July 2003

Axewoman

Guitarist Deborah Coleman rules the blues

by Don Harrison

While birds chirp outside, and sunlight streaks the curtains, a slender, sad-eyed lady relaxes in her immaculately furnished suburban living room on a warm spring day.

“I’m a pretty aggressive guitar player. It’s probably a little scary to some people,” she says with a throaty laugh.

Obviously, we’re not having an Oprah moment.

“We were playing the King Biscuit Blues Festival in Arkansas and I heard a story that I think is kind of funny. One of the bands asked [the promoter] who they would be following on the bill. When they were told it was Deborah Coleman, they all complained, ‘S--t! We don’t want to play after her.’”

She punctuates the story with an infectious laugh that rolls through the house like thunder. “I have a good reputation for making everybody else work hard all day.”

If you didn’t know who you were talking to—one of the world’s great electric blues guitarists—this conversation and its setting would seem more than a bit incongruous. But Deborah Coleman doesn’t do things by the book. She is an admitted upstart in a musical genre not particularly adaptive to change. That rare creature—an African-American female blues guitarist—she leads her own band, writes her own songs, even manages herself. “I want to turn at least one head everywhere I play,” she says, only half-joking. “So if I play a million places, I’ll have a million fans.”

For the rest of this story, you can order the July 2003 issue of Hampton Roads Monthly magazine.