2011.04.19 - Nightrain Station - Video interview with Bumblefoot

Transcript:

Interviewer: Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal [talking in Polish]

Bumblefoot: How are you?

Interviewer: Fine, welcome to Polish Radio Channel 4. Thank you for video Invisible.

Bumblefoot: Yeah, no, know very cool. Thank you for playing it and I hope everybody -- hello out there -- in Poland... I'm in my living room in New Jersey, just kind of hanging out here, just doodling on the guitar and hanging out with all you [noodling on the guitar]

Interviewer: [translating to Polish].

Interviewer: So it is a new way of releasing music, I mean, one song at a time on the Internet, not the album. It's a way, nowadays.

Bumblefoot: Yeah, it's just a different way of doing things, I mean, it's becoming more popular where people are just... we have the technology to do it, we can just keep busting out songs and keep this constant simmer going where you always have music coming out, it's not like you put out a dozen songs, two years later another dozen, now you can just keep it going at a steady pace. And what I did is... well, should I stop talking and you translate?

Interviewer: Okay, I'd translate it in pieces. [translates]. Okay, please go.

Bumblefoot: What did I say?

Interviewer: About releasing single songs.

Bumblefoot: Ah, so, yeah, so what I did is I asked everybody on my forum, asked different people, said, "What do you want? How should I do this? What is good for you? Because it's about all of you, it's about how you are going to get the music, how you want the music." Uh, I got a lot of ideas and I found the best way to do it that would really give the people that follow what I do what they would like, is to put out the song in all the different in high res formats, to do a guitar transcription that has backing tracks so all the guitar players can play along with it and learn the song note for note, everything, and then I also put out all the the tracks themselves that you can get and load into your multitrack software so you can make your own mixes and do everything like that. So for every song instead of just taking a song and sticking it on iTunes you get all these different options that you can have but however you want the song. You can have a song, you can have instrumental to sing along with, you can have backing track so you could play guitar along with it, or you can load it all into your software and make your own mixes of it.

Interviewer: Okay [translate into Polish]. Okay, the previous material on the album Normal was like kind of punk rock mixed with shredding with very fast solos, now it's more hard rock-oriented. Why in such a different direction?

Bumblefoot: You know, I don't know what's going to come out when I'm making songs, when I'm doing this stuff, I just write songs and then the way it ends up, like the vibe it has in the end, is just whatever vibe I'm in at that time. I think among the last few years I've been more... I grew up on a lot of punk rock a lot of Ramones and a lot of Sex Pistols, things like that, and I think when I was doing Normal and Abnormal I was really in touch with all of that stuff. Uh, with this stuff though it just came out more middle, I don't know, it just came out very... and I don't know how it's gonna come out when I'm writing it, when I'm recording it, just at the end you look at it and you say, "All right, what kind of vibe does this have?" It came out just very, you know [heavy metal scream], very metal. So it's what it is, but, yeah, I didn't plan it, it just just happens the way it happens.

Interviewer: [translating into Polish]. Okay, so let's go back for a moment to your previous material. It's [?]and we'll come back to ask questions from your fans.

Bumblefoot: Great, excellent.

Interviewer: [talks in Polish] Okay, so questions from your fans from Night Train Station forum, first one is from [?]: Do you know any polish musicians or bands?

Bumblefoot: Who do I know? That's a good question.... Um, there's one guy wasn't in [?], uhm, well you know, I'm bad with names, that's the thing, like I can't remember anybody's names so, I mean, far as bands like I've known, I've played with a few, I've played... uhm, I played on this one guy's album, I can't remember anybody's names though, I can't remember anything. I can remember notes and I can remember numbers, but I can't remember names. But yeah, I do know a few, I just can't name them. Uh, what's his face [plays on the guitar].

Interviewer: It's classical... Chopin.

Bumblefoot: So yeah.

Interviewer: [translated into Polish] Okay. [?] asks: Could you tell something about your Polish/Lithuanian family roots?

Bumblefoot: Ooh! Okay, let me see, going way, way back to the 1800s, there was [name] and [name]; then [name] had a bunch of kids, and Raisel [?] met up with Julius Yadwab, and that was in Poland. So my grandfather Julius Yadwab and my grandmother who became Raisel Yadwab, and from there they changed their names and identities and came to the US and... yeah, so that is my Polish last name, Y-A-D-W-A-B.

Interviewer: Okay. [translating into Polish]. Okay, next question, [?] asked, what is your favorite guitar effect?

Bumblefoot: Favorite guitar effect.... Uhm, well, I would have to say probably the wah pedal, it's the most expressive out of all of them. The other thing would probably be, if anything, I guess, this thing that I use [showing up his thimble]. It's a little metal cap that I keep on my pinky here and when I'm playing I use it to get all these other notes out, you know, those higher notes [demonstrates]. So that's sort of, like, not really an electronic effect or anything but it's an analog, a human effect. But yeah, so this thing that I use for a lot of stuff to get a lot of different expressions out of the string and out of the note. So yeah. That [showing the thimble again].

Interviewer: Okay.

Bumblefoot: So yeah, the thimble and a wah pedal.

Interviewer: [translated into Polish]. Okay, next question, Claudia Bloody Rose asks: How do your cats react to your music when you practicing guitar?

Bumblefoot: Ah, they run in fear, yeah.

Interviewer: [Translated into Polish]. Okay, and final question, from the-

Bumblefoot: Like the cats like different music, like there's one that likes very happy sort of [plays the guitar], that kind of stuff. And there's another one that's -- see, she just said something. Did you hear that? It was like a little "meow." [Talking to cat] Come in, come here!

Interviewer: Show him, please.

Bumblefoot: I was playing the song and now she's like all the way... Here she comes.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Bumblefoot: I played the song and she started singing. [Talks to someone in his room] You want to bring her over?

Interviewer: Okay, I translate it. [Translated into Polish]. Okay, and the final question from Schalke: Were you ever so pissed that you smashed your guitar amplifier or anything?

Bumblefoot: You know, I never smashed gear. If anything I would... if I wanted to smash something I would probably just smash the person that was pissing me off. Uhm, I would rather give the guitar to some kid in the audience or something like that before I smash it. Uhm, so no. Well, alright, one time I was playing a show in Spain and the sound engineer that was doing our monitors he, uhm, he wasn't listening to anybody, we couldn't hear anything on stage. This was a couple years ago, wasn't with Guns N' Roses, it was with somebody else. And he would not pay attention. I mean, the drummer actually threw a drumstick at him while he's playing and if flew past the guy's head and even even noticed, like he was not paying attention to anything and we needed him to fix things. So finally I took the monitors on the front, the big monitors on the front of the stage, starting kicking them off the stage, like a dozen feet down. So I kicked one off, he freaks out, you know, and gets in as I go and now you're gonna pay attention. So I did do that one time, I started kicking the the PA system off the stage all the way down there.

Interviewer: Okay [translated into Polish]. Okay, so thank you Ron, thank you very much, thanks for video.

Bumblefoot: Yeah, thank you. I can look for more and more silly effects to put on here.

Interviewer: Okay, so we'll be in touch, thank you for being in Polish radio 4. See you, bye bye!

Bumblefoot: Thank you, have a good night, bye bye.

Just transcribed this.