Samantha Fish And Jesse Dayton On Recording New Album With Jon Spencer

Collaboration is a concept that’s long lived at the heart of the blues tradition.

One of the more unique pairings of the last 30 years saw blues punks the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion backing legendary bluesman R.L. Burnside.

Growing up in Kansas City, the resulting 1996 album A Ass Pocket of Whiskey would become a flashpoint for soon to be burgeoning blues guitarist Samantha Fish.

Around the same time, Beaumont, Texas-born singer, songwriter and guitarist Jesse Dayton was at work with country legend Waylon Jennings on the 1996 album Right For the Time, further working with beloved figures like Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson.

Produced by Spencer, the new album Death Wish Blues, now available on CD, vinyl or online streaming services via Rounder Records, finds Fish and Dayton in collaboration for the first time, each working outside their comfort zone on a rollicking collection of 12 new tracks that’s joyously impossible to pigeonhole, pushing the boundaries of blues and outlaw country in glorious new directions.

While the duo gave fans a taste of what was to come last year on The Stardust Sessions EP, a trio of covers which saw Dayton and Fish draw upon the blues tradition of Magic Sam (“Feelin’ Good”), the storytelling of Townes Van Zandt (“I’ll Be Here in the Morning”) and the punk rock call to arms of The Clash (“Brand New Cadillac”), Death Wish Blues sees them further breaking new ground, in collaboration on twelve original new songs.

“I’ve known Jesse for years. I would see him come through my hometown and play shows. We sort of followed each other’s careers over the last several years or so,” said Fish during a recent phone conversation. “He’s really well known in the outlaw country world. But he’s also got a depth of artistry. He’s played with Danzig and I saw him playing with X. He can experiment and he’s like a chameleon in some ways. He did the Rob Zombie movies as Captain Clegg. I just dig his ability to do different, various things. He’s got a real depth to his artistry. So I’ve admired that about him over the years.”

“It’s almost like theater – blues theater,” explained Dayton of the new collab during a separate chat. “Because we’re singing duets together. And we’re supporting each other while we’re singing,” he said. “Playing with Samantha Fish is as creatively fulfilling as anyone I’ve ever worked with. We wrote all of these songs together. I’m learning every bit as much now as I was when I was playing with Glenn Danzig or Willie Nelson. Samantha is inspiring to work with, man.”

Operating in upstate New York, Dayton and Fish worked quickly at Applehead Recording and Production in Woodstock.

With the duo recording mostly to tape in the historic setting, Spencer took advantage of vintage equipment, occasionally employing unconventional instrumentation too.

“Just where you go to make something happen can really color an entire project. It can inspire you. You can create obstacles for yourself that come through in the music. It does matter,” said Fish of the studio experience. “Applehead was full of wild amplifiers. And we used a lot of vintage gear. They had a PA system from the Woodstock elementary school kind of dismantled on the floor and I played a lot of guitar through that,” she said.

“We went into the studio with Jon Spencer – in New York – and were recording at Rick Danko’s old farm. And everything around there is sprinkled with kind of this Woodstock fairy dust. We’ve got Big Pink right across the road. We’ve got Albert Grossman and Bob Dylan’s house down the road,” Dayton observed of the area’s history. “We’ve got all of these vintage guitar amps and guitars. And every day we would go in there with a full band and cut as much of the record live as possible. We were recording to tape. People don’t do that anymore. People fly tracks in. They fix vocals with Pro Tools. We didn’t do any of that stuff. And it all happened quick. We recorded the entire record in less than 10 days.”

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Joined by keyboardist Mickey Finn and a rhythm section consisting of Kendall Wind (bass) and Aaron Johnston (drums), Spencer loomed large in the studio, directing traffic while quietly encouraging the experimentation of each musician.

Beer cans stand in as percussion on “Dangerous People” while “Rippin’ and Runnin’” finds Fish back on cigar box guitar. “Trauma” features a particularly funky keyboard part.

“The synth on this album throughout is a starring member of the band. Mickey Finn laid down some wild, wild stuff,” said Fish. “When Jesse sent that song over, we had been talking a lot of 1970s funk at the time. That’s the starting point. But what we came up with is totally just Samantha/Jesse – kind of this moment that we captured,” she said of “Trauma’s” origins. “Jon’s approach, it makes all of the sense in the world. If I listen to his records, there’s so much character to the vocals. And he almost approaches it like acting. His references that he would throw out, it was almost more like acting than, ‘Try hitting the C-sharp up here.’ It’s very much getting into character and selling something that the song is about. That’s kind of where Jon really shines,” Fish explained. “Jesse, on that song in particular, you can just hear the personality in his voice. It just really comes alive in that track.”

For Dayton, Spencer’s unique ability to coax one of a kind vocal characterizations continues to manifest itself as the duo performs more and more of the new music live.

“The other day, I was singing this part with Samantha and I realized that I was singing too loud. She said, ‘Why don’t you try to sing it in like more of a falsetto thing?’” Dayton recalled. “I said, ‘You mean like Curtis Mayfield?’ And she was like, ‘Yeah! Try it like that.’ So I did. And it blended perfectly,” he said with a chuckle. “And I thought, ‘Oh my god, this is so cool! I’ve never gotten to sing like Curtis Mayfield before…’ I’ve gotten to sing like George Jones and Mick Jagger and Muddy Waters – but I never got to do like Philly soul or stuff like that. Every day we’re stumbling on new things that we can do,” said Dayton of the duo’s approach to their work together. “And all of my favorite bands that I grew up listening to made records like this! If you listen to the Stones or the Clash or ZZ Top or whatever, on all of their early records, they would play like a zydeco song and a rockabilly song, a blues song, a country song. So we tried to have that even though it’s all kind of blues-based.”

This Monday, May 22, 2023, Dayton and Fish will launch a tour abroad in Zurich, Switzerland, supporting the new album, a European jaunt which runs through the month of May. A North American tour, including a run of U.S. dates in support of blues legend Buddy Guy, kicks off June 9 in East Flagstaff, Arizona, a series of shows set to continue through August before the duo heads back to the U.K. in October.

With the help of Spencer, Fish and Dayton have managed to create one of the year’s most distinctly unique collaborative albums, further fleshing things out each night on stage.

For Fish, the idea of collaboration forcing each to work outside their comfort zone lies at the heart of the success of Death Wish Blues.

“If this was 100% my solo project, there might have been times where I could’ve held myself back by feeling anxious: ‘Is this true to my sound? Is this me? Is this what I’m supposed to be doing? Will people expect and respect this from me?’” she said. “But when you’re doing collaboration, it’s kind of like the whole idea is that you’re going to be outside of your comfort zone. You’re going to be pushing things. That’s the whole point. So it kind of frees you up to get out of your own way artistically,” said Fish. “We definitely wanted to do something different. We wanted it to be obvious that this isn’t a Jesse record or a Samantha record. It’s something special that the two of us created. We wanted it to stand alone on its own two feet.”