Blues Route: Shemekia Copeland
Photo: Jim Summaria
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The blues only works if it’s real. Which is why Shemekia Copeland is one of the most beloved, and successful, blues and roots artists in the world. Whether she’s searching inward, regaling audiences with stories from her life, observing and commenting on current events, or sharing an obscure historical yarn that you may never have heard but really should, Copeland simply can’t sing a song unless it resonates.
Nor can she sing a song without putting all of her heart and soul into it. Keeping it real is what she’s all about.
Copeland’s latest, Blame It on Eve, released by Alligator Records in August, bursts with stark truths. For starters, there’s the album-opening title track, whose potent, ripped-from-the[1]headlines lyrics include such knockout lines as “Wanna know how it feels to have the blues?/ Just try losing your right to choose.”
“I mean, come on,” Copeland says from her home in Southern California, when asked about the song. “Look at what’s happening with women in this country. It just makes no sense to me. Of course, I have to talk about that. It’s ridiculous! It’s a shame what women have to endure. Women’s rights are at the forefront of my mind.”
Another highlight is “Broken High Heels.” One shiver-inducing verse goes, “Maybe we’re done, maybe we’re doomed/ All just waiting for the big kaboom/ New flu’s comin’, end game too/ There ain’t a thing anyone can do/ See if they still call it fake news when they’re six feet under in melted shoes.”
“We’re watching the world fall apart before our eyes, and you’ve got deniers?” she says with disbelief in her voice.
The track is one of several co-written by a pair of longtime collaborators, her manager John Hahn and the superb guitarist Will Kimbrough—her producer for four consecutive albums now.
“These folks won’t be around when the world comes to an end,” she says of the tune’s lyrical theme. “They’re not leaving it a good place for their kids, for the future.”
It’s not all gloom though. In fact, says Copeland, “This record’s definitely a little bit lighter for me. It’s all about me and how I’m feeling. And I’m feeling lighter.”
Case in point: “Wine O’Clock,” which Hahn and Kimbrough co-wrote with Susan Werner, is a paean to a favorite time of day. “Think I’ll have another glass/ The world can kiss my ass,” Copeland sings. The album also features a few tender love songs, including “I Only Miss You All the Time” and “Cadillac Blue,” the latter of which was inspired by Copeland’s own interracial relationship. And Blame It on Eve’shistory lesson comes in the form of “Tee Tot Payne,” a true-life story of an early 20th century African-American singer who served as an inspiration to country music pioneer Hank Williams. The track features Dobro from Jerry Douglas, one of several high-profile guests on the record, along with Alejandro Escovedo, Luther Dickinson, Charlie Hunter and others.
Then there’s “Tough Mother,” the first single from the album. “That’s an autobiography,” Copeland says. “That’s everything that I’ve been through, growing up where I grew up, my father, losing my father, losing my mom, cancer, having my baby—all the important things in my life.”
Shemekia’s father Johnny Copeland, an all-time great blues singer/guitarist, still looms large in her life and music. Each of her albums includes a song written by him—this time it’s “Down on Bended Knee.” Johnny Copeland died in 1997 but not before encouraging his daughter, who was born in New York’s Harlem neighborhood in 1979, to pursue her own music. She was in her teens when she knew she wanted to follow in her dad’s footsteps.
“I had amazing parents,” she says. “I don’t think you can be successful in this business at all if you don’t have a strong foundation. My dad knew from day one that I would be a singer; he was the only one that knew that. Then one day, it hit me like a ton of bricks and I said, ‘This is what I’m going to do with my life.’”
After apprenticing with Johnny, Shemekia cut her first album, Turn the Heat Up! in 1998. Wicked followed in 2000, as did the first of eight Blues Music Awards. Each new album— including titles produced by heavyweights Dr. John and Steve Cropper—displayed a fine-tuned style and direction and, by 2015, every new album she released bolted to the Top 10 on the Billboard blues chart.
But the singer has really kicked things up a few notches over the past several years—first with 2018’s America’s Child, then on 2020’s Uncivil War and 2022’s Done Come Too Far. Each release boasted more intimate, pointed songwriting and a closer look at who Shemekia Copeland really is.
That’s not an accident; she makes her records with purpose. “Everything that we do is very calculated,” she says. “It’s always specific. We’re not rock stars; there’s not a whole lot of money to make records. We travel and tour to survive, and we have to be very prepared when we go into the studio. I know some people can go in the studio and write while they’re there, spending months. Well, we don’t do that. We can’t do that.
“The people I work with know me well, so it happens organically,” she adds. “It’s not so regimented where people say, ‘OK, let’s sit down and write a song.’ We don’t work that way. It’s like, here’s an idea, the idea gets talked about, then we execute it. It’s nice to work that way.”