Maggie Rose.
Last month, Visit Oxford announced the music lineup for the inaugural Square Jam Session concert on the Courthouse Square, which will run from 5 to 9 pm Friday, October 25, 2024.
The free event will usher in a big football weekend, as Ole Miss extends the Oklahoma Sooners a welcome to the Southeast Conference.
A stage will be set up in the parking bay in front of City Hall, where the University basketball teams have put on Square Jam over the past several years.
The live music, food, and community celebration will feature performances from local bands Neon Junkies and Thistle Ridge, as well as prominent, eclectic country singer/songwriter Maggie Rose.
Along with three strong musical acts, there will be food trucks nearby serving refreshments to round out a perfect night in the heart of town.
“We are so excited to welcome Oklahoma into the SEC,” said Kinney Ferris, Executive Director for Visit Oxford. “In their first year, these fans will get to experience Oxford at its finest.”
Maggie Rose returns to the Square
Since performing at Double Decker Arts Festival in 2022, Nashville artist Maggie Rose has gained considerable momentum in her field. After spending days, weeks, and sometimes months on end touring, it’s no wonder.
“I feel like an intruder in my own home right now,” she joked.
Rose also released an album in April that has already captured the attention of a large swath of the record industry and is sure to become a career landmark.
Her fourth effort, No One Gets Out Alive, is a musical reflection of Rose’s past several years in more ways than one. Like many artists, she took a hard nose to the challenges of remote recording, which every professional musician has had to adapt to in one way or another.
Also having suffered personal losses, she found herself coming to grips with “the inevitable unpredictability of life,” which drove Rose to the realization that she could no longer wait for an ideal set of circumstances to prepare for a new record.
Getting an album started in the lean days of Covid had its hurdles, but there were also plenty of skilled players looking for studio work during that time, because live shows were scarce.
One positive byproduct of remote recording for Rose was being able to implement a 64-piece orchestra on some tracks, which she said was a feat that may not have happened under normal circumstances and was a “doubling down” on the idea of going all-in on a record.
Rose’s bullish approach to putting the album together, in collaboration with composer and arranger Don Hart, was a huge factor in making it become a strong hark back to the Laurel Canyon, California, sounds of the late-’60s/early-’70s popularized by artists like Joni Mitchell and Carole King.
“Thematically, I wanted to make something for myself that would help me kind of process some loss and growth,” said Rose, “and also help people who’d been collectively through what we all were going through.”
She considers herself very “album forward” when it comes to conceptualizing a project, which is increasingly rare in this age of streaming music. Also, writing the album in a period of six months helped add “cohesion to the record,” and made the songs “inherently linked together.”
Although Rose enjoys performing certain new songs in her live set—particularly the title track, which she sang phenomenally during her 100th Opry performance last December—she still maintains that they are “stronger when bundled together.”
Her connection to Oxford now reaches back to the 2010s, when she began dating her now-husband, Ole Miss graduate, accomplished drummer, and talent manager, Austin Marshall. Marshall invited her to catch his band Dickey Do & the Don’ts (affectionately known as the “4th Best Country Band in North Mississippi”) play a show at Proud Larry’s.
Rose liked the environment so much at Larry’s that she booked her own gig there shortly after, which fell on a football home game weekend. “Even though it was definitely a party atmosphere, I feel like we had a really engaged audience,” she said.
Reflecting on her ’22 Double Decker performance, Maggie recalled the thrill of seeing the legendary R&B/gospel singer Mavis Staples standing on stage right watching her band’s set.
She also had a memorable show at The Lyric, which was capped off by the audience being holed up in the historic theater by a tornado warning.
“We were all in it together,” she said, “and I feel like everyone—given it could have turned into panic—was pretty cool, and we had a great night.” She recalls it as the first time her band performed “No One Gets Out Alive,” which thankfully didn’t turn out to be an ominous foreshadowing.
“The Square is such a great place for gathering any time of year, not just football season,” she said. And, she had bought her favorite pair of cowboy boots at Hinton & Hinton on Courthouse Square, nearby the Jam Session stage.
Two great local bands take part
The night of music begins at 5 pm with a newcomer to the Oxford music scene, Neon Junkies, who have been called “Oxford’s freshest country and western swing band.”
Led by the talented Jameson Hollister on guitar, vocals, and fiddle, and accompanied by seasoned, top notch players Jesse Pinion (guitar), Eric Carlton (piano), Bradley Gordon (drums), Kell Kellum (pedal steel guitar), and Nate Robbins (bass), Neon Junkies play so many upbeat country classics back-to-back that folks on the dancefloor are bound to two-step their boots off.
The powerhouse group performs hip-shaking favorites by George Strait, Vince Gill, Waylon Jennings, and Alan Jackson topped with their own North Mississippi special sauce.
Neon Junkies are followed by Thistle Ridge, who have been carving out their way in the Oxford music scene since they began doing live performances in mid-2022.
The band, whose core is made up of two Oxford High School graduates, Lucas McKeown and Cole Campbell, recently released an EP, titled “I Hope You Know.”
Not only has Thistle Ridge performed their rootsy, vocal harmony-driven set at local Oxford venues, but they’ve also built a solid network throughout the Southeast.
