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Photos by Laura Carbone

Check one off my bucket list: To see blues performed live at the Mother Church of Country Music in Nashville, aka Music City. Even in the midst of a pandemic, I had to get out for a double show at the Ryman Auditorium with the Beau and Belle of the Blues, Tab Benoit and Samantha Fish.

After eight months at home, these performers decided to break out the first tour right, staging their opening show at this historic venue. Originally the Union Gospel Tabernacle, the Ryman was home to the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 to 1974 and remains a premiere music venue in Nashville. For this show, tickets were limited to 170 people in a space that normally holds over 2000. Ticketholders had to buy the entire wood pew (yes, pews, not flip-up individual seats) in groups of two to four people, and open space was ensured with every other row left open. Masks were mandatory inside, no intermingling during intermission, and no alcohol, bar or merchandise sales were allowed. To compensate for the reduced live audience, the Ryman offered the world a front row pew with a multi-camera ticketed “Live at The Ryman” livestream broadcast.

Samantha Fish opened the show in a threesome with Ron Johnson on bass and Doug Belote on drums. As usual, Fish was stunning in a pearlescent sequined jacket, platinum blond locks and tight leather leggings. She can do it all: sing soulful ballads, belt it out like a raging rocker and play her SG Gibson while wearing spike heels. She played several songs from her much-touted latest release, Kill or Be Kind, and ended her set burning up the slide on her beloved cigar box.

With no intermission, we got baptized in the Mother Church by Tab Benoit, the bayou demigod of the blues. Dressed in his signature colorful shirt, worn telecaster guitar and his new Covid long locks—a look that he quipped was the result of a cut by a barber who was six feet away. Known for his on-stage humor, Benoit is BMA’s Entertainer of the Year, a Grammy-nominated musician and named one of the 30 Best Blues Guitarists in the world today by Guitar World.

Benoit’s music is smoky, swampy bayou-bred blues, slow and quick and passionate. On stage he closes his eyes and throws himself into the songs to the ebb and flow of the music. His guitar work is clean—no pedals, it all comes from his fingers—and his band, with longtime bandmates, bassist Corey Duplechin and drummer Terence Higgins, is tight, predicting his every note or pause. After eight months of quarantine he expressed his joy of getting back on stage and echoed what many musicians must feel: “I did not get into music to play for a little camera on my computer. I got into music to play for people, to feel their energy.” And play he did, for two hours more.

At the end of the night, Fish joined Benoit on stage, clearly enjoying the feel of playing live together. Sharing guitar and vocals, they performed “I Put a Spell On You” and Benoit’s show stopper, “Night Train” with a repeated climatic ending. At the end of the night we were all blessed to experience live these two phenomenal artists, there in the Mother Church, in Nashville.

—Laura Carbone