Samantha Fish started hitting stages regularly when she turned 18 and was able to play at Knuckleheads Saloon in her home town of Kansas City. Her first release, tellingly, was a live album — 2009’s independently released Live Bait.
That helped Fish hook a her first national deal, including more live albums and DVDs. The now New Orleans–based Fish has been a road warrior ever since, although she continues to hit the studio for regular albums, including her new release, Paper Doll.
“Being on the road, playing gigs... it’s exactly what I’ve wanted to do since I was a teenager,” Fish tells us. “We have great gigs. I never take it for granted — even when it doesn’t go the way it should,”she adds with a laugh.
Fish has her share of good, bad and ugly stories from the road, certainly. “I don’t want to knock gigs — it’s the gear that always gets me,” she says. “Your gear can destroy you. I can tell you that firsthand.” Fortunately, Fish adds, there always seems to be enough good to balance the bad.
The Best
Opening for the Rolling Stones last year on the final date of their Hackney Diamonds tour on July 21 in Ridgedale, Missouri, was a dream come true, Fish acknowledges.
“It doesn’t get much bigger than that,” says Fish, who named Exile on Main St. as one of the albums that changed her life. “I think that was an actualized thing, ’cause over the years, most every interview asks, ‘Who do you want to collaborate with? Who do you want to open for?’ I would say ‘the Stones’ in an ironic sense, ’cause that would never happen in a million years. That was my thinking at the time, at least.
“So to be able to do that was a full circle kind of ‘wow!,’ pretty incredible moment, ’cause I’m such a fan. It was a pinch-me moment.”
Fish did commit one faux pas during her set, which included covers of songs by MC5, R.L. Burnside, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Ted Taylor.
“Before they told me not to, I went out on the catwalk, because it’s such an iconic thing,” she recalls.
She didn’t get to meet the Stones, and didn’t push for it.
“I’ve learned over the years that if a meeting doesn’t happen in an organic way, I’m not gonna force it, ’cause it might take a really good experience and turn it into not a great one,” Fish explains. “If there was a moment where somebody was, ‘Hey, I can introduce you,’ then I would’ve been 1,000 percent into it. But it didn’t come up.
“It was the last show of their American tour and it just didn’t feel right to go push my way in and make that connection, ’cause I felt like it could’ve blown up in my face.
“We were backstage after everything and I saw Mick and Keith and Ronnie rolling by on a golf-cart, and I gave them a little wave. Keith gave me a thumb-up, and I thought, That’s awesome. That’s pretty great. I can go home happy.”
The Worst
Fish is loath to get too specific about where and one this particular debacle took place; “I hate to say it, ’cause if somebody might have been there and thought it was great, and I don’t want to taint their experience because I had a horrible time.“But she says a festival appearance during 2023 with Jesse Dayton, while promoting their joint Death Wish Blues album, was “just a comedy of errors.”
“The worst thing, especially at a festival, is the time constraint,” Fish says. “You’ve got your slot, and you have to fit everything in that slot. That’s already pressure and stress to put on a show, ’cause you can’t really relax. You’ve got to be done and off at a very set time.
“We did a show where the weather went crazy right before we played. All the gear got wet. We got onstage and it was like everything was broken. We started a song and the electric guitars shorted out, both Jesse and I — what are the odds both of our guitars would just completely fail?
“We’re doing the song, but it’s just the keys and bass and drums, and we’re up there trying our best while the techs are running around behind us trying to fix everything. It takes awhile to troubleshoot, while people are staring at you.
“It was just one of those gigs where we’d get one thing fixed, then the next thing would break or I’d break a string or the guitar would come untuned. Once that all gets in your head you start making mistakes. The whole thing felt like we were just juggling chainsaws the whole time. It’s just the most crushing feeling in the world.”
Speaking of gear brings another gig to mind for Fish.
“I have this ‘fuck-it’ button on my pedalboard,” she says. “I have this [Boss PS-5] Super Shifter [pitch-shifting] pedal I like to use if I want to do a dive-bomb kind of sound, or jump up three octaves or something. It makes these really squirrely sounds.
“Then, one notch over — it’s a very small movement — it goes to a setting called Detune.
“I was playing a festival and it was bright outside, so I didn’t see that the pedal was engaged and it had been switched to this Detune function.
"So I started the gig and I’m like, ’What the fuck? My guitar, it’s completely out of tune!’ It was like an affected out of tune. So I’m trying to tune it, and the tuner says I’m in tune. And I’m thinking there’s something wrong with the tuner...
“I finally realized the ‘fuck-it’ button was on. I’m like, ’Why do I have a gig-destroyer on my rig?’ One little misstep and everything goes south, right?”
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