Projecting a maturity beyond her years, blues singer Shemekia Copeland began making a splash in her own right before she was even out of her teens. Copeland fashioned herself as a powerful, soul-inflected shouter in the tradition of Koko Taylor and Etta James, yet also proved capable of a subtler range of emotions. Her 1998 Alligator debut, Turn the Heat Up!, featured a career-elevating version of “Ghetto Child,” a classic by her father, renowned Texas blues guitarist Johnny Copeland, that has been part of her performance repertoire ever since. She released three more acclaimed rough-and-rowdy recordings that decade before revealing a more nuanced, slow-burning persona on Never Going Back in 2009. Over her next two albums, 2012’s 33 1/3 and 2015’s Outskirts of Love, she became not only a formidable singer but an influential stylist. By the time of 2018’s America’s Child, she had transformed herself into an artist who could inhabit virtually any genre of music without sacrificing the power and passion that initially established her reputation.
Copeland was born in Harlem in 1979, and her father encouraged her to sing from the start, even bringing her up on-stage at the Cotton Club when she was just eight. She began to pursue a singing career in earnest at age 16, when her father’s health began to decline due to heart disease; he took Shemekia on tour with him as his opening act, which helped establish her name on the blues circuit. She landed a record deal with Alligator, which issued her debut album, Turn the Heat Up!, in 1998 when she was just 19 (sadly, her father didn’t live to see the occasion).
While the influences on Copeland’s style were crystal clear, the record was met with enthusiastic reviews praising its energy and passion. Marked as a hot young newcomer to watch, she toured the blues festival circuit in America and Europe, and landed a fair amount of publicity. Her second album, Wicked, was released in 2000 and featured a duet with one of her heroes, early R&B diva Ruth Brown. Wicked earned Copeland a slew of W.C. Handy Blues Award nominations and she walked off with three: Song of the Year, Blues Album of the Year, and Contemporary Female Artist of the Year. The follow-up record, Talking to Strangers, was produced by legendary pianist Dr. John and featured songs that she proudly claimed were her best yet. The Soul Truth, produced by Steve Cropper, was issued by Alligator Records in 2005. Never Going Back followed in 2009 from Telarc Blues and was produced by the Wood Brothers’ Oliver Wood. 33 1/3 appeared in 2012 and was again produced by Wood and issued by Telarc.
Copeland returned to Alligator for the release of 2015’s Outskirts of Love, which featured guest appearances from Robert Randolph, Alvin Youngblood Hart, and Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top. The album was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Blues Album category. In 2017, Copeland gave birth to a son and, deeply inspired by the experience, she shifted direction. She chose to record in Nashville and enlisted producer/guitarist Will Kimbrough — who in turn enlisted guests who included John Prine, Mary Gauthier, Emmylou Harris, Steve Cropper, and more. With guidance from Kimbrough, Copeland dug deep and completed a resonant program of soul, Americana, blues, and country with 2018’s America’s Child. Kimbrough returned as producer for 2020’s Uncivil War, 12 songs that mixed political and social commentary with more personal themes; guest artists included Jason Isbell, Steve Cropper, and Duane Eddy.
In June 2021, she released a single, “Hit ‘Em Back” with Kenny Wayne Shepherd, Robert Randolph and Tony Coleman in response to the growing pandemic of hate crimes.
On Sunday, June 6, in a virtual ceremony, The Blues Foundation announced the winners of the 42nd Annual Blues Music Awards, the blues world’s highest honor. Celebrated singer Shemekia Copeland led all artists with three wins, including the awards for B.B. King Entertainer Of The Year, Contemporary Female Blues Artist Of The Year, and Contemporary Blues Album of The Year for her groundbreaking work, Uncivil War.
2022 update: New release Done Come Too Far ( out 8/19/2022)
Possessing one of the most instantly recognizable and deeply soulful roots music voices of our time, Copeland is beloved worldwide for the fearlessness, honesty and humor of her revelatory music, as well as for delivering each song she performs with unmatched passion. Copeland — winner of the 2021 Blues Music Award for B.B. King Entertainer Of The Year — connects with her audience on an intensely personal level, taking them with her on what The Wall Street Journal calls “a consequential ride” of “bold and timely blues.”
Done Come Too Far continues the story Copeland began telling on 2019’s groundbreaking America’s Child and 2020’s Grammy-nominated Uncivil War, reflecting her vision of America’s past, present and future. On Done Come Too Far, she delivers her hard-hitting musical truths through her eyes, those of a young American Black woman, a mother, and a wife. But she likes to have a good time too, and her music reflects that, at times putting her sly sense of humor front and center. Guests on the album include slide guitar wizard Sonny Landreth, Mississippi Hill country blues icons Cedric Burnside and Kenny Brown, Memphis soul keyboard legend Charles Hodges, Oliver Wood (of the Wood Brothers), Americana star Aaron Lee Tasjan and Pat Sansone (of Wilco).
Recorded in Nashville and produced by multi-instrumentalist/songwriter Will Kimbrough (who also produced her previous two albums), Done Come Too Far is Copeland at her charismatic, passionate, confrontational best. With singular purpose and simmering power, Copeland unleashes the searing, history-fueled tracks “Too Far To Be Gone” (featuring Sonny Landreth on scorching slide guitar) and “Done Come Too Far” (with Grammy-winner Cedric Burnside duetting and playing Mississippi Hill Country blues guitar). “If you think we’re stopping,” she sings in both songs, “you got it wrong.” On “The Talk,” Copeland shares the brutally honest, harrowing reality of a Black mother talking with her son about surviving an encounter with the police (with the great Charles Hodges of the famed Hi Rhythm Section on pulsating B-3 organ). On the all-too-timely “Pink Turns To Red” (written and recorded prior to the May 2022 Uvalde, Texas school shooting), Copeland decries America’s gun violence epidemic.
This album was made by all sides of me — happy, sad, silly, irate — they’re all a part who I am and who we all are. I’m not political. I’m just talking about what’s happening in this country. Once my son was born, I became even more committed to making the world a better place. On America’s Child, Uncivil War and now Done Come Too Far, I’ve been trying to put the ‘United’ back into United States. Friends, family and home, these things we all value.