Keepsake of the Week: “Our Country” by Miko Marks

“Our Country” is the first new album in 13 years from country artist Miko Marks and is this week’s #KOTW.

In this semi-weekly blog series, we post our favorite new or re-discovered releases in independent music, our Keepsake of the Week, or #KOTW.

I first heard about the Nashville Dream when I was in high school. Similar to but decidedly different from the American Dream most of us are familiar with, the Nashville Dream is about moving to Music City and making it from nothing. Some of my favorite songs released in the last decade tell this tale from the perspectives of those who attempted it during the age of the new music business, from Caitlyn Smith’s “This Town Is Killing Me,” to Hailey Whitters’ “Ten Year Town,” to the final track on Chris Stapleton’s most recent record, “Nashville, TN.” There was an entire ABC television series built on the framework that Nashville is a town that chews you up and spits you out in ten years or less. No one knows this story as well as Miko Marks. 

Despite her obvious talent, skill, and determination, Marks was told throughout her time trying to “make it” in the Nashville music scene in the early 2000s that her work wouldn’t sell. The only notable difference between Marks and her contemporaries was that Marks is Black. “‘You won’t sell’ [my music] because I’m Black, without saying because I’m Black. But I knew what they meant. This was in 2003 maybe,” Marks told The New York Times earlier this year.

Marks released music that fit the trends, she wore the cowboy hats and boots and weave, all to fit in a genre where the only legend who looked anything like her was the late, great Charley Pride. And eventually, she left Nashville, even though her and other Black country artists’ work never stopped. “The country music industry doesn’t want to open up the gates,” Marks told The NY Times, “Because if country music really gave everyone an honest opportunity, they couldn’t play the game anymore, because their players just wouldn’t be up to par.”

She means that. Marks is back in full swing, following in the footsteps of other Black women--Valerie June, Mickey Guyton, and Brittney Spencer, to name a few--who have fought to open the gates themselves. Now living and performing in the Bay Area, Marks was inspired to write new music again as the Black Lives Matter protests re-erupted in summer 2020. Not known to bring her race or the political landscape into her previous work, this is the first album of Marks’ to call out her industry. But it does more than call it out.

The album reclaims country music as our country, the music of Black culture; it reclaims America as our country, a country for BIPOC people. The opener, “Ancestors,” is an ode to those who came before, an uplifting anthem with the piano keys and gospel choir of a Baptist church. “I’m calling on the ancestors now,” sings Marks, and boy do they come, as this song is just the runway the rest of the record takes off from.

Standout of the album is “Goodnight America,” which holds this nation accountable for all its highest promises and the music that made them. Marks worked with The Resurrectors to make the album, and their finger-picking and slide ring guitar work shine here, with a melody that pays homage to “America the Beautiful” and lyrics that unpack it. “Oh beautiful for spacious skies / But they wouldn’t hide your lies / America, your dream has died,” sings Marks. “Come and seek your fortunes upon our golden shores / But if we don’t like your kind, we’ll close the door.” 

There is no doubt that Marks is a country musician, classically and gospelly trained, but it should not be ignored that much of that training comes from her childhood spent in Flint, Michigan. “We Are Here” is Marks’ love ballad to her hometown. It gives voice to the people of Flint, crying that they are still there, despite receiving little government relief for the ongoing water crisis. It is no mistake that the record sequences this song to flow directly into the next, titled “Water to Wine.”

Miko Marks is back. “Our Country” is an instant classic and a record that deserves to be written in bold in the American country music lexicon, because it is everything that country music was always meant to be: founded in diverse folk styles of the American working class. Few have worked harder than Marks, and few records are as worthy of being a keepsake as this one.

Stream “Our Country” everywhere now.

Photo: Beto Lopez / Mooncricket Films.