
RON 'BUMBLEFOOT' THAL Talks 'Genuine' And 'Weird' Solo Career: 'I Just Want To Show All Sides Of Myself'
January 22, 2025By David E. Gehlke
Thirty years separate guitarist Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal's two all-instrumental solo albums. Without belaboring the point, a lot has changed, many of those changes Thal can easily ruminate upon. What hasn't changed is the guitarist's ability to genre-hop like few can. Thal's 1995 debut, "The Adventures Of Bumblefoot" is an off-kilter hybrid of metal, rock, fusion, jazz and funk that was released on the venerable guitar shred label Shrapnel. Jump to 2025 and Thal's new "Bumblefoot…Returns!" hits in the same way, albeit with a more modern, heavier angle, complete with guest spots from Brian May (QUEEN),Steve Vai, Derek Sherinian (WHOM GODS DESTROY, ex-DREAM THEATER) and Guthrie Govan.
Thal's new solo album continues his run of productivity. He remains an active member of ART OF ANARCHY and WHOM GODS DESTROY, not to mention his routine guest appearances, his production of other artists and his teaching of young musicians. Indeed, Thal's post-GUNS N' ROSES life has found even more doors open for him, especially on the studio work and behind-the-scenes side, which, as he told BLABBERMOUTH.NET, is where he truly feels at home.
Blabbermouth: Your first solo album arrived 30 years ago. What comes to mind when working on "The Adventures Of Bumblefoot"?
Ron: "I'll take it a year back. In 1994, when I signed a deal with Shrapnel, they were going to do a subsidiary of the label for vocal music. That was always my thing. I was always in a rock or metal band where there was a singer. I was the singer and guitar player for a four-member band. I didn't want to do instrumental music. When he [owner Mike Varney] said that, I was like, 'Yeah, let's do it.' I signed the deal. As soon as I signed [Laughs], he said, 'Could we just do an instrumental album to introduce you to the label's fanbase?' I was like, 'Argh! This is not what we talked about!' I did it and started busting out songs. I had a few that were already done because Mike Varney's brother, Mark, had a label called Guitar On The Edge and they put out a series of comp CDs called 'Guitar On The Edge'. I did a bunch of those in the early '90s. I had a few songs from that. I started writing. I was still living at home. I would be in the basement with a Marshall half-stack with a big blanket over it, using an SM57 [microphone] on it, going into two ADATs and a Mackie board. During the summer, I would have to wait until the big air conditioner in the house would shut off because it was making so much noise I couldn't lay down guitar tracks. I used to sneak upstairs and turn the thermostat up. I would get a good hour of recording. [Laughs] Then my mom would scream, 'Who brought the thermostat up to 90?'
"Making the artwork. I did that myself on a little Windows — I don't think it was a Windows '95 computer yet. It might have been a PC with Windows 3.1. I had CorelDRAW 4.0. To draw that main character of the artwork, which was a bumblefoot, whatever the hell that is — it's a half bee, half foot. It looks like a human foot with stripes and wings and a stinger flying overhead of these burning buildings, dogs puking and the ground opening up. I sat in the chair next to the computer with my foot facing me, holding it down, while I would connect the dots with the line. I'd fill the lines with a gradient of colors. It took two weeks to do that. When it was finally done, I sent a JPG of it to the label. This is an AOL 2.0 phone modem. It took 14 hours. I had to do it overnight. After every few hours, you'd hear, 'Goodbye!' Disconnected! I'd try again. It took 14 hours to get a 1.7 MB file to the label."
Blabbermouth: And now it takes two seconds to do something like that.
Ron: "There was that. For the recording, I went to Radio Shack to buy a button to step on to punch in and punch out. When I was recording, I found out it had a little bit of a lag. It would be half a second before I stepped down and started recording. I had to get the timing right of when to hit the button and start playing exactly at the right moment to not cut anything off or come in too late. There were so many little things that it felt like everything was held together with tape and Elmer's glue to make it work. But, we always found a way."
Blabbermouth: You can apply this to both of your solo records, but it was the "kitchen sink" approach. You were trying everything musically, even a song like "Q Fever", which is like a Frank Zappa funk song.
Ron: "Oh yeah. There's definitely a Zappa thing there, especially with the vocals. [Hums melody line.] That was a fun one."
Blabbermouth: Even if you think about where you fit on the label in the mid-1990s, you weren't the usual shred guy that Varney had.
Ron: "There were a lot of neo-classical virtuosos and a lot of fusion virtuosos. Then me playing all this weird shit out of left field. [Laughs] It was definitely something different for the label. It was not their usual thing."
Blabbermouth: Maybe that's the beauty of it.
Ron: "You gotta be you. That's the whole thing, for better or worse. You have to be genuine and I'm a weird dude."
Blabbermouth: Is it fair to say that "The Return Of Bumblefoot" is your "pandemic album"?
Ron: "It's been ten years since the last Bumblefoot album. Since then, I've been busy doing other stuff. Three ART OF ANARCHY albums. Really, three SONS OF APOLLO albums and the WHOM GODS DESTROY record. I've been producing a bunch of bands and touring all over the damn place. I've been really busy. When the pandemic hit, I was given the gift of time. All the things you had in the back of your head, suddenly, there's time to do it. I finished up an instrumental song, 'Planetary Lockdown' and threw it out. A really fun thing I did with that song was I made a video where I played the main riff. Then, I left the verse section open. I removed all of the noodling over it. I left the backing track and put it online and told everyone, 'Download it. Put your solos over it and I'll share it.' We got 500 people doing that. It was great during that time when everybody was isolated. It's almost like a communal thing. There were drummers, bass players, keyboardists and guitarists. [WHOM GODS DESTROY vocalist] Dino Jelusick, he wrote vocals and sang on it. Horn players, violinists…so many different types of people threw stuff down. Everyone would check out everyone else's stuff. That even led to other connections. It's like, 'Hey, it's that guy who did that one. I'm going to be doing the thing with him.' It was a nice way to stay connected and keep everyone connected in the music and guitar world.
"I did two acoustic EPs. When I was working with Derek Sherinian, we started writing music. I thought it would be the third SONS OF APOLLO album, but that was not in the cards. WHOM GODS DESTROY happened. During all that, I was like, 'The last two things I put out, besides the acoustic EPs, were instrumental singles that were digital things. I'm getting the itch. Let's do another album.' I started writing songs. Normally, when I'm writing songs, I don't have a guitar in my hand, or I'm not in the studio. I'm driving somewhere or watching TV, then something hits me and I hum a melody into my phone, 'Song idea 3,497.' There's a hundred of those I forget about. I went back and started looking at those and thinking about anything unfinished that was lurking in the back of my head.
"There was a song from 1989. Not a song but a riff. It's a riff I came up with when I was 19 years old. In 1989, I was in 'Guitar Player' magazine. I had a write-up in there. It may have had an address in there. I got a handwritten letter from England. I opened it up and was like, 'Hello, my name is Guthrie [Govan]. I'm a guitar player in the U.K. I want you to check out my demo.' He sent me a cassette. I was like, 'This is so cool.' We became pen pals. We would write each other letters and send cassettes of demos with weird little riffs we were doing in 1989 before we could email or anything. We would get a cassette and an envelope and put a bunch of stamps on them. We were pen pals. When I was putting that song together and had the middle section, that was the first thing I had in mind for the album. It was like, 'I'm going to make an album.' I took that riff and built it into a song. I pictured a trade-off section in the middle. I was like, 'You know, from 1989, that's when Guthrie and I connected. I should ask him.' I had played on his song, 'Rhode Island Shred' when he did his 'Erotic Cakes' album. I did the fretless solo in the middle and some harmonies. I asked, 'Do you want to trade off on this?' He was like, 'Yeah!' That was the first thing.
"From there, I kept writing. The thing with the guests, I got some cool guests on this thing. I didn't want it to be a whole variety show. I really didn't want to have that many guests or any at all, but there were certain songs where I would write something and it would come together and reach the finish line to where I could hear what it sounded like and feel the vibe, suddenly, I'd go, 'This song needs that person to complete it and make it right. I can't put the cherry on top. I don't have that, but that person does.' Like the song 'Monstruoso'. I'm thinking of old '60s and '70s monster movies. All the old 'Godzilla' movies are the reason why I named it 'Monstruoso'. I needed, when it slams back in, somebody who could play not like a human being, someone who could play like an alien. To me, there's one person who does that best. I asked Steve [Vai], 'Can you throw down on this?' He was like, 'Yeah!' He did it and I still can't figure out what the fuck he did. I transcribed the whole album once it was done. The guitar tracks and bass tracks — any string that moved. I wrote it out. The notation, the direction of the picking or any instructions, like, 'Put your elbow here and put your head down.' I was able to transcribe everything but Steve's solos. I could not figure it out. I asked everyone: 'Does this look right?' I asked him, 'What did you do?' He said, 'I think I started by playing a D chord and strumming down but making harmonics while I strummed while using a harmonizer. Then I had this switch that would raise everything a fifth higher.' I spent weeks with gear trying to figure out what he did — slowing the recording of his solo down to just nothing so I could hear an open string ringing out and hear if there was a harmony on it. Anything to figure out what the hell he did. That was the toughest thing about this album."
Blabbermouth: Do you recall the name of the documentary that inspired the blues song, "Moonshine Hootenanny"?
Ron: "I don't remember what it was. It was something on TV, like the old blues players. Lonnie Johnson pops on and I didn't know a lot about his stuff. He was playing this riff. Immediately, I got this feeling in my gut that lifts up. I was like, 'I like that!' I had to grab my guitar and go to the fretless neck. I needed to take that feeling and let it out. Then I thought of 'Raising Arizona'. It needed a voice. [Hums melody] The whole song was built from there."
Blabbermouth: How are you dividing your time these days between the solo stuff, ART OF ANARCHY and WHOM GODS DESTROY? Do you prioritize anything here?
Ron: "They are all priorities. I'm doing it all, day and night, just multi-tasking everything. I'm doing a lot of mixing people's albums and doing guest solos. I was busier in 2020, sitting in this chair, than with all the touring I was doing before."
Blabbermouth: We touched on this when talking about your first solo record, but how important has it been to never really pitch your tent in one spot? Is that what has kept your career going?
Ron: "When I'm in a band and I'm one piece of the pie and I'm contributing a specific thing and the band has an overall sound, it's about staying in one lane. When it comes to my own music, I think of it as a photo album. Every song is a series of photos that you've taken during different moments during the summer. It's that kind of thing. Each one is different. It's always you, but different experiences you had. In one sense, you're showing a visual and, in my case, it's audio. I'm not staying in one place. I'm not taking the same picture all the time. I want to show every side of myself. I want to give every side of myself. I'm never going to say, 'I can't do that. That's not my sound.' Or, 'I'm not going to do this kind of song. It's not what people expect.' I'm going to give every single part of myself that I can give, whatever it is, for better or worse. That's what I have to do to feel authentic, genuine, legit and to be fun."
Blabbermouth: You've had ART OF ANARCHY going for a few years and WHOM GODS DESTROY just came out in 2024. What's your experience with starting new groups at this stage in your career?
Ron: "I find that the main thing is that as long as everyone is committed and by committed, it doesn't mean they have to stop everything else they're doing; it means they have to be honest. If everyone is honest about their level of commitment and no one is being an absolute jerk or destructive, then it's going to be fine. But what are the odds of getting five musicians who are all functional team players and have no mental or health issues who are all willing? It's a tough thing. The older you get, the more life gets in the way. Now, it's one thing when everyone is in their 20s. You can devote more time. You can say, 'I'm going to take off work for two weeks and live in the van and do shows and sleep in fans' living rooms.' It starts in the 40s and once you're hitting your 50s and 60s, it's like, 'I've already lived my life and I don't want to be doing that with it necessarily.' Just priorities change and situations change. Everything changes. Some people can do it. God bless them. Suppose they can do it because they want to do it and not because they have to do it. That's the hard thing.
"For me, I always loved the studio. It was always my favorite thing. Producing bands has been my favorite thing. Teaching has been right behind it as my second favorite thing. To be completely honest, it's not that I hate it, but my least favorite thing is being onstage. Like if you were going to take everything a musician does, whether it's making music for a horror movie or teaching kids their first chord or whatever it is, being onstage is actually at the bottom of the list for me. The other stuff, I feel like…how do you explain it? I feel like I'm more comfortable as a coach than on the field. That's my place in humanity. I feel like I serve humanity best by doing that. The older I get, the more I feel it is pulling at me, saying, 'Before your time runs out, you need to be putting your time into the reason you were put here.' I'm doing a lot more producing and tons of Rock And Roll Fantasy Camps. I do my own camps. To me, I get so much more out of seeing a student that goes on to do something where I helped them even a little bit in their journey, so much more than playing on the biggest stage."