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Friday Full-Length: Shovelhead, Red Sky Horizon

Posted in Bootleg Theater on August 31st, 2018 by JJ Koczan

Shovelhead, Red Sky Horizon (2003)

Dig that vibe for just a minute, that’s all I ask. I know dipping back to a record like Red Sky Horizon isn’t exactly high-profile, but man, New Jersey’s Shovelhead could jam. They’d stand on stage at the Brighton Bar in Long Branch, all power-trio style and humble about-to-wreck-the-place swagger, and guitarist Jim LaPointe (also vocals) would unload these space-toned solos that stretched out as much as on, while bassist Sha Zaidi — usually chewing a toothpick, I guess because rockabilly — and drummer Mike Scott with his Vistalite kit set up on the small riser in back would hold down these righteous grooves. You can hear it in the mellow groove after the initial Motörheady thrust of third cut “Bottom,” or get a feel for some of LaPointe‘s power-trio-leading in the opening title-track, but the point is Shovelhead played with so much character, whether it was the take on mellow Sabbath that launched “The Weight” or in the Hendrixed-up instrumental take on “Amazing Grace” that closes out, fittingly enough, after the hard-driving chug of “Bastard.” On stage — usually on that stage — they were utterly at home. I had the pleasure of seeing Shovelhead on multiple occasions and even did shows with them, and it was always a bittersweet experience because I knew no matter how good a show it might otherwise be, Shovelhead were about to blow my band right out of the water.

A bit of nostalgia? Yeah, probably, but I remain a Shovelhead fan even though their last record, the all-lowercase spitting oil, came out in 2007. That was their third outing, and by then, they were long since underrated, having made their debut as Shovelhead with a self-titled CD in 2001 following a name change from their original moniker The Lemmings, which I guess wasn’t stoner rock enough. Maybe? I don’t know what motivated the switch, but they had a disc out called The March of Provocation in ’98 that was pretty good as I recall and I seem to think there was at least one other, maybe an EP? It’s kind of fuzzy two decades later, but either way, they were part of the NJ shore-region cohort of post-Monster Magnet heavy rock and came up roughly around the same time as the likes of The Atomic BitchwaxSolaceHalfway to GoneLord SterlingSix SigmaCore, and so on, and while some of those bands would get picked up by labels large and small — Core were on AtlanticBitchwax and Solace on MeteorCityHalfway on Small Stone, etc. — Shovelhead went unsigned for the duration. Fair enough. I don’t think they had particularly huge ambitions for touring or anything like that, so it was just as easy for them to DIY their releases and play where and when they could and felt like doing so. They were a well-kept secret of that scene, and for me, Red Sky Horizon was the album that came closest to capturing what they were able to do live.

To some degree, second track “Crop Duster” is a defining groove in my mind for them. It’s got the speed-punker root in its shovelhead red sky horizonverses, and LaPointe‘s vocals echo out on top to make even that verse a hook before everything stops and he asks, “Do you know what you’re doing?” and “Do you know what you’re saying?” before they kick full-boar into winding power trio jamming. They mellow out before halfway through the track’s six minutes, but just before hitting the four-minute mark turn to a funky series of starts and stops with Zaidi filling out the space with low and as LaPointe busts out a solo and Scott‘s drums gradually build their way back to the verse and chorus to finish out, the last question, “Do you know where you’re going?” held out with a bluesy soul. Likewise, after the seven-minute nod-fest boogie of “The Weight,” the instrumental “Uncle Jesse” begins a salvo of four shorter tracks that includes “Moon Shine Blind” and “Bastard” ahead of “Amazing Grace,” and what might otherwise be a side B in the second half of the tracklisting winds up efficiently expanding on the adventurous vibe of “Red Sky Horizon,” “Crop Duster,” “Bottom” and “The Weight,” stripping down some of the psychedelic elements at play, but keeping that character in their tones and the classic heavy rock spirit of the instrumentals. And hey, fun fact: when I reviewed Red Sky Horizon for the paper in NJ I worked for at the time, I compared “Moon Shine Blind” to the main song from the movie O Brother Where Art Thou? and LaPointe was the first person ever to tell me I nailed it on getting his inspiration for the vocal melody right. That was at least 15 years ago now and I still feel good about it to this day.

Pair that next to the maddening tension of “Bastard” — the standout line: “Take all your bullshit, shove it up your ass” — and cap it off with “Amazing Grace” and you’ve got an eight-track/40-minute outing that’s thoughtful but natural sounding and traditionalist in its dynamic, but again, so filled with personality on the part of its players that it almost can’t help but be original. I used to stand in front of the stage at the Brighton, my seventh beer probably in my hand, and you could watch any individual member of Shovelhead at any point in their set and you had at least an 80 percent chance your jaw would drop from what they were playing. That sounds like hyperbole, but these guys were great, and I love this record, so while I know it’s not the biggest release ever and people might prefer something they already know or be hesitant to take on an out-of-print 15-year-old disc from a NJ heavy rock band who once upon a time were really cool, fuck it, it’s my site and I wanted to listen to Shovelhead. I don’t need any more reason than that.

As noted, spitting oil was their third and final album in 2007, so their social media presence is pretty much nil. What was their website would seem to be long gone. I couldn’t even find a MySpace page lingering. But if you’re into Red Sky Horizon, there’s no Bandcamp or anything, but all three of Shovelhead‘s full-lengths are available as downloads from CDBaby — as opposed to being available on CD from DownloadBaby — and there isn’t one of them that isn’t worth time and dime alike.

So dig in, and as always, I hope you enjoy.

For the first half-hour I was awake this morning, I thought it was Saturday. I came downstairs, turned on the coffee pot, was all set to start writing stuff for Monday posts in that casual, maybe-I’ll-just-read-about-baseball-for-a-while way of Saturday mornings, when I remembered I hadn’t even done the Shovelhead post yet. Missed a day there, guy. Might want to get on that. In my defense, I’ll note only that said “first half-hour” was the half-hour between 2:30 and 3AM.

Hard week. On Monday I think it was or maybe Sunday, I can’t even remember, we said goodbye to my family and headed north to Connecticut to come back to Massachusetts, pretty much to hunker down for the semester ahead. We moved the coffee pot, so that’s it. We’ve done plenty of back and forth, but where the Chemex goes is home and it’s back in MA now. I have no problem admitting I was sad to go. It was awesome to spend so much time in New Jersey this summer, to see my family, to have The Pecan get to know those cousins, his aunt and uncle, his grandmother, and have him meet assorted friends. I saw Slevin two days in a row this summer! That’s a special event in itself.

We’ll be back down there a couple times over the next few months — once in October for sure, then again for holidays, but in terms of the daily where-I’m-at, it’ll be back here in MA in the townhouse. The Patient Mrs. has a conference this weekend in Boston, so we’re headed there this morning early — it’s quarter to five now, so by “early” I mean in about two hours, maybe a little less — and I’ll be on baby duty. Should be interesting in a hotel room, but weather permitting, which always a gamble in Boston, I’ll take him out and we’ll go somewhere around town. Even if it’s Armageddon Shop or wherever. Just something to do rather than sit on ass and try to stop him from climbing on the furniture — it’s not so much the climbing I’m opposed to as the inevitable falling off that follows — while I try and fail to stare at my phone and be bored. “You old enough to have a conversation yet? No? Okay, let’s go for a walk somewhere.”

We also found out yesterday that The Little Dog Dio has bone cancer. The vet showed us the rather sizable tumor in her shoulder on the x-ray. We knew she wasn’t well — hence going to the vet — and she’s 12, so the possibility that it wasn’t something minor had occurred to us, but it still hit pretty hard. They did a bunch of blood tests to see if it’s in her organs [Update: it’s not.] and the vet gave us some pain meds for her in the meantime. We have a follow-up appointment next week, which looms large and ominous in my mind. He said the treatment was either amputate her leg — she’s 12; so no — or start her on radiation, which would make her miserable and really only help pain management anyway. Light on options. Heavy on grief.

In the meantime, she’s sleeping a lot. She’s lost five pounds in the last month, going from 37 to 32, which is the lowest I can recall her being as a full-grown dog. We’ve had her since she was nine weeks old. She’s the last of the Koczans. My heart breaks.

Monday is Labor Day but I’ll be posting. It’s a busy week because it’s the start of the semester and I’ll be slammed with babytime, so of course I’ve booked a ton of premieres. Here are the notes, with likely changes:

Mon.: Kelly Carmichael track premiere; P.H.O.B.O.S. track premiere.
Tue.: Druglord video premiere/review; Stone Titan track premiere.
Wed.: Stoned Jesus review/album stream.
Thu.: La Chinga review/album stream; LaGoon lyric video premiere.
Fri.: Fuzz Evil review/track premiere; Yung Druid video premiere.

The week is full. I don’t like to do more than one premiere a day, and there are two booked for four out of the five days next week. I know there are a lot of releases coming up, but that’s just silly. I may whittle down the amount of news so I can fit it all in and still, I don’t know, exist?, but we’ll see. To be perfectly honest, I’ve kind of pulled the wind out of my sails thinking about it.

It’s a busy weekend though, so I’m going to punch out and get to it. If you need me, I’ll be social media-available intermittently and otherwise around. One never really detaches these days, or if so, not for very long.

I hope you have a great and safe weekend. Thank you for reading, and please check out the forum and the radio stream.

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