The charismatic Ron ‘Bumblefoot’ Thal is a very busy man at present. The headlines might suggest that his place in Guns ‘N’ Roses – a band that he’s been part of for the last nine years, no less – may be less secure than it once was, however right now he’s got his hands full, with a multitude of projects that are demanding his attention. With the release of his first solo album in seven years, the guitarist hit the UK recently for, among other things, a series of guitar events. He’s also got the launch of his controversial new project ‘Art Of Anarchy’ to look forward to, despite singer Scott Weiland’s withdrawal from the group before it has even got off the ground. Tactfully watching his words when faced with subjects relating to the two most volatile frontmen in rock (Weiland and Rose), the New Jersey native is none the less full of good cheer. He’s got a lot on his plate right now, and not just the meat to go with his hot sauces. Appetite for democracy: Eamon O’Neill.

 

How are you today?

 

I’m good. I’m busy prepping everything for the new album’s release. I’m just getting the newsletter html ready, and making sure that the links are right and all that little stuff. I’m pretty hand’s on; I do everything myself.

 

Your new album ‘Little Brother Is Watching You’ is your first solo album since ‘Abnormal’ in 2008. Are you excited to get it out?

 

Oh hell yeah! It has been so long overdue, and it’s just been tough with all the touring [in Guns N’ Roses]. I always find that when I’m touring I’m giving all my attention to everyone else, and when I’m songwriting I have to look within and be undistracted. The two always collide and I can’t do both, so the touring wins, and I end up not writing for a year, not really digging deep and pulling out a song. It was in 2008 that I did the ‘Abnormal’ album and then at the end of that year I did an acoustic EP and then hit the road in 2009 and 2010. In 2011 I did a song every month that I put out digitally, and each song would come with a transcription of the guitar parts, and backing tracks so that people could make their own mixes of the songs. I managed to get nine of those out before hitting the road again. Then in 2012 and 2013 I was on the road again, and then last year, I just said; “enough”, I need to put out some new music. And I just started writing and really forcing it out, and here we are!

 

Obviously then touring with Guns N’ Roses is very demanding and takes up your full attention.

 

Yeah, that’s really it. When I am on the road I’m spending as much time as I can with all the fans that came to the shows and the people that made that effort. It’s very much appreciated and I want to spend time with them. I want to talk with them and I want to give them as much time as I can, besides just being on stage, because to me it’s more than that. There’s got to be a relationship between you and the fans; it can’t just be like going to see a movie and the movie doesn’t know you. It’s not that two-dimensional. It’s a give and take, back and forth. They sing along and everybody is at this one thing together, and I don’t like having the separation between the two.

 

 Playing live sounds like a very personal experience for you. With your new album’s themes including beginnings, endings, and moving on, would you say that it too is very personal?

 

You know, every album is personal, but this one really touched on some more serious stuff. Whereas a lot of my albums might have been a little bit sillier, or I would present them in a ‘lighter’ way, on this one I didn’t joke around as much about things I was feeling. I was pretty straight-up about it, and very direct. I found that the even song writing had this direct line inward that was very point A to point B, and I was really pulling out exactly what I wanted to share with people. It was a good feeling.

 

Was there any specific reason for making such a personal album, such as specific events or was it a case of just reaching a certain age perhaps?

 

I think it’s a combination of everything; a lot of serious stuff, and also just growing up. Each grey hair that I earn is another story to tell, and those stories tend to get more elaborate.

 

You’ve worked once again with long time drummer Dennis Leeflang. You seem to have built up a fantastic working relationship with him.

 

Yeah, we’ve been working together now, since I guess 2002. So it’s been a long time. When anyone in the world needs kick-ass drumming, he’s the go-to guy. He’s the guy that they should be going to.

 

You’ll obviously be putting a band together to tour the new album. Have you any idea who you’ll be working with?

 

I can’t say for sure. I mean, I love everybody that I have worked with so it’s just a question of who wants to go out and do it. I haven’t booked anything yet because I really want to push the music and make sure people know the music before I just go out and play blindly. I want to have a good plan and a strategy to make sure that it’s the best for everybody, but I definitely want to have Dennis. Dennis has got to be on the drums.

 

What about the one hundred fans that appeared on the album [stomping, clapping and singing along on the title track]. Are you going to bring them out on the road with you?

 

(Laughs) Yes! I’m going to bring a hundred people, and they’re all going to stomp their feet and sing! I’m not planning to get a hundred microphones because we might have to bring our own mixing board – or five of them – but we’ll do what we can! Hopefully the people that are at the show will get a sense of when to sing from what the people did on the album. Hopefully we’ll have a good time, because that’s what we do.

 

 

The album is your 10^th in a twenty year career. Do those sort of statistics amaze you?

 

No, because there should be more albums, and there should be more music. I guess it’s all just juggling time the best you can and doing a lot of multitasking. I find that word always comes up every time I’m talking. I think it’s just the way my brain works, as I’ll be doing a solo and singing a lead part at the same time, and I’ll be working on an album while producing someone, or planning a tour while preparing a charity event or whatever. I’m always busy and I’m always planning in my sleep. I wake up at four in the morning and it’s like ‘oh yeah, let me make sure that this gets done when I wake up’, that kind of thing.

 

You’ve just played a series of ‘guitar masterclasses’ here in the UK. What do those events involve?

 

Usually the way it works is; I sit on a chair, I play all kinds of noodley noodley songs, and we tell stories and people have lots of questions which takes the event in all different directions. I do a lot of playing and a lot of joking around, and it’s very personal. Those things are a lot of fun, man, and I love doing them.

 

Whose guitar masterclass would you like to attend, if you could, living or dead?

 

Wow, living or dead. I could dig someone up and stick them in the chair? Good question. I’d like to see Allan Holdsworth. He is not dead, not at all. He’s a UK guitar player. He played with the band U.K. and did a lot of different things. He’s a progressive, fusion guitar player that has the most insane phrasing. He’s the guy that actually inspired a lot of the riffs that Eddie Van Halen used. He inspired a lot of his tapping, like for example ‘Hot For Teacher’, right after the whole intro, that riff in there is actually a riff of Allan Holdsworth’s from a song called ‘Road Games’. Eddie was very inspired by him, and the guy is just mind blowing.

 

You’re probably best known for your fretless guitar sound. Is it a difficult technique to master?

 

Well, you pick up the guitar and just don’t think. You let things happen and don’t try and control it and just see where it goes, and it all just starts to solidify naturally. Really, with a fretless guitar, the first five minutes are sort of shaky. I man that’s a nice way to put it – it sounds like crap! Then after a good hour, everything just starts ‘clicking’. Your eyes, your ears and your touch all kind of come together and you start developing more solidly and you start figuring out quickly how to reshape the chords and get them in tune, and all of that stuff. From there you just start sliding around, and it’s like having a slide on every fingertip.

 

 

Do you think it was because of that unique playing style that you piqued the interest of Guns N’ Roses back in 2006?

 

Originally we started talking in 2004, so it’s been a long time. I think they liked my name; “look at this guy’s name! Let’s try him!” (laughs). I hope it was for more than my funny name! From what I was told, it was a song from eighteen years ago, from an album I released called ‘Hermit’ that came out in ’97. There was a song on there that really just made fun of guitar players, the egos and the volume war, and trying to show off and shredding and all of that stuff. It was called ‘I Can’t Play The Blues’. From what I was told it was that song that was heard that piqued the interest.

 

Do you think that your style added an extra dimension to ‘Chinese Democracy’s overall sound?

 

I hope. I hope it added something of value that made the songs better and not worse! That depends on the individual listening and how it hits them, but I think that the things that I filled in in the verses with the slide, that kind of stuff, yeah I think it added a little something to it. It’s definitely the most unique rock album that anyone will find as far as musically, the history of it, and everything that went into it. No album has a story like that one.

 

Your song ‘Day To Remember’ was adapted as the theme tune to ‘That Metal Show’. How does it feel to have your music synonymous with such a well loved show?

 

Oh it’s great. I’m very grateful that they felt my music would match and I’m glad people like the theme. It’s a cool thing. It’s great when that happens.

 

How did that come about? Was it the TV network that contacted you, or was it presenters Eddie Trunk, Don Jamison and Jim Florentine who got in touch?

 

It was the guys themselves. They asked me if I could make something for the show, and I sent them a bunch of music and said here’s some songs that I already have, see if there’s any of these that you like, or if you like, let me know and I’ll make something special for you guys. They heard that song and said, that’s the one we like, let’s get an instrumental of that. And that’s using the fretless guitar, and sliding on the fret board.

 

Away from music you’ve got a hot sauce line that you launched here in the UK via a tasting in Whitney earlier this month. Tell me about how that came about?

 

I like to cause pain, I like to hurt people! Actually it came about two years ago. It’s a collaboration with a wonderful hot sauce company called CaJohns out of Columbus, Ohio. They were kind enough to let me come in the kitchen with them with my crazy ideas, and we worked together on making everything work, and came out with six sauces, ranging from mild to excruciating! There’s ‘Normal’, ‘Abnormal’ and ‘Uncool’, and those are also the names of albums that I have. The most mild one is ‘Normal’, and it’s a mild tomatoey sauce with Mediterranean herbs that goes good with Italian food and Mexican food. ‘Uncool’ goes great with Indian food and Thai food. Then we’ve got ‘Abnormal’ which is where we start getting pretty hot; that one’s got delicious fresh jolokia peppers, it’s got Caribbean jerk and it goes real nice with steak and stir fry and the dark stuff like that. Then there’s ‘Bumblicious’ which has cherry bourbon and chipotle, and then we have a variation of that called ‘Bumblebabe’ where we took out the bourbon and replaced it with chocolate because ladies love chocolate, and I love ladies and I want to give them some kind of delicious hot little something! The hottest one has ginger and tropical fruit, and it has ginseng and caffeine like an energy shot, which is something hot sauces don’t have. I want it to really fuck people up, so this one is called ‘Bumblefucked’. That’s actually the most popular sauce; it’s the one that people get the most and it definitely lives up to its name.

 

Looking forward and you are involved in a new project called ‘Art Of Anarchy’. What can you tell me about the band?

 

I can tell you a whole lot about that. It started in 2011 with the bothers John and Vince Votta who play guitar and drums, and I’ve been producing their stuff for about eighteen years. They wanted to step it up a notch so they started a music company, and the first thing they wanted to put out was a supergroup album. So they came into my studio and we laid all the songs and I started laying my guitar parts and working on sounds and everything, and John Moyer came in on bass and kicked ass, and then Scott [Weiland] came in. Well, he joined, I shouldn’t say ‘came in’ because he did it all from home, but he joined the festivities. It should be coming out in May. We also have two really cool music videos we all shot together and we’ll get those out as well.

 

Are there any plans to take ‘Art Of Anarchy’s on the road, given that Scott Wieland has now distanced himself from the project?

 

We’ve got to see where it goes. At this point, the main focus is just getting the music out. Ultimately it’s about that album, and that music that we all created together, so the first step that we want to take is just getting that to people. Then we’ll see what happens after that. I just don’t know what’s going to happen at all, it’s just one step at a time.

 

Is Scott’s stance disappointing?

 

Well, it’s kind of a surprise, considering we all agreed on what we were going to say and approved everything. He came out with that [his statement saying that he was not a member of the band], which was not… yeah, it is what it is.

 

You seem to have plenty going on right now.

 

It’s going to be a very musical year; we’ve got that, we’ve got my album coming and we’ve got the thing with Darryl McDaniels, DMC himself [from Run DMC] and the metal band Generation Kill with Rob Dukes, who is the singer who’s from Exodus. He’s an old friend of mine and he hit me up while those guys were putting it all together and asked me if I would do the production and add some guitars. We’ve got one song done so far called ‘Rock Lizard’, and it’s a real nasty song! Hopefully we’ll get a lot more done quick so we can get it to everybody’s ears and get you all to hear it.

 

Reading between the lines I would guess that you’re not going to much have time for anything else.

 

(Laughs) There’s always time for something else. [Regarding his status in Guns ‘N’ Roses] I don’t want to mislead anybody about that, but at the same time, I just need to shut the fuck up.

 

Finally, is little brother watching Bumblefoot?

 

Yes, very much so, all the time. And he’s watching you, and I’m watching you, and you’re watching me. We’re all watching each other. The new album is going to end up on the interweb for other people to check out and listen to very very soon, and to all those people I say thank you very much for listening.

 

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