Guitarist Josh Hamler says about the tour, “Being a rock band for 25+ years is almost unthinkable. But here we are. A lot of what keeps the fire burning are those bucket list moments that happen along the way. This opportunity to tour the UK and Ireland alongside our talented friends in Blacktop Mojo is one of those moments. It’s About Time we teamed up to make this dream a reality.”
Singer Nathan Hunt adds,” For more than a decade now, a bucket list item for the band has been to get to the UK and Ireland for a run of shows. Typically, you wait to go over with a band that’s already drawing crowds, and we’ve come close a few times, but they always seemed to fall through in the final hour. It got us wondering if we could potentially do this thing ourselves and who would be a great partner to run with. Over a 3 hour conversation with some of the guys in Blacktop Mojo and a few glasses of liquid courage, we realized both bands were bobbing in the same dingy, so why not try to bring this package over. With great risk and all that. I’ve not been this excited to play our brand of rock n roll in a long time.”
Shaman’s Harvest knows full well what risk and courage look like.
The bands’ last three albums via Mascot Records have seen them hit a creative streak with Smokin’ Hearts & Broken Guns (2014), the Billboard Top 20 Rock album Red Hands, Black Deeds (2017) and the Billboard #11 Hard Rock Album charting Rebelator (2022). Hit songs have led the way; “In Chains” has clocked up 8.3 million views and, at the time of release, spent over four months in the iTunes Top 10 Metal Songs Chart, “Dragonfly” has over 8m views and 5m for “Dangerous” along with the absolute boneshaker favourites; “The Come Up.” “Voices,” “Here it Comes“, and “Under Your Skin.”
They’ve been playlisted by Planet Rock, Total Rock, picked up numerous BBC Radio plays and support from Kerrang, who raved, “Rambunctious Missouri rawkers fry up a fracas” on Red Hand, Back Deeds. Classic Rock lauded their “Muscular riffs, Stonesy blues licks and Southern swagger”, and they’ve picked up fans at Loudwire, SiriusXM Octane, Heavy Mag, Metal Talk, Ghost Cult and more.
It’s their strength and power that have entwined them in the world of professional wrestling; “Broken Dreams” was the theme song for WWE wrestler Drew McIntyre, “End of Days” was the entrance song for Wade Barrett and The Corre, and “Then There Was Darkness” was the promo music for Bray Wyatt vs. The Undertaker at Wrestlemania 31.
But the path to the UK has not been an easy one; strewn with risk and courage, they have had a gruelling journey – in 2012, Nate Hunt had an accident, crushing his ankle, which led him bedbound, needing a hospital bed in his own home for months on end, having to remap his entire future! As he began to walk again, he was diagnosed with throat cancer, which fed into 2014’s Smokin’ Hearts & Broken Guns. “Some dark stuff came from that period. I feel, as a man, you can’t really express that loneliness, so I’d put it in melody,“ he says
He recovered from his cancer diagnosis, but before they began to write Rebelator, Hunt had to make a life-changing decision whether to amputate his leg or not, following his accident a decade earlier. With this hovering over him, they dug deep into the recording session of the new album as a tornado ripped through their town. Levelling everything in its path and devastating the community.
With Rebelator finished, Hunt’s pieced-together leg continued to deteriorate. He started the search for a doctor who would amputate so he at least would be able to walk with a prosthetic. They continued to tour and smashed through their set every night, Hunt pushing through the pain barrier, watching fans sing back – no one knew what he was going through. “The fellas in the band cover the stage movement, the jumping and all the high energy while I’m able to really internalize and project from a place of emotion,” he explains.
So much is their connection to their fans and roots that their hometown, the City of Jefferson, Missouri, proclaimed 2 August as the Official Shaman’s Harvest Day of 2018!
In May 2021, as they released their first new song in three years, “Bird Dog,” he found hope and a doctor who works with young athletes who replaced the joint and rebuilt the Achilles. Now they are tightly coiled and ready to fly headlong into their future.
Blacktop Mojo’s fiery blend of sludgy grooves, classic rock guitar riffs, and southern metal shredding falls somewhere between Soundgarden, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and ZZ Top to form a sound deemed by some as “Texas Grunge”. The music draws on a multitude of genres and styles to form a hodgepodge of dirty, heavy rock and roll mixed with sensual and at times even, carnal blues. After their debut album “I Am” in 2014, The band spent a few years cutting their teeth in dive bars, dancehalls, and honky tonks around Texas. Since then, the band has kept a relentless touring and recording schedule, with multiple songs reaching the top 40 on both the Mediabase and Billboard Rock Charts, no small feat for an independent artist. The band continues to grow the old-fashioned way by hitting the road, sweating it out on stage, and growing slowly, but surely, by word of mouth. “When you come see us,” says lead singer Matt James, “You’re seeing rock and roll the way it used to be. A group of people on stage playing their instruments right in front of your face. No laptops, no backing tracks. What you see is what you get.”
The UK fans may have been waiting a long time for Shaman’s Harvest to come over, but just think of a decade of struggles, heartbreak, pent-up hope and anticipation that the quartet of singer Nathan Hunt, guitarists Josh Hamler and Derrick Shipp and drummer Adam Zemanek are going to unleash on those first few days of the tour… is going to be monumental.
