Shemekia Copeland At the Birchmere 12/16/02

by Alan Greenblatt

Shemekia Copeland is just 23 but she won't have to wait to get that big-bodied figure so familiar on blues singers such as Ruth Brown and Koko Taylor whose voice hers kind of resembles. At the Birchmere Thursday night, she wore tight white clothing to accentuate such charms. "I'm on the radio with all those chicks with flat bellies," she remarked on her recording success, "and I didn't have to do no situps."

Making fun of being a full-figured gal is no new thing for a blues mama, of course. That was in keeping with much of Copeland's act, which was made up of formulaic lyrics about "ain't got a man," "I'm a wild woman," "the other woman" and, of course, "It's 2 am, do you know where your baby is." Her songs featured familiar musical tropes as well -- the ringing guitar line, the thumping bass and drums, the barrelhouse ending to phrases from the keyboards.

The question is, do any of these shopworn cliches detract from the pleasure of listening to Copeland sing? She has an amazing voice. It just comes out of her. She opens up her ungodly big mouth and out pours wonderful pitch perfect yells and screams and lovelorn plaints. Copeland is the daughter of blues guy Johnny Copeland and clearly learned many stage tricks. She knows how to please an audience.

But she's going to be bigger than daddy ever was because she has that tremendous asset of singing with not just authority but real charisma as well. Copeland left the stage and walked all around that big room at the Birchmere, singing a chorus over and over and impressing the little folks with her ability to project. It was a cute performance.

Overall, I would say she is someone I expect to like a lot more about 10 or 15 years from now, when her voice starts to fray a bit, when those words about being cheated by a man carry a bit more autobiographical heft. I'd also like to hear her in a real blues club, not the staid Birchmere, where the white people like me sit politely sipping beers. It's kind of cute that she gets such a crowd singing along to a song about a "beat up old guitar," but I think we all would have had more fun all crunched up against each other in a smoky room on Rush Street in Chicago or something like that.