Jo Dee Messina

Though it may come as a surprise to some, a number of artists from New England have made quite a name for themselves in the cradle of country music, Nashville, including Jim Rooney, Al Anderson, Robert Ellis Orrall, Dan Tyminski and Lori McKenna, proving that people from the six-state region aren’t nearly as repelled by or clueless about the genre as is often assumed. After all, New England’s boasted a thriving country scene of its own since the 1920s and lots of folks who aren’t from the American South – or even the United States – have achieved sweeping success in Music City, like Australian Keith Urban and Canadian Shania Twain.

Then there’s two-time Grammy nominee Jo Dee Messina, who was born and raised near Boston, moved to Nashville shortly after finishing high school and has been a force of nature on the country scene for some 30 years. Two of her seven studio albums have gone platinum, two have gone gold, six of her singles have hit #1 in Billboard’s country chart, and she’s received plenty of recognition for her efforts, including four Country Music Awards, two Horizon Awards and three Boston Music Awards. Simply put, no New England-rooted artist, past or present, has achieved Messina’s level of commercial success in the so-called “Athens of the South.”

But her journey hasn’t been a walk in the proverbial park. A management shakeup resulted in RCA Records dropping her from its roster before she’d recorded a single note for the label, and a combination of shaky financial decisions and management changes left her on the verge of bankruptcy following the release of her debut LP. The record-setting success of her second album pulled her away from the brink of financial ruin, and since then she’s been doing what she loves most: writing and performing songs, especially those that have a certain twang and imply a Southern drawl. “I don’t know anything besides country music,” she told Billboard’s Chuck Taylor in 1998, “but I’ll always do some kind of music, even if it’s demos or commercials. It just runs through my veins.”

MUSICAL BEGINNINGS, MOVE TO NASHVILLE

Jo Dee Marie Messina was born on August 25, 1970 in Framingham, Massachusetts (about 20 miles west of Boston) and grew up in nearby Holliston, a town of some 12,000 residents at the time. She performed in plays when she was in elementary school, started playing guitar around age 12, and was a regular presence at venues in and around Boston and Worcester by age 14, among them The Bull Run, Indian Ranch, Johnny D’s and Passim, watching and sometimes sitting in with the bands. “My mother used to take me out and sit with me,” she told Jeff Niesel of Cleveland Scene Daily in 2024 about that period of her life, noting that she’s always been drawn to country music in particular. “I was exposed to all sorts of music, but country music was always my safe space and something that spoke about my life. It was my home and what I gravitated toward,” she said.

When Messina was 15, she, her brother and one of her sisters started performing almost every weekend as The Jo Dee Messina Band, her brother behind the drums and her sister on bass. A sort of miniaturized, countrified Partridge family combo, the trio covered a wide range of country tunes, including ones by the artists she cites as her earliest musical influences: Reba McEntire, Deana Carter, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, The Judds and Hank Williams, Jr. The group continued performing together following Messina’s graduation from Holliston High School in the spring of 1988.

Determined to make a living playing country music and believing her chances of doing so would far better in Nashville, she moved there in early ‘89, making the 940-mile journey south on her own. Paying the rent by taking various temp jobs, she entered as many talent contests as she could, and one first-place finish landed her a regular spot on the radio show Live at Libby’s. That helped her catch the ear of Grammy-winning producer Byron Gallimore, who put together a demo tape and landed her a deal with one of country music’s premier labels, RCA, in mid-1989. Messina’s hopes for a bright future with RCA were dashed later that same year, however, when the company nixed her contract due to management changes.

Fortunately for Messina, Gallimore was working with an artist just three years her senior, the soon-to-be-famous Tim McGraw, around the same time, and Messina and he became friends. As serendipity would have it, when McGraw was chatting with an executive from Curb Records some years later, he jokingly suggested that they should “sign a redhead,” which encouraged Curb producer James Stroud to listen to Messina’s demo and watch her perform live. As a result, carrot-topped Messina signed with Curb in ‘95 and Gallimore and McGraw co-produced four of her five albums for the label.

DEBUT ALBUM, I’M ALRIGHT, BURN

When Curb issued Messina’s eponymous debut disc on March 26, 1996, it didn’t disappoint. The LP reached #22 in the Billboard Top Country Albums chart, #8 in Canada’s RPM chart, and spawned two top-10 hits in the Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart: “Heads Carolina, Tails California” (#2) and “You’re Not in Kansas Anymore” (#7). The album went gold but, even though she played more than 200 shows in 1996 following its release and was already among the most successful new female vocalists of the decade, questionable financial decisions and a management change left her broke, facing the very real possibility of foreclosure on her home and repossession of her car.

Under more pressure than ever to write marketable material, Messina spent nearly a year penning tunes for her second album, and the result was a 10-track collection of rather introspective songs, many of them about personal strength and survival: the aptly titled I’m Alright. Released in March ‘88, it was significantly more successful than its predecessor, making it to #5 in the Top Country Albums chart and #61 in the Billboard 200. Three of the LP’s singles went to #1 the Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart (“Bye, Bye,” “I’m Alright” and “Stand Beside Me”) – making Messina the first female solo artist to score three consecutive multiple-week #1 hits from one album since Billboard‘s country singles chart debuted in 1944 – and “Because You Love Me” reached #8.

Unsurprisingly considering the upward trajectory of her career, Messina’s third studio outing, Burn, which Curb issued in August 2000, was her most successful to date, becoming her first #1 in the Top Country Albums and featuring two singles that hit #1 in the Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart, “That’s the Way” and “Bring on the Rain,” the latter of which is a duet with Tim McGraw. The title track reached #2, “Downtime” went to #5 and “Dare to Dream” peaked at #23 in the country chart, while the album reached #24 in the Billboard 200. In addition to headlining shows to support the LP, she toured with Vince Gill, George Strait and The Judds.

A JOYFUL NOISE, DELICIOUS SURPRISE, UNMISTAKABLE EPS

Curb released Messina’s one and only holiday album in October 2002, A Joyful Noise (the title track of which went to #16 in Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart), and in May 2003 the label issued a greatest-hits collection that soared to #1 in the Top Country Albums chart. The LP included four new songs, two of which fared well as singles: “Was That My Life,” which peaked at #21 in Billboard’s country chart, and “I Wish,” which climbed to #15.

In April 2005, Curb released Messina’s fifth studio album, Delicious Surprise, which was her third LP to reach #1 in the Top Country Albums chart and made it all the way to #9 in the Billboard 200. The single “My Give a Damn’s Busted” (co-written by Grammy winner Joe Diffie) was Messina’s sixth number #1 in the country songs chart and three follow-up singles, “Delicious Surprise (I Believe It), “Not Going Down” and “It’s Too Late To Worry” cracked the top 40. Her next recordings, which became her last for Curb Records, were a trilogy of EPs released in MP3 format only: Unmistakable: Love dropped in April 2010, followed by Unmistakable: Drive and Unmistakable: Inspiration in November that year.

ME, BRIDGES

After several years out of the studio, Messina released her sixth full-length album, the 12-track Me, on her own label, Dreambound, in March 2014. While it didn’t have the gigantic success of her other LPs, it achieved strong commercial results by any measure, reaching #19 in Billboard’s country chart, #31 in Billboard’s Independent Albums chart and #156 in the Billboard 200. Reviews were mostly positive, with The Daily Country giving it a rare five stars and Michael McCall of the Associated Press writing that it “proves that Messina’s fans are right to think she still has plenty to offer.”

More than 12 years after the release of Me, Dreambound issued Messina seventh and most recent studio effort, Bridges, in June 2026. It’s “her most authentic and personal work to date,” according to Buddy Iahn of “The Music Universe” podcast, who called “it “a deeply reflective journey through heartbreak and healing, faith and perseverance, challenges and growth, and the unwavering resilience that has defined her.” Asked how the album is different from her others, Messina said her experiences, both positive and negative, have allowed her to write songs from a “maturer place” than before. “I think I have a different perspective now because I’ve lived through more,” she told Andrew Firriolo of BuzzFeed. “There’s a bit of wisdom and perspective in these lyrics that you can’t have at a younger age.”

(by D.S. Monahan)