In Conversation With Colin: Shamen’s Harvest

rThe Missouri hard rockers have been releasing music since 1996, and have shared stages with everyone from AC/DC, Alice In Chains and Cheap Trick along the way. Their last studio album, Rebelator released in early 2022 wasn’t recorded in the easiest of situations. “Every record has its struggles,” explains lead singer Nate Hunt philosophically. “There were a few more than we were prepared for, but all of the universe trying to tell us not to make the record I think it definitely lent itself to our will to fight through it and I think it probably made itself known in the actual music.”

Newport City Radio caught up with the band to find out more about them as Colin Palmer chatted to founder member and singer Nathan Hunt as the band prepared for their first visit to the UK playing two Welsh dates – March 23rd Swansea’s Sin City and Buckley Tivoli on the 26th.

Shaman’s Harvest is vocalist Nathan Hunt, guitarists Josh Hamler and Derrick Shipp, and drummer Adam Zemanek. “We’re a five piece band now, our bass player we’ve had since inception that’s twenty plus years went ahead and quit and went on to greener pastures, so we have a new bass player now, his name is Cord Bishop – that’s his real name it’s not made up”, says Nate with a wry smile. “He’s a singer with another band called Troy, and he’s able to bring in melodic harmonies and stuff that we haven’t done in a long time and that’s nice to have in our arsenal.”

“We’ve not crossed the pond at all. Normally how you do it is you go over with a band that’s already established like Black Stone Cherry or Rival Sons or somebody who’s doing well over there and grab their coat tails,” explains Nate. “We’ve had a few opportunities to do that and the tours have always fallen through before they get going. So finally we’ve got with another band Black Top Mojo and we’re pulling our resources together and find our way over there.

“We’ve toured with Black Stone Cherry extensively here in the States, and we’re all from the same area and know the same people and we’ve had the pleasure of sharing the stage many times and all of the shenanigans that go along with it”.

Employing an uncompromising amalgam of post-grunge, hard rock, and heavy metal, Shaman’s Harvest emerged in the late ’90s and caught the public’s attention across the Atlantic in 2009 with their fourth album, Shine. The band became fixtures on the rock charts after signing a record deal with Mascot Records and releasing 2014’s Smokin’ Hearts & Broken Guns, and continued to make headway on subsequent releases Red Hands Black Deeds (2017) and Rebelator (2022).

“With the record Red Hands Black Deeds we did everything vintage, we recorded everything analogue and the songs themselves were a pretty big throwback and because we are not really interested in making the same record we wanted to go the opposite way so we made a much more modern sounding record with Rebelator and it was just an artistic experiment, as every record is for us.

“I’ve had an ankle replacement that set me down for about a year to recover and for my body to accept the parts and all that stuff. I was going for an amputation just to deal with the pain I was going through but the doctors said ‘let’s try this and you’ll be walking around for another six or seven years and then either go and get another one or not’ and so it’s given me another lease on being active. I’ve got a three year old daughter and it’s allowed me to appreciate mobility.”

Words: Colin Palmer