Miko Marks on Spending Time Trying to Get Country Music to Give Her a Chance: 'I Kind of Gave Up'

Miko Marks has often been called an old soul — someone who craves a different time and place when great musicians of the past would play late into the evening, infused with a passion that permeated from within.

"I just don't want that kind of music to ever go away," Marks, 49, tells PEOPLE. "I feel like the roots of music is disappearing a little bit."

Not surprisingly then, in her new single "One More Night" with the Resurrectors, Marks finds herself singing about those fears and feelings, throwing it back both melodically and sonically to pays tribute to early artists like Lightnin' Hopkins, Howlin' Wolf, Big Mama Thornton and Muddy Waters.

Courtesy Redtone Records Miko Marks

"The song takes you back to those great artists that were really making a statement back in the day with their artistry," says Marks of "One More Night," written alongside Justin Phipps and Steve Wyreman, which premieres exclusively on PEOPLE. "Everything wasn't so perfect and clean back then."

It's this point of view that Marks will soon also bring to her fourth studio album Feel Like Going Home, set for an October release.

"This record is not perfect and clean," states Marks, who started singing when she was just 3 years old. "It's raw, and it's gritty. It's just honest music, not tweaked and made to sound a certain way."

Indeed, Marks was raised on this no-nonsense type of music. In 2005, she stood upon such a foundation while beginning to make her way through the far-too-narrow halls of the country music industry. At the time, she often wondered if there was ever going to be a way for a Black woman from Flint, Michigan, to fit into the genre.

Khristopher “Squint” Sandifer Miko Marks

"I kind of gave up," Marks recalls quietly. "I had put out two albums and recorded them in Nashville, and I felt like I was doing the things that I was supposed to do at that time to make it in this genre and in this industry. But it felt like I was knocking on doors, and they just were not being opened. I decided that I would just sing and perform on my own, but just not record any music because that wasn't doing me any good."

But then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. As the entirety of the music business seemed to screech to a halt, Marks says she began to see some light coming through the ever-present cracks in the industry — and bravely, she began her journey back from a 13-year hiatus.

"I think the COVID-19 lockdown gave people a chance to sit down, listen to the music and really take it in," says Marks, who proudly serves as a member of CMT's Next Women of Country class of 2022. "That's part of the reason why I've had some success, because people actually listened. I took it out of the hands of the major labels or the gatekeepers."

Khristopher “Squint” Sandifer Miko Marks

Marks then started calling the shots, and her first big decision was to record the new album in California instead of Tennessee.

"This album feels like going home. It's a return to my roots," she says of Feel Like Going Home. "It has a lot of gospel and a lot of Southern rock and a lot of blues intertwined with the country because that's who I am. I'm not just one genre. I love everything. And if I can add something from each different genre and make a big gumbo, that's what I am going to do. As artists, we must stir the pot with more and more ingredients. When you do that, it elevates us all."

While she calls the new album the "music of her life," one can sense a bit of weariness.

Khristopher “Squint” Sandifer Miko Marks

"My soul is so heavy," admits Marks, whose new album includes "Good Trouble," which pays homage to late civil rights leader John Lewis. "If I didn't have this music to focus on, I don't know what I would be doing. I would be stuck in a hole somewhere depressed with all that's going on in the world."

But it's these real feelings that also leave her with a mission.

"I want to put music out that speaks to where we are as a country," Marks declares. "I want to speak about the real issues that are happening and how I'm being affected by these things. Everything that has been going on has me realizing what I really want to say, and what I want to leave this world, through my music."