Brian Rozman
For the past few years, Kansas City blues-rock musician Samantha Fish has been making a name for herself as one of the most promising young voices in the genre. Her latest album, Chills & Fever, debuted in March of 2017 to positive reviews. Rooted in blues, she keeps reinventing her sound and is now touring with a six-piece band — her biggest stage show yet. Isthmus recently caught up with Fish, who performs in Madison Aug. 3 at Central Park Sessions.
Earlier this year you put out your latest album, Chills & Fever, which has a different sound and instrumentation than some of your previous work. Are you happy with how it turned out?
I feel like ever since I got started playing music, I always wanted to play with a bigger band, and this was a good opportunity to do it. It was time to do something big and dynamic, to take a step and explore this other side of music. I’ve always done soul vocals with a rock and roll trio format, so I didn’t get to express this other side of my personality. We added horns and keys, went to Detroit and worked with members of the Detroit Cobras. It really was this big collision of regions. I think it has a lot of personality.
The album is all covers, many by well-known artists, but the songs themselves are relatively obscure. Was that intentional?
My producer, Bobby Harlow, and I went through these tracks for a couple months. I feel like the criteria we were looking for was stuff that sounded like a hit but maybe wasn’t necessarily a hit. We wanted to redo something that people haven’t heard yet, great songs that really deserved to be heard. So we asked ourselves, “Does it sound like a hit?”
Detroit is a legendary music city with a distinctive mix of sounds. How was working with the Detroit Cobras and how did the city influence the record?
The Detroit Cobras have this edgy energy; they’re great. They’re the consummate musicians. Detroit was the perfect landscape for the record — it has that power and soul. As soon as we walked into the studio, everything had a vintage feel — the microphones, the amps, even the hotel that we stayed at had a lot of vibe to it. The whole process really had a personality, and you can hear that in the music.
How is it touring with the bigger band?
I was a little nervous at first — it’s a big step going from a teeny little road production now that you’ve got twice as many guys and twice as many personalities. But I love my band: They’re phenomenal players, and everybody’s really fired up about doing these shows. Before that, I had so much work to do — I still carry all the guitar, but now I can focus on being a singer and an entertainer rather than running around the stage trying to fill up the sound.
I read an interesting piece in the Washington Post recently about the death of the electric guitar, which talked about declining guitar sales and the perceived lack of modern “guitar gods” like there were back in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Do you think the instrument is still important?
There’s this inner battle for guitar players — either we’re all doomed, or we’re optimistic about music and where we’re going. Everything ebbs and flows, popularity wanes, but then it comes back again. I think there are a lot of guitar heroes out there who aren’t getting the attention. But it is interesting about the decline of physical sales of guitars. Maybe there’s just enough of them out there at his point?
You’re a young person who plays blues, a genre that stereotypically has older fans. What are your thoughts on its relevance and popularity these days?
There are a lot of great [blues] bands right now. Blues is the longest standing American art form. It keeps reinventing itself. It has stood test of time because everybody can relate to it. Now is a time when we need that kind of music, we need it now more than ever. It’s pretty scary out there — just watch the news.
So do you think we, as a society, have the collective blues?
We’ve all got it. We live in a scary world, but music is something that unifies everybody. It’s comforting. It has the power to connect, and that’s why it’s so important.
I read that you recently moved from your hometown of Kansas City to New Orleans. What’s next for you and the band?
Well my band is out of [New Orleans], so it was a logistically sensible thing — I wanted to be a grownup and move to where the band is. But I’ve been wanting to go there for a long time; there's so much inspiration to be had there for songwriting, so much to soak up. We’ve got a record coming out in October as well, Belle of the West, which was recorded a year and a half ago with Luther Dickinson. He recorded it and played on it. There are all these Mississippi and Memphis musicians on the album — it’s really very Americana-songwriter, very personal. It’s a semi-acoustic record, but still pretty rockin’.
We recorded Belle of the West before [Chills & Fever], but it wasn’t the best time to put it out, but after Chills & Fever came out, it felt like the right time. So we’ve got these two dramatically different albums, but they relate because they’re concept albums — Belle of the West is like the flip side of Chills & Fever. So I’m giving it two shots this year. I’ve got a lot to say right now, both musically and in my writing — 2017 felt like my year.