A Friday night in Birmingham is not a time anyone would wish to breakdown – especially not in one of the tunnels that ring the city. Unfortunately, this is exactly what has happened to some poor soul, and thanks to the ensuing tailbacks, a 45-minute journey ends up taking us over twice that. Hardly an auspicious start to the evening, then, and we arrive just in time for the final song of the Zac Schulze Gang’s too-short set.
This is particularly galling because Zac is on fire in those final moments, wrestling his guitar like a man possessed. Of the little we get to see, the sound is excellent, with the three musicians on stage sharing a rare synergy. If the rest of the set was on a par with this explosive climax, then the audience were in for a treat, and certainly the in-bar discussions that follow suggest that Zac’s return cannot come soon enough.
And so, to Samantha Fish. Not so much a musician as a phenomenon, Rock You Like A Hurricane could have been written about her, and she positively explodes on to the stage. Live is where it’s at and, as good as Samantha’s records are, it is here in front of a crowd, that she reaches her awesome potential.
The signs are there right from the start. Where Samantha’s peers would kick off with a blues standard, Samantha unleashes the MC5’s Kick Out The Jam, the soulfulness of her vocal offset by the explosive power of the riff. With Jamie Douglass a mess of hair behind the kit, pounding out the beat with relentless force, it causes the entire audience to take a collective step back, jaws scraping the floor as they go.
What follows is nothing less than a mesmerising tour-de-force, taking in the entire spectrum of Samantha’s influences and keeping the audience hooked right to the end.
Having set the scene, Samantha is hardly minded to let us go, and she charges headlong into an electrifying Wild heart, which pitches great riffs against a soulful, Arethra-esque vocal. With Mickey Finn’s organ patches and Ron Johnson’s nimble bass rounding out the sound, it leads to a sparky solo that sees Sam standing at the edge of the stage, eyes closed in concentration as she sways to the power of the music.
Of course, it’s not all raucous rock ‘n’ roll. Samantha puts shivers down the spine with Chills And Fever, the first of several singalong pieces (“don’t leave me hanging”, she warns, “I’ll get you back, you know I will”), to which the audience respond enthusiastically. As if by way of reward, she then grabs a cigar box guitar for the bristling slide-rock of Bulletproof. With its processed vocal and thunderous beat, it’s a set highlight, even if it does make you wonder just how solid the Town hall’s foundations truly are.
However, what follows demonstrates that, thus far, Samantha and her band have only been warming up and they dig deep to pull out Kill Or Be Kind. Initially slow-paced, with a muted intensity to the vocals, it leads to a raging solo; and that’s just the first half. From there, Sam decides to have a little duel with Mickey, pitching her scat singing against his keys, before swapping out her guitar to bring it all to a dizzying, slide-led conclusion. A perfect prog-blues piece, it defies all expectations, highlighting the awesome command Samantha has of the stage.
After so expansive a track, Samantha briefly draws down the shades with a solo acoustic rendition of a Charley Patton song. It’s a gorgeous delta blues piece and, while we don’t catch the title, you could hear a pin drop in the auditorium, despite the reduction in volume from the stage.
When the band return, it’s for an epic-length Somebody’s Always Trying, a dramatic blues rocker with a sweet soulful vocal. With Samantha once again duelling Mickey, this time on guitar, the psychedelic finale finds Sam on floor playing with her extensive range of pedals to whip up a suitably enveloping wall of sound.
From there, it’s the home stretch – a bristling cover of Poor Black Mattie and a soaring, countrified Dream Girlserving to pave the way for the climactic Black Wind Howling. A showstopping, Hendrix-esque finale, the energy on stage recalls the spontaneous jams of Neil Young and Crazy Horse, and the audience stands riveted as the drama plays out on stage. At a time when so many artists seem to have been co-opted by the spurious need to play live exactly as they sound on record, Samantha Fish has headed in the opposite direction, reacting to the raw power of her band, the energy of the audience and the spontaneity of her muse, and it is simply stunning to witness.
Samantha played for 90 minutes. I know this because my watch tells me so. Even so, I cannot convince myself that this is the case. For the duration of the set, I find myself transported, along with the rest of the audience, as Samantha takes us on a wild ride. From the explosive punk rock opening to the loose-limbed sonic explorations of tracks like Kill Or Be Kind and Black Wind Howling, you cannot tear your eyes from her as she prowls the stage, sharing moments with her band and with the audience. A virtuoso guitarist, a generous host – these are but words. Samantha Fish has that indefinable sense of presence that makes her shows something special, and tonight she simply dominates the Birmingham Town Hall.
