Muddy Magnolias

In recent years, lots of attention has been paid to Nashville’s expansion beyond the country music community, as rockers like Jack White, the Black Keys and Kings of Leon have relocated there to take advantage of the history, atmosphere, and infrastructure of Music City, U.S.A. But this, of course, isn’t the first time that less-predictable artists have been attracted to Nashville. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, rockers like Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, and Simon & Garfunkel traveled to Tennessee and emerged with classic recordings; Jimi Hendrix once said that Nashville was “where I learned to play, really.”
This is the Nashville that the Muddy Magnolias represent. It’s what drew Kallie North, from the Mississippi Delta, and Jessy Wilson, a native of Brooklyn, to the city in pursuit their musical dreams. When lucky circumstances brought them together and they formed the striking, genre-smashing duo Muddy Magnolias, they proved that Nashville remains a place pointing to music’s future as well as its traditions.
Before even putting out a single, Muddy Magnolias have been earning raves from the national press, including Rolling Stone (“a sound that melds city grit and Delta dirt, exploding onstage not like two lead singers but more like parts of the same whole…Performed as if Mick Jagger and Keith Richards inhabited the Indigo Girls) and Elle magazine (“a country, soul, and R&B cocktail that’s heavy on harmony and candid, occasionally gritty lyrics...reinventing the American Woman). Now, with new music produced with Butch Walker (Weezer, Pink, Panic! At The Disco, Fall Out Boy) the pair is poised for its real breakthrough.
Wilson has been singing since she was a child. She was starting to enter the elite level of R&B—touring as a back-up singer with John Legend, and co-writing songs on albums by Fantasia and Ledisi that earned Grammy nominations—when she decided to look into relocating to Nashville. North, born in southeast Texas, grew up playing and singing music with her family. She moved to the Mississippi Delta and worked as a photographer until her husband gave her a guitar and she began writing music.
When the two came together to make music they discovered that they had different ways of working. “Kallie was used to writing alone, on a guitar, and I spent so much time writing to tracks and beats,” says Wilson. “So we’ve really had to develop a style together.” And, of course, she notes that their sounds were based in disparate sources. “We have some of the same influences, but the meat of our influences is rooted in different things, so it’s fun to bring those together.”
One notable aspect of Muddy Magnolias’ songs is the way in which they offer the perspective of grown women, with hard-earned, real-life experiences. “We have amazing stories, and they’re not perfect,” says North. “They’re filled with insecurity and pain, and also being badass—moments of taking on the world and moments of being taken on.”
By looking at their differences as strengths and opportunities rather than limitations, Muddy Magnolias have found their way to music that is honest, organic, and rich. “I don’t think we’ve put any actual mental time into shaping a sound,” says Wilson. “You spend years absorbing everything and then when you go create, it just naturally comes out. We are still evolving every day.”