Two years after opening for the Rolling Stones at the Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans, the incendiary blues guitarist and vocalist Samantha Fish will visit East Hampton for the latest in the guitarist G.E. Smith’s “Portraits” series, happening on Saturday at 8 p.m. at Guild Hall.
Fish, who has previously performed at the Stephen Talkhouse in Amagansett, is a Grammy Award-nominated artist, one in a long tradition of guitarists who breathe new life into a longstanding musical form, like Stevie Ray Vaughan before her and, more recently, Christone (Kingfish) Ingram, the latter also appearing at the 2024 Jazz & Heritage Festival as well as the Talkhouse in 2025 and last month.
Her tone and attack are ferocious: On Fish’s 2025 “Paper Doll,” her first album recorded with her touring band, and its 2026 follow-up, “Paper Doll (Live),” the latter recorded at the Bijou Theatre in Knoxville, Tenn., the artist is at turns intense and pensive, effortlessly shifting from slow burn to epic, incendiary solo on “Sweet Southern Sounds” before the meditative, brooding “Off in the Blue,” which leads to the haunting and hypnotic “Fortune Teller.”
“I borrow elements from different genres,” Fish told The Star. “I love Americana, writers, storytellers, pop hooks. I do love rock-and-roll and soul music.” They are all connected, she said, “part of a grander story.”
Her Kansas City upbringing “had a really profound effect on me and how I learned to play.” Initially taking up drums, she switched to guitar at age 15 and was soon attending nightly jam sessions. “I was learning how to play from the people around me,” she recalled.
“Of course, I love B.B. King, but I think I started finding my sound and things I loved and what made it all click for me when I got into north Mississippi hill country blues,” she continued, referring to artists on the Fat Possum Records roster such as Junior Kimbrough, as well as Freddie King’s 1972 “Texas Cannonball” album. “It made sense to me,” she said, “maybe because I started as a drummer. That style of music was about the groove and the trancelike effect with guitar. I felt I was centered around that.”
Her father “played for fun with friends,” she said. “He wasn’t on the scene playing gigs, but I learned a lot of from him when learning how to play guitar. He showed me scales and chords and said, ‘Good luck. Here are the chords you will need to know, a scale that might link it all together if you practice enough and figure it out.’ ”
From that foundation, she followed the path of many an aspiring guitarist: “Listening to records, trying to figure out how to make this chord fit somewhere up the neck. How do I make sense of it? It takes a long time to learn those things.”
But learn them she did. Her howling electric guitar soars above a gumbo of blues, rock-and-roll, rockabilly, funk, even some country influence. Luther Dickinson, of the North Mississippi Allstars and a musical lineage that includes his father, the late Jim Dickinson, produced her 2015 “Wild at Heart” album, while 2023’s “Death Wish Blues” was a collaboration with Jesse Dayton, a Texas-born and bred musician and producer who has contributed to recordings by the likes of Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson.
For Smith and Taylor Barton Smith, who produces the “Portraits” programs, “we always look for somebody that is going to be interesting,” G.E. Smith said, “and I love it when it’s somebody like Samantha, who plays blues-based music. That’s what I love.”
“It’s her show,” he said of Fish, “so we’re doing her songs.” While a setlist remained in development last week, “one that I suggested is a great old song,” he said, referring to “Crow Jane,” of unknown origin but best known as a 1960s recording by Skip James and featured on Fish’s 2017 release “Chills & Fever.” “I’m looking forward to that,” he said. “She’s also a great slide player, and it’ll be fun to put that together.”
An Amagansett resident and a longtime bandleader on “Saturday Night Live” who has toured with musicians including Bob Dylan, Roger Waters, and Hall & Oates, Smith is known for playing Fender Telecaster guitars, but to play alongside Fish, who favors a Gibson SG, “I have a nice old [Gibson] 335 that I got at a pawn shop in San Francisco in 1978,” he said. “A great guitar. I love doing these shows that aren’t far from the house,” he added, “so I can bring the really good stuff.”
Fish “is a phenomenal guitar player, with a great sense of rhythm,” he said, “so we’re going to have fun tossing it back and forth. She’s also a great singer, and she’s got really cool songs. We’re going to have a good time.”
Tickets for “G.E. Smith’s Portraits: Samantha Fish” are $92, $141, and $190 at guildhall.org, with discounts applied for Guild Hall members.
