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Sixty Watt Shaman Interview with Rev. Jim Forrester: Recalibration of an Ultra Electric

Tomorrow night, March 22, Baltimore heavyweights Sixty Watt Shaman will take the stage at the Windup Space as headliners for the Moving the Earth 2 festival. It’s a bill they share with a host of others loyal to the Doom Capitol in geography or spirit including Iron Man, Black Lung, Kingsnake and Wasted Theory, among others, and the beginning of a reunion some years in the making. Sixty Watt Shaman called it quits after the release of 2002’s Reason to Live on Spitfire Records, arguably as they hit their peak of notoriety. As bassist Rev. Jim Forrester elucidates, however, it wasn’t so simple as that. To be fair, it rarely is.

Moving the Earth 2 is the first of several fests at which Sixty Watt will appear in the coming months. They’ve been confirmed for Desertfest in both London and Berlin at the end of April, and May 3 will find them at the top of the bill at The Eye of the Stoned Goat 4 in Worcester, Massachusetts. Granted, they’ve played intermittently over the last decade, but it speaks to the continued relevance of Sixty Watt Shaman‘s studio albums that their work precedes them after all this time. Before Reason to Live served as their swansong, 2000’s Seed of Decades and 1998’s Ultra Electric positioned the Marylanders among the forerunners of what was then still a pretty deep underground. They’re a band whose influence has seeped into a lot of East Coast heavy rock, and the response to their return has been appropriately loud.

Comprised of Forrester, lead guitarist/backing vocalist Todd Ingram (who replaced Joe Selby), returned drummer Chuck Dukehart III (also of Foghound), who left in 2000, and guitarist/vocalist Daniel Soren, the reinvigorated Sixty Watt Shaman has hinted at new material of one form or another to come this year, and reissues of their past albums are in the works, though details remain to be solidified. Wherever they head after these fests, as Forrester describes in the interview that follows, the four-piece are taking a more mature, “grown-up” approach. So no, it seems they won’t be crashing on your couch this time around.

This interview was conducted a little while back, but Rev. Jim — whose involvement in post-Sixty Watt projects like Angels of Meth, Soaphammer, The Devil You Know and Serpents of Secrecy as well as his reputation as an all-around good guy precedes him — was kind enough to shed some light on how the Sixty Watt Shaman reunion came about, how it’s been getting back to work with the band, and where he thinks it might all be heading.

Please find the Q&A after the jump, and enjoy:

Take me through how it feels picking back up, getting started with Sixty Watt again.

Well, it’s been interesting. There’s been a lot of talk about it for years now, and we’ve made little stab attempts at reunion shows here and there, appearance shows. Usually those involved booking shows with all of our other bands at the time being on the show. Like when Dan and Joe had Stillhouse, I had Angels of Meth and the Soaphammer thing going on. That was that one show we did in Baltimore. So, like I said, the talk’s always kind of been out there. Me and Dan had actually started to work on a project after Stillhouse had broken up with Tommy Sickles from Nothingface. We were kind of messing around, but after a while, that dwindled away to nothing. I ended up getting sick and I didn’t talk to anyone for a real long time. At least him for a real long time. Right before I got sick, I had started talking to Todd. Me and Chuck and Todd had gotten together and started Serpents of Secrecy with Johnny Throckmorton from ATP and Aaron [Lewis] from When the Deadbolt Breaks, and that ended also. I’d gotten sick during that period of time, which pretty much destroyed a good part of my year. I was no good. Come back from that, and me and Todd kept going with Serpents and we’ve been writing material, and Chuck’s got Foghound going on, and the whole time, we’ve been talking to Scott Harrington at 313, and he’s been helping us out a lot. And Scott’s a huge Sixty Watt fan, and just kept pushing the issue, “Do you think you guys are gonna get back together and do something?” It just kept weighing on our minds, and we kept getting offers in. For the second year in a row, we got an offer from Desertfest in London, and it’s like, “You know what? Why don’t we give this a shot?” Everyone’s been telling us for so long they want to see us, they want us to really take a stab at this. People really give a shit. People really want to see us. So  let’s take a stab. That was pretty much what drew it all into happening. The actual happening? It’s interesting getting back into the room again. It’s been a long time. It’s cool. So far, it’s just been a really happy reunion every time we’ve gotten together and jammed on the old stuff, man. It’s been nothing but good vibes and good times.

Is it weird after so long?

That’s the thing. It’s not. It’s weird that it isn’t weird (laughs). It’s just like picking up right where we left off, which is even crazier when you consider that, Chuck was out of the band in 2000, so we went on to do a whole other record and a whole lot of touring without Chuck even in the band. We just kind of rode in. Me and Todd have been working on the songs. Todd has done an incredible amount of work on his own learning the stuff. For us it was like getting back up on that bike we used to ride. Todd had to learn everything fresh. He’s done a great job. We’ve just gotten in the room — bang. Turned on the switch, man.

What was it that led you guys to stop?

(Laughs) Um… I was asked this recently. Basically, Sixty Watt had pretty much been all of our lives nonstop since things started picking up for us in about ’97. The band started in ’96, so from about ’97 till when the band finally stopped being active, I guess, it had basically consumed all of us. It was everything we did. Anyone who’s been in a band knows the toll that can take obviously on relationships, even just your family or keeping steady work employment going. Because we were never in any kind of position where any members of the band didn’t have to work. We did good. We did very well for ourselves for a while. It was self-sustaining, but we all still had to have dayjobs, you know what I mean? And they had to be the kind of jobs that allowed you to take off and go on tour for three months at the drop of a hat. And keeping that going was rough. Plus, just being up each other’s ass (laughs) so much like we were, I think a lot of frustration started showing. We were having a lot of problems with Spitfire. They ended up dropping our tour support for a headlining tour we were supposed to do in Europe. When Reason hit, they didn’t do anything to support the record. At the time, we had just gotten rid of our management, because our management was horrible (laughs) – just flat out bad management. So business-wise, we were completely just floating along, and it was like, my god, after seven years, eight years’ worth of work and everything we’ve done, we’re starting back from the beginning again. I think that really hit everyone pretty hard. Minnesota Pete [Campbell] was the drummer. He was still living in Minnesota. I was in Baltimore, Dan was in .D.C. Dan ended up taking off and moving out to Oklahoma. Everyone was in different parts of the country and it was just like, “You know what? I think it’s time to put this to bed.” There was never any conversation like, “We’re breaking up the band!” There was no huge fight that precipitated it or anything like that. It wasn’t all dramatic. You can’t wrap it up in a nice little package that, “This is what happened and it was over after that.” It just kind of went away, and I knew it was definitely done as an active band when it happened, kind of around that timeframe, because I went on and started The Devil You Know in Baltimore, and after that band, I moved off to Kentucky and started another band there. It was actually a couple years before I even talked to any of the other guys. I had just gotten really wrapped up in staying productive. I wanted to keep recording music. I wanted to keep putting music out. I wanted to keep performing, you know? And I got in other business ventures along that follow along with that. The tattoo and piercing business. I’ve been a body piercer for years and years and followed along that trail. The other guys went along and did their things. So yeah, there was no Hollywood story of the big breakup of Sixty Watt or anything (laughs). It just kind of went away, man. And now it’s back (laughs).

Aside from being in the same area, was there something in particular that let the reunion happen now?

Well, I’m by no means close. It takes me about four and a half hours to get to band practice. We practice in Baltimore City. It’s about four, four and a half hours for me to get down there. So when I go to rehearse for these shows we have coming up and whatever other stuff we’re doing, it’s a weekend for me. It’s a trip. I’m lucky enough to be in a situation that I can afford and have the time to do that in my life right now. Otherwise it would be impossible, obviously. It’s a lot of money, it’s a lot of drivin’, it’s a lot of time. I was already going  down there anyway, because again, I never stopped playing. I never stopped doing this stuff. It’s always been in my heart and I’ve always been a part of it and I always plan to be, some fashion or the other. I was already going down there anyway because me and Todd were getting together once a month, couple times a month, to work on Serpents of Secrecy, so when Sixty Watt came up, it was just like, “Well, I’m heading down there to do this anyway, might as well keep on doing it for Sixty Watt now.” We just switched the attention over to Sixty Watt for now instead of Serpents.

How has it been putting a set together?

We’re still working on that, to tell you the truth (laughs). Everybody has their favorite songs, and everyone, everyone, everyone gets an equal vote. That’s one thing out of the jump that we made very clear, that everyone has equal say in this crew, so no one can hold out to get their way. You get voted down (laughs). Obviously there’s compromise. We try to work by group consensus, though. It’s tough, because everyone’s got their favorite tunes, and just today, Chuck put something up on the Facebook page, asking fans, “What songs do you really like? What songs do you want to hear?” because we want that kind of input. We don’t want to just go and play a bunch of tunes that we want to hear and we want to play and everyone’s standing there going, “We never liked that song” (laughs). We’re taking all input. We want to know what cats want to hear and we know what we want to play, so it’s going to be a combination of both.

And the atmosphere in rehearsals? I’d imagine, coming from four and a half hours away, you want to get right to it when you get there.

Oh yeah man. It’s business. It’s all business. Well, we’re all friends. We’re palling around, joking around the whole time, but all our party days are behind us. I can’t. I don’t anyway. Todd doesn’t. So it’s not like we’re cracking beers and doing shots and it’s a big party the whole time. We’re getting in there and we’re playing. That’s why we’re doing this whole thing anyways. We love to play. We want to perform. We want to get back out on stage and play these songs for people again.

Any chance you’ll write new material?

Well… (Laughs). We’re not talking about that much right now. I will say that we’re definitely jamming on some stuff. Everyone’s got some ideas, so it’s definitely a possibility that there’s gonna be new material out there. Is it gonna happen at these three shows we have booked for the spring? I can’t necessarily say. It might, it might not. But we are jamming on some new stuff.

How often are you actually getting together?

Right now we’re trying to get together twice a month. But the day we get together, it’s a full eight to 10 hours of work, of jamming.

You could, theoretically, put something together.

(Laughs) Theoretically. The way this band works, dude, theoretically we could have an album written by now (laughs). This band has always worked in – I mean, we have T’s impact coming in, his writing ability. The way it used to work, literally, if we had a big long jam, one or two songs would come out. There’s so much unreleased Sixty Watt, unrecorded Sixty Watt material out there that’s probably only on live shows that someone has recorded somewhere. We were always spitting out songs, dude. Always. Always a very creative group, and all of us on our own have never stopped being like that. We used to call each other the riff machines, dude, because the riffs, just constant (laughs). Unending. Nothing’s different now. I mean, obviously Joey’s not in the room, T is, but T fits with us perfectly. He’s the same kind of guy, same kind of player.

Which came first, Stoned Goat or Desertfest?

Actually, Stoned Goat came first. The offer came in from Desertfest London, but there was a lot of negotiation to be done, basically. Until that was announced online, that was the same week that we finally came to agreements on the show. The same time. They announced we were playing it, we announced we were playing it. Within a couple days, we had come to agreements on that show. It wasn’t like we were sitting back on playing that show. But yeah, Brendan [Burns, organizer of The Eye of the Stoned Goat] came through. We said, “Hey, we’re gonna start doing this,” and Brendan came in with the offer and we were like, “Fuck yeah, that sounds awesome. Of course we wanna play.”

Will there be other shows?

Yes. Chuck is doing another Moving the Earth festival. Moving the Earth will be March 22 and 23 at The Wind-up Space in Baltimore, and we are headlining the first night, the 22nd. That will be our only Baltimore, only local show so far booked.

That’s soon.

Yes it is, man. Yes it is.

That will actually be first.

Yes.

How long will you keep the reunion going? Or is it just these, and then maybe, maybe not?

That one we’re gonna figure out on the trip, you know what I mean? We’re not coming to this with the same do-or-die, be-all-end-all feel that we did back in our early-20s or mid-20s. All of us are in our 40s. I’m 39. I’m the baby in the band, everyone else is in their 40s. We have more of a sense of patience and a sense like “wait and see” to things more now, where before everything had to be figured out and decided right this god damn second. I think it’s gonna continue. We’ve talked about everything. Doing another record. More shows. We’re definitely coming out with a whole new line of merchandise. We’re re-releasing Ultra Electric, which is going to be remastered, re-released. Our first demo (laughs), which no one has ever heard outside of maybe 100 people in Baltimore City. Tons of live tracks we’re putting together. Some downloadable content. We’re editing some old shows we have. I’m trying to get as much fan footage and fan audio from stuff that we have in for different releases. Those are all things we’re putting together. And yeah, you know, it depends what offers come in, to tell you the truth. We’re not aggressively going, “Hey, we’re gonna book this tour.” If people come in with an offer, if it’s a good offer, chances are we’ll probably take it. It’s gonna continue. There is no dead-end, “Okay, we’re playing these three shows and this is the end, right now, right here.” We’re taking a wait-and-see stance to it all.

That’s probably the more mature way to do it.

Yeah. Fuck. We’re grown-ups now (laughs). It’s not like, “Right now we gotta drop everything and book three weeks, four weeks out to the West Coast and back and we’ll be sleeping on people’s floors again and living off ramen noodles” (laughs). We’re not doing that one again. We did that enough times.

Sixty Watt Shaman, “New Trip” from Seed of Decades (2000)

Sixty Watt Shaman on Thee Facebooks

Moving the Earth 2 Festival on Thee Facebooks

Desertfest London

Desertfest Berlin

The Eye of the Stoned Goat 4

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