Samantha Fish - Chills & Fever

180-gram vinyl

One of the best American Roots records of 2017!

Whether it's blues, Americana or playing with a garage band, there's a common bond that suggests a reverence for the roots. Looking back towards an earlier template proves the point that appreciating what came before can be a stepping stone for what comes next.

Samantha Fish knows this all too well, and it's been evidenced in the music she's made her entire career. 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 and roll. "I grew up on it," she insists.

It's little wonder then that when it came time to record her new album, Chills & Fever (released March 17, 2017), Fish ventured off in another new direction, one she was exploring for the first time in her career. She traveled to the land of the legendary Motown Detroit and 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, and Kenny Tudrick along with 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.

Covering songs from the ‘60s and ‘70s — indelible melodies from the pens of legends such as Jackie DeShannon, Jerry Ragavoy, Bert Berns and Allen Toussaint — along with producer Bobby Harlow (King Tuff, The Gap Dream, White Fang), a member of the Detroit band The Go, which also featured Jack White prior to his stint with the White Stripes. With that as her starting point, Fish and the band then created an album that's best described as a pure slab of rocking rhythm n' blues.

Samantha's soulful sultry voice and hot rod guitar slinging is layered against a polyrhythmic horn entrenched background all mixed and mastered by Jim Kissling (The Crystal Method, Fat Boy Slim) delivering a cool, exciting, and one of the best American Roots records of 2017.

"I listened to a lot of soul music, and I dug deep into people like Otis Redding and Ray Charles," Fish recalls. "I was also influenced by people like R.L. Burnside and North Mississippi's Junior Kimbrough. It's a lot less restrained style of music than the sound people may be used to hearing from me, but it's definitely a different facet of my personality. It's far more straight forward."

 

 

 

1. He Did It

2. Chills & Fever

3. Hello Stranger

4. It’s Your Voodoo Working

5. Hurts All Gone

6. You Can’t Go

7. Either Way I Lose

8. Never Gonna Cry

9. Nearer To You

10. You’ll Never Change

11. Crow Jane

12. Bonus Songs

13. Somebody’s Always Trying

14. I’ll Come Running Over

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