Samantha Fish
Is Playin’ Up a Storm on New Ruf Records CD, Black Wind Howlin’, Due
September 10
Follow-Up Album
to Her Blues Music Award-Winning Debut Was Produced by Mike Zito and Features
Guest Appearances by Zito, Yonrico Scott, Charlie Wooton and Paul
Thorn
KANSAS CITY, MO – Ruf Records announces a September 10 U.S.
release date for Black Wind Howlin’, the new CD from blues-rock
guitarist/singer Samantha Fish and follow-up to her 2012 Blues Music
Award-winning label debut, Runaway. Produced by Mike Zito, who did
the same honors on her last album, Black Wind Howlin’ was recorded
at Dockside Studios in Maurice, Louisiana, and features Samantha’s blazing
guitar and vocals backed by Mike Zito on guitar and vocals, plus his fellow
Royal Southern Brotherhood members Yonrico Scott on drums/percussion and Charlie
Wooton on bass. Special guests include Paul Thorn on vocals,
Johnny Sansone on harmonica and Bo Thomas on fiddle.
Kansas
City-based Samantha Fish has been on a major roll ever since she teamed up with
Cassie Taylor and Dani Wilde on Ruf’s 2011 release, Girls with Guitars,
and fueled by the trio’s Blues Caravan tour of Europe and the U.S.,
created an international buzz in the blues world. Later that same year she
recorded Runaway, her solo debut on Ruf, which mixed gutsy
riff-blues rockers like “Down In The Swamp” with the mellow small-hours jazz of
“Feelin’ Alright,” while marinating her songwriting in the groove of the Rolling
Stones and even tipping a hat to Heart. “It’s all the sounds I grew up with,”
she explained at the time, “with my own spin.” Earlier this year Samantha joined
labelmate Devon Allman for a sultry duet of the Tom Petty classic, “Stop
Draggin’ My Heart Around,” that appeared on Devon’s Turquoise CD
and accompanying video.
Hitting a receptive international blues and
rock press, Runaway was hailed as a thrilling opening statement,
earning a string of rave reviews and radio airplay, climaxed by her winning the
Blues Music Award (BMA) for “Best New Artist Debut” in 2012. “I’m truly humbled
by the recognition,” Samantha said afterward. “I can barely wait to make record
number two…”
Now, the wait is over, as Samantha Fish
unleashes a major storm of her trademark guitar work and soulful vocals on
Black Wind Howlin’. “It has a
rebellious streak,” says the bandleader of her game-changing new album, “and
a prevalent theme is, ‘I’m not
gonna take your sh*t anymore…’”
No “sophomore slump” here, as Black
Wind Howlin’ leaps from the speakers with 12 smoking tracks that chart
Samantha’s evolution as songwriter, gunslinger and lyricist. “Since completing Runaway back
in 2011, I’ve been on tour pretty much non-stop,” she proclaims. “I’ve spent a
lot of time writing, playing and listening to music. I feel like the themes and
the sound of my music have matured. To me, it’s about the human experience from
my perspective, as well as people I’ve come into contact with over the last few
years.”
Rather than trying to duplicate what she
accomplished on her first success, Samantha re-defines her sound throughout the
tracks on Black Wind
Howlin’. She can be
brutally rocking on cuts like the tour bus snapshot of “Miles To Go”
(“Twelve hours to Reno/ten
hours til the next show”), the swaggering “Sucker Born” (“Vegas left me weary,
LA bled me dry/skating on fumes as I crossed the Nevada
line…”) and the venomous “Go To Hell” (“Oh, this ain’t my first rodeo/You hit
yourself a dead end/Your voodoo eyes, ain’t gonna cast a
spell/So you can go to hell!”). “I’ve become tougher,” she notes of these
head-banging moments, “and I think that was reflected in the sound we went
for.”
And yet, elsewhere, backed by the versatile
production of longtime collaborator Mike Zito, you’ll find Samantha shifting
gears to the aching slide-guitar balladry of “Over You” (“Echoing words, said
I’d never make it on my own…”) and the redemptive country song, “Last
September” (“Don’t remember the curves of my face/Can’t feel the warmth in my embrace/Well I’m
here to remind you…”).
She might stop off for a gritty cover of
Howlin’ Wolf’s “Who’s Been Talking,” and co-wrote “Go to Hell” with Zito, but
all other tracks are Samantha’s self-penned originals, and it’s a mix that will
keep listeners on their toes.
“I wanted this record to have a modern
rocking sound,” she explains of the album’s vibe. “I also wanted it to have
elements of Americana, country and roots.”
For Samantha, the recording sessions proved
just as rewarding as the writing “I had a dream team of musicians and
special guests,” she recalls. “And Dockside Studios quickly became one of my
favorite places on earth.”
It hasn’t been that long since a teenaged
Samantha Fish first started showing up at her local Kansas City blues club,
Knuckleheads Saloon, and began soaking up the sounds of visiting modern blues
guitar masters like Mike Zito and Tab Benoit, then going back to ’80s heroes
like Stevie Ray Vaughan and following the lineage to the pre-war Delta
masters. “I fell in love with
it,” she told Premier Guitar of her growing passion for the form,
“and started doing my homework by listening to the old guys like Son House and
Skip James.”
With those influences as her template,
Samantha incorporated the sounds of the classic rock of The Rolling Stones
and Tom Petty, alongside contemporary artists like Sheryl Crow and The Black
Crowes, in putting together a sound that would become her own.
By the age of 18, Samantha had settled on a
searing lead guitar style that expressed her own voice rather than mimicking
clichéd blues licks note-for-note. She quickly broke into a dues-paying period
on the Kansas City jam circuit: an apprenticeship at the sharp end that
tightened her musical chops, polished her stagecraft and gave her the grit to
overcome occasional skepticism about her age, hair tone and gender.
“I always hated the idea of the
gimmick,” she told Premier Guitar. “People come out just because
you are a girl, but then you have so much more to prove once you get them in the
door.”
And Samantha has delivered on that promise,
as evidenced by one listen to the new recording. “I really got to do exactly what I wanted to
do on Black Wind Howlin’,” she says, “and I’m incredibly proud of
it.”
