Interview by: John Wisniewski
Live Photo by Robert Cavuoto
The guitar virtuoso talks childhood inspirations, supergroup dynamics, eight years with Axl Rose, and championing the next generation of rock artists
When did you begin playing music, Ron? What were your early days like?
It began at age 5, when my family moved from Brooklyn to Staten Island in 1975. There were lots of kids my age, there were always vinyl albums all over their houses belonging to their parents and older siblings. We’d curiously put different albums on the turntable and listen… I remember seeing this one album of 4 painted faces—it was the just-released KISS Alive! album. As soon as I heard it, I wanted to be a musician.
A band was immediately formed with my brother and neighbor, we started writing songs about our childhood interests (planets, speeding cars…), we would record using multiple cassette recorders to bounce tracks and overdub, we’d play shows in our yards, our school, eventually I started taking guitar lessons learning the academics… and never stopped.
Could you name artists that have influenced you?
Being a kid in the ’70s, there was so much good current music… my first music love was The Beatles, there was Zep, Queen, Bowie, the Who, Floyd, the Stones, Cream, AC/DC, KISS… from there I got into punk, metal, prog…
Guitar-wise it was Hendrix, Angus, Brian May, Page, Clapton, Alex Lifeson, but the biggest inspiration was Eddie Van Halen—hearing Eddie was life-changing. And Randy Rhoads as well. And the virtuosic Yngwie, Al DiMeola, Vai, Satch, Holdsworth…
What was the experience like releasing your first solo album? What was it like to record?
In the early ’90s I had a handful of songs on comp albums from instrumental guitar labels Shrapnel and Legato Records. I signed a deal with Shrapnel in ’94, and had a concept for the first album based on a song I had called “Bumblefoot” named after an animal disease—the album would be called The Adventures of Bumblefoot (and other tales of woe…) and I’d name every song after a different animal disease, along with some strange comic book style album art.
I still lived with mom & dad, and would spend day & night recording in the basement where I had a Marshall half-stack with an SM57 mic on it, all under a big blanket. The mic went into a Mackie board and to two ADATs, along with recorded Alesis HR16/16B drum machine tracks, DI bass tracks, some old sequencer used for horn sounds… I was recording in the Summer and would have to wait for the air conditioner to shut off so it wouldn’t be heard through the mic. I’d sneak upstairs and turn the house thermostat up really high, so the air conditioner wouldn’t go on… I’d get a bunch of tracking done and would then hear my mom yelling upstairs, “Who turned the thermostat up to 90 degrees?!”
I’d step on a Radio Shack punch in/out button to get in & out of record mode as I played. The button would activate half-a-second late from when I’d step on it, so I had to get the timing juuuust right for when I’d step on it as I played. I made the album cover using CorelDraw4 on a PC with Windows 3.11, for two weeks of connecting dots and bending lines and filling shapes with gradient colors… I remember the sleepless night of continued attempts to send the final 1.7Mb JPG to the record label, took 14 hours on AOL 2.0 with a phone modem, losing the connection every few hours and starting over… ahhhhh the good ol’ days!
The album was released May 1995, it was quite different from the usual style on the label—there were a lot of neo-classical and jazz fusion players, then I stumble out with this Zappa-ish unpolished wacky cartoon-ish music, with a handful of odd techniques (playing on the strings higher than the fretboard with a thimble [https://youtu.be/AAnG7WD5sBk], tapping onto harmonics from over the neck with percussive thumping… [https://youtu.be/F5ey0LesrJQ]). It was very different. Now 30 years later you can go on social media and see people doing the same kind of thing, playing cartoon-ish music with a metal spoon, it’s entertaining!
What was the concept for The Sons of Apollo, the supergroup with Mike Portnoy? What was that like playing in the supergroup?
The seeds were planted years before the band formed, starting with jams with Mike [Portnoy] and Billy [Sheehan] over the years—at one point the three of us were the house band for a big Eddie Trunk event in NYC, backing Ace Frehley, Peter Criss, Scott [Ian] & Frank [Bello] from Anthrax, Michael Sweet, Lita Ford…
A year later I was on “Cruise To The Edge” music cruise with Tony Harnell, and jammed again with Mike & Billy, this time Derek Sherinian joining. After the jam Derek said to me “We should form a band…!” In early 2017 Mike hit me up and said “You know we always talked about doing a band together? Derek and I are putting something together with Billy, Jeff Scott Soto,” and they asked me to be the guitarist.
From there, Derek and I would email each other music ideas, then we got together in the studio with Mike in early 2017, and in a week-and-a-half wrote and recorded the music for the first Sons of Apollo album, with Billy joining us halfway through when he got off tour. I laid solos from my own studio and Jeff laid vocals from his, and we hit the road for most of 2018, including making the live Blu-ray concert with the orchestra and choir…
In 2019 we started writing album #2 and released that in early 2020, started touring early in the year, and then the pandemic hit, the tour ended abruptly. Derek and I wanted to make the next SOA album during that time, but things went how they went. Since then, Derek, Jeff, and Billy continue to work with each other in different scenarios of studio and live. [https://youtu.be/6edyMJONKs8]
When and how were you asked to play with Guns N’ Roses? What was it like touring with them?
Joe Satriani had recommended me to them back in 2004. We got together in 2006 right before their touring began, jammed 7 times in NYC and hit the road. We toured the world for 8 years, released Chinese Democracy and the Appetite For Democracy DVD/Blu-ray, and did two Vegas residencies.
Are you a fan of progressive metal?
Well of course…! Listen to all the Bumblefoot albums, Sons Of Apollo, Whom Gods Destroy, pretty proggy 😉 Influences started with ’70s prog rock before metal existed—Yes, Crimson, Rush, Tull, ELP, UK… then Queensrÿche, King’s X (who I wouldn’t really call “prog” but they have their moments—I would call them one of the greatest rock bands ever…), up to Scandinavian math metal—will never forget when Destroy Erase Improve [Meshuggah] came out, was like getting the shit beaten out of you and liking it, haha… Opeth, Cynic, and one of my all-time favorites, Thank You Scientist, what a mind-blowing band!
Tell us about being in Whom Gods Destroy. This was after Sons of Apollo had broken up.
When we accepted that SOA was not going to make the next album during the pandemic, Derek and I kept writing together, and Dino Jelusick joined on vocals. From there, Bruno Valverde (drums) and Yas Nomura (bass) joined and we had a new band and a record deal. We released the album Insanium, but when the pandemic ended members got busy with everything they were doing before the pandemic… in the end we made an album I’m very proud of. [https://youtu.be/8Ie77apU0RA]
What was it like playing Judas Priest’s “Running Wild” on Metal on Fuse? You also joined Zakk Wylde on the show.
Ha, what a cool TV show! It aired 2007-2008, I did the sound mixing for the live performances on the show, and participated in some of them as well…! I joined the show hosts for a jam of Priest’s “Running Wild” for the pilot episode (along with GNR bandmate Frank Ferrer), and for the finale episode with Zakk writing a song on piano, I was on acoustic guitar, the hosts on drums & bass, the show’s crew on backing vocals—it was a fun hang!
What are you working on now, Ron?
Now I’m doing a lot of music camps, promoting the Bumblefoot …Returns! album and the hot sauce bizz, and a lot of producing. I love helping new bands get out there.
There’s Shavrock from Baltimore, their song is a mix of Daughtry-style rock with acoustic and duo vocals, lots of melodic guitar heroics throughout [https://linktr.ee/shavrockband]. There’s The Dodies, a garage rock duo with ’90s alt-rock influences, phenomenal band with lots of depth and character [check out “Falsetto” – https://youtu.be/lhHkWz4oXFY]. There’s the talented Sierra Levesque who at 20-years-old writes her own songs and plays every instrument, does a lot of performing in LA and the Ottawa Canada area [https://linktr.ee/sierralevesquemusic]. Lots of great music out there.
I’m working with a wonderful record label, Deko Entertainment, where the bands I produce can have physical distribution through their retail distributors. They’re a supportive label that truly cares about bringing opportunities to artists.
Any future plans and projects?
Will continue producing artists, teaching and mentoring at music camps, mixing/mastering people’s recordings at my studio, laying some guest solos, and doing more with the …Returns! album.
So far, the album has been released on double-vinyl full of artwork and a UV disc-art pressing, also on CD and cassette, streaming & downloading, and retail distro through Deko Records (US), Cargo Records (UK) and Disk Union (Japan). There are music videos for the songs “Simon in Space” and “Moonshine Hootenanny”, there’s a free retro space-shooter “Simon In Space” video game, new “Moonshine Hootenanny” hot sauce, lots of merch, guitar tone presets for the entire album available, a physical & digital transcription book and backing tracks of the entire album…
Have plans for more music videos, maybe another hot sauce, and a physical & digital comic book—and perhaps some live performing.
For news, tour dates & more, visit https://Bumblefoot.com
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