SAMANTHA FISH

blues · bluegrass · blues rock

Samantha Fish is an American blues and roots guitarist and singer-songwriter from Kansas City, Missouri, born January 30, 1989. She started on drums as a child and switched to guitar at fifteen, drawing on Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Tom Petty and the Rolling Stones, and became a regular at Kansas City's Knuckleheads Saloon after turning eighteen. Ruf Records paired her with Cassie Taylor and Dani Wilde on the 2011 label showcase Girls with Guitars before issuing her solo debut Runaway the same year, and Runaway won the 2012 Blues Music Award for Best New Artist. A run of Ruf albums followed, including Wild Heart in 2015, produced by Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars, and two 2017 records that pulled in opposite directions: Chills & Fever, cut in Detroit with producer Bobby Harlow and members of the Detroit Cobras, and the acoustic, Mississippi-leaning Belle of the West. She moved to Rounder Records for Kill or Be Kind in 2019, recorded in Memphis with producer Scott Billington, and Faster in 2021. Death Wish Blues, her 2023 collaboration with Texas guitarist Jesse Dayton, earned a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album, and Paper Doll, released on Rounder in April 2025, earned a second nomination in the same category. Paper Doll is the first album she recorded with her touring band, with Ron Johnson on bass, Jamie Douglass on drums and Mickey Finn on keys, again with Harlow producing, tracked at The Orb in Austin and Savannah Studios in Los Angeles. Fish cites Junior Kimbrough and R.L. Burnside alongside Prince, Leonard Cohen and Black Sabbath, and says she writes with her live set in mind. Onstage she alternates between slide playing, a four-string cigar box guitar and full blues-rock lead work. She has collected multiple Independent Blues Awards and Blues Blast Awards, and opened for the Rolling Stones on the final United States date of their 2024 tour. Her sister, Amanda Fish, is also a blues singer-songwriter.

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