Former Manowar guitarist Ross The Boss has checked in with some exciting news:

 "We The RTB Band are SO FUCKING EXCITED and honored to have KK Downing, an immortal Metal legend, joining us onstage in front of some of the greatest metal fans in the world at BLOODSTOCK UK."

The Bloodstock Open Air 2019 show will take place on Sunday, August 11th at Catton Park, Derbyshire, UK. Stay tuned for more details.

Downing was recently interviewed by DJ Yentonian during the 2019 Metal To The Masses Final in Wolverhampton, England. Subjects discussed include: Bloodstock Festival, his own venue KK's Steel Mill and plans for its future, musical influences when starting out as a guitarist in the mid-late '60s, his departure from Judas Priest (in 2011) and why he's open to working with them again in the future.

The entire interview can be heard via the audio player below. An excerpt, detailing whether Downing would be interested in participating in Judas Priest's upcoming 50th Anniversary Tour in 2020, has been transcribed as follows:

Downing: "Well, I'm certainly open to any conversations, as I always say to those guys. I've said it pretty openly — what's happened has happened. Everybody in the band knew why I left the band, quit the band. Everybody in the band knew I had good reason to quit the band, because nobody, nobody quits a lifetime of invested time and energy into something and walks away from it that easily."

K.K. continued: "Can I draw you guys a comparison? And it might be a rubbish comparison, but I always think that if any of you guys ever left your girlfriend or your wife, or whatever, and your parents had gone, 'Oh, but she was lovely. You guys were made for each other. You got on so well.' And you think, 'No, she was evil' — can I say 'evil bitch'? Because I've been there. But only you understand, because you are the ones behind closed doors having to deal with it all. On the outside, you put on a good face for everybody. But the thing is, just because everybody tells you that person is good and you shouldn't leave and you should go back, you know better, don't you? And you can't do it. As much as you'd like to, you can't do it — until circumstances change. And, obviously, circumstances [in Judas Priest] did change, which left an opening for me. But all the guys decided not to keep the door open for me. Because the controlling entity still had control — unfortunately."