Christone “Kingfish” Ingram & Samantha Fish
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram & Samantha Fish
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram
Hailed by Rolling Stone as “a rare 21st century guitar hero and the undisputed future of the blues,” Christone Kingfish Ingram stands at the crossroads of history and innovation, channeling the spirit of the Delta while boldly reimagining what comes next. Now, with his new album, Hard Road, Kingfish looks back at his extraordinary GRAMMY® Award-winning journey thus far by lighting out for previously unexplored musical territory, infusing his signature sound with a genre-blurring approach fraught with creative urgency and heretofore untapped emotional range.
Executive Produced by Ingram and Ric Whitney for Kingfish’s newly minted Red Zero Records with production by Patrick “Guitar Boy” Hayes, Nick Goldston, and longtime collaborator Tom Hambridge, Hard Road is Ingram’s most sophisticated and musically ambitious collection yet, one which renews the long tradition of the blues by welding it to multiple strains of contemporary Black music. Songs like “Nothin’ But Your Love” and the fiery “Voodoo Charm” see Kingfish effortlessly uniting classic blues licks with hard rock, no-holds-barred funk, soulful pop, and velvety R&B, all with resounding immediacy and astounding eloquence. With each album, Kingfish has upped his already prodigious game, not only in his breathtaking guitar playing but in the increasing strength of his deeply personal songcraft and vocals marked by a depth of expression well beyond his 26 years.
“I feel like this is one of the first times people will be seeing me outside of just the blues thing,” Kingfish says. “ I’ve always wanted to do music that showcases my voice and my songwriting as well as my guitar playing. And I feel like this is the first album that showcases this approach.”
A native son of Clarksdale, Mississippi — the de-facto Ground Zero for the Delta blues, just a stone’s throw from the fabled crossroads where Robert Johnson made his fateful deal with the devil — Kingfish’s six-string prowess first turned heads when he was still but a teenager. Though steeped in the tones of B.B. King, Albert King, and Buddy Guy, what set Ingram apart was how he expanded the form, blending in funk, soul, rock, pop, and jazz to create what has proven an evolving body of work that has drawn accolades, acclaim, and honors from all corners of the globe. 2019’s debut album, Kingfish, topped Billboard’s “Blues Albums” for an incredible 91 weeks and earned him his first GRAMMY® Award nomination, plus three Blues Music Awards, including “Album of the Year.” Kingfish followed up with 2021’s 662, titled after his hometown MS area code, which won both the GRAMMY® Award and Blues Music Award for “Best Contemporary Blues Album.” In 2023, the incendiary Live In London received yet another GRAMMY® Award nomination as well as his second Blues Music Award for “Album of the Year” and third consecutive triumph in the “Best Contemporary Blues Album.”
Samantha Fish
One of the most formidable guitarists of her generation, Samantha Fish deals in her own unmatched brand of bravado, bringing both mind-blowing power and extraordinary emotionality to everything she creates. Since first introducing the world to her larger-than-life talent, the multi-award-winning festival headliner has built a triumphant career whose latest milestones include earning a Grammy nomination for Death Wish Blues (her 2023 collaboration with rocker Jesse Dayton) and opening for The Rolling Stones on their final 2024 U.S. tour date. On her new album Paper Doll, Fish offers up nine powerhouse songs that hit with an unstoppable force, each delivered with an exquisite dose of illuminating insight, soul-soothing empathy, and—above all—newly heightened clarity of vision. “It’s taken me years to finally find my voice in a studio setting,” Fish admits. “But with this record I took everything I had, and slammed it right on the table.”
Fish’s first-ever album recorded with her touring band, Paper Doll takes its title from the first song the Kansas City-bred musician penned for the LP: a raw yet reflective battle cry that perfectly encapsulates the album’s spirit of unapologetic defiance. “That song’s a feminist anthem in a way—but then again, every song’s a feminist anthem when you’re a woman writing from your own experience,” says Fish. “It’s about rebelling against other people’s expectations of who you’re supposed to be, which feels pretty relevant for the times we’re living in right now.”
Recorded at The Orb in Austin and Savannah Studios in L.A., Paper Doll marks the latest entry in an uncompromising and endlessly adventurous catalog that’s found her working with luminaries like Jon Spencer of Jon Spencer Blues Explosion as well as Luther Dickinson (co-founder of North Mississippi Allstars and former member of the Black Crowes). This time around, Fish reunited with Detroit garage-rock icon Bobby Harlow, who also produced her 2017 LP Chills & Fever. “When I look back on Chills & Fever I realize that Bobby was pushing me into some cool and dangerous places, but at that phase in my life I was holding back a bit,” she says. “Now I’m at a point where I’m ready to give people something totally unexpected, something that breaks the pop formula and really takes its time to tell a story with the guitar playing.”
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