Blues-rock guitar heroine Samantha Fish’s latest album was met with a little resistance from longtime fans but, during a recent phone chat, she tells me that that’s something she’s okay with: “Everyone initially freaks out because it’s different. They’re like, ‘Tech N9ne? Synthesizers? No!’… but my favorite reactions are when those people are eventually like, ‘It wasn’t what I was expecting, but I like it.’” “I like to grow and change with every album and, for me, it feels like a natural evolution,” she adds.
Although only 32, Faster, which dropped September 10th on Rounder Records, is already Samantha Fish’s sixth full-length. And although Fish is most frequently associated with the blues, her latest album does, indeed, feature rapper Tech N9ne on Southern rocker “Loud” and was even produced by Martin Kierszenbaum, best known as one of the producers behind Lady Gaga’s The Fame. However, she tells me that the finished product was far from what she expected would come out of her during the past year and a half: “My initial thought on this record was that it would be a real dirge, because it was written at the top of the pandemic… I was thinking about real post-Apocalyptic shit.” But when she got down to actually writing and recording, she explains that she found herself in a very different mindset: “I wanted to write stuff that made me feel good and made other people feel good. I feel sexy and empowered listening to it and I hope other people do too, but there’s a little bit of edginess and angst as well.”
The sound of the album, which is as much dance club as it is honky tonk, was also inspired by Fish’s record collection, which she recently got to spend a lot of time revisiting: “I was playing a lot of vinyl last year because I was at home so much.” In particular, she mentions listening to a lot of Betty Harris, Prince, and Nine Inch Nails, in addition to George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass and, of course, The Fame. However, she emphasizes that she certainly wasn’t trying to sound like any one thing: “Sometimes when I’m writing I try not to listen to music because I don’t want to be crazy influenced by any other artists, but it’s hard to not listen to music as a musician, because you love it.” She also tells me that she’s been excited to watch her fanbase grow and evolve with her sound throughout her first six albums.
“I think especially coming up in this blues genre, the fanbase is a little bit older, but the shows are becoming more diverse. I don’t want it to become one thing or the other. The idea is to connect with everyone. Music’s about making a connection. It’s universal.”
“I just fucking love going back out on the road,” says Samantha, who has already spent much of 2021 playing live, including her fifth year in a row at the Telluride Blues and Brews Festival and an extra special show at the legendary Troubadour: “We just did LA and sold out a show at The Troubadour. I always geek out about that stuff. Like, Bob Dylan played there, Tom Waits cut his teeth there.” However, despite so much time on the road, Samantha Fish tells me that she and her band are taking the conditions of the pandemic very seriously: “We have a pretty strict protocol within our band because if one person gets sick, we all get sick. People want to politicize it, but it’s really more an economic issue for the touring industry.”
Samantha Fish’s current round of US dates (most of which are headlining) will take her all the way to New Year’s Eve (when she plays Macon, GA with Allman Family Revival) and she will be headlining our very own Union Transfer on Sunday, November 7th. Of what can be expected of the evening, she tells me, “I’m just trying to put on a good show.” She says the setlist will likely feature much of Faster, in addition to stuff that some members of the audiences are used to singing along to: “We have a new album, so I’m leaning on that pretty hard, but also mixing in some old stuff, the ‘favorites.’” She says the goal is to, “Mix them together and take people on a journey. They want to feel connected.” In addition to these dates, Samantha Fish already has Europe shows booked throughout the first and fourth quarters of 2022, which she tells me is something that always excites her.
“I love touring Europe, to go to these really beautiful places and embrace the culture… We want to put as much focus internationally as we do in the states. We want to spread it out. I mean, if I was playing in your city every week, you’d get fucking sick of me.”
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