From Blues To Rock To Country

Samantha Fish’s polished guitar work and engaging vocals are a force to be reckoned with.

- Jennifer Odell

Before Samantha Fish appears in the music video for “Blood in the Water,” from 2017’s Belle of the West, we see a man running in slow motion, his brow furrowed, his amplified breath bursting through the silence. When Fish comes into view, she’s alone in a darkly lit, crimson bedroom. Her wide-set eyes look distant as she tunes a Fender Jaguar.

“Run from your people,” Fish sings as the camera alternates between her bedroom lament and the man, who’s now driving a convertible across a dusty country road, looking anxiously over his shoulder. Figures dressed in white—a woman and child, an old man—appear and disappear in his rearview mirror. “Run from your home,” Fish croons. “What is the matter?/ What’s goin’ on?/ I see the panic/ I hear the howl/ Tell me what did they do now?”

By the time she gets to the hook, her voice lilting over the words, “there is blood in the water,” two storylines are coming into view. There’s the man who’s desperate to run from something he can’t quite seem to escape— and there’s Fish, who’s haunted as much by his memory as by the frustration of not understanding where he went or why.