Shemekia Copeland makes her way into ranks of the blues greats

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Shemekia Copeland makes her way into ranks of the blues greats
September 8, 2010
By THIERRY PEREMARTI
The Dallas Morning News

It's hard to imagine anyone coming along who's as powerful as the late Koko Taylor or as moving as the late Ruth Brown. The unforgettable Dinah Washington could electrocute you in two notes. And let's not forget Etta James.

If there is someone who might convince you that maybe we do need someone new, it's Shemekia Copeland, who's performing tonight with her five-piece band at the Winspear Opera House.

She's not exactly new, having recorded five albums since 1998 and shared the stage with blues' most famous artists. But it is with her latest recording, Never Going Back, that Copeland, the 31-year-old daughter of legendary blues singer and guitarist Johnny Copeland, shows that she's one of the most interesting musicians in blues today.

It's not uncommon for artists to want to broaden their horizons, but very few have the nerve to expose themselves. That's what Copeland has done.

Having explored various subgenres of blues throughout her career – pure blues, rock blues, gospel-tinged blues, Memphis soul-tinged blues – Copeland has reached a point at which she needed to make an even more dramatic departure. As a result, she has lately come into her own as an artist.

"I love blues music so much that I want to see it evolve and grow," she said via phone last week. "In order for that to happen, I myself as an artist need to evolve. And I need to grow."

Yes, she still likes to sing hard, to "pound vocals," as she says; she's a devotee of blues shouting. These days she also reveals her sensitive side. Take her cover of Joni Mitchell's "Black Crow," a song that she says exposes her vulnerability.

In a break from her past, when her material focused on "being in love and out of love," as she puts it, she also now touches on religion, politics and social issues.

"I'm 31 now," she says, "and I'm part of the world. I know what's going on, and I want to talk about it."

Copeland isn't particularly insecure, but she does have one constant worry: the turnout for her shows. "I'm hoping the people are going to show up because nobody has any money these days," she says. When she put out her first record at 19, she thought that in the next 10 years, blues would become as big as country music. Now, she says, "Thank God I have a gig."

In 2002, when Dr. John was producing her record Talking to Strangers, she felt she was losing focus, and she turned to him for advice. She had no idea what to do next, she told him; she didn't know what people wanted to hear.

"And in his Dr. John voice, he said, 'Now you're about to screw up. So far you've been doing what you want to do. When you do what you want to do, the music business has to conform to you. But when you start trying to conform to the music business, that's when you screw up.'

"And I thought, wow, that's exactly what I needed to know. Because you can lose focus on this journey. I had lost my focus, and he brought me right back to, you know, I'm doing what I love to do, and I hope people like it."