Girls With Guitars – Featuring Kansas City’s own Samantha Fish

Girls With Guitars at 2011 Legendary Rythym and Blues Cruise
Sena Ehrhardt at 2011 Blues Music Awards
Heavenly Sight: A Vision Out of Blindness

This week we start on the high seas with BSC favorite, Girls With Guitars on the 2012 Legendary Blues Cruise. Then we catch another young female blues diva, Seena Earhardt at the 2011 Blues Music Awards.

We continue our guest series, Heavenly Sight: A Vision Out of Blindness.

The name says it all. “Girls with Guitars” – the 2011 Ruf Records Blues Caravan Tour – presents three of the scene’s hottest young female guitar slingers on a single stage.
Over the past six years, the Blues Caravan has toured successfully in the UK, USA and throughout continental Europe. This unique triple bill revue has helped introduce bright new stars such as Ana Popovic and Joanne Shaw Taylor to an international audience. Following in their footsteps on the 2011 tour is a trio of dynamic, up-and-coming blues talents: Dani Wilde, Cassie Taylor and Samantha Fish.
Hailing from Brighton, England, Dani Wilde sings the blues with the old-school fervor of Aretha Franklin, but also takes a cue from contemporaries like Duffy and Joss Stone. The singer/songwriter/guitarist has just released her second album, Shine, a collaboration with renowned producer Mike Vernon (Eric Clapton, Fleetwood Mac). She has shared stages with luminaries like Robben Ford, Candye Kane and Koko Taylor. Says Paul Jones of BBC Radio 2: “Dani Wilde’s voice is astounding, with a unique raw passion and energy. She sings with more conviction and passion than old legends from the Mississippi Delta.”
At the tender age of 21, Samantha Fish is already a hot property on the live music scene in and around her hometown of Kansas City, Missouri. She discovered the blues almost by accident as a teenager, but it has since become her singular mission in life. Her high-heeled, rock-edged performances have won her a loyal local following and carried her to venues like Rosa’s Lounge in Chicago, where she opened eyes during the 2010 Chicago Blues Festival. 2011 seems destined to be her breakout year.
Proud to call herself the “Daughter of a Bluesman,” multi-instrumentalist Cassie Taylor has appeared on eight critically-acclaimed albums by her father, Otis Taylor, and accompanied him on tours all over the world. She was also a featured vocalist on Gary Moore’s 2008 release Bad For You Baby. Still just in her early 20s, Cassie has been hailed for her commanding stage presence and “heavenly” voice (Boston Globe). Her music ranges from heart-wrenching ballads to hard-driving blues. Like her father, Taylor doesn’t shy from topical subject matter, nor shrink from breaching musical boundaries.
This trio of young, passionate performers is backed by a top-flight band of road-tested professionals for more than two hours of live blues excellence.
As a foretaste for their upcomining shows around the world, the three guitarists recorded a common album in November 2010 in Berlin at the Studio Erde, which will be released to the blast-off to their tour.
None other than Mike Zito produced the album. Multiple Blues Award Winner in Memphis 2010. On the album are ten own songs, like the earthshaking Get Back (“a real Killer” – Daniel Böhm, ROCKS Magazine 01/2011) or the laid-back Wait A Minute, and two covers of two really great songs. Bitch from the Rolling Stones ( therefore, the girls produced also a video – see www.bluescaravan.com ) and Jet Airliner, well-known by the Steve Miller Band.

 

Roots music label Blind Pig Records has signed singer Sena Ehrhardt, one of the freshest and most dynamic young voices on the blues scene today. The buzz about the Minneapolis-area vocalist is poised to go nationwide as word is getting out about her incendiary performances at clubs and festivals across the upper Midwest, and people get a chance to hear her brilliant debut recording, Leave The Light On, which was released
on August 16th 2011.

Ehrhardt was born and raised in a house of blues. Through years of playing music in clubs and juke joints, her guitarist father, Ed Ehrhardt, laid the groundwork for a love of blues that eventually lead to the formation of the Sena Ehrhardt Band. Sena has taken those influences and several years of experience to forge her own personal and intelligent take on the blues.

Though her band’s repertoire includes a wide range of blues, soul and funk cover tunes, Sena chose to record ten original compositions that she co-wrote with her father for Leave The Light On. Her songs are fresh and incisive, delivered in a style that moves effortlessly from sultry to declarative to passionately forceful. Her band – Ed Ehrhardt on guitar, bassist Steve Hansen and drummer Tim Hasler – performs flawlessly throughout, matching Sena’s drive and intensity.

Of the signing, Sena said, “Growing up in a home filled with blues music and having a love and passion for blues for my entire life makes signing with Blind Pig Records a dream come true for me. This music is my heart and soul and the album is a labor of love for those who have loved me. I am so excited to see what the future holds and can’t wait to bring our music to both long-time blues fans and a new generation of listeners. The blues is about feeling – and this feels so good!”


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