#93xrt

Are you ready for a meandering post with lots of links that will eventually take you all the way to Chicago for a nice surprise? Well, read on then. When I got in my car yesterday, I was pleased to see sand on the passenger seat. That may not make sense to most folks, but I live for being in and around water. People look at me funny when I tell them that I feel more comfortable being in water…

How in the bloody hell did I end up at this show over the weekend? Some say it’s because I’m Father of the Year. I volunteered to take my 15-year-old daughter and her friend to see the feminist punk band Destroy Boys. You may remember them from their haunting ballad “I Threw Glass at My Friend’s Eyes and Now I’m on Probation.” Anyway, I took these two lovely young ladies into Chicago to Metro to…

BY JORDAN MAINZER

For electric blues vocalist Shemekia Copeland, last night’s concert at City Winery was a homecoming and a celebration. Copeland, who long lived in Chicago before recently moving to California, delivered an enrapturing set that showed why she’s been dubbed the new Queen of the Blues for over 10 years now, and more. She was introduced to the stage by 93XRT’s Tom Marker, who remarked that though blues drives everything Copeland does, her actual genre output is far more diverse. That dichotomy is as present as ever on her most recent album Uncivil War (Alligator Records), a 12-song collection of originals and covers that encompasses sociopolitical issues as timely as they are constant. (The album, which was released last October, missing the 2021 Grammy Awards cutoff, has thankfully been nominated for a 2022 Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album). As expected, not getting to properly tour Uncivil War at the time of release, Copeland prioritized the record in her setlist, from the ZZ Top strut of “Money Makes You Ugly” and the R&B funk of “Clotilda’s On Fire” to the quietly strummed, powerfully minimal title track and pro-gun control stomp “Apple Pie and a .45″.

It’s been quite a trying two years for Copeland, who shared that she recently was diagnosed with cancer and had 20% of her kidney removed as a result, and then contracted COVID-19, and that her mother was sick for most of last year. She’s on the mend now, though, and her mother and brother were actually able to attend last night’s show. Copeland’s banter with her loved ones in the audience was just as if not more charming than that between her and her formidable band (guitarists Arthur Neilson and Ken “Willie” Scandlyn, bassist Kevin Jenkins, and drummer Robin Gould). Her stories of her childhood, and past and current romantic relationships contextualized older tunes like “Big Brand New Religion” and “It’s My Own Tears”. Tales of church and bible studies with her mom’s friends played off of performances of blues-turned-gospel jams such as “Walk Until I Ride”. At the center of it all was Copeland’s voice, a stunning instrument, that can wail like a blues guitar or emulate the late John Prine’s nasal sneer on her adaptation of his “Great Rain”. And when she performed “Ghetto Child”, a cover of her father Johnny Copeland’s song originally recorded for her 1998 debut Turn the Heat Up, Copeland ended the song singing without the aid of a microphone, her ability to project washing over a crowd stunned to quietude. Queen of the blues, and everything else, too.