“For Shemekia Copeland,
singing blues is in the blood”

Some people stumble across the blues; others inherit them. Shemekia Copeland falls into the latter camp.

Shemekia was born and raised in Harlem, where her father moved after the 1970s disco boom and the oil crash that laid waste to Houston’s live music scene.

By the time she was growing up, hip-hop had replaced disco as the neighborhood soundtrack. But blues, gospel, country and soul music still reigned supreme in the Copeland household.

Read the full feature story written by Bill Forman in The Herald Journal before Shemekia’s performance this Friday, June 1st, at the Brevard Blues N’ BBQ Festival, in Brevard, N.C.