By ELIZABETH BRIGNAC
Durham’s Rissi Palmer is one of only eight Black women ever to hit the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, which she did with her song “Country Girl” in 2007. Her 2019 album Revival was included in Rolling Stone’s 2024 article “The Best 25 Country-Soul Albums.” She hosts an Apple Music radio show called Color Me Country Radio with Rissi Palmer, and she’s a correspondent for Country Music Television (CMT).
So it’s interesting that these days, she doesn’t really think of herself as a country musician. Since Palmer’s 2007 album Rissi Palmer, which established her as a country music artist, her style has evolved. “I feel like my music is Southern soul,” she says of what she is doing now. “It’s a really cool marriage of gospel elements, and there are some country elements to it. There’s definitely an undercurrent of old soul—1970s kind of soul—in the thing we’re doing right now.” She adds, referring to the roots music category that emerged in the late 1990s, “In the very beginning of my career, there was no such thing as Americana. [Today] I think a lot of things fit within the basket of Americana, and this is one of them.”
Palmer’s new album, Survivor’s Joy, leans heavily into her current Southern soul style, which she began exploring in depth with Revival in 2019. She compares its feel to Al Green’s music of the 1970s. Tentatively scheduled to release in May, the title of Survivor’s Joy is based on a conversation Palmer had with Canadian musician Allison Russell on Palmer’s radio show. Palmer asked Russell how she maintained a relatively light—even joyful—approach to the world after a harrowing childhood.
Palmer paraphrases Russell’s response: “People talk about survivor’s guilt, but nobody really discusses survivor’s joy. And the fact that the things that you’ve been through—you’ve gotten over them. You got through them. And, God willing, you’ll never face them again.”
Survivor’s Joy took four years to create—much longer than Palmer usually takes to make an album. “A lot of life has happened,” she explains. “I’m divorced now. That’s not the only [event], but that was a major one. This album has been reflecting a lot on relationships—not just my marriage, but [other] relationships and friendships.” It’s an inward-looking album, reflecting on Palmer’s having turned 40; the career resurgence that has allowed her to help other artists come up in the music field and other shifts her life has taken in recent years.
One element of that career resurgence has been Palmer’s Color Me Country radio show, on which she interviews musicians from demographics traditionally underrepresented in country music. The show’s name is an homage to Linda Martell, whose 1969 single “Color Him Father” hit number 22 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart (then called the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart)— the highest-peaking single by a Black female country artist until 2024, when Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” hit number one. Martell was the first Black woman ever to play the Grand Ole Opry, and her only album was called Color Me Country. “I wanted to pay homage to her, because I see her as
a foremother,” says Palmer.
In addition to Allison Russell, Palmer has interviewed Alice Randall, Darius Rucker, Rhiannon Giddens, Mickey Guyton and many others on her program—some established musicians and some up-and-comers. These interviews add to the cultural conversation about the definition and characteristics of country music, which audiences and critics debate often, in part due to the different ways fans identify with the genre.
“I think Cowboy Carter, and Post Malone and Jelly Roll and all these different people entering the chat definitely changes the shape of things,” Palmer says. She adds that country music “is one of the last bastions of terrestrial radio having ultimate power and say over who gets to be a star and who doesn’t. There are very few people who get to be stars who aren’t mainstays on country radio—Kacey Musgraves being one of the few.” Palmer’s interviews on Color Me Country add depth to the changing conversation about what types of musicians and what types of song “count” as country music.
As if her radio show, her new album and her work with CMT were not enough to keep her busy, Palmer will also be touring this spring with the second North American tour of Trailblazing Women of Country: From Patsy to Loretta to Dolly alongside Atlanta-based singer Kristina Train and a five-person, all-women band. The tour, which will cover music by Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton, kicks off from Nashville February 20.
“I love the fact that they’re giving me an opportunity to interpret this music in my own way, and to pay homage to it, because these women really are part of the female Mount Rushmore of country music … I’m really excited about it,” says Palmer.
