Location: Vrba na Korošem (Velden Am Wörthersee) / Bluesiana Rock Cafe / Austria
Concert date: Sunday, December 22, 2013
Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal had to step into giant shoes in 2006. That’s when he joined the lineup of rock ‘n’ roll troublemakers Guns ‘N’Roses, which puts him in the league of the best guitarists on the planet! He’s still working with those rock titans today. To date, Bumblefoot has released 9 studio albums and one DVD. His solo debut “The Adventures of Bumblefoot” came out in 1995, but the release that definitely stands out is his contribution to the latest Guns ‘N’ Roses studio album, “Chinese Democracy” (2008).
The fact that Bumblefoot could already play Eddie Van Halen’s “Eruption” “in reverse” as a kid says plenty about this guy’s guitar virtuosity. Over the years he’s grown into a versatile guitarist who handles any musical situation, whatever the genre, and he’s a very good vocalist too. His studio albums back up Bumblefoot’s multilayered musical outlook, since they jump around wildly from genre to genre. Because of that, he enjoys a lot of respect among “employers” who love hiring him as a producer and session musician. Plenty of music magazines put Bumblefoot on their lists of the world’s best guitarists, especially those famed for a top-notch, polished technique and total command of the six-string (guitar) craft.
So much for the intro! This time Bluesiana is literally boiling. A name is a name. I can’t remember a crowd like this. A mob of Italians in particular had already stormed the front of the small club’s stage and was kicking up a proper little racket in feverish anticipation. Around half past nine in the evening Ron Thal finally takes the stage, accompanied by drummer Dennis Leeflang. A wave of excitement breaks! The club is getting more and more sweltering. After a few minutes of sound calibration – Ron Thal is obviously his own “roadie” – he straps on a double-neck Vigier guitar from his »DoubleBfoot« series (the upper neck is »fretless«), and he’s joined on stage by two seasoned Italian musicians: Simone Massimi on bass and Nazzareno Zacconi, who stood on the Bluesiana stage three weeks ago as the touring guitarist for Jennifer Batten, Michael Jackson’s former guitar sorceress.
A spontaneous concert night is at the door. Even the opening warm-up, when the band “borrowed” the Beatles classic Come Together to calibrate the sound, hinted at an interesting and unusual turn of events, the kind you couldn’t have predicted even thirty seconds ahead. Right from the start, the fast-fingered devil on the guitar showed with his five-finger tapping that he’s cooked from a special kind of dough. Some astonished looks and bulging eyes from Nazzareno Zacconi confirmed it, too. He kept up the rhythm backdrop on guitar for Ron throughout the show, even though Ron cleared the way for him a few times so the excellent Italian guitarist could stretch out in some solo acrobatics and show the crowd he’s a top-class musician.
The feeling of a thoroughly fragmented, disjointed show grew by the minute. Ron would launch into a recognizable riff, and as soon as the other three buddies joined in, he’d stop playing and jump to another song. This story repeated itself countless times during the set, so the more demanding listeners were seriously despairing over the musician’s seriousness. The tickets, after all, were alarmingly pricey. Still, especially in the second half, things started to make sense and hang together. Only Ron Thal can simply afford this kind of theater. Because the guy has a big, recognizable name, and because he’s an ultra virtuoso!
The repertoire was mostly weighted toward songs from Ron’s solo catalog, all of which rang out with the famous rock ‘n’ roll tomfoolery, dosed with a proper punk “bad ass” vanity, which was ample proof of why Ron clicked with Axl in the new Guns ‘N Roses lineup. So we got Abnormal, Real, Some Other Guy, Normal, Guitar Suck, Turn Around, Simple Days, Overloaded, Guitar Still Suck, Dash, Rockstar for a Day, The Colour Of Justice, Last Time, Shadow, plus some downright lucidly smashed-up covers of originals, like The Pink Panther Theme by Henry Mancini, a hefty dose of goofing around with Wasted Years (Iron Maiden), a Bohemian Rhapsody (Queen) accompanied by a heap of mistakes, or a somewhat more serious Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (Elton John). And of course Ron didn’t forget to play (the quietly expected) Little Wing (Jimi Hendrix), a favorite concert standard of many guitar heroes of his caliber in the amusement park of the rock ‘n’ roll universe.
The show ended up running a full two hours and twenty minutes (true story, Ron absolutely, positively didn’t want to say goodbye to the crowd), and the top-shelf guitar virtuoso naturally garnished it with three Guns N’ Roses songs right at the end (Sweet Child O’Mine, Estranged, Don’t Cry). During one of the numbers Ron theatrically left the stage and strolled across the whole club, from table to table, from bar to bar, then came back to the stage a few minutes later and theatrically soloed the big finale on his knees. Besides being a brilliant guitarist who developed a special guitar technique (hellishly fast), Ron Thal is also an outstanding singer. He loves to sing. Almost too much.
Anyway, a show like the one he treated himself to at Bluesiana, which brought us to the edge of chaos, is best kept from his first “employer” Axl Rose. To some extent, Ron Thal became his own Axl Rose up there. But despite his dandyish, rascally look, this musician is a sweetheart. You could eat out of his hand. When you chat with him after the show, he radiates incredibly positive energy, joy, mischief, curiosity, and respect for everyone who came to his concert at Bluesiana that night. An unforgettable spectacle of first-rate rock ‘n’ roll and an extraordinary rally drive across the guitar (richly seasoned with a series of breakneck guitar escapades) for the big finale of a rich concert year at the famous club Bluesiana Rock Cafe in 2013. Let’s hope this show is also a nice send-off into a new bountiful harvest of gigs we’re hoping for next year, at this dear club of ours on the other side of the Alps.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
