played guitar and sang. Bill Bunce, Sleepy John Davis, Phil Lucas and the Piff brothers all offered advice and attitude. And at 13 I won an all-city talent contest in Bellingham, WA at which I sang San Francisco Bay Blues. Soon thereafter, I had my first recording as a bass player. From then on I was always in a band. Starting set lists included Secret Agent Man, House of the Rising Sun, Gloria and Louie Louie. As a freshman in high school, I was in the jazz band playing the electric bass. I then moved on to the orchestra percussion section and upright bass. As a junior in high school, I took half the year off to audit composition, theory and sight singing classes at the University in Moscow, Idaho.

After the Beatles and having been moved to a college campus with my family in 1967, I became enamored with a succesion of rock idols; Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, John Fogarty. English art rock groups like Wishbone Ash, Genesis, Yes, King Crimson, and Gentle Giant were a major souce of influences. My first paid gig was in my sophomore year; my 5 piece band got $50 and I still have the contract in my wallet. I am thinking about framing it. After high school, the rock world was my oyster. Playing almost every high school sock hop and tolo in Washington state as a bassist and lead guitarist, I was part of one of the top local bands in Seattle area in the '70s. But somehow during this time, I managed to attend an institution of higher learning.

At Skagit Valley College and Western Washington University, I expanded my classical studies in theory, composition and guitar. At the U, I studied the Segovian tradition with Frank Bliven and Tom Patterson. Studies included Fernando Sor Etudes, Tarrega, Albeniz, Lauro, Barrios and Bach. I had master classes with Michael Lorimer, Christopher Parkening and George Sakelario. During these post high school years, I also had a real job working as a civil servant technician for the US Navy. It was here that I met Jim Blackburn who turned me onto jazz fusion. Countless hours were spent listening to early Pat Methany, Chick Corea and Oregon with Ralph Towner.

But in 1980 it all came crashing down. I left the glitsy rock band world for classical gigs in restaurants and open mics at local coffee houses. In early 1981, I bit the dust and got married. For the ceremony, I composed one of my first works for solo guitar in a classic style. By 1982 I had enough compositions to release my first recording of original material on my own record label. The album was called On the Links and it did quite well in the Pacific Northwest market. In 1984, I did my second work entitled Urban Guitar. It did not do so well. At this point, I was well into my Windham Hill phase and was doing concerts with that stable of players. But they never gave me a record deal.

Sometime in early 1985, I had the somewhat unique idea of doing an instrumental recording of holiday music. Enter Nancy Rumbel who was in semi-retirement and now living in the same area. I asked Nancy to join me on the project and the result was The Gift. It also did quite well in the Northwest market. By early 1987 Tingstad and Rumbel were recording for the Narada record label.

Narada recording artists Tingstad & Rumbel are performer/composers who have been presenting their contemporary folk music throughout North America since the mid-'80s. Eric Tingstad, a classical guitarist, and Nancy Rumbel, who plays oboe, English horn, and ocarina, began their association after meeting at a music festival in the Pacific Northwest. They were drawn together by a shared interest in applying their instruments outside their traditional settings, integrating ethnic, jazz, rock, and other contemporary influences into their classical backgrounds. Their neo-classical instrumentals mixed with a warm folk treatment has been called "Northwestern Impressionism" and brought the attention of new age label Narada who released their holiday-themed album, The Gift, in 1985. Extensive touring throughout small towns in the U.S. and Canada built an avid fan base, expanding their exposure to new and more diverse audiences. Both artists have also released solo albums (Tingstad's Renewal in 1992 and A Sense of Place in 1995, and Rumbel's Notes From the Tree of Life), but their greatest successes have come from their collaborations, notably Pastorale released in 1997, and 1998's American Acoustic, which both debuted at number one on new age voice radio.