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June
is Citizen Cope Month @ Sin-e
June 2nd, 9th, 16th & 23rd
By Craig Cook
Back in 2003, I received a package
from the Syndicate (one of the premier national marketing/
promotions firms for the music industry and a former employer)
that included postcards for a scraggly bearded fellow with
a sweet Gibson guitar named Citizen Cope. I thought, “Damn,
what a cool postcard, not like the crap I usually see.”
On the back of the card was something I’d never seen
before in my time as a street promoter; a personal message
that read:
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Greetings,
Thanks for checking out the last
CD. I will be playing live and recording my new CD this
summer. Check
out citizencope.com for a studio diary, tour dates, and a live
video from Spain.
Peace,
Cope |
| I was intrigued by this personal message,
but was so busy with work and school that I did not have time
for discovery. It was not until a few weeks later, in the Arista
office of the former Vice President of Marketing Tom Gimbel,
that I received my first introduction to the music of Citizen
Cope. After discussing various projects and our mutual musical
tastes, Tom handed me a burn of unreleased material from a Dreamworks
EP that Cope had recorded and told me to “keep your eye
out for this, Cope’s gonna make it big”. Throwing
it into my Powerbook, I discovered an artist with a voice that
touched my soul, a message close to my heart and a musical direction
that was far from the mainstream. I immediately fell in love
with the music and started playing Cope for all of my friends
and family. |
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The album starts with an instrumental,
synth strings that build on a chord, heralding the revelation
to come. The downbeat of “Contact” sets a strong
R&B kick snare groove into motion and the gospel begins.
Cope intones a bardic tale tackling fear of authority, the harassment
of the lower classes, corruption in the state, the abuse of
the prison system, and concludes that his life depends on human
interaction for survival. Cope will come back to these themes
over and over throughout the album. |
| The EP contains a track about a mentally
disturbed woman who used to mistake Cope for a guy named Randy
("Mistaken I.D."), a song about George the hustler
who's addicted to his medicine (200,000 ["In Counterfeit
50 Dollar Bills]"), one about a modern day Judas set to
deliver Cope to his maker ("Salvation"), and your
standard love stuff ("If There’s Love"). Throughout
the recording, the heavy organ, tight percussive groove, speech
like bass lines, and Cope’s unique voice combine with
open and bright chord writings to paint a sonic picture akin
to renaissance portrait art; formal and flowing with emphasis
on the detail of reality. Having reared myself on jazz, soul,
funk, and R&B during my IMAC years, I have developed a taste
for the finer points of African influence on American art forms,
and could tell that Cope had developed mastery of both the aspects
of oral historical importance and the rhythmic and melodic motifs
necessary to the overall inflection in traditional African oral
transmission. In my estimation, Cope is a Griot, a weaver of
tales that speak language in song. |
| Fast forward to CMJ…
I’m attending a breakfast thrown by Arista for college
age attendees. I’m not too happy being out of bed at 9am,
and the stale pastries at the Hilton had little positive effect
on my mood. However, this day happened to be the first opportunity
I had to see Cope live; he was playing an acoustic set along
with Rachael Yamagata (another emerging artist with tremendous
momentum). Now, this was not the best performance space, nor
was the crowd really there to appreciate the artists that were
performing, but Cope’s presence held me in my chair and
made all the distractions fade out of the room. I introduced
myself to the introverted artist and we parted ways. |
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Over the next few months, I made every
effort to see Citizen Cope play live, at times solo acoustic
like at the Mercury Lounge, and with a full band (the first
time I saw Cope at Sin-e.) Each time he made an effort to
say hi and get an update on what was going down in my part
of town.
That brings us to June and the Citizen
Cope residency at Sin-e with Abdel Wright and Mieka Pauley.
Cope brought out the band once again, and things had gotten
much tighter. With almost six total hours over the four-week
stint, Cope started things out slow with a small crowd. He
played a good mix of the old and new on the first night including
"Mistaken ID", "Salvation", "Night
Becomes Day", "Son’s Gonna Rise", "Pablo
Picasso" and "Bullet and A Target". Striking
was the diversity of the crowd, as every race seemed represented.
This first Wednesday, the crowd was the smallest it would
be for the remainder of the tour, however, important figures
from Carson Daily to James Diener (Octone Records/ RCA) made
appearances along with a steady flow of execs from Cope’s
label (RCA via Arista who apparently dropped the ball during
the LA Reid fiasco) and management team. As the weeks went
on, the lines grew and so did the excitement surrounding this
tour. Each week, Cope tried to diversify his offerings, throwing
in a good mix of new material while placating the sometimes
rowdy audience, who never ran out of song titles to scream
(Which I must comment is the Most Disrespectful Thing EVER-
Stop it fuckers), returning to "Contact", "Night
Becomes Day" and "Bullet and A Target" often. |
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One song that was not replayed
was "Penitentiary", appearing only during the second
performance. This song is a lamentation of the prison system
that finds Cope “waiting for a day when the people walk
free, when the penitentiary is on fire, and there’s no
need to bleed for your mother or your father or the one that
come before ya.” It’s a somber protest song that
gives insight into the world of those affected by the prison
system, but not actually a “guest” of the state.
It’s songs like this one that show Cope’s uniqueness,
his ability to make you enjoy a song that’s not full of
pop fluff, songs that actually have a conscious like Dylan’s
"Hurricane" or CSNY’s "Ohio". |
| This residency has set the
bar for success. From the first show to the last, there was
a marked improvement in attendance, with the final date completely
sold out (a large number of unhappy patrons were turned away).
On the last day, I could hardly make it past the entrance, and
witnessed the staff at Sin-e lugging tables over the heads of
the dense crowd in order to maximize space. I can’t think
of a three-artist bill that I would rather return to week after
week, and give major props to Cope and Brickwall Management
for their foresight. The amazing part of it all is that while
each concert seemed personal and unique, the entourage was actually
making the rounds, playing the same residency on different nights
of the week all throughout the Northeast. A feat of booking,
management, promotion, administration and effort made June Citizen
Cope Month, while Mieka Pauley and Abdel Wright hopped on the
jet that will hopefully launch their own careers into the stratosphere. |
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