I had a chat with Shaman’s Harvest vocalist, Nate Hunt during their first ever UK tour!
So, you guys have probably been asked this about 100 times, but what has taken you so long to come to the UK?
Man, it’s not for lack of will, it’s really just, it’s about money. It costs so much money to get over here and luckily enough this time around we’ve had a partner with another band who also desperately wanted to get over here, and we just kind of pulled our money together, and we’re sharing everything and that’s really the only reason why we’re able to make the jump.
Blacktop Mojo, the guys you’re out with, how did it come about that you decided to do this together?
Well, we’ve done some shows in the States, several times we’ve played together. We’re kind of from the same neck of the woods, so we have the same interest and we just became friends, and over several whiskeys we decided that we should just roll the dice and do it, and the pros way outweigh the cons and if we lose, you know, what’s the worst that’s going to happen, right?
As this is your first time over here, how would you say the crowds are maybe different compared to back home?
To be frank, I mean, they’re very energetic. Back home a lot of times you have a cell phone in your face, when you’re looking out over the crowd. That is one difference that it seems like they’re in the moment, and that is the biggest payoff for us, is to play to people that are in fully engaged, you know, not distracted. That’s what any musician ever wants, they put a lot into it, right? It’s music, so, I mean, it translates wherever in the world you are, but there are levels of attention spans, you know, and it does seem like they’re definitely more fully engaged here.
Are there any cities you’re particularly excited to visit?
What’s cool about this tour is we’re kind of seeing… I think we’re seeing the entire island, right? So, we’re just trying to take it all in. We’ve had three days off in Manchester, so everybody’s been running around exploring as much as possible. Our bass player just discovered his families from here, so he went to a museum where his families like history is, and he’s pretty stoked about it. And he literally discovered that yesterday, his dad called him. We’re excited to play Cork. I got a good buddy from Cork back in the States his families from Cork and, you know, he’s been talking it up for years and years, so, we’re excited for that. We’re extremely excited for Scotland. That’s Matt, the singer for Blacktop Mojo, where his family’s from, so he can’t wait.
While you are out on the road, what are some must have comfort items you have to have with you?
Space is the most comfortable item, because it is two bands and one bus right now. I mean, every nook and cranny is taken up in that thing. For instance, we’ve had three days off where we’ve been spread out and everyone’s kind of gotten a little bit more comfortable. The number one most important thing is deodorant and body wipes. That’s the most important thing on tour for everyone’s sake.
So, you guys have been doing this a long time now and it’s not always seemed like it’s been the smoothest ride. How do you find you keep motivated and positive through everything?
It is interesting I see some bands that you know have great success and it took them two years and everything lined up perfectly for them, and I see bands that have struggled for 20 years before they’ve only had half the success that the first band has, I think all the motivation that’s needed is… I think with everybody in our band, it’s just something that we have to do is create, regardless of the amount of success. If all we could do is drum up enough people to come see us at our local pub back home, we’re still going to do the thing. If we can fill a place across the world, great, but I think the thing that keeps us going is, I think we as people are defined as performing musicians and writers and artists in that way. There’s no real choice in the matter, really. We’re going to do that regardless of success, so I think as we’ve kind of gone through the years, the frustration has decreased because we’ve accepted the fact that no matter what happens, we’re still going to play music, and because of that acceptance, I think we’ve been able to enjoy the process a little bit more, if that makes sense.
With music and everything changing over the years, there’s such a pressure now with social media and keeping up with that. How do you find that pressure on top of everything?
We’re absolutely awful. We’re terrible at social media. I think our record label is finally like, hey man, you guys got to do something about it because you’re terrible at it. I have a hard time keeping up with my personal social media, much less the band. So, I think we’re making like one post every other week, apparently that’s not good. So, we’re trying to jump on top of it. And we’re trying to have fun. You got to keep it honest, right? That’s kind of the way to navigate that. You can’t really pretend to be something you’re not. So, I think capturing more of the fun things, like the impromptu jam sessions or, cooking dinner on the road or, stuff like that. People want to engage into the reality, not just like, hey, we got a new single, check out our music. I think the point of it probably shouldn’t just be constantly trying to sell, sell, sell. I hate a salesman, everybody’s a salesman, right? I think it should be what do we pick up from store today to survive one more day on the bus, you know, or whatever like that. I think that would be more helpful in navigating the social media world.
You guys put out your first single in a while back in January, ‘Rock n Roll Queen’. What was the inspiration behind that track?
It’s almost a bit of worship for this thing that’s called rock and roll, in a lot of the world it’s taken a backseat to a lot of things and that’s fine, you know, that’s cool, that’s just what it is, that’s how the world works as far as music goes. But it was such a big thing to us growing up. You know, the riff is really simple, it’s a simple basic rock and roll riff reminiscent of some of the basic like Thin Lizzy stuff, and with the guitar harmonies and these like things that we love, and just a basic groove. It’s just a rock song. I mean a lot of our songs are extremely involved and there’s a lot of ambient sounds and cinematic stuff going, and this is just straight up two guitars, one bass, one drum, one vocal, and I think that’s something to be explored too sometimes.
How would you say your approach to creating music has maybe changed over the years?
I have decided that there’s no one way to do it over the years, like I am completely open to any and everything. I’m willing to explore anything that lends itself to unlocking the creative process, which sometimes can get blocked, you know, so the rule of thumb is for me is there is no rule of thumb. What worked on the last record, or even the last song, isn’t necessarily going to work on this song. I mean, this is our first time over in England and we’re all taking in little things and we’re kind of locking them away for the next time we need to sit down and do some writing, which we did last night. When the creative thing starts taking off in our brain, we immediately stop what we’re doing and if we’ve got to write it down, or if we’ve got to record it into the phone, like nothing else matters but to get that little moment down and then we can go on with our life and then come back to it later. So, I guess just learning that you got to capture it when it comes.
And do you find you can find enough time while you’re out on the road to get those moments down and capture them?
I mean, not particularly but we really lucked out over the last couple days, we’ve had a couple days off. We had four shows in a row and then we needed a couple days off, and you know the last thing you want to do is pick up a guitar sometimes on your days off. It’s funny we’re at this Airbnb here in Manchester, you go downstairs right now everyone has a guitar in their hand and they’ve got ideas flowing, so it’s kind of a magical time right now for us.
Are there any artists that inspire your sound?
We’re definitely a product of everything that we love, I mean, and we all love different things, there’s everything from heavy metal Black Sabbath, Mastodon, to you know Jim Croce. I was just talking about today, David Gray and like these singer songwriters and stuff like that as well. So, what I find interesting is I don’t really find one specific genre interesting, what I find interesting is trying to weave multiple genres into a song. That’s what’s disappointing to me in this day and age is everyone needs to quantify what that music is, they need to say this music is this specific thing, instead of just saying this is music and I enjoy it. So, we are a product of a lot of mixed genres and really honestly mostly a product of just life experiences. Sometimes we create these soundscapes just based off of a feeling that we can’t put words to, and that’s why we made the song was because we can’t explain how we’re feeling. So, we had to do it in the art, right?
What are some of your favorite songs on the set list on this tour?
Oh, man, it’s fun. We’re doing a song, it’s kind of an acoustic moment in our set, we really don’t tend to have those too often. It’s usually like, okay, we only have an hour, an hour and 15 minutes, so you feel like, well, it has to be rock and roll, as hard as it can go, as fast as it can go, get as many out. But I’ve been watching the crowd, and there was a girl at the VIP who requested this song at one of the shows the other night, and we started adding it. It was a powerful moment, so we’ve been doing it every night. There’s a song called Silent Voice, and it’s off of our record, ‘Smoking Hearts and Broken Guns’ and it’s a bit of a journey, and so I’ve really been enjoying doing something that we’re not used to doing.
Do you have any artists that you would love to do a collab with?
Oh, yeah, yes, all the time, everyone, all of them. I want to do collabs with everybody. I’d love to sit down with Robert Plant and do a collaboration and just see what that would sound like after a couple of days in a room. There’s this guy from Wales who’s on tour with us, he’s filling in for another guy in Blacktop Mojo, his name is Joe Harvatt, I guess I’ll just ask him cause he’s downstairs. Man, you know, there’s a lot of older blues singers I would love to do collabs with I just don’t know if they’re still alive anymore. Hit me up, if you’re an artist anywhere in the world, hit me up I just want to sit down and just do art.
So, you’ve just released your new single, you’ve got the UK tour you’re doing now. Is there anything in the works that people can expect from you after this?
Certainly. We were in the writing phase right before we left. I think we’re like five or six demos in for the new record, and just kind of exploring where the sound is going to shift to for the next record, because it changes every record. We’ve just been loving the process, falling in love with doing it all over again. So, we’ll be making a record, hopefully by the summer, we’ll have a single out there for everybody to hear, and our goal is to be able to come back to the UK and Ireland and Scotland and everywhere, once a year, at least.
Bit of a random question but if you could go back in time and write the soundtrack for any movie, what movie do you wish you could’ve written the soundtrack for?
Oh my God, this is crazy. This is what I want to do for a living, I’d love to score film. When I write, I see scenes in my head and not necessarily from particular movies, but it’s just, I see a movie playing out based off of the soundscape that’s being made. That’s my dream is to create for film. But I would love to rewrite, just cause I think there could be some missed opportunities, I’d love to rewrite ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, I think there could be some more epic moments because, I mean, the cinematography, it’s one of the greatest cinematic moments in film history, and the audio is great, but I don’t know, it could be better.
Wrapping up, is there anything you would like to say for anyone reading this?
Yeah, I mean, really, for the next three weeks, we’re all yours so please come out to the shows. Tickets are still available for several shows, grab them up while the grab is good. And then for everybody we’ve done the shows for, thank you so much from the bottom of our hearts for letting us experience these very emotional moments on stage. They’ve been some of the highlights of our lives. So that’s really all I want to say.