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Tim O'Brien / Shemekia Copeland, presented by 97.3 KBCO

Live Show: Thursday, Dec 18, 2008
Location:

Etown and hosts Nick & Helen Forster welcome back old friend, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Tim O'Brien. He shares songs from his deep and varied catalog with Nick, Helen & the Etones backing him up. Young, phenomenal blues singer Shemekia Copland is back, too. Still in her 20s, she's opened for the Rolling Stones, headlined at the Chicago Blues Festival, and more. The Etones, with Nick & Helen, lend their solid support to her set of blues music. Also, newly elected U.S. Congressman Jared Polis visits and chats with host Nick Forster. And don't miss this week's touching E-Chievement Award story, too, all right here in Etown.

Tim O'Brien
At a point in his career where you'd think he'd be charging at full speed toward the next big thing, Tim O'Brien confounded expectations by doing something else: he took time--and plenty of it--to create the next small thing. Chameleon, his latest recording project, is an intimate record that, in its blend of virtuosity, wit and warmth, is unmistakably his. And this time around, it's literally his alone.

Though he first won renown as a member of one of bluegrass's premiere bands, Hot Rize, O'Brien's been doing solo performances for a long time, and pressed for antecedents, he offers up figures like James Taylor and Joni Mitchell. "The folksinger with a guitar is a sort of an unassailable icon," he says with a laugh. "Dylan, Woody Guthrie--what can you say. And I remember that when I heard the first Doc Watson album, I thought, what does he need a band for? This guy has got it all. But what happens is that when you go into the studio, you can play with a band and get the juices flowing and maybe do things that you might not be able to do on the road. So there's a temptation to go that way. But this time, I thought, let's just bring it inside."

Shemekia Copeland
For more than a decade, Shemekia Copeland has been paving a road that will inevitably lead to her reign as Queen of the Blues. By some standards - numerous blues awards in the U.S. and elsewhere, a Grammy nomination, a resume that includes work with musical titans like Dr. John and Steve Cropper and film giants like Martin Scorsese and Wim Wenders - she may already be there. For as appealing as that regal title may sound, though, and for as much as she respects the rich legacy of artists like Bessie Smith, Etta James or Koko Taylor, Copeland insists that there's more to who she is and what she does than a twelve-bar ballad or a Chicago shuffle could ever convey.

Never Going Back, her debut on Telarc set for release on February 24, 2009, captures Copeland at a crossroads on that artistic path - a place where numerous new avenues are open to her. While Copeland will always remain loyal to her blues roots, Never Going Back takes a more forward view of the blues, and in so doing points her music and her career in a new direction.

"I've had success in my career, and I'm happy with that," she says. "But that doesn't mean I don't want to continue to grow. In order for an artist to grow - and for a genre to grow - you have to do new things. I'm extremely proud to say I'm a blues singer, but doesn't mean that's the only thing I'm capable of singing, or that's the only style of music I'm capable of making."

Born in Harlem, New York, in 1979, Copeland actually came to her singing career slowly. Her father, the late Texas blues guitar legend Johnny Clyde Copeland, recognized his daughter-'s talent early on. He always encouraged her to sing at home, and even brought her on stage to sing at Harlem-'s famed Cotton Club when she was just eight. At the time, Shemekia-'s embarrassment outweighed her desire to sing. But when she was fifteen and her father-'s health began to fail, her outlook changed. -'It was like a switch went off in my head, and I wanted to sing,-' she says. -'It became a want and a need. I had to do it.-'

At only 19, Shemekia stepped out of her father-'s shadow with the Alligator release of 1998 debut recording, Turn the Heat Up!, and the critics raved. The Village Voice called her -'nothing short of uncanny,-' while the Boston Globe proclaimed that -'she roars with a sizzling hot intensity.-' A year later, she appeared in the Motion Picture Three To Tango, while her song -'I Always Get My Man, was featured in the film Broken Hearts Club.

etown Interview: Congressman-Elect Jared Polis