Interview by Cath Holland & Tony Gaskin

We’re here back stage at the HMV Institute in Birmingham with legendary bass player, Rich Mullins of Desert Scene pioneers Karma to Burn.

Good evening Rich, thanks for taking time out to talk to us here at Midlands Rocks.

First question I want to ask is the big talking point about you working with John Garcia(Kyuss). Are we going to see the results of that collaboration?

We’re not really sure yet when something will come out. It was before he had decided to do the Kyuss Lives! project, and now they’re looking to put out a record, so I don’t know when John will go back to working on his solo project which is what we were working on. If Nick (Oliveri) keeps getting arrested it might be sooner rather than later!!

You’re back to being primarily an instrumental trio now that Daniel has left to pursue other things. Will you be looking to bring in another vocalist at some point?

We don’t want to limit ourselves. We’ve had loads of emails from vocalists who want to work with us, so who know? We may put out a record with one of those or do an album with lots of guest vocalists. We’ve also thought about our next cd, it will possibly be a double consisting of one instrumental and one with vocals.

Back I 2002 did you think it was the end of K2B?

Oh yeah, I thought that was it. We had a lot of bad things happening, and to be honest we were lucky to be alive!  I probably should’ve died, but we came through it and just kept writing.

In your own mind did you think you had taken it as far as you could, or did you feel there was unfinished business?

I knew we had things left to do. The band didn’t break up, it was just getting out of hand with the amount of drugs we were taking, it was just a matter of time before it caught up with us

We left a lot of things on the table, our problem is never the music, our problem is like, people who say they want to work with us, but to them it’s just a business. For instance, here in the UK, the booking agent kept telling us no one wants to listen to live instrumental bands, so he booked us 1 show at Water Rats in London, I was like “WTF”!!! What are they thinking? It’s all about perception on what they can sell. Record companies say people don’t like records without vocals, No! record companies don’t like records without vocals because they can’t get them on the radio and don’t know how to market them.

Going back to when you were with Road Runner, do you regret what happened there?

It was hard; we were young and inexperienced with these things. They told us we had to have a vocalist. Jim had left and we had this record which we wrote and recorded as an instrumental and they were telling us we must put vocals on top, which just wasn’t going to work. We said we’ll do another album and write it for vocals, but they said no. It was bad for us because they hung onto us for three years before letting us go and we couldn’t even play live. In hindsight I think both us and Road Runner could’ve handled things differently.

How are things now re the drink and drugs?

Well, I’ve not had a drink in six years!

So what do you do to chill and relax these days?

I write music all the time, and I’m working on the cover of our next album.  Plus I actually have a bank account with money in these days so I go and watch bands.

Are you aware that the roots of your music stem from this fine city?

Yeah. Black Sabbath was a big influence on us. There are not many bands who can justifiably claim to be original, but Sabbath was. There was just nothing like it at the time

So, you say you write all the time, does that mean lots more K2B albums?

Yeah definitely, for the foreseeable future anyway! We’ve got loads more stuff; we could put out a record tomorrow! There’s even a movie score we’re working on for an animated movie buy an amazing graphics guy, Pete Spires. We’re really excited about that.

Well thank you Rich for taking out time to talk to us, have a great show.

Thank you, hope you enjoy the show.

You can read the review of the gig here