It was opening weekend for the new City Winery at the Foundry STL, capped by a Sunday night performance from renowned blues singer Shemekia Copeland.
Copeland hit the ground running with a slinky cover of Ray Wylie Hubbard’s “Barefoot in Heaven,” one of six songs she played from her Grammy-nominated new album Done Come Too Far.
“I’m like the Susan Lucci of the Grammys,” Copeland told the crowd regarding her oft-nominated, never-won Grammy history.
It was a chatty show with the singer holding forth between songs on subjects as varied as forgetting to pack bras for this tour, feeling gratitude for Spanx leggings and attending an Iron Maiden concert with her husband. “I want to know how much money they made on merch!” she said.
Backed by a four-piece band of seasoned pros, including former Cyndi Lauper cohort Arthur Neilson on lead guitar, Copeland was in a good mood, belting out 90 minutes of muscular blues rock and hot-stepping gospel soul.
And Shemekia sings hard. She delivers her husky contralto vocals with a wide vibrato and fire-breathing commitment. Her voice was pushed up front for maximum punch, and while the overall mix was balanced, the volume was pushed into the red all night.
READ MORE:
It’s a venue still finding its legs, and despite the danceability of Copeland’s set, attendees had trouble finding theirs due to the communal-style tables packed close together and against the stage with next-to-no wiggle room.
After encouraging everyone to “stand up and testify” during gospel rafter-raiser “Big Brand New Religion,” Copeland admitted that it was a tough request. “It’s not easy to stand up in any City Winery in the country,’ she told the crowd.
The most enthusiastically received of the new tunes was her countriest song of the evening, the cheeky semi-autobiographical “Fell in Love with a Honky, ” and Copeland reached back to highlight earlier career tracks produced by Dr. John (the funk workout “When a Woman’s Had Enough”) and Steve Cropper (the R&B thumper “Who Stole My Radio?”).
She also paid tribute to John Prine, joking that she had once spread a rumor that she had slept with him, with a hard-blues cover of “Great Rain,” and honored her father, the blues great Johnny Copeland, with his “Nobody But You” and “Ghetto Child,” which she took off-mic for some full-throttled shouting to end the main set.
After an encore of the swamp-folk hand-clapper “Gullah Geechee,” Copeland asked the crowd if they were ready to rock and roll before delivering on the promise with her signature rocker “It’s 2 A.M.,” encouraging the crowd to shout the title even though it was actually 8:30 pm. For the Sunday-night crowd, that was close enough, and Copeland had nothing left to prove as a roots and blues luminary.
Coming soon: Riverfront Times Daily newsletter. We’ll send you a handful of interesting St. Louis stories every morning. Subscribe now to not miss a thing.Follow us: Google News | NewsBreak | Reddit | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter
