Chicago’s reigning blues queen takes a detour through folk and Americana

Shemekia Copeland’s new album reaps the fruits of her kinship with artists such as Jason Isbell, Emmylou Harris and Mavis Staples.

By Mark Guarino

Aug 29, 2024, 6:00am CST

On her new album, Shemekia Copeland sings of an influential Black musician who helped change popular music and of telling the devil to go to hell. In another song, she rhapsodizes about drinking a good glass of wine.

The blues singer couldn’t help it, she said. “I wanted to make a lighter record and a more fun record,” she explained. But Blame It On Eve, out Friday on Chicago-based Alligator Records, is not quite that. Despite songs like “Wine O’Clock” and the blues rocker “Cadillac Blue,” the sturdy songs on her new album reflect a singer who sees music as a way to channel stories relevant to the times.

Blame It On Eve follows a strong run of three albums — America’s Child, Uncivil War, and Done Come Too Far — that started during the Trump years. Together, the albums positioned Copeland as a singer who found musical inspiration in confronting the fear and chaos of a time period when COVID-19, the murder of George Floyd, mass shootings in schools and an insurrection in Washington dominated headlines. Her anxiety was real, she said, because she had just become a mother to a son who faced a future as a Black man in America.

“I never considered myself super political. But if you’re singing about difficult things, that’s what people call you. But it’s OK, I get that,” she said. Those records, Copeland said, were confessional, since she was talking about her direct experience. “If you ever have to worry about your brother, nephew, son just living day to day life, it’s hard. It’s a tough way to live, not feeling safe when you’re supposed to feel safe.”

These days, with public excitement mounting around the campaign of Kamala Harris, a Black woman, Copeland said she is feeling “more optimistic.” When I made those records, I was worried about my child growing up in this country. Now I’m feeling a little bit better about things,” she said. Still, on one of her new songs, she sings of “dancing in the graveyard in broken high heels” — bruised but determined to move forward, no matter what.

Copeland grew up in New York City and then nearby New Jersey. Her father was blues royalty. Johnny Copeland helped cultivate the Texas blue guitar sound and mentored her when she was a teenager. Her natural talent as a singer was noticed early; Alligator Records in Chicago signed Copeland at 19. She lived in Chicago for decades before departing for California a few years ago.

A prolific recording career followed, marked by collaborations with many of her early heroes, including singer Ruth Brown and New Orleans raconteur Dr. John, and many awards. By the time Copeland was in her early thirties, the family of legendary Chicago blues singer Koko Taylor, who died in 2009, awarded her Taylor’s crown onstage at the Chicago Blues Festival, naming her as the new “Queen of the Blues.”

The honor, she said, was not a burden. “I felt super honored. Koko wanted me to have it because she knew I would honor and cherish her, and I would always say she’s the queen of the blues. Because she is,” she said. “And I also knew I couldn’t be her, and I never tried. I always tried to be the best version of me.”

Unlike many blues performers, Copeland’s versatility as a singer and her taste for songs have let her blur the boundaries of the genre. She found kinship with Americana rocker Jason Isbell, who contributed to a prior record and toured with her. Other collaborators include Emmylou Harris and the late John Prine. Blame It On Eve features bluegrass ace Jerry Douglas on lap steel guitar and dobro, and the album also features a duet with Texas Americana legend Alejandro Escovedo.

The album reflects Copeland’s home listening, which she describes as a lot of American roots music. That taste has made her comfortable incorporating banjos, fiddles and strings into her own music. The blues is a natural cousin to country music, after all. In fact, a new song on Blame It On Eve is named to honor Rufus “Tee Tot” Payne, a Black musician from Alabama who is long considered an early, but largely unrecognized, mentor to Hank Williams. Payne, a blues guitarist, showed Williams chords when he was a child. In Copeland’s song, a country blues, she sings, “Country music wouldn’t be the same” without Payne. “The old man taught him blues guitar/ turned that boy into a star.”

She said “Tee Tot Payne” is an example of her interest in having a teaching moment about Black history on each album. “They’re trying to wipe us out of history and are still trying to,” she said with a laugh. “When you know better, you do better, and education is key.”

Her closest companion is also one of Nashville’s most established songwriters and producers. Will Kimbrough emerged from the city’s singer-songwriter scene after the turn of the century, when an early band of his was signed to Oh Boy Records, John Prine’s independent record label. In addition to his own music, Kimbrough built a career supplying songs to other singers, such as Emmylou Harris, Jimmy Buffett and Mavis Staples. Copeland said her lengthy association with Kimbrough — Blame It On Eve is her fourth record with him — has resulted in a relationship where communication is seamless.

“We are like the dream team. He’s so extremely talented. There’s nothing I can say to him that he can’t make happen. He’ll just get on the guitar and start doing it. I’ve never seen anybody work that way,” she said. “He gets me.”

Kimbrough called Copeland “one of the greatest musicians I have ever worked with.”

The confidence and relaxation in Copeland’s voice on Blame It On Eve makes everything she sings believable and urgent. “Two of the fundamental things about music I love are the human voice and rhythm. She has everything she needs in her voice,” he said.

Over many years, the songwriting process begins with Copeland downloading her everyday thoughts to John Hahn, her long-time manager, who helps organize them into themes that require lyrics that he writes. Kimbrough supplies the music. “Then they put it together,” she said of her collaborators. By proxy, the songs are easy to sing because they reflect her deepest feelings about the subject. “It happens so organically, it’s hard to even explain,” she said. “It’s like getting a dress tailored for you.” The songs represent “all my curves.”

The feelings Copeland channels to Hahn and Kimbrough are a mixture of sounds she wants to explore and messages she wants to say in response to the headlines she reads every day. Both make Blame It On Eve feel current, from the title song that echoes the disparaging of women echoed in the headlines during the current national presidential campaign to “Tough Mother,” which tells her personal story of raising a son during troubled times.

“There’s an open mind and an open heart and an intellect that sees the world in its complexity and wants to sing about it. And she can put it out there [in a way] that sounds modern and timeless,” said Kimbrough. “She just delivered it.”

Blame It On Eve refuses to stick to a single theme, genre or even sound. With a voice rooted in gospel, soul, and, of course blues, Copeland digs into each song with familiarity and ease. The challenge she gave herself came from tackling a cover of the hauntingly beautiful French ballad “Belle Sorciere,” written by Parisian singer-songwriter Pascal Danaë. “I’ve always wanted to sing in another language,” she said.

Despite the variety, Copeland will always think of herself as first and foremost a blues singer. Songs like the scorcher “Down On Bended Knee” clearly show those roots. “I’m a blues singer and a very proud one at that,” she said. “Other people put limitations on music. I don’t. Just like any genre that can evolve and grow, the blues can too.”

If you go: Shemekia Copeland headlines City Winery Nov. 16. Tickets start at $42.