“In the family tradition”

Some people stumble across the blues; others inherit them. Shemekia Copeland falls into the latter camp. […] “I was very proud of where I grew up, but I was fully aware that we were living in the ghetto,” says the singer, whose soulful cover of her father’s song “Ghetto Child” — about growing up dirt poor in “this so-called free land” — rings no less true today. “My father wrote the song about Third Ward Texas over 50 years ago,” says the Grammy-nominated electric blues singer. “And when I was growing up in Harlem, the song was still relevant, and it continues to be. I’d like to be like people who look at the world through rose-colored glasses. But I’ve been on this earth for 37 years, and so far I’ve been watching it get worse. I wish that wasn’t true, but unfortunately it is.”

Bill Forman wrote “Shemekia Copeland carries on in the family tradition” for the Colorado Springs Independent before Shemekia’s performance at the Blues Under the Bridge festival this Saturday, July 30, in Colorado Springs.

Read the full article in the Colorado Springs Independent.