New Orleans musician Maggie Koerner releases ‘Upstate’ | Music | Gambit Weekly

Maggie Koerner knew she wanted to take the wheel when she began working on her new album. In the past, the New Orleans singer-songwriter says, she had often shifted the power over to the producers she was working with.

It wasn’t that things in the past had necessarily gone wrong, but for her fourth full-length album, full of personal, resonant songs, Koerner wanted to trust herself.

“I just had a pattern of going to the studio, letting somebody else steer my ship and feeling like something got lost in translation,” she says. “I felt as if maybe the producers were putting their sound as a filter on top of my sound, which is natural.”

Still, Koerner couldn’t do it alone and turned to a group of New Orleans friends to help, including Ajai Combelic, who co-produced the album, The Revivalists’ frontman David Shaw, bassist Gina Leslie, drummers Howe Pearson and Aaron Boudreaux, keys player Andriu Yanovski and more.

The result, the remarkable “Upstate,” took Koerner back to the feeling of when she first started performing in her hometown of Shreveport, before moving to New Orleans, performing with Galactic, touring widely and carving out a place in the music community as a powerful vocalist and songwriter.

“Upstate” is now available, and Koerner celebrates its release with a show at 9 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 29, at Tipitina’s. People Museum opens.

“I got back to my roots of where I come from and what I sounded like before I ever started recording music,” Koerner says. That was “almost 15, 20 years ago, right? I know who I am now as a woman, who I am as an artist, and so I was ready to get back to that pure place of making music for music’s sake, the way I was doing in Shreveport.”

With a blend of folk, country, indie rock and some truly grand moments, “Upstate” feels raw and relatable. There are a lot of deep emotions on the record, but it isn’t a sad album. There’s a recognizable bittersweetness as Koerner reflects on the high highs and low lows of past relationships, memories of friends and her knotted roots in Louisiana.

Koerner wanted to “get back to that sound of just making music for the joy of making music,” she says. “Making something you want to listen to, before you get any industry or people in your ear.”

Several songs on “Upstate” center snapshots from past romantic relationships, including the singles “Sarah’s Farm,” which Koerner says is about her “favorite ex-boyfriend,” and “Oaxaca,” about an abusive relationship. On “Mississippi,” which features pedal-steel guitar by Jonny Campos, Koerner weaves in her mother and grandmother for a song touching on the ways women have been viewed and controlled in Southern society.

Shaw appears on the song “Way Down,” which he helped co-write along with Suzannah Powell, the pop artist Boyfriend. Powell also co-wrote the swelling, string-backed folk song “They Say.”

And on the track “DMT,” featuring Americana singer-songwriter Hans Williams, Koerner speaks to a friend about the time they smoked DMT — “You saw death / I saw music dance right outta me,” she sings — and builds into surreal, poetic associations. There also are a couple of instrumental tracks, like Yanovski’s “Andriu’s Reprise” and “Keep Your Heroes Handsome,” a voice memo Koerner recorded with other musicians in 2013.

“I sometimes like songs that are just drops in a moment,” Koerner says. “Just an indie film, a moment of your life.”

Koerner grew up with a mom who was a school teacher and a father who was a mechanic and business owner. She loved to sing but aside from a brief stint performing in a church youth band, she didn’t pursue her own music until her early 20s.

After graduating from LSU Shreveport with a bachelor’s degree in psychology, Koerner was considering working toward her master’s when she met an actor who “convinced me that I was talented enough to give [music] a damn try for a year.”

While working as a waitress at her dad’s restaurant, Koerner started playing singer-songwriter nights around Shreveport and meeting other musicians. Around the time she was 23, Koerner caught the attention of drummer Brady Blade, a Shreveport native, and worked with him to produce her debut “Quarter Life” in 2011.

Things moved quickly. In the same year as her first album, Koerner met Shaw and The Revivalists at a bar in Shreveport, and soon, Shaw asked her to contribute to the song “Hey Na Na” for Galactic, putting her into the funk band’s orbit.

At 24, Koerner moved to New Orleans and began performing around town. A year later, she recorded her second album, 2013’s “Neutral Ground,” and was invited to be Galactic’s vocalist.

“It’s like going to get your PhD in performing,” Koerner says about her time with the veteran band. “These guys have been doing it for 20 years.”

Koerner performed and toured with Galactic for close to two years before she decided to again focus on her solo music. She still occasionally appears with the band, including recently at the NOLA Funk Fest during a set that also featured Irma Thomas, Anjelika “Jelly” Joseph and Erica Falls.

Along with her solo music, including her 2022 full-length, “The Bartholomew Songs,” Koerner has co-written songs with Jessica Simpson, Shaw, Powell, John Shirley and others. She’s also opened for Band of Horses, The Head & The Heart and Shakey Graves and performed with Gov’t Mule.

As Koerner began to feel ready to record what would become “Upstate,” she took some time to consider who she wanted to work with but found a lot of inspiration in the singer-songwriter scene happening around the 9th Ward. She also launched a GoFundMe to help create the record.

“I did not have any fucking idea how I was going to do any of this. And then a year later, I was doing it, and now a year after that, it’s released,” Koerner says. “I’m really proud we all came together to make this beautiful piece of art. I’ve never been more proud to talk about an album.”

Tickets for Koerner’s release show are $31.02 via tipitinas.com. Find the music at maggiekoerner.com.