Samantha Fish

The US roots-rocker on broken bones, shaking off the fish jokes and giving the finger to the doubters.

Samantha Fish is not in Kansas anymore. The 30-year-old gunslinger might have come up on the Midwest circuit, but since then she’s taken her studio catalogue all over the map, from the Mississippi and Chicago blues flavours of early albums like 2011’s Runaway to the Nashville tones of 2017’s Belle Of The West. It’s a US road trip that continues with this year’s Kill Or Be Kind, tracked in Memphis, taking in everything from spring-heeled soul to brassbolstered country rock.

Kill Or Be Kind salutes all the great American genres. What’s been the early reaction? So far it’s nice to hear that people are digging it. You’re always just taking a shot, trying to evolve and hoping they’ll come with you. The world can be fickle. People can love you today, not love you tomorrow.

Any favourite memories from the album sessions? We went back to Royal Studios in Memphis, where I recorded part of [2015’s] Wild Heart. I just feel a real soul connection to that town. There’s Memphis all over that album. It seeps in somehow. When you go into Royal, it’s like, you’re singing into Al Green’s microphone, playing with Ann Peebles’s drum machine from I Can’t Stand The Rain…

Can you tell us what some of the songs are about? Well, I think the title track is an interesting assessment of how quickly love turns to hate, the duality of that emotion. Like, say you’re on your way out of a relationship – you can either rip the other person to shreds, or just move on in a kind way. The verses of that song are insults, like, ‘You used to be great but you’re not any more.’ Bulletproof is kind of a social commentary about being in the music industry. People criticise and you’re sort of expected to have this bullet-proof exterior. Love Letters is a really sad and desperate love song; you’re drowning in your own feelings, basically.

You really hit the guitar at points on this album. Ever made your hands bleed? Oh, hell yeah. You get the wrong kind of manicure and before you know it your nails are falling off, y’know? I thought I broke my hand last week. I was being an asshole, trying to get some feedback out and punching my guitar. But I’m more careful now with my hands, my arms, my fingers. I used to be a little daredevil. Now, someone will ask me: “You want to go skiing?” and I’m like: “Definitely not.” I can’t afford to break an arm – or anything – at this point.

“you find the people that believe in you, and f**k the rest.”

Did people ever underestimate you on your way up? Yeah. I think we’re all underestimated as we’re coming up. You’d get that a lot. People can be snarky and shitty. They’d say: “Oh, you’re just here because you’re a girl. You’ll be gone in a couple of years.” But you just gotta fuckin’ ignore it, move forward, find people that do believe in you, work with them, and fuck the rest.

Do you get sick of all the fish-pun headlines in magazines? Well, they’ve laid off the fish jokes in the last couple of years, which is cool. I don’t think I get it as bad as Walter Trout. He actually made an album called No More Fish Jokes, so I guess he’d kinda hit his threshold, too, huh?

Kill Or Be Kind is out on September 20 via Rounder. Samantha Fish tours the U K in February and March 2020.