S5: E11: Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal (Guns & Roses, Asia, Art of Anarchy, Sons of Apollo, Whom Gods Destroy) - Tremolos & Thimbles - PART 2

Speaker 1: 0:46

This is Backstage Pass Radio, the podcast that's designed for the music junkie with a thirst for musical knowledge. Hi, this is Adam Gordon, and I want to thank you all for joining us today. Make sure you like, subscribe and turn alerts on for this and all upcoming podcasts. And now here's your host of Backstage Pass Radio, randy Halsey.

Speaker 2: 1:15

And we're back. Hello again, it's Tuesday. Well, thank you for doing this again.

Speaker 3: 1:21

Oh man.

Speaker 2: 1:22

Yesterday I was buttoned up down here, so let me do that. Try and make it look the same like.

Speaker 3: 1:28

Oh, good man. Well, I know we've talked a lot about the music, ron, along with all the things that you have going on. I know that you work producing as well and I was curious if this is a service that you do for just anyone or are you very selective with, I guess, the musicians that you onboard to work with? Talk a little bit about your production and your producing aspect of your career.

Speaker 2: 1:56

I am definitely selective. They have to. I gotta like them, I gotta think they're good, I have to think there's potential and I also have to think that there's some purpose. I can serve to help them, and that's what I do, yes.

Speaker 3: 2:14

I would think that that would make sense. If you know, I'm sure everyone would love to work with you and you know someone of the caliber of yourself and I think that gets really noisy where you have probably hundreds and hundreds of people that say help me with this, do that, do that, and it's all this ankle-biting stuff and you have to have a passion about who you're working with, right to put your whole heart into it and to make them sound the best you can. So I totally understand the mindset there that you have. Yeah, well, there's a current project that you are working with and it's a band called the Dodies. Tell us a little bit about this project.

Speaker 2: 2:55

The Dodies, one of my favorite bands in the whole world. They are so good, surprisingly just. Ah, where do I begin? Okay, they're a duo, kind of garage rock. They sound sort of like a mix of we saw on the surface Nirvana and Radiohead and the young guys, but they have a 90s inspiration. Definitely they have that musicality from that era, that grungy time.

Speaker 2: 3:22

Okay, the singer has the widest, most dimensional voice of any singer I've ever worked with. So many sounds come out of his throat, just the dynamics and the way he sings is phenomenal in the range and the lyrics are so personal and deep and touching and the melodies that he comes up with are things you would never think of and they work so well and they surprise you. So he sings, plays guitar, gets very atmospheric and they're into kind of noise and just you just gotta hear them. The drummer now. But the drummer. He plays a full drum set with just one arm, plays everything with one arm, while singing back in vocals and with his free left hand he's playing the bass on a synth and every once in a while he keeps a drumstick on the synth and every once in a while he'll grab it and then play like this. And when he does that, the guitar player kicks on an octave pedal that's running to a bass amp, so it's like they're taking turns being a different type of bassist in the songs and they have such a big sound for two dudes and it's just phenomenal musicality. It's just such beautiful stuff and every on is just better and better.

Speaker 2: 4:45

So I started working with them in 2018. An old manager, the old manager of Art of Anarchy he was friends with the studio they were recording in where they were doing this demo out in Texas, and he hit me up. He said you should meet these guys, you should produce them. And I listened to some of their stuff online and I said I don't think there's anything I can add. Like they're good as it is, like there's nothing that I think I can really do to greatly move them forward. They're already on the path. And he said trust me, something will click. And met with them and we hit it off well and it worked. I found there were things that I was able to contribute and just help them be the best version of themselves, which is my goal.

Speaker 2: 5:34

There are a lot of producers that try to be an artist in their producing, where they start to make it a little bit about their sound. I try to do the opposite. I try to be completely invisible and just enhance the band and make it where their best foot is forward. You get the best version of them, the strongest identifying things about them, and that's what I like to do. I like to be unseen, unheard and unnoticed, where what I'm doing is just making the band shine. And it's very easy to do with the Doty's. Well, I would think that In recording at a friend's studio in the northern tip of Ireland in this beautiful, serene spot a studio, wild water studios and an old friend of mine, owen Johnston, that's super talented as a musician and an engineer and becoming a great producer as well, so it's a great meeting place.

Speaker 2: 6:33

Because this band lives in the Middle East, I live in New Jersey, so we meet up in Ireland, we live there for three weeks and just have this great life experience in such a beautiful environment with just the greatest people on earth. So we did that for the second album in 2021 and now we just did it this past July in 2023, and they even did a couple of shows. They did half a dozen shows while they were out there, which was a lot for the time we were there for them to record and then go do a show and record the next day and do a show and to mix that in. It was a lot. But they are pros and the way they work is not one of these things. I know I won't shut up.

Speaker 3: 7:19

No, you're good, I love it. I love it.

Speaker 2: 7:21

I love hearing about no click track, no auto tuning, none of that stuff. They just look at each other and play, and the first or second take is the one of everything Vocals, music, everything. They just have their shit down.

Speaker 3: 7:38

Well, you talked about the vocalist having all these dynamic things that happen with the voice. Do you think that that is something that guys like that work on to get good at? Or do you think they're born with those things and they just exploit them out of nowhere? Or do you think it's kind of a it could be a hybrid of the two? What are your thoughts around that?

Speaker 2: 8:02

I think there are certain singers that express themselves emotionally and then add the words to match the emotion, where there are other singers that treat it more like a musical instrument and almost like coordinates, like here's the note, here's the word, boom. Here's the note, here's the word, here's the note, here's the word. And they treat it more like it's an instrument. But the greats when you listen to Robert Plant, when you listen to Stephen Tyler, janice Joplin, people like that, that just poured out emotional sounds. Sometimes it wasn't even words. They were just crying out what they felt, of course, whether it was loud or whatever it was. And Yoni, the singer of the Doty's, does that.

Speaker 3: 8:48

Well, it made me think of, you know all of the, I guess, the dynamic of playing a drum with one hand and doing something with the other. I mean, the first person that kind of comes to mind was, you know, getty Lee, how he would play the synthesizer and the bass and then even have Bass pedals on the floor too. So he was working every, every limb that he had to make. Just, you know, make that sound as big and as Plosive as as possible, right?

Speaker 2: 9:17

He was doing three jobs at once, it's amazing.

Speaker 3: 9:19

It's a good way to save money, though, right, right, you do it all yourself. Well, I think there's some videos the listeners can check out for the Dodies as a well. Are you able to point us out to where we would find those videos? I'm guessing a YouTube channel of theirs, or yes, okay, anywhere.

Speaker 2: 9:40

Just Look for the Dodies band, whether it's the Dodies band, comm, or on Instagram and tiktok and Facebook, the Dodies band. Or on YouTube the Dodies band. T H E D O D I E S B A N D.

Speaker 3: 10:00

The.

Speaker 2: 10:00

Dodies the spelling bee in my. There you go.

Speaker 3: 10:03

There you go, you did it. The Dodies band you did it Well. We'll speak in of producing and taking people under your wing. You're also working with Sierra LeVe, correct? Tell the tell the listeners. A little bit about Sierra.

Speaker 2: 10:18

So talented. I mean it just began as she was a child and she just had that natural thing as a singer musician and she started doing theater and she was Annie in Annie, like where she lives, and and Really good stuff. And then she started getting into rock and as she grew up and when she was 15, I started giving her guitar lessons. She's 18 now and since that time, besides just being an incredible, you know, just all-around musician, I mean she's just grown so much and she's doing such great things so she can sing heart songs like crazy on you, like it's nothing Ranging all just I mean she's incredible voice she has and she can even play the intro to crazy on you the guitar. The acoustic thing nailed it down. There's a video of her on her YouTube page doing it when she was just 15, when we just started working together. I mean she's incredible.

Speaker 2: 11:27

So she's been writing her own songs and she, besides writing everything, I helped her I guess you said I guided her in setting up a home studio and she has one and she plays drums, she plays bass, she plays piano and the other keys, she sings, she plays guitar, records everything herself, and then I help her mix it and she just released her first single. Finally, because she has like 20 songs done that are just better and better and the song is called get off my stage and the way the song came about was about a year ago when machine gun Kelly Switched from rap to rock and he started dissing all these rock people like you know, people she was a fan of sure and it really it pissed her off. She's like you know I can't say that about these people, my heroes. So she decided to write a diss song, just really giving it to machine gun Kelly, and she wrote a rock diss song. That just and it's all in fun, I guess not, of course, you know evil or hateful, but it's funny, it makes you laugh. So she put that out September 1st as a very first single that she debuted and that song in Canada where she lives she lives in Ontario. There are 10 stations in Canada that are playing that song now and that's unheard of over there to have an unsigned, completely independent artist to be on all these FM stations, of course.

Speaker 2: 13:02

And she's been taking Berkeley College courses in music business and she does all her own marketing and and all the paperwork and everything that a label does, like she's. She's just amazing whatever she does in the music business. So really just in life, she's going to excel at it because she's one of those people that has the work ethic, she has the character, she has the heart, she has the head. She's just phenomenal. So I really I believe in her so much. So, her and the dodeys of the two that I would stick my neck on the chopping block for and say yes, these two isn't an amazing how, how good the young, the youth, can get these days.

Speaker 3: 13:44

You know back when you and I were coming up, when you wanted to learn A new song on the guitar of the piano, you popped in a cassette and you hit rewind, play, rewind, play, rewind, play needle. You drop a needle.

Speaker 2: 13:57

You three seconds of wherever dropped, absolutely remember it and then one to your guitar and figure out what those notes are, and then do it again and it was an all-day thing to learn songs.

Speaker 3: 14:06

It was, and there was no tablature, there was no YouTube videos, how to, right and there, and everybody's you know, and they're learning at an alarming rate. So you, you see nine and ten and twelve-year-old kids playing Pianos and guitars and they're just seasoned beyond their years. It's, it's, it's inspiring, but it pisses you off, all at the same time, right, if that's even possible. Right, you get inspired and mad all at the same time because they're just so good, right?

Speaker 2: 14:45

I'm happy for them. They have everything we only could have dreamed of, I agree, and Everything in so many ways. Besides having all these tools to help them learn and help them get down Whatever it is they want to do, also the tools to release music themselves. There's no gatekeepers that are stopping right. I mean, anyone can make everything available to the entire world now. Yes, they are so lucky.

Speaker 3: 15:10

Well, back in the day, if you didn't get signed I mean you what did you do? You didn't do anything. You just kind of run around and played some shows. But now, with all of the cool recording technologies that you can get in your house, no, it's, it's not a hideout, or no, it's not a, you know, an abbey road by any stretch. But you can do really good stuff in a home studio, as you well know.

Speaker 2: 15:35

And for sure. I mean what it in a way now, it's not about the gear, it's about your own talent, of course. It's almost like everyone's got the same size gun now. That's how good, do you?

Speaker 3: 15:44

shoot, exactly that is exactly it. Well, backing up real quick, I wanted to go back to the music, your music, for just a minute. You have a solo record coming out sometime in the very near future. Let's talk a little bit about that, or is it already out?

Speaker 2: 16:03

It is not out. I wanted it out two years ago and it's just such a slow Process. The album is done Musically, it's done, it's, it's ready to go and now it's all the other things that I want to prepare for when I release it. So my very first album was called the Adventures of Bumblefoot. Back in 1995 it came out on Trapno Records, the old guitar label, and it was an all instrumental album.

Speaker 2: 16:30

And I haven't done an all instrumental album since I Put out songs here and there and mix them in with other vocal albums I've done so. I decided I would just Put a piece of tape over my mouth and and just do all instrumental. Because what usually happens is I get an idea For a guitar song, had this nice melody, and then I'm like I gotta sing that, I gotta sing it, and then there's nothing pretty for me to play and all I could do on for my solos is all the, because I'm singing all the pretty stuff, of course, but now all instrumental, not singing. And it's pretty widespread, diverse album. It covers a lot of ground, it's not just one direction of songs, it's 16 songs. Some of them are more like little interludes to other songs. Is a couple of great guests not too many, just three or four and they're just phenomenal and just people that I admire and respect that I'm so grateful to have them on the record.

Speaker 2: 17:36

Most of the album was done with Kyle Hughes on drums, all except for one song, and he is the greatest drummer in this. Young dude that I met out in England when I was doing shows out. There was doing a solo show and his band opened and they also offered to be my backing band for that show and the drummer was just a star. As soon as I saw it was like this guy could play anything. He's got backing vocals, he's a showman and he's just a really cool kid. He's not a kid anymore. That was eight years ago, of course. Now he's a fine, upstanding young man and he's doing great things and he's still my go-to guy when I need drums. He's the guy, yeah well the first, Kyle Hughes.

Speaker 3: 18:22

Okay, and so first solo effort since 95. Why so long? It? Was it that you were focusing on other projects like why was there a Such a large gap between solo efforts?

Speaker 2: 18:38

Well between Instrumentals okay, okay because fairer.

Speaker 2: 18:42

Two years later I put out an album on that label called hermit and I sang Yep I don't think there were any instrumentals really. And then after that, a year later, I put out an album called Hands, and then a year later I put out an album called Uncool, which I ended up kind of restructuring it was through this French label and it wasn't my exact vision. As time went on and in 2001, I had an album that was sort of half instrumental, half vocal, which the album was going to be called Guitar Suck, and after the terrorist attacks I changed the name of it to 9-11 and I donated 100% of proceeds of that album to the American Red Cross. That was that one. Then, 2002, the American version what I consider the real version of Uncool came out 2003. I took all the music that didn't make it onto the other albums because they weren't finished or they just didn't fit, and made an album that was just a collection of unreleased music from the early 90s until then. Then in 2004, I put out a live DVD from this sort of clinic thing that I did. So it's full of funny stories and a lot of playing and a little bit of how to see from there.

Speaker 2: 20:09

Then in 2005, I put out an album called Normal, and then in 2006, I joined a certain band which kept me busy on the road for a lot of the time. As soon as we got off the road in 2007, I started recording the next album that came out in 2008, called Abnormal, which certainly fit at that point, and let's see. Then, 2009, I started putting another band together, which didn't work out the singer. So then there was 2010 to 2011,. A whole bunch of touring, and during 2011, what I did is every month for the first nine months of the year, I would put out a single, and with the single, besides putting it out digitally, I would have two things you can get. There was a player pack where it had a transcription of the main guitar part all written out, and special mixes where it was boosted and when that guitar wasn't there, so that you could play along and play it. So one is like a louder reference. And then one was just the minus one version. And then there was what I called the producer pack, where I gave stems of the song. So you got a wave file of drums, bass, first guitar, second guitar, vocals, backing vocals, everything so that you can make your own mixes. So what people would do is they would make one where maybe they played drums to it instead, or where they sang. So it was pretty ahead of the curve to be doing that a dozen years ago. I mean, that's what I was doing, so that was 2011. I put out nine songs.

Speaker 2: 21:59

I also produced two different artists that came out following year, in 2012, where I was again on tour for a good year, and then I was getting busy with Art of Anarchy, getting that together, and I put out in 2015 an album called Little Brother is Watching, which I still feel is the best thing I've ever put out. I'm just I think it's just everything like if I had to end there, I would have been fine. And also Art of Anarchy came out and then Sons of Apollo started and put out Art of Anarchy's second album and Sons of Apollo's first album and in between, just doing so much more touring throughout all that time, like really starting in 2013 through 2019, it was nonstop solo touring. I was doing in between like every free moment of being in the studio, which was a lot less, and working with these bands, because now I had two bands I was working with Art of Anarchy, sons of Apollo.

Speaker 2: 23:04

So 2018 was all a bunch of touring 2019, writing the second Sons of Apollo album and going out with Asia and doing tons of solo touring. And then 2020 hit and when I was home, the first thing I did is I put out two acoustic albums, which I failed to even mention. Also, in 2008, I put out an acoustic EP so this was. It was called Barefoot and then in 2020 I put out Barefoot 2 and Barefoot 3 and started writing stuff with Derrick and started writing. We started recording and making Art of Anarchy's third album and I also spent a lot of time mixing and producing other artists and in that time we put out in 2020 the Doty's first album, in 2022 the second one and next year will be the third. So it has really been nonstop making music and putting out music. It just became more of a stretch to put out my own Bumblefoot albums.

Speaker 3: 24:14

Well, it seems like a full time job for you just remembering all of those dates. How in God's green earth do you remember?

Speaker 2: 24:23

I can't remember what I had for breakfast.

Speaker 3: 24:25

Do you have a chart hanging up on the wall like a yearly timeline and you study this thing or what? Like I don't remember. Like you said, I don't remember what I ate for lunch yesterday, let alone like what I was doing in 2008.

Speaker 2: 24:38

Like, I have no idea. Every single one of those things was very meaningful and it was something important to me, so you don't forget that stuff.

Speaker 3: 24:46

Yeah Well, I wanted to let me throw you a curveball real quick and we'll bounce from music and talk about a little invention that you came up with that can spice up just about any meal, right, and talk to the listeners about what I'm talking about here.

Speaker 2: 25:05

Hot sauce, hot sauce, hot sauce. I mean in Texas, you know about hot sauce.

Speaker 3: 25:10

Yes, we do.

Speaker 2: 25:11

So, yeah, I've always dug that fire, that kick, and it started when I was about 12 years old my older cousin, steve. He'd bet me $5. I wouldn't need a hot chili pepper and I ate it and I liked it. And since then, every time I would make a turkey sandwich, you got the rye bread, you got the spicy brown mustard, you got the pastrami and maybe some Swiss cheese, and then I would line it with lots of hot peppers. I remember just take them with my fingernail and just open them up and stretch them out and spread them out and just, yeah, I was fortunate to cross paths with a company called K-Jongs.

Speaker 2: 25:52

They were based out of Ohio and they took me on as a kind of like making an artist line and I worked with them. I had the ideas, but they were the ones that made it really happen. They're the ones that turned it into bottles of sauce. It was a collaboration, but they deserve credit here. It's not like I invented these things from scratch and made it all happen and I couldn't have done it without them.

Speaker 2: 26:20

They took my wacky ideas and we were in the kitchen and with them it was like, you know, when we cook down the blueberries, they just don't pop. Why don't we try sour cherry? That made it work Things like that. They guided me, their expertise and I still have a ton of ideas that I need to get out and make sauces out of, but I was with them, rolled them out in 2013, a line of six sauces and some of them even won awards at big food festivals. There's one in Dallas called Zest Fest that won two first place awards for the sauces. So, yeah, it kept that going. And then in 2019, k-john sold the company. I no longer had my manufacturer, distributor, everything, folks so I put the pieces together myself, created Bumblefoot.

Speaker 1: 27:08

Foods.

Speaker 2: 27:09

LLC and got manufacturer down in Florida and got the label company to print them up, and got a distributor in North Carolina and got resellers in Germany and Australia, in Norway and all of them. And there you go.

Speaker 3: 27:27

So you've kind of made this a global thing then, oh, yeah, yeah, wow, I feel like I've neglected it.

Speaker 2: 27:35

With all these bands, all this music stuff. I really need to get some more sauces out. For sure, I did make for Shiprock Music Cruises their official Shiprock sauce called Scully. That's their mascot, scully.

Speaker 3: 27:47

So Scully sauce, it's quite delicious.

Speaker 2: 27:50

It's got a nice fruity flavor with a kick, and it's a good one. It's real nice.

Speaker 3: 27:57

I was doing some a little reading the other day and I saw one called the sauce, and then you had one called Bumbleicious, and then I loved the one that was called Bumblefoot. Let's talk about Bumblefoot, okay.

Speaker 2: 28:13

Out of those six sauces, I took the three that people liked the most. So the first one, the sauce. It is an all-purpose red sauce that goes with everything. It's more complex than your typical just vinegar, vinegar, peppers and boom, it has a lot of Mediterranean herbs in it. Goes great with Italian food, goes with, of course, mexican food, indian food, thai food, chinese food, you name it. It goes with it. Something that'll work on your morning eggs, something, if you're crazy, you'll stick it on vanilla ice cream at night with some bacon for you psychos out there like me. And then the next sauce bumble-licious, it has cherries, it has bourbon, it has chipotle, it's a barbecue type of hot sauce. Okay, and both of these sauces are pretty mild. It's just a ton of flavor, and I have seen people actually drink this one like they liked it. They were just drinking, yeah. And then both of those sauces, when I rolled them out back again in 2020 and in Zestfest in Dallas, they both won again first place awards in their category. Yes, good stuff, but the hottest one now.

Speaker 2: 29:28

This sauce is so hot it never should have been made. It's like when Einstein talks about splitting the atom like you shouldn't have gone with it where you did. Well, this is that sauce. It never should be consumed by human beings or anyone. Don't even look at it, just pretend it doesn't exist. One pinhead dot of it on your tongue will light you on fire for a good 10 to 15 minutes. And I don't mean just your mouth, I mean everywhere, serious chemistry and the folks at Hot Ones. You know the YouTube series Hot Ones sure? They did a blog years ago where they said that this sauce bumble fucked is the third hottest sauce in the world now coming from them. That's a serious endorsement. Yeah, if you put one drop of this stuff in an entire plate of food, or even a bowl of chili, it'll raise it from mild to super hot.

Speaker 3: 30:29

It is that potent yes, do you do you? Do you realize, while I'm thinking about this, do you realize? So my podcast is now heard in, I think, 73 countries. Okay, do you realize how many knuckleheads are gonna run out and buy bumble fucked just because you said if you take drop of this, this is correct. This is genius marketing, ron. You realize that you're a genius marketer of this product, right?

Speaker 2: 30:58

if you want to test what the human body with a human digestive system can endure, go get some head to tail. You will taste this. And everyone has the same reaction. As soon as they, as soon as it touches their mouth, it feels like you just got hit with a novocaine and you're at the dentist. Your gums, your lips, your tongue are numb and I go okay. And then you count to 10 and at exactly 10 seconds, perfectly timed, it's like someone opened an oven door and shoved your head in it. Just the heat is like. And now do you feel this heat from wherever within rise up in the back of your throat and it's slowly that he just worse this way down to your stomach. Now, from here up you're just burning internally and everyone's doing this penguin walk with his stiff arms and they're just going like everything like that and the sweating noses running. They're just all screwed up. And then they turn to me and they say I just got bumble fucked and yeah so you didn't even have to come up with the name yourself.

Speaker 3: 32:14

The people that were eating this came up with.

Speaker 2: 32:17

Here's what's good with this trio of sauces, you have one that's so insanely hot that is just something you get for someone you hate as a gift. And then you have these two sauces that are mild. They're delicious. So what's in between is like you're going from mild to super hot. When you get the medium, well, you can take the bumble fucked and add it to the others to give them a kick from mild to medium. Sure, I mean just a very small kick, so you can use it like in a heat additive to the mild sauces if you want to bump them up a bit. So they really work well together. This trio of terror, these sauces, this trilogy of doom what is a an ingredient?

Speaker 3: 33:01

and you can plead the fifth on this question. But what is a one ingredient? Or it could be a combination of ingredients that make things that hot capsaicin it is a molecule that really confuses the body, really.

Speaker 2: 33:18

Huh, yes, that molecule, and it's measured on a Scoville rating, scoville units, where zero is you know some water 16 million, is that pure molecule, just like crystallized stuff. Yeah, so to get a sense, you know, a sweet bell pepper is nothing. I mean, I don't think there's any rating. I should be googling this. If anything, maybe 300 to 500. Okay, it might be, let me do.

Speaker 2: 33:51

Scoville, repeat the molecule again, ron capsaicin, which is used for not just for food heat, but it's also pain remedy. It's used for that as a painkiller. Okay, let's see, let's find a good chart okay.

Speaker 3: 34:09

I learned something new today okay, bell pepper, zero.

Speaker 2: 34:12

Yeah, let's say you wanted to jump up to a jalapeno, that is 2,500 at its hottest, maybe 8,000. Okay, from there you go to a serrano 6,000 to 23,000. Tabasco, 30 to 50,000. Cayenne, 30 to 50. Thai peppers, 50 to 100,000. Scotch bonnets, 100 to 350,000. Habaneros, around the same, around 100,000 to 350,000, and you can keep going. You get a rinse of vina which gets up to a half a mil. You get ghost peppers which get up to a million. Trinidad scorpion peppers which can get up to 2 million.

Speaker 2: 34:53

The Carolina Reaper, which until recently was the world record hottest pepper, invented by a good friend of mine and Ed curry, with a name like Kari, which is born to create a hot Carolina Reaper okay, 1.4 to 2.2. But now pepper X. Pepper X is the world's hottest pepper. World's hottest pepper, yeah, and I remember tasting it years ago, before it even had a name, when Ed just had created it. And when you just take a sliver of this pep like, as soon as your teeth touch the outside of this pepper and start to break the skin, it feels like you're biting into a piece of hot cavicana. It's like the same reaction. It's incredible. This thing is amazing.

Speaker 2: 35:47

And if you go on my YouTube channel, bumblefoot YouTube channel, and scroll down a bit, you'll see one where my wife and I try the one chip challenge from Pahki who make those amazing delicious chips. I love their, their ghost pepper chips, but all of them are fantastic. In fact, they are Texas company and they are great. They do the one chip challenge where it's just one chip covered in Carolina Reaper pepper dust.

Speaker 3: 36:19

Okay.

Speaker 2: 36:20

And this thing killed me. My wife, on the other hand, is a cyborg and she can eat it. It's like, yeah, yeah, it's hot and I'm like I'm dying, my face is melting. So that's on there. And then, two years ago, there was another challenge called the dual the chip dual challenge, where two people have to each eat a chip, and this one was covered in pepper X dust. I just tried a piece of the chip and I was called up in a ball on the floor dying, and Yoni, the singer of the dodeys, ate the rest of that chip and he was in the corner vomiting. His body just rejected it. It's like this is not happening and my wife ate it, and she's like, yeah, it's hot, I feel the heat, yeah.

Speaker 2: 37:09

She's a weird woman, isn't she Cyborg? Women can tolerate heat way more than men. If you go to all of the hot contests, the hyper eating contests, usually at the very top, women are there. They have the strength of a thousand men.

Speaker 3: 37:30

Is it really that enjoyable when it gets that hot, though In a sick twisted way? Yeah, of course. Yeah, if you like, pain, right, it's kind of like what you just shock.

Speaker 2: 37:39

your system is like I'm alive and your brain is reacting and trying to put out the fire and just drowning you in dolphins and serotonin and just adrenaline. You get a bit of a high off it. But I would go to chili cook all like contests and all these things and pepper hot, spicy food conventions by the end of the day. I'm just floating just from all day just trying different hot sauces and different things to slow you throughout the day. After eight hours of that you're just wow. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 38:19

It gives you this natural kind of high, yeah, and growing up like, were you a kid that liked to be in the kitchen? Were you kind of a cook kind of kid, or not? Not so much.

Speaker 2: 38:32

I love being in the kitchen not to cook.

Speaker 3: 38:35

To eat. I like to eat. Well, we all like that. That's the thing.

Speaker 2: 38:39

I'm not a. I'm not great at it. I don't consider myself great at cooking Fair enough but I am fantastic at eating. I really got it down to, you know, perfection. That's good, the whole eating thing.

Speaker 3: 38:51

Yeah, I don't know if the hot sauce thing stemmed from just the love of being. You know the culinary art, so to speak, right being in the kitchen cooking dishes and things like that.

Speaker 2: 39:04

Yeah, I've experimented, but there are definitely. There are pros, and I'm a professional eater.

Speaker 3: 39:12

I don't consider myself a professional cooker, well at least you know your role, you know your role.

Speaker 2: 39:18

I think there are people who do it way better, of course, yeah.

Speaker 3: 39:22

I think you're going to shift in gears. And one more time on you. What advice would you give to somebody just starting out wanting to learn the guitar? I'm sure you might have been asked that many times in the past, but it's always a curiosity of mine, for somebody that lives and breathes the guitar like you do, what your advice would be to somebody just starting out.

Speaker 2: 39:47

Enjoy it. It's a very it's an endless road and it just goes as long as you're on it and you never stop learning, you never stop creating and it's always there. It's your companion, it's your medication, it's when you're pissed off. You sit down and lose yourself and playing for a while and it brings you back to the good place. And it doesn't have to be your entire life, just let it be for you.

Speaker 1: 40:15

Sure.

Speaker 2: 40:16

It's whatever you want it to be. So enjoy it. Enjoy learning, enjoy everything you can do with it, enjoy learning new songs and people's styles and making your own songs and finding your own sound and style and all the different types of guitars and the sounds they have and the different amps and the effects and all the different sounds you can make from it. And then getting together with people and playing, whether you're playing to entertain them or you're making music with other musicians. Whatever it is, and just enjoy it.

Speaker 2: 40:50

You don't know what the future will be and where it will take you. If it's just something you do for yourself, that is totally fine. That is a success. If you do that, as long as you're doing what you want with it and you're happy and you're humble about being on that road and know that what you can learn and how much better you can get is infinite in front of you. You're always a beginner. You are always a humble beginner, no matter how long you've been doing this, because you're on an infinite road of what can be learned, of course. So enjoy the whole process. Enjoy that journey.

Speaker 3: 41:32

Let's do a summary real quick. Let's talk about, at a high level that's coming up musically for you, that the listeners can be on the lookout for Any tours, show dates that you want to mention. Let's take this time to mention the new music and any live shows, tours that you might have looming in the horizon.

Speaker 2: 41:55

Good, yes, well, in the first bit of next year, the first couple of months, the full Art of Atom will be out. There is other music in the pipeline that will be coming out. There's my solo music that will be coming out. The Dodies album will be coming out. The more singles from Sierra Levec Look up on Sierra Levec music. That's her handle on pretty much everything. S I, I'm going to go back to my spelling beast of S I E R R A Sierra Levec, I'm going to go to silent S L E V E S Q U E music. I don't need to spell that and yeah, so there's a lot of that. I will be doing the ship rock music cruise. There's this All Star Band kind of thing and since 2016, I've been doing that, so I'm looking forward to doing that again. When does a whole bunch of wonderful people jamming together?

Speaker 3: 43:00

When does that run? When does that come up? Do you remember the dates off the top of your head for ship rock February 4th to February 10th.

Speaker 2: 43:07

It's already sold out. The thing sells out fast, so hopefully you all can get on one in 2025. Oh my God, so far away. I was about to say 2024, but that is next year.

Speaker 3: 43:20

A couple of months away, you're flying by.

Speaker 2: 43:22

So then there will be shows. We will see what is possible for everything I'm involved with, and I hope to get out there and do some playing face to face with everybody next year.

Speaker 3: 43:38

Super, super. And how about from a merch perspective? Where can the listeners pick up Bumblefoot merchandise?

Speaker 2: 43:46

Ah, okay, I will be making changes with that. But there is a link on my site to a merch site where you have my stuff. Okay, you know the short links, bitly short links, bitly you go to bitly slash BBF like Bumblefoot BBF merch and I'm going to quickly check and make sure that link is still working.

Speaker 3: 44:19

And I think you can get to that. Just to add, on top of that run, I think you can get to that by way of Bumblefootcom. So if the listeners will just go out to wwwbumblefootcom, there is a, I think there's a store or a merch link at the top of the page and that will route them out there. Yeah, and personally I wanted to ask you real quick while I had you, I did a quick scroll of that. I saw a lot of CD stuff out there. What about from a vinyl perspective? Do you have vinyl out there? I'm a vinyl collector. Okay, great, I'll take a look at that and get you to sign some vinyl for me and we'll do something out there to support you. And then, of course, where can the listeners find you on social media? If they wanted to find all things Bumblefoot, where would they look?

Speaker 2: 45:09

Look up the word Bumblefoot and you will find me, whether it's on TikTok, whether it's on Instagram, facebook, twitter, bumblefootcom, anything Bumblefoot. You're going to find either a chicken's foot with a big wart in the middle, also rid of pododermatitis. That's the actual disease, bumblefoot, where that name came from or you're going to find me I'm not sure which one is worse to look at.

Speaker 3: 45:38

A wart or a disease.

Speaker 2: 45:40

So choose between a diseased foot and me.

Speaker 3: 45:43

I'm sure they'll pick you. I'm quite positive. Well, listen, man. This has been a super cool treat. Thanks for joining me yesterday and continuing today. I appreciate the time. It was awesome getting to spend some time with you and learning about the amazing guitar abilities and all of the other cool stuff that you have going on with producing and the hot sauce stuff. So congrats on all of the success there. And you know, for the listeners out there, go check out Bumblefootcom. There's a lot of information about music and tours and merch and all that, and you can find all things related to Ron Bumblefoot Thall there. I asked the listeners to like, share and subscribe to the podcast on Facebook at Backstage Pass Radio, instagram at Backstage Pass Radio, twitter at Backstage Pass PC and on the website at wwwBackstagePassRadiocom. You guys make sure to take care of yourselves and each other and we will see you right back here on the next episode of Backstage Pass Radio.

Speaker 1: 46:53

Thanks so much for joining us. We hope you enjoyed today's episode of Backstage Pass Radio. Make sure to follow Randy on Facebook and Instagram at RandyHulseyMusic, and on Twitter at RHulseyMusic. Also make sure to like, subscribe and turn on alerts for upcoming podcasts. If you enjoyed the podcast, make sure to share the link with a friend and tell them Backstage Pass Radio is the best show on the web for everything music. We'll see you next time right here on Backstage Pass Radio.