Interview by: Mark Lacey
Live Photos Credit: Julius Richardson
Since Nathan Hunt, and guitarist Josh Hamler founded Shamans Harvest in 1996, alongside former bassist Matt Fisher, the band have built a strong following their US homeland. However, despite successful tours with Alice in Chains, Cheap Trick, Nickelback, Seether, Shinedown, and many others, and an iconic show with AC/DC, the band have never ventured overseas. Previous attempts to visit the UK have been hampered by cancelled tours, and COVID, as well as Nate’s own health issues, including throat cancer and ankle surgery. However, two years on from their impressive album ‘Rebelator’ the band will finally make it happen, and play an extended run across the UK from 5th – 29th March.
MyGlobalMind.com talks to lead vocalist, Nate Hunt.
MGM: Shaman’s Harvest have never stood still musically. How would you describe where the band are right now?
Nate: Our sound has always been a heavily blues-influenced, soul-influenced Midwest rock n roll. We got started in the era of grunge in the ’90s. We’ve probably retained some of that. But from record to record, it’s quite a departure from the previous record, and that’s intentional. I think we try to keep it fresh for ourselves. I think it probably drives our fans crazy because they want to hear shit that they’ve gotten comfortable with. But we try to keep it fresh and new, and a little uncomfortable for ourselves. We try to bring in as many genres as feels natural. I think the older we get; I don’t really know what rock n roll sounds like now anymore. I think it just has to be genuine. So, if we’re not feeling a particular sound that we may have felt 10 years ago or whatever, it’s not going to be genuine. I think that’s probably the number one trait to have in a decent rock album.
MGM: It’s amazing that your band’s been going for as long as it has; 25 years now, isn’t it? The journey for you guys started with you, Josh, and Matt, who is no longer in the band. Has your career path surpassed your expectations, or did you always have a plan?
Nate: When we started, we were teenagers in high school together. I don’t think we ever even hung out in high school. We just had this after-school thing in the basements of our respective houses. I don’t know that there were any plans to go past the next party that we were playing at. I think we just were stubborn enough to hang on, and falling in love with the feeling of making music all the time. It’s genuine. It’s outlasted some of our marriages. It’s a relationship we have with each other that’s hard to describe. I mean, it’s difficult being in a band with some of the same guys that you’ve known your whole life, really. I think there’s just some diplomacy involved. But you get to a phase where you’re comfortable with each other. What works great for the music is that you know where the next person is going. So, if you want to riff live and just go off the cuff, you just know where that person is going to go when you’ve been playing that long with each other.
MGM: Josh has previously spoken about the path to putting out ‘Rebelator’ in 2022 being quite a tough time for the band. The world had just come out of COVID, but you also had your own personal challenges. And there was talk of things like tornados and flooding in the area that you live. Josh talked a little bit about how maybe you’d overstretched yourselves touring the previous album, and it tested relationships between the band, and you were all maybe slightly burnt out from that experience. But how did that time feel for you?
Nate: I’ve never been able to correlate the touring aspect of being a musician and the creation process You almost have to be a different person. For me, anyways. It’s such a different animal. When we make our records, it’s still quite the process. We’re still renting out studios and still spending all of our budget on making the record. We dive in headlong. It used to be to make a record, I’d have to intentionally or unintentionally destroy my life because for creation, it was easier for me to come from a point of absolute misery. Self-destruction was a part of the process. It’s like my closest friends and family would always know I was making a record when my life was just going to shit. Luckily, that’s not the case anymore. I’ve been able to tap into a creation process without self-sabotaging, which is nice. But touring is about survival. It’s like trying to stretch your voice for as many shows in a row as possible and getting as much rest, but still trying to interact with fans. All those things just become Groundhog Day. It’s just the same thing over and over, while creation, it’s new and fresh, and just trying to tap into that part of your brain is such a departure from what you’ve been used to. Coming off tour anyways is just weird; it’s not PTSD, but you’re used to doing this way of life every day, and here’s your schedule. Then you get home and you got to make up your own schedule. It’s different.
MGM: Are you someone that needs chaos, or challenges in life, to get your creative juices flowing and create your lyrical ideas?
Nate: I think so. I’ve always written from a place of pain instead of joy. The older I’ve gotten, the more I can tap into the creative process that joy can provide. But I’ve always just self-sabotaged. Whatever is going on in my life takes a back seat to creation. That’s the number one most important thing when making a record. Always has been for me. Now, the older I’ve gotten, those things can coexist. I farm cattle now. Just like normal everyday shit can be a part of my life, and I can still be an artist, whereas before it was, I can only be an artist. That’s no way to be.
MGM: You’ve had your own fair share of challenges; from having throat cancer and getting through that; and the problems with your ankle, and getting through that. You’ve had to endure quite a lot of personal health challenges and, but yet you’ve been mentally resilient enough to come out the other side, and still be able to get up on stage and perform.
Nate: Well, I’d like to take credit, but whilst I was going through treatments for throat cancer, I was making a record. So, the treatments took a back seat to making a record, which is probably what mentally carried me through that time. I’d go get treatment, but that took a back seat to me thinking, what parts do I want to add? What harmonies need to be added? What parts need to be changed? I wasn’t thinking about being sick. I was thinking about trying to make a great fucking record. For anybody that is going through something like that, it’s just a great tool to have something else to focus on.
MGM: Around the time you had your ankle surgery, you performed alongside AC/DC, but in a wheelchair. Is that right?
Nate: Yeah, it was crazy. On top of that, it was our first arena show. There’s a lot of firsts. We were being hidden. Our management said, you guys need to hide. We were hiding in the dressing room because we didn’t want them to know. On top of that, our guitar player had broken his knee, so he was on crutches. My brother, who was in the band at the time, had broken his ankle. He was on crutches. We were challenged, to say the least. And we have this huge runway of a stage. I’m trying to wheel myself out there, down the catwalk and back. We were headed to the stage, and there’s three guys trying to push me up the ramp to get on stage. And AC/DC’s tour manager is absolutely losing his shit. It’s like the Special Olympics and he was losing his mind, but there was nothing he could do at the time. We were already announced to be on stage. We made a connection with the whole front row of the upper deck where all the mobility-challenged people were. They were all in wheelchairs, so we had those guys under our thumb.
MGM: When you were going through those different challenges with your throat and your ankle, did you ever feel like this is just too hard or that some greater power was trying to stop you moving forward?
Nate: At the time, no, because the mental state is just that the show must go on. It’s like, no matter what, we still have to somehow figure out a way to perform the show. There’s so much that goes into touring. Besides the fact that in this day and age, you financially put everything towards touring. People are counting on you, and the crew’s counting on you for their pay cheque. It all trickles down to, the show has to happen. It wasn’t really until 2020 and all the bullshit with COVID, etc. Now it’s just like, tour buses are triple what they used to be, fuel’s triple what it used to be. But the pay for the band is still the same. There’s been times recently, where I’m just like, Jesus, why continue to do it? Then you get on stage and you’re like, Oh, yeah, why wouldn’t you? How could you not? It’s that buzz you can’t really get anywhere else.
MGM: Shaman’s Harvest have been a formidable touring force for a long time. You’ve supported the likes of Nickelback and Sether and obviously AC/DC, but it looks like your live footprint has largely been in the US, and a handful of dates in Canada. You’ll be heading over to the UK for the first time in Spring 2025. You’ve rarely ventured outside of the US. Why is that?
Nate: That’s absolutely right. But there’s been some tours planned. There was one with Black Stone Cherry that was going to happen, but two days before we were supposed to cross the pond, the whole tour got cancelled. We’d already spent the money on hiring the tour manager and the bus. It took us two, or three years of touring straight just to make up for what we lost. It’s so expensive to cross the pond and rent the gear and everything. Generally, you wait for a bigger band, and you go with them. We just got tired of waiting for somebody else to bring us over, and we’re just rolling the dice here and hoping that there’s a turnout, and we can keep calling back.
MGM: Black Stone Cherry are doing great business over here, and their music is really resonating with UK audiences, and so you should be met with a warm reception. You said that you got fed up with waiting, but is there any other reason why now?
Nate: The drummer for the other band going with us, Blacktop Mojo, and I were just drinking whiskey, and we were both shooting the shit, and we’re talking about how that is a thing you have to check off the list. The goal, regardless of where it is in the world, is to play in front of people that are passionate about music. Right now, with rock n roll, in our view, it’s the UK. That’s where people are passionate about going to shows. It’s great playing here in the States, but music fans aren’t all there for the show. So yeah, it was liquid courage and a series of conversations, and let’s just do it. If we were in a business where we were worried about risk, we’d be insurance salesmen.
MGM: How did the collaboration with Blacktop Mojo come about? Are these friends of yours or are they from the same part of the world as you?
Nate: Yeah, man. They’re from Texas. They’re all very, very, very Texas. If you know anybody from Texas, you know what that means. They’re very Southern, and they have some similar characters. They’ve gone through similar challenges of just being in a rock band here in the States. They jumped on a couple of tours with us for a few dates here and there. The singer is absolutely incredible. Insane range. They had asked me to feature on a song and to do a co-write with them, and I got to know them intimately in the studio. A musician’s battleground is going through that process of writing a song together. And we still liked each other afterwards, so why not?
MGM: You’re going to be playing the length and breadth of the UK, and playing some really interesting places while you’re over here, including Bristol, London, Belfast, Glasgow and Newcastle. Your biggest challenge will be navigating all the different regional accents. How well do you know the UK?
Photo credit: Adrienne Beacco
Nate: For everybody that’s going, it’s our first time, so I have no idea how we’re going to navigate anything. We’ll probably need to hire somebody local to wrangle all the cats, and make sure we don’t get into trouble. It’s also somewhere around St. Paddy’s Day.
MGM: You’ve not been to the UK before, but you’ve decided to play these different cities. Is there anywhere in particular that you’re looking forward to going to, apart from being in Ireland on St. Paddy’s Day?
Nate: Yeah. I’m a history nerd. I’ve always been fascinated. In the States, everything’s young. I imagine I’m going to be pretty touristy as far as on my days off, I’m going to go to all the old haunts. If anybody has any suggestions, we’re fully open to doing everything. Back in the day, I’d stay on the bus and do nothing. Not anymore.
MGM: It’s been two years since you put the last album out. What’s your plans for new music at the moment?
Nate: Demo-wise, we’ve tracked probably half a record or so … four, or five songs. We’re just exploring, and lingering in the feel of whatever Shaman’s Harvest is now, between this record and the last record. With the last record, we intentionally moved a little more modern than the record before that. We’re just trying to figure out who we are and what do we want to make right now. It’s been really interesting. We have a few songs that are real rock opera, theatrical, Queen, Bowie-ish vibes going on. I don’t know what you’d call it, but we’re really into exploring whatever that means.
MGM: Josh had described the last album as being after a quite testing period for the band, and that album was written over a period of time. You’ve been consistently touring ‘Rebelator’ and now travelling overseas for the first time. How do you go about making sure that you don’t end up with that burnout situation again that you experienced after your last extensive period of touring?
Nate: I think we’re all mentally in different places now. We’re not carrying pain right there at the surface. We’re able to turn off. There’s a lot more joy touring with the people that we’re touring with now. There were a lot of tensions, and they boil over constantly. Everybody would be walking on their tip-toes all the time waiting for something negative to happen within the camp. Now we just enjoy each other’s company, and obviously, we enjoy the music we made. The benefit of switching the genre between records is you’re not going to get bored artistically either. In the UK, it’s going to be new to a lot of people. Having that challenge where people aren’t instantly singing along to every word, and you get the opportunity to try to win over a crowd; that’s pretty magical and something to work for.
MGM: Does this UK tour provide a new reset for you with Shaman’s Harvest? Hopefully, it’ll present an opportunity for you to come over to Europe and further afield if it’s successful?
Nate: Yeah, that’s the payoff of the gamble; being able to visit again and go on into Germany and France and the Netherlands, etc, which is where our label’s from. We’ve been signed to Mascot now for 10 years or something crazy like that and never been face-to-face with any of these people. But I mean, what an opportunity, to introduce people to the tunes. It does feel like a reset, which is probably what lends itself to longevity with the band. Every five years, we have some reset within the band. You’ve got to have that with art.
Shaman’s Harvest will be touring the UK & Ireland in March alongside Blacktop Mojo
5th March: Fleece, Bristol
6th March: 1865, Southampton
7th March: Islington Academy, London
8th March: O2 Institute, Birmingham
12th March: Rebellion, Manchester
13th March: Cathouse, Glasgow
14th March: Anarchy, Newcastle Upon Tyne
15th March: Corporation, Sheffield
19th March: Limelight 2, Belfast
20th March: The Academy, Dublin, Ireland
21st March: Cyprus Avenue, Cork, Ireland
23rd March: Sin City, Swansea
26th March: The Tivoli, Buckley
27th March: Hairy Dog, Derby
28th March: The Waterfront, Norwich
29th March: The Arch, Brighton
For more information:
www.shamansharvest.net/
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