Outer Banks Onstage

The second day of the Carolista Music Festival proceeded under gray skies around the great lawn on Roanoke Island Festival Park.

The Carolista Music Festival, founded in 2003 by Outer Banks Hotline, is a community celebration that promotes a safe and compassionate community through music, art, dance, film, and cultural awareness.

Arts and craft booths and more were set up and snacks available from one end of the field to the other. One side of the lawn was dominated by a colorful inflated dragon-tunnel, crawling with children.

A rack nearby held a few dozen brightly colored hula hoops for sale; many were being tried out by children, and later, by adults.

The self-described "Funk/Reggae/Rock/Spoken Word/Go-Go/Soul/Jazz" band Seed Is... was finishing a set of tuneful rap and funk when I arrived.

The two numbers I heard from Seed Is... were outstanding, with great lead and harmony vocals, a heavy, funky rhythm section, horns and memorable material and they deserve more mention than I can give them here.

Their website says "Seed Is... has created an original musical arsenal that encompasses the full spectrum of musical tastes." ... "Seed Is... has the ability, to make a man wearing a business suit loosen his tie and groove until he is shirt-less, to make a barefoot Phish fan flail around in circles to his heart's content, to make b-boys take over the dance floor with old skool break dance battles, to make a tattooed rocker bang his head so hard he sprains his neck, or to make a raver reel to the effects of musical ecstacy."

Yup; that's the band I heard. They ended their set with an a capella "Happy Birthday" to Outer Banker Delaney Goldberg, who is in the hospital fighting leukemia.

While Shemekia Copeland's band set up, Arum Rae, from Lexington, Va., played a few blues at the front of the stage. Her first number, "Too Young to Sing the Blues," was like a blues suite, with several sections.

Her acoustic guitar was bright and her strong voice confidently explored the edges of the blues scale. Three mp3s of her fresh original material can be downloaded from her website; presumably that taste will lead to the purchase of her first, five-song, CD.

Shemekia's band came onstage and, per tradition, played an instrumental before she came on, a bluesy reworking of a classic pop tune from the early sixties, Herbie Mann's "Comin' Home Baby." Arthur Neilson used a lot of reverb on his Flying Vee guitar; the atmospheric arrangement reminded me of Peter Green's original Fleetwood Mac blues band.

Shemekia came onstage and belted out "I'm Breaking Out," a classic-style rhythm and blues with a wailing vocal and backup singing from her band. Her voice was powerful and soaring.

On the dramatic "Should Have Come Home," co-written with New Orleans eminence grise -- or gris-gris -- "Dr. John," Mac Rebennack, the rhythm section of Kevin Jenkins and Damon DueWhite kept the audience dancing, while Neilson paid tribute to Steve Cropper, who has also worked with Shemekia, and the Stax sound.

Jeremy Baum played organ and piano parts on his Hammond keyboard; the music followed Memphis orthodoxy and 26-year-old Shemekia drove it like the seasoned professional she has become. The talent comes partly from her genes; her father was the late Texas blues guitar legend Johnny Clyde Copeland.

She sat down with Neilson on acoustic National Steel guitar for a tribute to her father, "Beat Up Guitar," a variation on "Rollin' and Tumblin'." Neilson's traditional Robert Johnson-style bottleneck playing perfectly complemented Shemekia's lovely vocal.

The sky shed a few tears during "The Other Woman," a potboiler that Shemekia brought up and back down before bringing it to a near-whisper in anticipation of its climax. A couple slow-danced on the grass before the stage.

During "Turn the Heat Up," from her first CD, a small three-masted schooner could be seen sailing behind the stage on the sound. The music they heard was dynamic and funky; good as she was, Janis Joplin only aspired to this.

Writing about music requires some pre-existing knowledge on the part of the reader. Those who aren't conversant with ryhthm and blues might listen to Sam Cooke or Sam and Dave from the sixties for some background, or they could see (the original) Blues Brothers movie, or listen to Etta james records. Popular radio, with the exception below, probably won't deliver the goods.

Shemekia had been introduced by WVOD Radio "The Sound" disc jockeys "the Blues Dudes," Mike Russell and "Tread" Willis, who often play her music on their weekend blues show. They could feel themselves exempt from "Who Stole My Radio?" a kicker lamenting the sad state of modern radio.

Working the audience, Shemekia wondered if North Carolina audiences enjoyed rock 'n' roll. The audience assented loudly when she hollered an offer to play some. During "It's 2 A.M. (Do You Know Where Your Baby Is?)" even the birds in the sky danced. Probably the flora and fauna behind the stage were rocking too.

Shemekia finished her vocal and, while the band carried on, moved to the back of the stage to dance with someone back there. Her band finished up and they all left ... until the audience insisted on an encore.

Shemekia and her band concluded with a dark and stuttering "When a Woman's Had Enough" and the field was oddly enveloped in the kind of green light that usually follows a rainstorm.

For further study, our R&B students mentioned above could do no better than to hunt down some of the mp3s available on Shemekia's site, and follow that up with purchase of some of her CDs. As many satisfied buyers at the Carolista Festival can tell you, you won't be sorry you did.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.