SHEMEKIA COPELAND

Outskirts of Love

Alligator Records

12 tracks/43:15

Greg Easterling

Shemekia Copeland is arguably the top female blues singer in the world today and the release of her latest album should be a major event. While blues is not the popular music of today, it is still an important tributary into the stream of contemporary American music and a musical style that continues to inspire and entertain its fans worldwide.

Copeland’s new album, Outskirts of Love brings her back home to Chicago’s Alligator Records, for whom she recorded her first four albums from 1998 through 2006.  Outskirts is made up of 12 blues informed songs, many of which tackle important issues of special significance to women such as homelessness and life below the poverty line, sexual harassment and date rape. These are songs about an America where the dream has been deferred with the lives of many of its citizens missing the mark in a number of very real and troubling ways.  Recorded in Nashville this time, Copeland sticks with guitarist Oliver Wood and manager John Hahn, the same production and writing team that were so effective for her last outing, 2012’s Grammy-nominated album 33 1/3 on the Telarc label. Wood and Hahn (with an assist from Ian Siegal) crafted four new original songs for Copeland to record including the notable title track.

As she often does, Copeland also reaches back into the songbook of her late father, Texas blues guitar great and singer Johnny Clyde Copeland, plus a mix of covers from the catalogs of Albert King, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, ZZ Top, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jesse Winchester and Jessie Mae Hemphill. It’s a formula that has served Copeland well over the course of recent releases for both Telarc and Alligator. She’s also helped out this time around by notable guests such as ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, steel guitar great Robert Randolph and bluesman Alvin Youngblood Hart.

Outskirts of Love kicks off with the title cut, reflected visually in the album cover shot of a seedy “adults only” motel on the edge of town with falling rain.  The song starts with a spare but compelling guitar figure over which Copeland starts to sing about a number of scenarios. A forsaken wife, a child left alone by “working girl” mom and another woman who wakes up with a stranger. All are portraits of lost love from a woman’s perspective that connect with anybody -- regardless of gender -- when Copeland sings: “When you can’t find the thing you’ve been dreaming of, you’re living on the outskirts of love.”

In the wake of well-publicized allegations made against Bill Cosby, “Crossbone Beach” feels like it’s ripped from today’s headlines. It’s the hard rockin’ tale of a woman who’s been slipped a knockout drug by “Mr. Gold Tooth” and ends up with her “soul washed up on Crossbone Beach.” Copeland communicates the emotions of surprise and agony as she takes on the role of the victim here, asking “how’d I end up on Crossbone Beach, close to hell as you can reach.” In this fictionalized account at least, the victim gets revenge on her perpetrator later as Copeland confides, “Payback’s a bitch!”

“Devil’s Hand” is a well-regarded song from one of her father’s (Johnny Copeland) albums. It’s the straight stuff, real blues, driven home by guitar and horns as Shemekia pleads, “Please Mr. Devil, go back where you belong,” relating “That no good Devil wrecked my life like a hurricane”.

Copeland tackles another street level issue with the acoustic blues of “Cardboard Box”, a John Hahn original crafted for her to sing on the subject of homelessness, never more prevalent than today throughout  America. She duets with Alvin Youngblood Hart, an effective combination that helps get the point across with a hint of ironic humor.  “Don’t need a roommate/I live all alone/Don’t need a door/I don’t need a lock/Living my life in a cardboard box.”

It is a surprise to hear country steel guitar on a Copeland song but with Nashville in the song title and also the location where this CD was recorded, it isn’t too shocking. Purists might be aghast, but “Drivin’ Out of Nashville” is a witty sounding assessment of a not-so-fun topic: sexual harassment in the entertainment business. Once again, the point is made with humor and besides as Copeland declares, “Country music ain’t nothing but the blues with a twang!”

For cover songs, Copeland taps into a stream of classic rock and blues that should entertain baby boomer fans. She brings a soulful quality to a great John Fogerty Creedence song, originally from Cosmos Factory, “Long As I Can See The Light.” Billy Gibbons shows up to play guitar on “Jesus Just Left Chicago,” which feels more contemporary these days with its references to both Chicago and New Orleans, highly influential American cities in terms of music and culture that are facing huge challenges economically and with gun violence here in 2015.  By the time you get to the end of the CD, the final track, Jessie Mae Hemphill’s “Lord Help The Poor and Needy,” feels like a benediction of sorts for the album and the real life issues dealt with so effectively in many of the songs here.

At the age of 16, Copeland began to accompany her father on tour and eventually opened shows for her dad. Two years later, she made her critically acclaimed recording debut for Alligator with Turn the Heat Up. Three more Alligator albums followed as Copeland recorded with famous name producers such as Dr. John and Steve Cropper. Along the way she garnered eight Blues Music Awards, several Grammy nominations and a number of Living Blues Awards including that publication’s ultimate honor as 2010 Blues Artist Of The Year. The list of legends with which she has performed is a virtual Who’s Who of rock and blues: the late B.B. King, Buddy Guy, James Cotton, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Bonnie Raitt and Carlos Santana.  Copeland has opened for the Rolling Stones and played the White House. Pretty heady stuff for a singer only a little over halfway through her thirties.

No doubt, it is a challenging time to be a recording artist in these days of digital downloads and online piracy. But working in a timeless genre such as the blues, rather than in flavor-of-the month pop music confections, bodes well for career longevity for Copeland. As acknowledged by her home town and state at the 2011 Chicago Blues Festival, Copeland carries the mantle of “The New Queen Of The Blues” in the footsteps of past luminaries such as Koko Taylor and Bessie Smith.

Outskirts of Love continues Copland’s story in a compelling way as she continues to spotlight a variety of contemporary issues, staying open to musical experimentation while still operating under the umbrella of the blues. It’s worthy of another Grammy nomination and hopefully a win this time.

Greg Easterling holds down the 12 midnight – 5 a.m. shift on WDRV (97.1 FM). He also hosts American Backroads on WDCB (90.9 FM) Thursdays at 9 p.m.

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