Singer back in the saddle
Miko Marks brings country music into Black Lives Matter era on new release
Nashville can be a lonely place for a Black woman breaking into the country music scene. And Miko Marks knows this firsthand.
The Oakland singer, who recorded two wellregarded albums during a Tennessee sojourn in the midaughts, said she found a warm welcome just about everywhere she performed except for the home of country music itself.
“I was always open to wherever my path would lead, but things did not work out in Nashville,” Marks said, noting that she felt fitting in required tamping down her identity.
Music City may not have been ready for Marks, but she helped clear a country music trail for other Black women, and now she’s getting back on the horse with her first new album in 14 years. Working closely with the creative team at the recently launched East Palo Alto label Redtone Records, Marks recorded “Our Country,” a rollicking, gospel musicinfused session that thrums to the justiceseeking frequency of Black Lives Matter.
“These songs were made out of the experience we’re going through right now,” said Marks, who celebrates the album’s Friday, March 26, release with an acoustic performance that will be livestreamed on her YouTube channel and Facebook page. “The music is there to speak to the times.”
The album grew out of a vivid dream Marks had, but not in the sense of fulfilling a longheld ambition. Rather, late in the summer of 2019, she literally dreamed about musicians she hadn’t worked with for more than a decade. A quick phone call put her back in touch with Justin Phipps and Steve Wyreman, the Redtone Records founders who perform together as the Resurrectors.
Phipps and Wyreman were excited to get back in touch with Marks and realized a song they’d recently written, “Goodnight America,” would be ideal for her rich contralto. An elegy for a country headed in the wrong direction, “it didn’t fit anyone we were currently working with,” Phipps said. “When Miko reached out, we sent it to her and she sat with it for a while. Ultimately, she felt it resonated with where she was and where she wanted to be going.”
When Marks released the song as a video last year, a few weeks before the pandemic lockdown, it was definitely a departure from where she’d been. Before “Goodnight America,” she’d always avoided taking a politi
cal stance in her music, preferring to focus on personal themes. With “Our Country,” she’s jumped into the fray.
“I definitely feel like there’s a conversation being had that’s long overdue,” Marks said. “I am hopeful. I feel that the times are different than when I started out.”
Marks grew up with gospel music, singing in church in Flint, Mich., “but I was always drawn to country music,” she said. “Loretta and Patsy, Kenny Rogers and ‘Hee Haw’ were huge in my household. It was a normal thing. It wasn’t until I was older that there was this line clearly drawn, but country music has its roots in Black music. Even the banjo is from Africa.”
She met her San Franciscoraised husband David Hawkins when they were students at Grambling State University in Louisiana, and by 1996 the couple had settled in the Bay Area. Though she loved singing, Marks said she wouldn’t have pursued a career in music without Hawkins’ encouragement, and after recording a Jeffrey Woodproduced demo at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, she decided to give up her day job in San Francisco as a legal secretary and try her luck in Nashville.
Working with producer Ron Cornelius at Mirrome Records, she released her debut album, “Freeway Bound,” in 2005 and followed it up with 2007’s “It Feels Good.” Both albums featured firstcall studio talent that caught the attention of mainstream country music audiences. And yet, while the sessions were well received, the indie label couldn’t break Marks into country radio and it became clear that Nashville didn’t really know what to do with her.
In 2006, the Bay Area welcomed her back. Marks became one of the region’s most visible country music singers, performing everywhere from the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo and San Francisco’s Pier 23 to
the Saddle Rack in Fremont and Oakland’s Overland (the latter two permanently shuttered during the pandemic).
But it’s only in recent months that her role as a country music pioneer has gained considerable attention. She’s quick to credit the Black women who preceded her to Music City, like Linda Martell, Jo Anna Neel, Ruby Falls and Rissi Palmer. (Palmer joined Marks and rising country music artists Reyna Roberts, Brittney Spencer and Mickey Guyton in a roundtable conversation last month for the New York Times).
Indeed, almost four decades after Oakland’s Pointer Sisters made history as the first Black women nominated for a Grammy Award in a country music category with their 1974 hit “Fairytale,” there are signs that the glass ceiling imposed by country radio might be starting to crack.
But the visibility of Black women in the musical continuum, which runs from folk and roots music through Americana to commercial country, isn’t just about opportunity and optics. Black women are claiming space with longneglected narratives, as on last year’s “Songs of Our Native Daughters,” the Smithsonian Folkways Records project exploring the experience of Black women in slavery by a supergroup featuring Amythyst Kiah, Allison Russell, Leyla McCalla and her former Carolina Chocolate Drops bandmate
Rhiannon Giddens.
“There’s a feeling of camaraderie among the women,” Marks said. “And technology is playing an integral part, where people can get online and hear your music, and you can advocate for yourself.”
She’s found an ideal team at Redtone Records, a label that grew out of Phipps’ community activism promoting grassroots culture in East Palo Alto. With Wyreman back in the Bay Area after a highflying career in Los Angeles collaborating with artists like Logic, Jhené Aiko, JayZ and Rihanna, the Redtone team helped Marks record her vocals at her Oakland home during the height of the pandemic, including a powerhouse performance on Stephen Foster’s alltootopical 1854 song “Hard Times.”
“Miko is a fantastic spirit with an amazing voice,” Phipps said. “Every aspect of recording the album with her was exciting.”
Marks is ready to seize the moment, and this time the country music zeitgeist might put some wind at her back.
“I feel like there’s a rebirth with my music,” she said. “I’m already working on our next project with Redtone. We’re keeping the magic going.”