Miko Marks, Rissi Palmer bring career

Dec 20, 2023

Until recently, Rissi Palmer hasn't had a song on the radio charts in almost 15 years. In that same amount of time, Miko Marks completed raising her critically-acclaimed guitarist son Justin to adulthood. Thus, when hearing the tandem sing the words "you can't go home again" in their cover of The Judds' classic ballad "Flies On The Butter" as they performed it at Nashville's City Winery on May 18, it struck a different note.

Indeed, Marks and Palmer can go home again. Only this time, they're entering through wisdom's door -- and by being smart enough to know where, why and how to stay in a home where they unquestionably belong, they'll never leave home again.

In City Winery's upstairs lounge, the duo performed two 30-minute solo sets and paired for not just the Judds cover that they debuted onstage at the Grand Ole Opry nine months ago but for their current, previously-mentioned Top-40 Americana radio single "Still Here."

The duo revealed even more of their humanity while seated with The Tennessean a day prior.

The era of Marks and Palmer as survivors of the country music industry's racist tendencies whose hardscrabble struggle to stardom was denied before it ever began being their solely-marketed narrative is officially moot.

Yes, a past where they likely deserved to follow in the footsteps of artists like Wynonna Judd and LeAnn Rimes and recontextualize country music history is always to be remembered, but their present has the earmarkings of differently reimagining their legacies.

Marks is currently a frequently-charting Americana artist who has been on tour throughout 2023, plus has CMT cosigns and has gotten standing ovations at the Grand Ole Opry and Country Music Hall of Fame.

Moreover, Palmer's an Apple Radio and CMT television personality, alongside being a burgeoning entrepreneur and mother with a PBS American Masters special released celebrating her career.

Palmer is aware that the shot at redefining her legacy via controlling her narrative is a rare one that artists -- especially those in Music City -- are never afforded.

"This new chapter in the books of our lives is one defined by comfort in our authentic selves," says Marks.

Onstage, Marks comments how, in a different chapter of her life, she was fond of "carrying the burdens of the world on her shoulders." Then, as she thrusts into a boisterous version of her 2022-released track "Lay Your Burdens Down," the tent-revival feeling intersection of blues and gospel that resonates throughout her performance style fills the room with unrepentant euphoria.

"I'm making the best music of my life right now because people get to organically know and see my spirituality," Marks says.

Unlike Marks -- who is also fond of making laughably bold statements (she describes a propensity for "hugging on people so hard" that she "breaks their bones") and whose cackling laugh reverberates off brick walls and wooden floors -- Palmer's calm composure offers a level of assuredness that invokes that previously mentioned wisdom. Moreover, it highlights her as being above the fray of lowest common denominator stereotyping and low-hanging expectations.

She humbly turns questions about decades-old conversations about how competitive country music's mainstream still makes young female artists against each other, plus how isolating it is to be a marginalized artist in the space into introspective, human moments that speak in a broad context.

Rissi and Miko are not Black female country music artists. Instead, they've evolved into artistic female musicians whose musicianship includes country music.

And of course, they're Black. Before all else, from birth to death, that is their proudly undeniable heritage.

Notably, as artistic females searching for stardom, they both arrived in Nashville in 2007 seeking to be -- and still could be -- Music City-conquering stars concerned with lucrative, headlining success.

However, learning to overcome what Marks calls "adolescent-minded ignorance" that frequently clouds single-minded pursuits has been vital to their artistic development.

Alongside surviving isolation, necessary to Marks and Palmer's growth has been their deeper understanding of all facets of what it means to be a country music star.

In that vein, 16 years after releasing the single "Country Girl," Palmer now finally owns the song she wrote.

Imagine spending your entire life singing about the "pride [you] feel" when you "walk the walk" of being a person -- in a creative sense -- that you do not own. Couple that with the song being entitled "Country Girl," and it dives into a level of artistic slavery that would make Prince or any other industry commerce and politics-stifled musician of the past century blush.

As an acoustic song stripped of mainstream country radio's hyper-polished refinement and played alongside her frequent collaborator Charles Newkirk, it sounds -- both figuratively and literally -- free. The art flows from brain to fingers and onto people who, whether their neophytes to the genre or were unaware of the two headliners before the past three years, didn't know they could hear this song in this space.

The Palmer they hear singing that song initially sang it without ample awareness of life's realities. For her, life truly began at 30, when, ironically, she had moved from Nashville to Durham, North Carolina and was no longer actively pursuing a mainstream country music career.

"Fitting into what you perceive the box of what Nashville or pop stardom requires you to stifle so much of who you are at the core of your soul. What years of life and wisdom add won't allow you to do that," Marks adds.

"The ability to bare your soul is appreciated," states Palmer.

She doubles down on that statement with a joyous, peaceful reflection concerning where she and Marks' art has arrived in the present era.

It's one bearing a personal victory that supersedes the industrial confines of country music's mainstream but also welcomes the eyes of fans of all backgrounds and interests everywhere.

"Above all else, we're successfully doing cool stuff with and for cool people on the strength of our humanity and the artistry of our songs."