We talked with Bumblefoot about his new projects, his music and video games... Thank you Ron!

Merlin'in Kazanı (MK): You said "I would like to see my Bumblefoot albums on Rock Band" on previous interview. Now you're adding your songs on Rock Band Network. How did you decide? When will it be on Rock Band Network?

Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal (RT): It was something I needed to prepare for first. I needed to go back to my old albums, open up the multi-track mix files, and make 'mix stems' of each instrument. That's when you take one track (or a group of tracks) and mute everything else in the song, and make a mix of just those unmuted parts, as they exactly appear in the song, with whatever level and EQ and FX they have in the song. I had to convert my computer to the system I had 10 years ago, with the same software and plugins, and go through every song of every album and have stems ready for when it was time to submit songs to Rock Band.

As I was working on that (and tweeting about it, www.twitter.com/bumblefoot ) an independent Rock Band game author contacted me about having his company 'Freen In Green' prepare my songs for Rock Band Network. He did really good work, and we started with the most requested song, 'Guitars SUCK'. It's in the final stages of testing now, and will hopefully be available soon. I'll post an announcement on my site ( www.bumblefoot.com ) when it is. After that I'll continue to submit songs – Normal, Real, Turn Around, Guitars Still Suck, Abnormal, as many songs as possible.

MK: Can you tell us about new project? I guess you will re-release your album. What will it have inside? When will it be released?

RT: My first album 'The Adventures Of Bumblefoot' came out in 1995, on Shrapnel Records in the US, Roadrunner Records in Europe & Japan. It's an instrumental guitar album, and every song is named after an animal disease, a concept that began with the first song 'Bumblefoot' (aka Ulcerative Pododermatitis) That's where my nickname 'Bumblefoot' began. The album got a good response from critics and press, reader's polls, it was a nice beginning. Two years later, I finished the record deal and the label stopped manufacturing the album. It was out-of-print, and there was no way to get the album.

Sometimes I'd see them on eBay, selling for up to $150. I even saw one going for $600... last year Shrapnel contacted me and said they wanted to re-release the album. I was so glad – we worked together on it, I prepared the artwork for the digipak design (original was a jewel case) and added 5 bonus tracks from a video game soundtrack I had made for a Sega game also in 1995. The album will be available online at my webstore ( http://www.bumblefoot.com/store/ ) in August – the CDs will be autographed and $5 from every album will be donated to Multiple Sclerosis research.