Shemekia Copeland: A blues singer with an impressive pedigree

Shemekia Copeland has come a long way from being the frightened 8-year-old who was prodded onstage at Harlem’s legendary Cotton Club by her famous blues guitarist father, Johnny Copeland.

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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Cajun fiddler Michael Doucet to play Ringwood Public Library

It might seem odd to hear the strains of a Cajun fiddler emanating from a library in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. But then Michael Doucet and his band, BeauSoleil, have always made a habit of bringing the sounds of southwestern Louisiana to the places you’d least expect.

It wasn’t always the 62-year-old musician’s intent to carry the torch for Cajun music. Like so many of his generation, he started playing folk and rock as a kid after watching the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. Yet there was always an allure to the native style that soaked the very fabric of his home state.

Pianos and fiddles were always present at family get-togethers, he said, and he learned the songs and their French lyrics in the same fashion that those from another background might learn Christmas carols. But it wasn’t until he was a high school senior that he noticed that the older generation of musicians was beginning to die off, and he realized that when they did, their music and history would go with them.

He made the choice to take music more seriously, and in the years since, he has become a sort of "semi-anthropologist" on Cajun music and culture, studying, taping, and recording the great fiddle masters of years gone by.

And although he started his band, BeauSoleil, in 1975, he never thought that, 38 years and some 35 albums later, he would be a two-time Grammy winner who has reached the highest of the music industry’s heights.

"We did that for fun. But we never thought it would sustain us… nobody thought about making a living doing this," he said with a laugh.

All the while, he’s kept true to his roots. The songs are still sung in French, and, with their slow, deliberate moods and the natural rhythms, reflect the swampy climate they rose from. There’s a mix of cultures present in every note, and the Spanish, Native American, and African influences can be heard with varying degrees of prominence.

While some might think of Cajun music as simply "party music," he said, songs like "Carencro," which chronicles a tale of lost love and murder, reflect the darker side of his writing style.

"The rhythm represents the cadence of the environment… I think that really affects it," he said.

And although most listeners outside of Louisiana and France might not understand the lyrics, they won’t have a hard time gleaning the meaning of the songs from fiddle and voice alone

"Sometimes, you don’t actually need to know what the song is about," he said. "It’s about a certain visceral feeling, an understanding, that we all share. And I learned it in French, so I think it’s good to keep it in French… I’m too ornery to change it."

That orneriness appears to run in his blood, and Doucet, who graduated from Louisiana State University with a degree in English literature, said that the band’s name derives from a nickname given to one of his relatives, Joseph Broussard, who led an eighteenth-century rebellion in Nova Scotia against the English.

Captured and later deported, he eventually led other French-speaking countrymen — the Acadians — to the Louisiana territory that Doucet still resides in.

"It’s been kind of a family battle cry for a long time," he said of the word. "And we were asked to play in France in 1976, and they said, ‘[Your band] must have a name! So I said, ‘Yea, BeauSoleil.’"

There won’t be a setlist for the show at the Ringwood Public Library, which is slated to start at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 17, but that’s okay. The band never has one anyway, and he treats every audience differently. Once the place fills up, he said, he’ll figure out what they need to hear.

"It’s all serendipitous," he said.

For more information, go to ringwoodlibrary.org/newlegacy.shtml.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

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Sonya Kitchell to play West Milford

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

BY STEVE JANOSKI

WEST MILFORD — When Sonya Kitchell brings her traveling show to West Milford's Music at the Mission in Union Valley Road on Saturday, April 16, she'll be bringing her string quartet with her.

That's right. A string quartet.


The 22 year-old Massachusetts native said that she enjoys playing with the "Brooklyn Strings" because they give her "more space" during her songs.

"When you have loud drums, guitar, bass…the notes all kind of mesh into each other and there isn't a lot of space," she said. "I think it's more melodic (with the quartet)…and it's a pleasure to work with them."

During the show, Kitchell will be playing electric guitar and piano, as well as singing the lyrics that she's written that are quickly earning her comparisons to the best in the business, such as Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell.

It might be surprising to hear the depth that lies in her words, which remain simple and concise — Kitchell's seem to speak to jagged experience that is unexpected from someone who's barely in the her third decade of life.

Of course, to her, it's not unusual — she points out that when the aforementioned singers were in what she called their "first prime," they were both young.

"Certain people are insightful and notice things in life perhaps in a different way," she said. "I've always really enjoyed taking stock of human interactions and emotions and things that happen in life and the poetry in it."

Being as she wrote her first songs at age 12, she's also come into the peculiar situation of having to grow into her own lyrics.

"When I was 12 I had no idea what I was writing about…they were (things) that I didn't understand, but I felt like I could imagine it if someone was going through it," she said. "As I've gotten older, I've started to understand my songs more, and I'm singing something five or six years later and I'm finally able to relate to them."

Kitchell started honing her craft at the tender age of 7, when she asked her mother if she could take voice lessons and learn to sing.

Her parents, both of whom are visual artists, supported her decision to go the music route, and she was soon immersing herself in both singing and jazz while learning guitar from her mentor, June Milllington.


"I was really lucky that I grew up in a place where I was surrounded by talented and encouraging people," she said of her youth. "I had a lot of great influences."

The singer, who now lives in Brooklyn, still looks to her Western Massachusetts roots for guidance, especially when writing songs.

"I grew up in the country, and it has had a huge impact on who I am as a person and what I seek in life," she said.

Far from friends and without a TV as a child, Kitchell said that she spent a lot of time in the woods by herself, and that provided her the refuge from which to write.

"That's the space that was there for me to start writing and playing and singing….and to this day, I seek that quiet, and that space. It gives me the platform to be a strong artist," she said.

She takes little credit for some of her deepest songs — haunting ballads like "Soldier's Lament," which was featured during the ending of the season four finale of "The Unit," came from somewhere else, she said.

"I swear that song was written in 15 minutes," she said. "I didn't write it…some songs just come through you, and that's one of those that I don't have any personal experience with whatsoever (but) it needed to come through."

Kitchell said that she believes as a musician, she is something of an open vessel to whatever is around.

"Almost any great musician would never take credit entirely for their ability or the material that they write…they can't create without these things that are in the atmosphere, so to speak," she said.

The same can be said of her voice, which drips of painful years that she hasn't yet seen and sounds far older than it should.

"I think it's always been there," she said. "Some people believe in old souls, some don't…I do, and that's part of it, I think."

Next Saturday, she'll be playing songs from her 2010 EP "Convict of Conviction," which is full of material written over the course of the winter of 2009 when she spent time alone in the country.

She'll also be playing newer tracks that haven't come out yet, as well as favorites from her older albums.

When asked what she wanted from her next album to be, she had a simple answer— "the most awesome."

For tickets or more information about her April 16 show, go to MusicattheMission.org.

Vanilla Fudge guitarist to play Butler's "Fusion Cafe"

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

BY STEVE JANOSKI

 BUTLER — It's been 45 years since Vinny Martell first started burning up the stage with the psychedelic acid-rockers Vanilla Fudge — and all these years later, he's still at it, bringing his guitar chops to the Butler Church of the Nazarene's "Fusion Café" on Kiel Avenue on April 9.

Martell, 65, will be playing the band's old favorites like "You Keep Me Hangin' On" while mixing in some classics from the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and the Mamas and the Papas while backed by Peg Pearl on keyboard, Russ T. Blades on drums, and Vanilla Fudge bassist Pete Bremy of West Milford as well.

The Butler performance will be the latest in a string for the very active Martell, who has been touring with the original lineup of Vanilla Fudge (minus bassist Tim Bogert) on what started out as a "Farewell Tour" but has ended up becoming quite the event.

The band has been playing gigs at venues like the legendary Stone Pony in Asbury Park and B.B. King Blues Club and Grill in NYC, and has sold out a number of them. On March 28, a performance of "You Keep Me Hangin' On" on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon" put the band back in the national spotlight.

For the ever-humble Martell, though, the best part of the show was meeting another celebrity that night — UFC superstar Brock Lesnar, who was also appearing on Fallon's show that night.

"He's a nice cat," said Martell "I told'em I really dig watchin' him fight."

Martell even got a picture with the 6-foot-3-inch tall, 280 lb. Lesnar, who he said was "very big" but "very cool."

The performance went off without a hitch — a quick search on the Internet will reveal that the band tore up the stage with as much fury and flare as they did back when they played "The Ed Sullivan Show" in 1968.

Martell said that one thing had changed since those days however — his waistline.

"It looks like I gotta' go on my diet and lose about 25 pounds," he joked. "Whenever I go on TV it puts 20 pounds on me, I swear."

The band is supporting their 2010 offering "Box of Fudge," which is made up of two albums and two live performances, including a New Year's Eve 1968 performance at the Fillmore West that the band didn't even remember had been recorded.

The tour has been going well, and, for once in the band's rollercoaster history in regards to friendships, everyone has been getting along.

"Everybody wants to make this happen, so we're taking it easy on each other, and we're being receptive to each other," he said.

They've also been playing their first album in its entirety, a thing they've never done, in a tribute to the fans who have followed them for so long — Martell said that fans have been coming from literally all over the world to see the band with original vocalist and keyboardist Marc Stein and Carmine Appice on drums.

Martell said a few people from Germany had flown to New Jersey to see the performance at the Stone Pony, and then gone to the B.B. King Blues Club show as well.

Another loyal fan flew over from Italy — he'd seen the band on TV in 1968, and finally made his way to the U.S. to see them live.

"It's tremendous to get that reception," Martell said. "We have some super-duper fans, and we got fans from Europe that blow our minds."

This is why the band makes such a point to sign every autograph and take every picture with the fans that they can; it's the bands way of saying "thanks" after all these years.

"We applaud you," he said.

The guitarist has been involved with a range of other things in his free time, and, as a veteran of the U.S. Navy, he is extremely active in veterans' affairs.

He often plays benefits to help homeless veterans, and said that the subject is one that strikes near to his heart; he was even born on Nov. 11.

"I want to bring attention to that," he said. "There should be no homeless vets— they signed that (line) to give their life for this country."

That's this guitarist's creed, one might say — keep on playing, for any cause, big or small, whether it's doing a show at the VA hospital in Wilmington, DE, or playing music at his mother's nursing home.

And in between, of course, there's the big stuff. Like Vanilla Fudge.

Martell said that he hopes the tour keeps going, because "we're having a lot of fun out there."

But, if it has to end, as all things do, Martell said he believes that his band left a lasting impact on the music industry as the "pioneers of heavy metal."

"We were the first guys to come out with the big amps, and our idea was that whenever we went out on stage, it was like a war….you wanted to be as emotional, and get as much feeling out of it, as you could," he said. "You wanted to blow the walls out of that place."

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com

Singer/songwriter James Maddock to play Ringwood Public Library

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

BY STEVE JANOSKI

Ten years ago, the world seemed like it was at James Maddock's feet.

He was the frontman for the band Wood, who had just released their debut album "Songs from Stamford Hill." One song was even included on the first "Dawson's Creek" compilation album — something that, 10 years ago, nearly guaranteed success.
The band toured with Paula Cole and Train, and seemed poised to break out.

And then…they were never heard from again.

Ten years later, however, Maddock is back. He's formed a new band, and released his first solo album in 2010 called "Sunrise on Avenue C."

Now, 48 year-old self-described "melodic folky singer/songwriter guy" will be bringing his raspy vocals and catchy guitar licks to theRingwood Public Library as a part of their New Legacy concert series on Sunday, March 13, at 2 p.m.

'Out in the wilderness'

The past decade has been an eventful one for Maddock, even if he's been somewhat out of the public eye.

After a failed attempt at Wood's sophomore album, the band was dropped from Columbia records, who had put out their debut; what could be called a wandering period ensued.

Maddock moved from London to New York.

"I was bored of London," says Maddock. "All my friends got married and had kids and London was a dead place to me…everyone moved on, and I was writing and playing and singing still."

Maddock says that the city that never sleeps is an exciting place to be because, as opposed to other cities, there's the feeling of "being a part of a musical community" that stems from seeing the same people at different gigs and being able to form friendships with likeminded people.

"I never had that in London. I felt very isolated," he says.

When he figured out that he couldn't' afford to live in the city, he moved to Texas, where he found himself renovating a house in Austin while still writing and playing gigs where he could.

"I was kind of out in the wilderness a little bit," he says.

Eventually however, New York's magnetic pull reeled the musician back in.

He formed a band with former Spin Doctors drummer Aaron Comess, bassist Drew Mortali, keyboardist Oli Rockberger, and guitarist John Shannon, and says last year's "Sunrise on Avenue C" is a sort of collection of songs that have been written over the past eight years.

Although New York certainly seeps through the character of the songs, Maddock says that his music isn't geocentric, and the album is not a concept album; his self-deprecating humor shines when he states that he's "not clever enough" to write a decent song, then write another about the same subject.

But still, he admits that "every writer that comes to New York has to write about New York somehow," and the album's title track reflects the experience of moving to the city.

Even though he was raised in England and still has the accent to prove it, Maddock says that he's gravitated to more American sounds from the second he picked up his grandfather's ukulele at the age of 4, and lists guitarists like the Allman Brothers' Dicky Betts and Neil Young as his inspirations..

As far as songwriting goes, Maddock says that he's always looked at people like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen (who his gruff vocals are sometimes compared to) and Jackson Browne as heroes.

When he's asked if he enjoyed the writing process, however, he says that he thinks himself "pretty slow" at the craft, which he calls deceptively simple, and yet some of his songs take years upon years to complete.

"If you can play a few chords, sing a few melodies…it's very simple. But what's magical is to make something great, make something that lasts," he says.

"Like 'All you need is love,'" he says, referencing the famous Beatles track. "How'd they do it? I don't know… it's a fantastic mystery. There's no rhyme or reason."

That's the thing about being a songwriter, Maddock said — you have to "live it."

"It's not like a hobby. You have to be it. You are it. I've been it all my life, and I couldn't do anything else," he says. Even at its worst, though, songwriting isn't work — it's "avoiding work," he says with a chuckle.

New album in the works

Maddock has been hard at avoiding work all week, recording intensely at the legendary Sear Sound Recording Studio in Manhattan, which has hosted everyone from Paul McCartney to Steely Dan, in preparation for a new album which might be out in June.

The album is being paid for by a relatively new Pledgemusic.com, which allows fans to donate to their favorite artists to raise money for albums — gone are the days where a record label not only took most of the album's profits, but also owned the music.

"This affords (the artist) to pay the rent…instead of making five cents off each album, you're making six or seven dollars," he said.

This lets a career musician like Maddock keep on playing for as long as he can.

He's looking forward to bringing his show to Ringwood, and says that he can't stand when musicians don't give 100 percent when playing a smaller venue like the library.

"I give everything I've got, all the time, whether it's a big place or small place," he says.

For more information about the show, go to the library's website ringwoodlibrary.org or call 973-962-6256.

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com

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