I have some sad news to report. I had heard this earlier today and it appears to be true, yesterday at around 6:00pm, Rob Brumfiel passed away.

Rob was a great musician (mostly know for guitar playing, but he also played piano and I'm sure could play about any instrument) and was a long time teacher at the Recording Workshop.

In the 70's he played in the Balloon Band that was originally from the Long Island area and then relocated to Columbus in the late 70's and released at least one 7" single on the OWL label. After that band disbanded Rob stayed in Columbus and played with tons of bands, I have no idea how many Columbus records he played on but it must be hundreds. There is no way I could do justice with trying to list all the bands he played with or recorded but I do know he was a pretty big force in the Columbus music scene for a long time.

I first saw him in the early to mid 80's when he was playing in the Dogz. I know that he played on the 1982 Willie Phoenix album on A&M. One of the most recent things he played on was Grace Adele's "Never Lost" cd that came out a few months ago.

I had the pleasure to work with Rob on two occasions, in 1998 and 1999 he produced all the tracks for a Bubba Ho-Tep record that never came out, as we broke up soon after finishing it. Then in 2000 he helped produce the Hillside sessions, recorded at The Fur Peace Ranch and that was released as a double 7", Rob played on one of those songs, "The Whiskey".

Rob was a great guitar player and an excellent producer and engineer and teacher who worked with many Columbus musicians, he will missed.

How did he die? I remember him from the workshop.