Citizen Cope

Citizen Cope is both a person (Clarence Greenwood) and a band. Born in Memphis, Greenwood is obviously the leader of the group, as he plays the keyboard, guitar, sings, and acts as a DJ, songwriter, and producer. Greenwood first broke into the music biz by appearing on albums by Maryland rapper Basehead (1993's Not in Kansas Anymore and 1996's Faith) and issued the first Citizen Cope album around this time, titled Cope Citizen. Greenwood followed it by donating songs to several independently issued compilations throughout the remainder of the decade (1997's Settling the DC Score, 1999's Anti-Rascist Action Benefit) as well as movie soundtracks (1999's Eat Me and Clubland). He also appeared on Lazy K's 1997 album Life in One Day. By 2000, Greenwood had inked a deal with the Dreamworks label, which issued his debut full-length, Citizen Cope, in 2002 (his actual first album, made with Capitol in 1997, was never released). Greenwood felt the label "mishandled" the record, however, and as their relationship wasn't improving, the singer looked to buy out his contract with the label and used his advance from his next home, Arista, to do it. But the problems didn't end there. Things didn't work out with Arista, either, and Greenwood moved on to RCA. His first album for his new label, The Clarence Greenwood Recordings, hit the shelves in September of 2004, receiving enough attention that one of its songs, "Son's Gonna Rise," was used in a GM Pontiac commercial. Two years later, and still with RCA, Every Waking Moment came out.

--by Greg Prato

“When I was a kid, I was a listener,” says Clarence Greenwood, a.k.a. Citizen Cope. “Music was something coming out of a radio or off a record, something that made me feel these things I couldn’t explain. It was magical to me, and I thought it was something you had to be ordained with.”

What’s clear when you listen to Cope’s own music now, years after he sat transfixed in front of his stereo speakers, is that he *is* ordained. Or touched. Or blessed. Or however you want to say it: The man has the gift. It’s never been more evident as on “Every Waking Moment,” his third album (second release for RCA). By far his most personal recording, “Every Waking Moment” shows Cope continuing his deep exploration of the world that confronts all of us every day. How do we love those we care about? How do we change a world that throws daily horrors in our faces? How do we live with ourselves day after day? How do we capture joy?

If you’ve heard any of the work that Cope has created over the past few years, you already know how quickly he can paint a masterpiece with the lightest of brushstrokes. How he captures a character in just a few words. Remember George from his self titled album, the two-bit hustler from Baltimore in “200,000 (In Counterfeit $50 Bills)?” who “spends all his dough on the horses at the Pimlico.” The amputees in Sierra Leone’s sadly named capital of Freetown in “Bullet and a Target”? The lost soul worshiping his true love in the form of a forty foot tall woman in a mural in “Pablo Picasso?” The woman who vanishes on the streets of D.C. in “Southern Avenue,” where ‘you don’t have to go overseas’ to find war, because war finds you.

This is Cope’s gift: He takes snapshots of the world around him, and turns them into universal truths. He sets them to the simplest of melodies, and weds those in turn to the most soul-stirring grooves.

Doors open 7 pm - All ages