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<\/a> says, she had often shifted the power over to the producers she was working with.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t that things in the past had necessarily gone wrong, but for her fourth full-length album<\/a>, full of personal, resonant songs, Koerner wanted to trust herself.<\/p>\n \u201cI just had a pattern of going to the studio, letting somebody else steer my ship and feeling like something got lost in translation,\u201d she says. \u201cI felt as if maybe the producers were putting their sound as a filter on top of my sound, which is natural.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, Koerner couldn\u2019t do it alone and turned to a group of New Orleans friends to help, including Ajai Combelic, who co-produced the album, The Revivalists\u2019 frontman David Shaw, bassist Gina Leslie, drummers Howe Pearson and Aaron Boudreaux, keys player Andriu Yanovski and more.<\/p>\n The result, the remarkable \u201cUpstate,\u201d<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n \u201cUpstate\u201d is now available, and Koerner celebrates its release with a show at 9 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 29<\/a>, at Tipitina\u2019s. People Museum opens.<\/p>\n \u201cI got back to my roots of where I come from and what I sounded like before I ever started recording music,\u201d Koerner says. That was \u201calmost 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\u2019s sake, the way I was doing in Shreveport.\u201d<\/p>\n