Samantha Fish - Shake 'Em On Down
Live in Las Vegas
There aren't many artists who can headline a blues festival, open for the Rolling Stones, and top Billboard's Blues chart, all while carrying the genre's traditions into new territory. Samantha Fish is one of them. Over the past fifteen years, the Kansas City-born guitarist, singer, and songwriter has built a reputation as one of the most electrifying live performers in blues and roots music — and in 2026, with a Grammy nomination and her first official live album under her belt, she's arguably at the peak of her career so far.
Samantha Fish - Kick Out the Jams
(Paper Doll Live)
Fish's musical story didn't start with a guitar in her hands. She began on drums, and it wasn't until she was fifteen that she picked up the instrument that would define her career. Music ran in the family: her mother led a local church choir, and her father played guitar with friends, giving young Samantha an early, informal education in performance.
Her guitar influences came in waves. She first gravitated toward Bonnie Raitt and Stevie Ray Vaughan, the kind of players who fuse technical command with raw feeling. Later, she discovered Tom Petty and the Rolling Stones — she has cited the Stones' *Sticky Fingers* as a formative record — which helped push her sound beyond straight blues and into rock and Americana territory. That blend of influences, from Prince to Leonard Cohen to the hypnotic rhythms of Mississippi Hill Country blues, still shapes the wide-ranging sound she's known for today.
By her teenage years, Fish was already hustling for stage time, reportedly cold-calling bars around Kansas City to book her own gigs — an early sign of the relentless work ethic that would carry her through more than a decade of near-constant touring.
Fish's rise wasn't built on a single breakout hit. It was built night after night, on stages across the country and eventually the world, where she earned a reputation for high-energy sets that could swing from searing slide-guitar workouts to tender, soulful ballads. Critics and fans alike have pointed to her live shows as the clearest expression of who she is as an artist — a performer equally comfortable trading extended solos with her band and pulling a crowd into call-and-response.
That reputation has opened doors most blues artists never get near. She's shared stages with the Rolling Stones, joined Slash on a multi-artist blues tour, and landed at the top of Billboard's Blues chart. She's also become an outspoken voice for representation in a corner of the music world still dominated by men. Reflecting on the growing number of women playing electric blues guitar, Fish has pointed to the internet's role in surfacing artists who historically couldn't get record deals or radio play — a shift she sees as long overdue rather than a recent trend.
Samantha Fish - I Put A Spell On You
(Paper Doll Live)
Fish's studio work has earned serious industry recognition. She picked up a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album for *Death Wish Blues*, her 2023 collaboration with Jesse Dayton, and followed it with another nomination for her 2025 album *Paper Doll*. The rankings have piled up too — Total Guitar recently placed her among the top 40 blues guitarists working today, a distinction she's described as both surprising and deeply meaningful, framing guitar playing itself as fundamentally an act of self-expression.
Samantha Fish - Bulletproof
In 2026, Fish did something she'd never officially done in her recording career: release a live album. *Paper Doll Live*, out via Rounder Records, documents a sold-out show at the historic Bijou Theatre in Knoxville, Tennessee, and captures her band at full strength in front of a crowd that traveled to be there. For an artist whose reputation was built almost entirely on stage, the album feels less like a new direction and more like a long-overdue document of what she does best.
Fish has described the record as a response to years of fan requests, and as an attempt to bottle the energy of a typical night on tour rather than reinvent her sound. It's a fitting release for an artist fifteen years into a recording career defined by the space between the studio and the stage.
Fish's signature tone owes a lot to hands-on experimentation. She's talked openly about a habit of constantly adjusting her tone knobs mid-performance — something she eventually turned into an asset rather than a distraction, developing a technique that transforms her Gibson SG into something closer to a lap steel guitar. It's the kind of detail that reflects how she approaches her instrument overall: less concerned with convention, more focused on chasing the right sound in the moment.
That same restless, hands-on approach extends to her pedalboard and rig, which she's candidly admitted isn't built to any textbook standard — just to what works for her on stage, night after night.
Fish spent much of 2026 on the road with the Paper Doll World Tour, a production built around neon-lit visuals and the raw, rootsy musicianship her fans have come to expect. The U.S. leg has taken her through storied theaters and clubs — including stops in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, California, Illinois, Michigan, and Massachusetts — with support from acts like Robert Jon & The Wreck, and later Cedric Burnside and Jon Spencer, who bring their own flavors of Southern soul and garage blues to the bill.
The tour has also taken her overseas, with a full run through the United Kingdom and mainland Europe, hitting cities from London and Manchester to Amsterdam and Berlin. It's the kind of international footprint few contemporary blues artists manage to sustain, and it underscores just how far Fish's audience has grown beyond her Kansas City roots.
Samantha Fish - Faster
What sets Fish apart isn't just technical skill, though she has plenty of it. It's the way she treats genre as a starting point rather than a boundary — pulling rock, soul, and Americana into a sound that's unmistakably rooted in the blues but never confined by it. Combined with a work ethic forged in teenage bar gigs and a live show that critics consistently describe as electrifying, it's easy to see why she's become one of the defining blues artists of her generation.
With a Grammy-nominated album, a newly released live record, and a world tour still unfolding, 2026 looks like another milestone year in a career built one show at a time.
ARTICLE CATEGORY Music
