Samantha Fish: Good Music is Good Music (Part 1 of 2)

At a mere 35 years old, Samantha Fish is a musical icon. Though she came to fame as a blues guitars, there’s much more to the Kansas City-born musician. Her work transcends genre, and has substantial crossover appeal. Add to that the fact that she’s a guitar hotshot, and you’ve got an artist who turns out quality albums and puts on a great live show. Her latest release is a collaboration with Jesse Dayton, Death Wish Blues. Her current tour features just her and her band, digging into her substantial back catalog. I spoke with Samantha Fish about her creative process and her approach to her art.

Your recording work spans a whole lot of genres: blues, rock, pop, soul, Americana. Do you approach each album with a specific style or musical theme in mind, or is it more of a case of each record simply representing where you are musically at that given moment?

I think it’s a bit of both, honestly. When you’re writing songs, they take more of a shape in the studio, and I think the situation sort of defines the sound of the music: where you’re recording, how you’re recording, who you’re recording with. And then you’re capturing a moment, and sometimes that moment becomes a concept in and of itself. But when I’m writing songs, I’m generally just trying to get the best out of me that I possibly can: What are the catchiest melodies? What’s really going to speak to people?

But every time you go into a situation where you’re writing and you’re creating, it’s like you’re a different person than you were the last time. You’re basing these songs and this creative approach off of who you are now. So sometimes that defines the sound, but it’s a little bit of both. I mean, there’s been times where I’ve been like, I really want to, like the record I made with Jesse Dayton, we definitely had a style in mind. We kept calling it our “North Star.” [We’d ask ourselves,] “Does this fit within the parameters of what we’re trying to create?”

You’ve worked with a wide array of producers. How do you approach the task of selecting a producer for each album?

Life just kind of happens, and people come into your life. When I did the (2021) Faster record, Martin Kierszenbaum came into my life. It was in the middle of the pandemic. Somebody from Kansas City, a radio deejay that I’d known a long time, knew Martin, and said, “Hey, this guy is interested in talking to you. He likes what you’ve been doing.” He’d worked with all these incredible artists. He produced records for Gaga and worked on Madonna albums. We just spoke to each other, and we kind of became friends and kept up with each other.

I approached him and asked if he wanted to write some songs together. And one thing kind of led to another for him to produce the record. If you would have asked me a year before who was going to produce the next record, I’d have no idea. It was like these things kind of had to happen, and that was the right thing to do.

And with the last record, Jon Spencer has been somebody I’ve wanted to work with for years and years. My manager and I had been talking about it, and for that Death Wish album with Jesse, and the concept that were trying to execute, Jon seemed like the perfect person to help us create those sounds. And so we reached out to him.

Different situations call for different things. Sometimes the producer just falls right into your lap, and sometimes you gotta go and find him.

Do you make a conscious effort not to repeat yourself musically?

Yeah. There’s a vocabulary that you have as an individual. And that’s hard, because I have repeated myself before. And then you get frustrated. You’re like, “Where did I hear that song before? Oh, you wrote it seven years ago, you ding dong!” So you try hard not to repeat yourself.

For me, I want to grow and I want to do something new. That’s the beautiful part about making art: you get to be creative and try different things. When I feel like I’m scratching the surface of something different, something that I haven’t done before, that’s when I feel the most excited about what I’m doing.

But at the end of the day, good music is good music. And if it’s something that fits in your catalog naturally because it has a certain feel to it that is reminiscent of your other work, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. But I think you just have to keep pushing yourself out of that comfort zone.

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