Editor’s Note: This is an incredibly special part of “dual articles” about the dynamic Shemekia Copeland and her long time manager and songwriter, John Hahn!
Author: Don Wilcock
Don Wilcock
Now into his second half century as the warrior music journalist, Don Wilcock began his career writing “Sounds from The World” in Vietnam, a weekly reader’s digest of pop music news for grunts in the field for the then largest official Army newspaper in the world, The Army Reporter. He’s edited BluesWax, FolkWax, The King Biscuit Times, Elmore Magazine, and also BluesPrint as founder of the Northeast Blues Society. Internationally, he’s written for The Blues Foundation’s Blues Music Awards program, Blues Matters and Blues World. He wrote the definitive Buddy Guy biography 'Damn Right I’ve Got The Blues,' and is currently writing copy for a coffee table book of watercolor paintings of blues artists by Clint Herring.
The blues superstar talks her huge new album, covering Dylan, Sam Cooke, and her father, as well as playing at the White House, paving her own way, and being presented the mantle as the new “Queen of the Blues”!
Derek talks the family vibe of having an 11 piece band, bringing substance back to American music, how being a “orphan band” eventually helped them cross genres, and playing with B.B. King, Keith Richards, Wynton Marsalis