HOOKED ON BLUES
Guitarist Samantha Fish performing at ¡Globalquerque!
Samantha Fish is enjoying her time off the road so much. In fact, she’s been undertaking a home renovation during her downtime.
“I just moved into a house in Louisiana,” she says. “I’m talking to Sheetrockers, and it’s a lot of work. I won’t ever do this again. Next time, I will buy a ready-made house. I watch too much TV and those home renovation shows. I thought to myself, ‘I can do this.’ They say it’s not easy, and I can tell you, it has not been easy at all.”
Fish is a blues singersongwriter and guitarist. She will be one of the nearly 20 musicians performing at this year’s ¡Globalquerque! at the National Hispanic Cultural Center this weekend.
There will be 17 artists who will perform over the course of two days. The performances are held in the Fountain Courtyard, the Albuquerque Journal Theatre and the Plaza Mayor at the NHCC. The will also be a free Global Fiesta of daytime programming at the NHCC.
She grew up in Kansas City, Mo., where she started out playing drums and eventually made her way to playing guitar.
Fish has made music her own way all the way up to her current album, “Chills and Fever.”
While she’s well-known as a purveyor of blues, having been lauded by such legends as Buddy Guy, the Royal Southern Brotherhood and Luther Dickinson, her real love is simply raw, scrappy rock ’n’ roll.
“I grew up on it,” she insists. “Working with Luther on my last album further instilled that spirit in me. It made me realize just how much that basic, unfettered sound means to me, and how well it ties into soul music, R&B, country and so many other forms of music that are essential even today.”
It’s little wonder that when it came time to record her new album, “Chills & Fever,” Fish set her sights on
Detroit, the home of soul, Motown and legendary R&B, as well as the much edgier rock ’n’ roll of Iggy Pop, Jack White, and The White Stripes.
It was there that she joined forces with members of the Detroit Cobras, a band whose insurgent ethic has made them darlings of the Midwest punk/ blues scene.
The two entities — which included Joe Mazzola on guitar, Steve Nawara on bass, Kenny Tudrick on drums and Bob Mervak on keys, and the New Orleans horn section featuring Mark Levron and Travis Blotsky on trumpet and saxophone — bonded over a common love of classic soul and rollicking rhythms, so much so that the results testify to a seemingly timeless template.
“I listened to a lot of soul music, and I dug deep into people like Otis Redding and Ray Charles,” Fish says. “I was also influenced by people like north Mississippi’s R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough. It’s a less restrained style of music than the sound people may be used to hearing from me, it’s definitely a different facet of my personality.”