Up to that point, she’d only sang "under beds and behind curtains," and even though her dad gave her a false name to hide her identity and calm her nerves, she was still upset with him for making her do it.
Years later and she strides across that same stage with such ease that one might be tempted to call it the 34-year-old singer’s second home.
"It’s my favorite part," she said, "but that came with age — the more comfortable you are with yourself, the easier it is to be up there."
It’s that ease and flair that the Teaneck High School graduate and two-time Grammy nominee will bring to the Ringwood Public Library on Sunday, April 6 as a part of the library’s New Legacy concert series.
"We’re gonna’ do our show," she said. "We’ve never done that gig before, so we’re looking forward to it."
She’ll be playing selections from both her blues-soaked backlog and her newest album, 2012’s "33 1/3," which expanded on her love of bringing new, funky musical ingredients back into a genre that’s often pigeonholed as being about a lone guitar player playing old standards.
Her songs use bluesy melodies, funk-driven guitar riffs, and rock-and-roll gruffness to tell the stories she wants to tell, and her lyrics address topics like the plight of the poor and the horrors of domestic violence.
"I take elements from everything," she said. "I love to try and put it all in there, all the voices, all the styles… just because it’s the blues doesn’t mean it should be limited. That’s how it moves and grows."
As experimental as her albums might be, however, Copeland herself exudes the feeling that she always knows what she wants. She spoke bluntly about how the blues is born into a person, and she "wouldn’t give up my pedigree for all the fame and fortune in the world."
She plays guitar badly, she said, but doesn’t really care because "there’s certainly enough" guitarists in the world and the instrument itself is "so clichéd."
And even though being nominated for two of music’s most prestigious awards was "amazing," she doesn’t need the Recording Academy to "tell me I made a great record."
No, she said, she’s proud of what she does no matter what.
Few would dare say that pride is misguided, and as Copeland’s career progresses, her honor roll continues to grow. She has opened for the Rolling Stones, headlined the Chicago Blues Festival, and played at the White House for President Obama and the First Lady alongside blues legends Buddy Guy and B.B. King.
That might have been one of her more remarkable gigs, she said, not least because she overheard the 77-year-old Guy marvel in disbelief about how he’d gone "from the cotton fields to the White House."
But no matter how high she climbs, she steadfastly adheres to the idea that the blues is about singing your song, and hoping that it helps someone else through their own troubles.
"It’s about affecting people," she said. "It’s about you telling your story. And if your story can affect somebody in some sort of way, then you’re doing good."
Email: janoski@northjersey.com
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