08/30/12 – Thursday – 3:14PM – Madison, CT

In about four hours, the twelfth edition of the Stoner Hands of Doom festival will kickoff at the El ‘n’ Gee club in New London, Connecticut. SHoD XII finds the fest moved north from its established home the last several years at Krug’s Place in Frederick, Maryland, and it has brought some of its Chesapeake-era veterans north to New England to mesh with the always-fertile scene here.

Between tonight and Sunday, my project is this: See and cover every single band at all four days of SHoD XII, leaving no one out.

I’m not even sure yet how I’m going to do it, but that’s my goal. Tonight I’ll test the waters of the process while enjoying the familiar likes of Black Thai and Roadsaw, a new lineup of Ichabod and bands I’ve never seen before in Raw Radar War, Birch Hill Dam and fest openers Rozamov. No matter how it works out, I know I’ll have a good time.

And until I need to leave, I’ll enjoy a few hours repose and charge batteries both literal and figurative. I left the office at 12:30PM and made better time up here than I thought I would, which gives me a little flex. Likely I’ll still want to get to the El ‘n’ Gee early and get the lay of the land — I’ve only ever been there once and it was a long time ago; I look forward to seeing if the stage is as high as I remember — but even so, a little time to catch my breath is a boon, as I don’t think there will be much of it, particularly as we get into the all-day extravaganzas of the Saturday and Sunday lineups.

I’ve been looking forward to this. I think it’s going to be a great weekend with a lot of awesome people, killer bands and just the right kind of vibe. If you can make it down, I hope you’ll say hi.

Welcome to The Obelisk’s coverage of SHoD XII.

For the complete lineup, check the fest’s website: http://cherylsweb.com/shod/

Tags: SHoD, SHoD 2012, SHoD XII, SHoD XII Total Coverage, Stoner Hands of Doom, Stoner Hands of Doom 2012, Stoner Hands of Doom XII

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2012 at 2:28 pm and is filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.