Samantha Fish

With her latest studio release, the Kansas City blues rocker bottles the energy of life on the road

- BY DAMON ORION

FORTUNE HASN'T JUST been smiling on blues rocker Samantha Fish lately — it's been sending her long- stemmed roses and leaving love notes on her windshield. The Missouri-born guitarist/ vocalist grabbed the top spot on Billboard's blues chart in 2023 for Death Wish Blues (a collaboration with Jesse Dayton), and 2024 found her opening for the Rolling Stones and joining forces with Slash on the latter musician's multi-artist blues tour, the S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival.

Fish bottled some of that magic on her most recent release, Paper Doll. She and her road bandmates — keyboardist Mickey Finn, bassist Ron Johnson and drummer Jamie Douglass — recorded the album between gigs on tour.

"For the record to come out when we wanted it to come out, recording on the road was really the only choice, because our touring schedule was just bananas last year," she says. "I don't use the word 'bananas' lightly, by the way. I felt like we had set ourselves up for this impossible task, but thanks to the dedication of my producer Bobby Harlow and the willingness of the band, we were able to make it happen. I feel like it worked out really well, because the band was fully primed from gigging."

Paper Doll finds Fish at her most stylistically wide-ranging. Influences like Jack White, AC/DC, ZZ Top and Led Zeppelin bob up on standout cuts such as "Rusty Razor," "Can You Handle the Heat?," "I'm Done Running" and the ghostly, quasi- mystical "Fortune Teller." Meanwhile, "Lose You" proves that Fish can wail with the best of gospel, soul and R&B singers.