Kansas City’s Samantha Fish is, by her own admission, not your typical blues artist.

If a mention of the blues brings to your mind an image of B.B. King, Muddy Waters or perhaps Tas Cru, then Fish will turn your world upside down. She is a petite, doe-eyed blonde with only 21 candles on her birthday cake, and won’t apologize for playing a show in heels. But don’t let her size, age or footwear fool you. When Fish steps onstage and rattles off that first powerful riff on her guitar, people sit up and take notice.

“She’s a real up and comer,” said Suki Willison, booking agent and manager at Uncle Bo’s, where Fish will be performing Friday evening. “Some prominent blues people have been throwing her name on the table. She’s been doing all of the hard work for the past year, and they’re keeping an eye on her.”

The Samantha Fish Band has been touring steadily as of late in support of their debut album, Live Bait. Fish herself has shared a stage with industry greats like Tommy Castro, Tab Benoit and Shirley King, and considers the members of acclaimed KC blues band Trampled Under Foot her mentors. Her band will be competing in the upcoming Kansas City International Blues Challenge, where Willison said they have a great shot of making the final cut amidst a highly competitive field.

It might seem like a lot for someone so young to handle – at least without developing a supersize ego – but Fish seems to be in little danger of becoming spoiled, reckless or reclusive. Splash! caught up with her via phone a few days before she was scheduled to perform in Topeka. She apologized for missing an earlier call – she had to take her cat to the veterinarian – before settling in to chat about defying stereotypes in the blues world, how she got her start and why she won’t play Janis Joplin covers. Intrigued? Read on…

The blues world is generally known as a pretty exclusive boys club – or perhaps a gruff old man’s club, to be more precise. What is it like to be a 21-year-old woman trying to break through? Do you have to work harder to be taken seriously?

I think it’s a little bit of both – good and bad – just because people are really intrigued by a young girl playing the blues. But at the same, some people don’t buy it because it’s not what they’re used to. But for me, I think it helps, because it’s something different. I play the blues because I want to, not because I thought it would be good marketing or anything. It’s just what I love to do.

What has the response been from others in the industry? You’re based in Kansas City, so have other local performers been supportive?

There are several people who really helped me develop musically and help me hone my skills. Bands like Trampled Under Foot in Kansas City – they let me jam with them. They really helped me come up. Guys like Mike Zito – he’s out of Texas – every time he came to town he let me jam with him. There are a lot of kind people in this industry in particular. It’s very welcoming – it’s like family. They want to see you succeed.

What first inspired you to pick up a guitar when you were 15?

My dad played and my sister played, so we just kind of had them laying around the house. At the time, it sort of seemed convenient to try to pick it up and mess around with it. I just wanted to play around with it, but I really fell in love with it and started just wanting to learn more and more.

What kind of music were you interested in playing back then?

That’s a good question… I don’t know. I was all over the place. We kind of grew up listening to 80s hairbands – stuff like Bon Jovi, Guns N’ Roses, ACDC, stuff like that. So I was really heavy into the rock riffs and all that, but I loved Bonnie Raitt. She was huge to me. So kind of in between there, I liked a lot of Bonnie Raitt, the Black Crowes and the old Guns N’ Roses stuff, too.

So eventually, you must have started gravitating toward the blues. Did your interests change as you got older, or what inspired the shift?

It started after I graduated from high school. I wanted to go out and play in Kansas City, but I realized that the only way I was going to get to jam with other people was if I learned some blues tunes because this is a blues town. So that was really the beginning of it. I just kind of did it because I thought I had to, and then I really, really started to enjoy it. It slowly kind of crept in, and that was it.

You’ve been touring for a while now to promote your debut album. What has that experience been like?

It’s good. We’ve done some stuff outside of Kansas City. We’ve played Chicago a couple of times and Colorado, and that’s been really, really cool. I love going out of town, and it’s just nice to be able to make a living doing what you love. We’re building our fan base, and that’s always crazy because you feel a personal connection with your fans. Playing out and about that often, they come out to see you all of the time. It’s been a lot of fun. I feel really lucky to get to do what I do.

You play a mix of originals and covers. You mentioned in a past interview that you’re not necessarily interested in singing the type of covers people expect you to perform. Janis Joplin, for instance, is a common request.

Right, right, right. I know I just sound like I’m Contrary Mary here, but you get a lot of requests for stuff like Janis Joplin. I’ve never terribly been into Janis Joplin too much. It’s easy to get pigeon-holed as a female, you know, if people think you sound like that. I don’t want to be a Janis Joplin cover artist. What she did was great – she really helped form that kind of music and left a big mark on it. To each his own. I’m just trying to do my own thing.

On the flip side, what are some of your favorite covers to perform?

That’s a hard question. Sometimes something will strike me when I hear it. I can’t say in particular that there’s one guy that I – oh wait, there is one that I cover a lot. I do a lot of Tom Waits covers. That, to me, I think that’s different. Not a lot of people cover his stuff. A lot of his albums are very blues-oriented, but they don’t sound blues-oriented when you listen to them. If you break down the chord progression, a lot of it is. So not a lot of people are covering his tunes, so for me that’s different and exciting. He’s one of them that I really like to cover. A lot of it’s just something will catch my ear, and I might not have even ever heard the person sing before and it might only be that one song by them, but it caught my attention.

For Topeka blues fans looking forward to Friday evening, what are your live shows like?

We’re going to have a lot of energy for them. We have a lot of passion, a lot of fun. They’re going to enjoy themselves. I’ve got a great band – I’ve got two of the best rhythm players in Kansas City. They hold it together. A lot of guitar solos… It’s just going to be a good time. And it’s going to be a good variety of music – they’re not going to get too much of one thing. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Suki Willison shared with me a funny anecdote about you helping unload equipment before one of your first performances at Uncle Bo’s. Evidently she caught you carrying a huge amp into the club wearing a pair of heels, and scolded you to put on some sneakers.

(Laughs.) I don’t know what I was thinking. I didn’t realize that walk was so long from the outside to the inside. I think it was wintertime, so I kept my shoes on because it was cold outside. She gave me a lot of trouble for wearing my heels and carrying that amplifier in. I sent her an e-mail a couple of months ago saying, you’d be proud of me. I brought an extra pair of shoes… I’m just trying to practice. You never know. If you can carry your amp with heels on, you can run with it in tennis shoes.

Lots of blues artists keep performing well into their old age. Can you see yourself following that path? That would make for one hell of a long career.

Well, I… I know I want to play music for the rest of my life. Am I going to be singing the exact same songs in 50 years? I have no idea. But I know that I’m going to be playing music for sure. It’s what I like to do – it’s my calling. Like I said, I’m so lucky to get to do what I like to do. Someday if I stop liking it, which I don’t think I will, I’ll find something else. But I love what I do.