Miko Marks impressed me when she came over to The Long Road to perform on the ‘Color Me Country’ stage. A packed out field, basking in the summer sun, was thoroughly entertained by Marks. Less than a year later and she returned to the UK to play a packed out Hackney Empire as part of UK Americana week, she joins me the day after to discuss her latest album ‘Fell Like Going Home’ and her Opry debut.
I congratulate Marks on the release of her album to which she simply replies, “It’s just me girl, putting it all out on the table,” a big grin occupying her face. The title track is a song that sees Marks really find her voice. “The story behind ‘Feel Like Going Home’ is really me returning to myself, returning to who I authentically am as an artist and who I am as a person. When I first started out, I wanted to do traditional country like I wanted to do Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline style country, a little Tanya Tucker, because that’s me. I wouldn’t listen to anything else. Then I started going down these other rabbit holes of Muscle Shoals, Muddy Waters. I started getting into Allman Brothers and just started really embracing it. I can relate. I just wanted to really like not limit myself anymore. So I think with this album, this is a culmination of 50 years of my life, and what it looks like as a reflection of me today.”
She has a solid team of collaborators that she writes and records with that she couldn’t praise highly enough. “My dream team is Justin Phibbs and Steve Wyreman. We are a collective, we sit down, we each bring our talents to the table. Sometimes Justin writes a song, Steve, he might write a line, I write three, and Steve comes up with the line production wise – they’re the team, they produce the record. So the sound of the record is them.” There is just the one track on the record, ‘Jubilee’ that wasn’t penned by the three of them, Lee Bob Watson takes the credit for that one.
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