Ever since I started listening to Shaman’s Harvest’s new CD, Shine, I have been a fan of their stuff. When I got a chance to catch them live at Rock on the Range this year, it did nothing but further improve the amount that I liked the band, listening to Nathan’s vocals live and seeing the way that Ryan plays the guitar. So when I found out that they were heading back to Nashville with Black Stone Cherry and Willow Shade, I couldn’t have been more pleased. If you haven’t heard any of their stuff, to me, a lot of their stuff has a Shinedown sound to it with a little more blues mixed in. Even though it isn’t the normal metal stuff that fills my Zune, their music is a great change of pace on the playlist.
Saturday, June 27th started off as your normal TN summer day, hot and humid as Hell. But as time came to head towards the show mother nature reared her ugly head with some nasty looking storm clouds, but that did not deter me from wanting to see the show. Miranda and I traversed through pouring rain, hail, and lightening. However, by the time, we reached the Exit/In for the show, the weather was perfectly fine once again.
The Exit/In was as hot and muggy as ever, and packed with people here to see the bands play. Even though this wasn’t the typical show that we go to that has lots of mosh pits and crowd surfing, the crowd looked like it was ready to have a great time.
Willow Shade took the stage first. For a band that I have never heard of or seen before, they did a great job. Both their drummer and their bass player were the highlights of their performance, since they seemed to put every ounce of passion they have into the performance. Even though I didn’t know the songs, they were pretty easy to get into, and overall the band had a pretty great performance. Right after the last song of the set, their bass player passed out on stage and had to be carried outside for some fresh air and some water.
2nd on the lineup for the night is Shaman’s Harvest. I enjoyed them a lot at Rock on the Range, and was hoping for a great performance again this night. They started their set off with their album’s title track, “Shine” which sounded great live even though the vocals were set a little too low at first. But it didn’t change the fact that the song is amazing. They moved through a lot of the songs that I love off of their latest album like “Turn it Up” and my favorite song by them, “Devil’s Gift”. After a while it looked as if Nathan was starting to feel the heat and mugginess of the venue too, but he kept on. They closed their set off with “Dragonfly” which is their current single on the radio waves, which is a killer song too.
Unfortunately, we were unable to stay for Black Stone Cherry due to some previous engagements that we had planned for that evening. In all honesty I didn’t enjoy their performance at RotR ’09 and I didn’t have much in the ways of expectations for them this time. But I hope they had a great performance and that the crowd had a great time listening to them. On our way out we spoke with a couple of members of Willow Shade to make sure that their bassist was fine, and they said he was doing great and was back in the building rocking out.
Overall, it was a great night for music in Nashville. Even with the rather poor acoustics of the Exit/In it was easy to get into the feel of the music and just have fun, after all that is what concerts are all about. Having fun and enjoying the art.