humblegrumble

Humble Grumble started as a project by Gabor Vörös and Tom Theuns. During these early years of Humble Grumble, the band toured in Switzerland and Germany.
The band was continued by Gabor Vörös and has had various line-ups since then. Humble Grumble has toured the world, performing in Belgium, Ireland, Wales, Hungary, Slovakia, Germany and Mexico.

from the website:
"Humble Grumbe started off in 1996 with the folk and jazz musicicans of Dearest Companion, a belgian flip-folk group. The early music had more in common with folk-rock than jazz, but was always flavored with an excentric touch of humor. The early work of Humble Grumble was mainly composed by Gabor Grumble and Tom Theuns, who already played rather manic performances in the region of Ghent at the time."

Due to the mixture of different musical styles, and the humorous lyrics, Humble Grumble is said to sound Zappa-esque.

Pieter Claus (who played the marimba in Whatchamacallit) has been a part of Humble Grumble for a while.

August 22, 2012, Bobby Marquis did broadcast a Humble Grumble special on Canadian CKCU-FM radio.

	humble grumble: the golden pile (1996, demo, bel, private release)
	humble grumble: the tom and gabor special (1996, demo, bel, private release)
	humble grumble: dreamwavepatterns (2000, cd, bel, private release)
	humble grumble: rockstar (2004, cd, bel, private release)
	humble grumble: the tom and gabor special (2006, cd, bel, private release) - re-release of the 1996 demo
	humble grumble: 30 years kolinda (2006, cd, nl, pan records)
	humble grumble: the face of humble grumble (2008, cd, bel, cocktailsoul productions)
	humble grumble: flanders fields (2011, cd, it, altorck records)
	humble grumble: guzzle it up (2013, cd, it, altrock records)
	humble grumble: live (2014, download, --, --)

Humble Grumble is one of the best-kept secrets of the alternative music scene.
The band will be performing at Zappanale, and they're marked as "must-see" in my book.
If you're familiar with Humble Grumble's music, you'll be at their concert. If you've never heard about Humble Grumble, you should really check them out. They just might be your biggest surprise at Zappanale.

UniMuta : You recently released the "Flanders Fields" album. How has the response been so far?

Gabor Voros : It's been doing very well as far as I know. It's enough to just google the band name and title and you get to huge amounts of very pleasing good reviews. Humble Grumble is also played on radios worldwide and we're getting a lot of response from people around the globe. You can read some of their comments, reviews on our official website.

UniMuta : "Flanders Fields" got released on the italian Altrock label. How did you get in contact with them?

Gabor Voros : Marcello Marinone, one of the owners of Altrock has been following Humble Grumble since the 90's. He found out about us in a review where someone mentioned that we sound a bit like X-legged Sally. Marcello was looking for those good old X-legged albums. He got curious and today we're enjoying life in the progrock sphere together.

UniMuta : Last year, or the year before that, you played at the Burg Herzberg Festival. What was that like?

Gabor Voros : Hahha, good question! I must say that I love those Germans coming to the Festival! they are great loving, energetic, warm audience! We were honored to come and play there twice and both times it was a blast!

UniMuta : In a couple of weeks, you'll be playing at the Zappanale festival in Bad Doberan. I can tell that you're familiar with Frank Zappa's music, but were you familiar with the Zappanale festival? How crazy do you think one has to be to organise a festival around Frank Zappa's music?

Gabor Voros : I knew about Zappanale, but it's the first time that we're invited to play there. I find it perfectly normal to honor the great Frank with a Festival like this and it's a present for the people who enjoy this high quality stuff, there are not many Festivals left unfortunately with this high level of music.

Gabor Voros : We are going to Gouveia (Altrock music festival in Portugal, red.) next year and there will be a tour around that. Zappanale will be the last Festival in 2012, I will explain in another interview what makes us so busy that we do not gig enough.

UniMuta : You're in the middle of recording a new album. Can you already tell us a bit about it? Did you record it with the current line-up of the band? Do you already have a title for it? Is it true that it will not contain any love songs? Will it be out on the Altrock label as well?

Gabor Voros : Well, it is recorded with the current line up of the band. I wouldn't say that there are no love songs, only nothing will sound slow and romantic. It's becoming a high energy album, I am very satisfied with the results of the recording. I don't have a title yet, only silly ideas, you know how it goes. But it'll be released on Altrock indeed presumably in September.

Biography

Crazed jazzy and avant-proggy Belgian ensemble Humble Grumble seem "Zappa-esque" in their meld of anything-goes music and sometimes outrageous, sometimes incongruously dark lyrics, but the roots of the band are on the somewhat folkier side. Hungarian singer/guitarist Gabor "Humble" Vörös wandered around Europe before settling in the Ghent, Belgium area in 1993. He participated in a number of musical projects, including a somewhat oddball folk-rock outfit named Dearest Companion, also featuring multi-instrumentalist Tom Theuns. Vörös (on guitar and vocals) and Theuns (on bass) formed Humble Grumble in 1996, and a quintet version of the group toured Switzerland and Germany and recorded a pair of demos that year, The Golden Pile and The Tom and Gabor Special. (Singer/guitarist David Bovée was another member of Dearest Companion, and Bovée later went on to form Think of One, whose debut disc, 1998's Juggernaut, featured appearances by Humble Grumble's musicians.) Theuns would soon depart the group, however, to form Ambrozijn with violinist Wouter Van Den Abeele, and Humble Grumble largely became a vehicle for realizing whatever ideas might spring from Vörös' imagination.

After the privately released Dreamwavepatterns in 2000 and Rockstar in 2004, Humble Grumble issued 30 Years Kolinda on the Pan Records label in 2005. Vörös had become enamored of the music of Hungarian folk outfit Kolinda, and embarked on the 30 Years Kolinda project and album after meeting group mainstay Peter Dabasi in Budapest. To mark Kolinda's 30th anniversary, Vörös invited Dabasi to perform live with Humble Grumble, and, aside from one track, the associated 30 Years Kolinda album featured Dabasi compositions exclusively. The album also marked the arrival of several musicians who would remain key members of Humble Grumble in the future: saxophonist Pol Mareen, clarinetist Pedro Guridi, and bassist Jouni Isoherranen.

Several years would pass between the release of 2005's 30 Years Kolinda and Humble Grumble's next album, The Face of Humble Grumble, which arrived in 2008 on the Cocktail Soul Productions label and featured re-recordings of material from Dreamwavepatterns and Rockstar. In addition to Vörös, Mareen, Guridi, and Isoherranen, the musicians on The Face of Humble Grumble also included Pieter Claus on marimba, Jonathan Callens on drums, and a pair of singers, Megan Quill and Franciska Roose, who good-naturedly harmonized with decidedly quirky frontman Vörös. From that point forward, Humble Grumble would settle into a lineup of guitar/vocals, saxophone, clarinet, marimba/vibraphone, bass, and drums, plus female vocal chorus and other guests.

Meanwhile, to the south in Milan, Italy, producer Marcello Marinone and friends at the AltrOck label were taking notice of Humble Grumble, and ultimately concluded that the group would fit in well with the imprint's avant-prog artist roster. Providing the group with its widest distribution yet, AltrOck released the ambitious yet crazily offbeat Flanders Fields CD in 2011; the album featured Vörös, Mareen, Guridi, Isoherranen, Claus, and Callens, plus Quill and Roose among a slew of 11 guest musicians, most of them vocalists. Two years later, Humble Grumble returned with their second AltrOck release, Guzzle It Up!, featuring the same basic core lineup plus guests; singer Quill was now deemed a full bandmember but Roose had departed, with Liesbeth Verlaet joining Quill in the band's female vocal duo (with matching nautical motif miniskirts and over-the-knee socks), and Joren Cautaers was the group's new vibraphonist, although Pieter Claus took a "guest" marimba solo on one track.

2013/06/01 & 02 ALTROCK / FADING FESTIVAL