Bass
Dan Dungan
When Dan was about eight years old, his father took the family to the Flying W Ranch outside of Colorado Springs. It is a dude ranch with activities like fishing and horseback riding. Later, the ranch provided a great chuckwagon barbeque complete with a show by the Flying W Wranglers. Dan was hooked on cowboy boots and western music ever since!
After singing in church choir and playing the French horn as a youth Dan quit his job to be a musician, playing rock and roll on the electric bass. He soon forgot all about his earlier influences until one day about three years ago, while playing with One Night Stan at the Gene Autry Museum. There was a jam in the courtyard with a couple ladies from San Francisco
called “Sagebrush Swing.” Dan joined along the jam seeming to know this music intuitively. He vowed from that moment on to find a band to play western music with! It happened again at the Gene Autry Museum, where he met Tumbleweed Rob. Rob saw Dan thumping along on his bass at a jam with everyone who stepped up with a song and was amazed at how adeptly Dan played along with every song. Rob, who had been in search of a bass player to play with The Tumbling Tumbleweeds, invited Dan to record with them as a Guest Artist on The Tumbling Tumbleweeds' debut album. Dan eagerly agreed and, like Jean, has been a featured Guest Artist with The Tumbling Tumbleweeds ever since.
Fiddle
Jesse Olema
Jesse Olema is one of LA’s top emerging fiddlers. Jesse began playing at the age of five in Humboldt County California. Now, at 26 he works as a session musician, and live performing artist. You can see him throughout Southern California playing not only now with The Tumbling Tumbleweeds but also with, Fearmia, and The Dustbowl Cavaliers.
The Tumbling Tumbleweeds found Jesse playing in a jam circle at the Topanga Banjo & Fiddle Contest and Folk Music Festival this past May of 2011 and were instantly taken with his intuitively laid back style.
“Jesse has an uncanny knack of weaving in and out of a melody as if being beckoned by some alternate point of view of the song no one but he has ever considered. It is his own special
gift that we find stunning and we can’t wait for our audiences to be delighted by it as well!” says, Tumbleweed Rob Wofskill who was the first one to spot Jesse at the Topanga Festival. “Jesse has the heart and soul for Traditional American Music and we are so thrilled to have him playing with us!”
Guitar
David Elsenbroich
David Elsenbroich started playing guitar at the age of nine in his hometown of Redwood City, California. Though he started with classical guitar, David studied jazz in high school and then went on to receive two degrees in jazz guitar performance from the University of Southern California. It was there that he studied under world-renowned bebop and Western Swing guitarist Bruce Forman, who first introduced David to the music of Bob Wills.
“When I heard the guitar playing in Bob Wills’ music, I was shocked by how sophisticated their playing was, and I was instantly attracted to the high energy and playfulness of the style.”
Since graduating, David has made his living teaching and playing guitar in the Los Angeles area where he continues to focus on
guitar styles from the 30’s and 40’s. He has his own traditional swing band, The Hi-Fi Honeydrops, and also plays everything from bluegrass to Western Swing. Now as a member of The Tumbliing Tumbleweeds David brings his Western Swing sensibilities as well as his classical American Guitar skills to the group and as Tumbleweed Rob puts it, "He's a dynamo!"
R.J. Mills is another native of Los Angeles with an ancestral background rooted deeply in the Southwest. His Mother, a classical concert soprano and father, a piano player are both from the great cowboy state of Texas.
His constant exposure to music flavored with the Southwestern background of his family make him a perfect addition to the Tumbling Tumbleweeds. The music is in his blood and it flows through him with no effort at all. To put it in his words, “It’s not enough just to know the words and music of these songs you have to have the feeling for them in your heart.”
R.J., a very well rounded musician, has been playing guitar since childhood. He has studied many genres from jazz to folk and everything in between and is equally adept at both rhythm and lead guitar.