Magnolia is anything but your typical country act. Energy, excitement, and non-stop exuberance are not something you necessarily think about when thinking of a female country duet but its something that Magnolia pulls off every night on stage. Tristan McKay on lead vocals dives into the music with reckless abandon while Nicole Lea on bass and lead vocals lays down the groove and steers the audience wherever she wants to take them.
Fall Down Seven, Magnolias first album release, leads listeners on a journey through Alabama-style sing-a-longs, down the Mississippi swamp country straight to the heart of good old-fashioned southern rock and roll. Some find it hard to imagine coming from a female-fronted, two lead guitars and drums powerhouse quintet. But once you see them live it all starts to make perfect sense.
Playing clubs, weddings and honkytonks across the Southeast and paying their dues for more than five years led the girls of Magnolia to a crossing point in their career. "We were saying weve paid our dues, now wheres the receipt"� Lea said. This led the girls to record their first album, Fall Down Seven, released March 2007.
When Magnolia landed themselves a steady, weekly gig at the world famous B.B. Kings Blues Club in downtown Nashville, it gave them an opportunity to figure out who they really wanted to be. "Living in Nashville, its kinda hard to see the forest for the trees sometimes," said McKay. "You deal with so many musicians and songwriters in the audience. B.B. Kings brought us a lot of tourists and fans that gave us so much support and confidence that we realized we should just do this on our own and see what happens."
Boasting a fan club at the time of over 1000 members the girls decided to ask their fans for help. "We sent them a letter basically letting the fans know that we were barely making ends meet and really wanted to record an album but lacked funding," McKay said. "Literally, within days we had enough money to fund the entire album."
"The response to sponsoring our album was so overwhelming it made us want to work harder and play even more dates than we were already doing," added Lea. "We owe our fans more than we can ever repay. And at this point in our career, I like being in debt to our fans."
"We wanted to record using our band playing our songs," said McKay. "We believe in every word on this album," adds Lea. "And I think thats important to show who we are as artists and more importantly, people. Thats what hopefully flows off the stage and throughout the album."
Fall Down Seven has Magnolia looking forward to breaking down more boundaries and building more bridges between country music and southern rock.
Read more...