Ten Top Tracks from . . . Samantha Fish

This one’s gonna be tricky.  Long time Blues Enthused readers (assuming there are some) will have realised a while back that Samantha Fish has become one of my favourite artists.  She’s now racked up seven albums*, plus her Death Wish Blues collaboration with Jesse Dayton, and I’ve enjoyed all of ‘em big time – though funnily enough I don’t think she has yet racked up a perfect 10 score with any of these releases.
Still, that’s a fair number of songs to choose from, and even following the Ten Top Tracks principles that this is not a league table, it’s a personal chronological overview, and I could put together a whole different list on another day, picking out just ten tunes ain’t easy. But I'm also

inclined to venture off the beaten path a bit to make things more interesting. So let’s get the ball rolling – and as ever, watch out for links to the selected tracks on YouTube, and to reviews of some of the albums too.
As with some other artists who have become personal favourites, I first came across Sam Fish in the October 2013 issue of The Blues Magazine, which ran for a few years in Britain until 2016.  There was an interview with her linked to the release of her second album Black Wind Howlin’, which made her sound interesting, and as a taster a track was included on that month’s covermount CD sampler, which was enough to make me get a download of the album.  And at some point during my first few listens to it I had an epiphany during ‘Kick Around’, the second track.
‘Kick Around’ is a relatively simple, sparky boogie, on which her producer Mike Zito also contributes guitar and backing vocals.  Samantha is giving a characterful vocal performance, when two thirds of the way through she reaches the lines “With open arms and an open heart / I’ve been here from the very start / But I won’t go down on your sinking ship no more,” and on those last two words her voice just flies!  “Holy shit,” I thought, “this girl can sing!”  But that wasn’t all, because on the sizzling guitar solo that follows – possibly by Zito, who is credited with lead guitar on the track – she whoops and hollers at regular intervals in a way that transmits innocent, spontaneous joy.  And that’s it, I was hooked.
Sadly I’ve never heard Fish play ‘Kick Around’ live, and indeed she’s very selective about the tracks she plays from her first two albums.  I get the impression she regards them as immature stuff, like she was on a learning curve and they don’t count for much.  Which is a pity, because there are good songs in different styles littered all over them.
Elsewhere on Black Wind Howlin’, for example, you’ll find the tender and rueful rejection song ‘Over You’, on which she delivers a lovely vocal and sensitive guitar work.  Also in a low key vein there’s the slinky solo acoustic outing of ‘Let’s Have Some Fun’, featuring some imaginative

chord work.  On ‘Last September’ she even knocks out some warm, Zydeco-tinged rootsiness, complete with fiddle.  But for my second pick let’s hear Samantha get heavy, with the lurching, grinding, slithering ‘Heartbreaker’ (not to be confused with the Stones' song '(Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo) Heartbreaker', which she's been known to play live now and then).  It may not be a flat-out rocker, but is still a hefty beast that highlights her early adoption of slide guitar – and is the very track that appeared on that Blues Magazine CD.
Naturally enough I soon got hold of Samantha’s debut album Runaway, and again there several gems among the 10 tracks.  The title is a rattling boogie (though Sam claims to scarcely know the words these days), and ‘Down In The Swamp’ is a tense, atmospheric heavy blues.  I’m tempted by the relaxed but dark storytelling on the twangy blues of ‘Today’s My Day’, and also by the lop-sided groove of the bohemian sounding ‘Otherside Of The Bottle’.  But I’m going to choose a song that’s very unusual in the Samantha Fish canon.  It's true that she’s done lots of slow songs, and stripped back songs, but ‘Feelin’ Alright’ is something else – a breathy, intimate and, yes, seductive performance that’s pretty damn remarkable for a kid who hadn’t quite reached 21 when she wrote and recorded it.  And that’s my general take-away from these first two albums – that whatever Samantha Fish may think of them herself, they’re way more interesting than the run of the mill blues fare you might have expected someone in her youthful shoes to produce.
Her next release, Wild Heart, is a case of what might have been.  Split almost evenly between tough blues-rockers and more sensitive tunes, when it's good it's very very good, but two sub-par tunes - ‘Road Runner’ and ‘Wild Heart’ - let the side down a bit.  To accentuate the positive though, I’m going to highlight both a rocker and a stripped back song.
The upbeat stuff here includes two heavyweight tracks that rarely see the light of her day in her live shows, ‘Turn It Up’ and ‘Show Me’.  The first features a stonkingly tough riff, and a lead guitar turn from producer Luther Dickinson as it accelerates towards its finish.  But I’m going for ‘Show Me’, with its Led-heavy descending riff, and La Fish wailing fit to bust on the clattering chorus, demonstrating that the lady really does know how to put the hammer down.

Fish really spoils us when it comes to more reflective songs on Wild Heart, including the spellbinding ‘Go Home’, with which I’ve seen her reduce an audience to stunned silence in the past, and the haunting, introspective break-up song ‘Lost Myself’.  But my favourite - I think - is the delicious cover of Junior Kimbrough’s ‘I’m In Love With You’ with which she closes the album.  It’s a simple, hypnotic song, but feels relaxed, sun-dappled, and just marvellously contented.
Chills & Fever was a bolt from the blue when it was released in 2017.  A collection of soul/R’n’B covers recorded in Detroit, it’s bursting with dance tracks and torch covers which Fish delivers with style and swagger, summed up by the sassy title track and the heartache of ‘Never Gonna Cry’.  But for sheer untrammelled fun my pick is the breathless ‘Somebody’s Always Trying’, announced by Sam with a bawled “Yea-ea-eeahhll!” worthy of Lulu on ‘Shout’, and featuring some wonderful, teasing guitar.  (By the by, I’ve never felt that the tough stomper ‘Crow Jane’, while a great song, really fitted in this collection.  Now if it had been on Wild Heart instead of those weaker tracks I mentioned . . . .)
Released later the same year, Belle Of The West was a complete contrast.  It’s a collection of semi-stripped back songs produced by Luther Dickinson once again, and featuring a bundle of his North Mississippi compadres.  Often an elegiac, understated affair, it features offbeat rhythms, back porch harmonising, and weeping violin from Lillie Mae on some tracks.  In that vein I heartily recommend the spooky, edgy ‘Don’t Say You Love Me’ and the vivid storytelling of the title track.  But I can’t resist selecting ‘Gone For Good’, one of my favourite Fish songs and often a rollicking highlight of her live show – and that being the case I’m cheating, and sharing a live, more electrified version from 2021.
After Belle Of The West Fish signed a new record deal with Rounder Records, for whom her firstouting was Kill Or Be Kind.  It opens with ‘Bulletproof’, which has become something of a signature song, and other tracks such as the dark and heavy ‘Watch It Die’ and quasi-psychedelic ‘Dream Girl’ have been mainstays of her set for long spells.  The only problem with KOBK, to my mind, is that it tailed off with the closing couple of tracks, ‘Dirty’ and ‘You Got It Bad’, both good songs but not the final exclamation mark that was required.  No matter, I want to draw your attention to two tracks in the middle of the album.  First up there’s ‘Fair-weather’, a sad song revolving around some Beatle-ish twinkling guitar notes and Sam’s vulnerable,

reflective vocal, which is notable for the fact that Fish, normally the Queen of Melisma, here keeps her delivery dead straight throughout.  Oh yeah, and there’s killer key change as a knockout punch. ‘Love Your Lies’, meanwhile, is a perky, power-poppy slice of rock’n’roll, with a delightful, scratchy little guitar break.  Did it hint at Sam having imbibed some punkish classics somewhere along the way?
Which brings us neatly to her most recent solo album Faster, on which Fish pretty much took a wrecking ball to past expectations of her, from the downright wicked album cover onwards, stirring not just New Wave-ish pop into the mix, complete with safety-pin scrabbling guitar breaks, but also electronic dance grooves and even – nurse, the screens! - a guest turn by rapper Tech N9ne.  It’s terrific fun listening to her pinballing around all these styles, though a couple of songs sag a bit in the middle.  But I’ve only got one pick left, so what’s it to be?  The gritty throb of ‘Faster’ itself?  The groove and gloss of ‘All Ice No Whiskey’?  The rattling punkishness of ‘So-Called Lover’?  All good options, but I’m going for the needling, curled lip earworm of ‘Better Be Lonely’, a tale of lust and jealousy set to pulsing bass and a snapping beat, shot through with razor-like guitar.
No room here for anything from Death Wish Blues, Samantha’s dynamic duo 2023 album with outlaw country rocker Jesse Dayton – but hey, you can’t have everything.  Some of you may also wondering why I haven’t included her much acclaimed take on ‘I Put A Spell On You’, or other live diversions such as 'War Pigs'.  Well if that’s your fancy then by all means go for it as your own personal encore.
Samantha Fish has got itchy feet, artistically.  I suspect she’s also a canny, ambitious woman who wants to expand her audience^ well beyond the borders of the blues and blues-rock, and is prepared to move fast and break things to do it.  She’s already come a long way from Runaway to Faster –  her next adventure might just see her shoot for the moon.

You can find a playlist containing all ten tracks on the Blues Enthused YouTube channel, here.

*I'm not including her independent album Live Bait, or the Girls With Guitars collaboration for Ruf Records.

^Six years ago Samantha gave a lengthy and interesting interview about her career, and particularly the business side of being a professional musician, which you can find here.

All photographs by Iain Cameron @bluesenthused.com.