{"id":16801,"date":"2019-07-29T05:30:17","date_gmt":"2019-07-29T09:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=16801"},"modified":"2019-06-07T17:00:16","modified_gmt":"2019-06-07T21:00:16","slug":"shemekia-copeland-not-like-everybody-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2019\/07\/29\/shemekia-copeland-not-like-everybody-else\/","title":{"rendered":"Shemekia Copeland: Not Like Everybody Else"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The singing daughter of blues guitarist Johnny Copeland, Shemekia Copeland is a Blues Music Award winner and critics\u2019 favorite. On America\u2019s Child<\/i>, her 10th<\/sup> album, Copeland delivers a set of heartfelt songs, many built around themes of racial prejudice, xenophobia and greed. Songs like \u201cAin\u2019t Got Time for Hate\u201d are message-driven, but the music is still the deep-groove blues that earned her fame.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re thought of as a blues artist, but as the new album really makes plain, one genre seems like it\u2019s too small to contain your musical vision. Do the other styles that inform your music \u2014 Americana, county, rock \u2014 come naturally to you, or are you consciously trying to expand your musical reach beyond the blues?<\/b><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a little bit of both. I mean, ever since the beginning of my career, I\u2019ve loved blues music so much. I\u2019ve always wanted it to evolve and grow, and I\u2019ve always been able to see the potential. My whole goal was to bend<\/i> it, not break it. And the way to do it, I always felt, was by adding elements of different styles of music, basically taking it back. Everybody else borrowed from blues. So why can\u2019t I borrow from everyone else?<\/p>\n

Tell me about the underlying message of America\u2019s Child.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

We wanted everyone to we\u2019re all immigrants. So, we just kind of wanted to make a big statement that we\u2019re all the same and we should act like it. We\u2019re Americans, damn it, and we need to be proud and happy about that and love one another. I keep telling everybody I feel like a beauty queen who just won the Miss America contest because all I want is world peace. It\u2019s like shouting it to the rooftops. All this hate makes me so sad, so sad.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s like the have and have nots: the rich and poor thing. Forget it! It\u2019s so terrible. People keep talking about the government and politics and Democrats and Republicans, saying, \u201cIt\u2019s all about money.\u201d Nobody\u2019s gonna do anything to change anything as long as our economy is good. They all have their hands in oil and big pharma, everything that runs this country. That\u2019s why our medicine costs so much money. They don\u2019t want universal healthcare. They don\u2019t want anything like that that works everywhere else.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s like, \u201cWell, we got ours. So, we\u2019re good.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

Yeah: \u201cWe\u2019re good. We\u2019re good. We don\u2019t need anything.\u201d But to just not care about other people and only care about yourself, it just irks me. One of Trump\u2019s sprouts said that if poor people want more, they just need to work harder.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the whole \u201cborn on a third base\u201d perspective.<\/b><\/p>\n

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being born with privilege, but my thing is, know<\/i> it. Know that you were born with privilege and know that you were afforded opportunities that other people don\u2019t get. At least don\u2019t be ignorant to it and make stupid comments like that. And don\u2019t tell me about your father and your grandfather and your great grandfather.<\/p>\n

Let me tell you something. If I stole a bunch of land from people and then got hundreds of years of free labor, I\u2019d be a billionaire too. I\u2019d be a big ol\u2019 billionaire! Hell yeah.<\/p>\n

What sort of feedback have you received from ordinary people about the record?<\/b><\/p>\n

I think I make people a little nervous sometimes! But I get great feedback; the people who get it really get<\/i> it. And it makes me very happy. When I do songs like \u201cWould You Take My Blood\u201d \u2013 which is my very direct way of talking about race in this country, something I\u2019ve never done that before \u2013 I really love the feedback I\u2019m getting from that.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re all hardworking artists. And we get our reward by being able to do what we do. And having the voice to say the things that are important to me, I realize how important that is. Especially here as I get older, and when I as I became a mother, having a voice is very important to me. I get so tired of bullies on social media who go on and say [something like], \u201cYou\u2019re a guitar player. So just play the guitar. You don\u2019t get to talk about this or that.\u201d<\/p>\n

And it pisses me off because my thing is is that artists pay taxes, artists live here. I think what upsets people is that you have a voice, you have a big voice and people are listening to you. If I have an outlet that you don\u2019t have, that\u2019s not my fault. If I\u2019m at the Oscars and I can speak my mind and say whatever I want; don\u2019t hate on me. My hard work got me to the Oscars so that I could say what I wanna say and do what I wanna do. And that\u2019s my prerogative.<\/p>\n

This is something I should probably never say, but as a blues singer, singing about issues and doing what I\u2019m doing right now, I\u2019m not sure how I fit in.<\/p>\n

\"\"You started your recording career with Alligator Records, and now you\u2019ve returned to them. I just read Bruce Iglauer\u2019s memoir Bitten by the Blues<\/i>. I think that he and the label have been one of the most important forces in helping to keep the blues alive. Tell me what the label means to you.<\/b><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a family. Bruce and his staff, they work so hard. Since the beginning of my career, over 20 years ago now, you\u2019re talking about still the same people. They care about the music, they care about the artists, and it\u2019s a wonderful place to be.<\/p>\n

Way back when, you toured with your father. How did his life as a musician influence your own musical path?<\/b><\/p>\n

So<\/i> much! First of all, my father was all about originality. One of the songs on my record is \u201cI\u2019m Not Like Everybody Else,\u201d the song by The Kinks. One of my deepest fears \u2013 my deepest \u2013 is to be like everybody else. So, I love that song; I love the lyric. And my father was all about originality. So I got that from him.<\/p>\n

And hard work: He would give 250% on stage. Even when he was sick and didn\u2019t have [much] to give, he would go out there and give his absolute all. And I watched him do that.<\/p>\n

I had great upbringing; I had great parents. And I\u2019m so grateful for that, because in these days you have to have a solid foundation in this world. If you don\u2019t have that, you\u2019re just not gonna survive. My mother is a total badass! She and my father gave my brother and me the tools that we needed to survive in this world.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve received quite a number of awards and nominations as well. What effect, if any, do those have on you and your career?<\/b><\/p>\n

Getting an award for doing something that you love to do is a wonderful thing; it\u2019s like the icing on the top. But I don\u2019t let it define me, because if you don\u2019t get that award, you don\u2019t want to feel inferior or \u201cless than.\u201d So any time I get a nomination or an award, I\u2019m truly grateful for it. But if I don\u2019t<\/i> get nominated and I don\u2019t get the award, I don\u2019t feel any kind of way about it either. It\u2019s like what my daddy always told me: \u201cDon\u2019t read the press. If it\u2019s good, you become cocky and arrogant. And if it\u2019s bad, you become bitter and angry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The singing daughter of blues guitarist Johnny Copeland, Shemekia Copeland is a Blues Music Award winner and critics\u2019 favorite. On America\u2019s Child, her 10th album, Copeland delivers a set of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16803,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,41,49],"tags":[3871],"class_list":["post-16801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blues","category-interview","category-new-release","tag-shemekia-copeland","cat-9-id","cat-41-id","cat-49-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16801"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16804,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16801\/revisions\/16804"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}