"She takes day-to-day experiences and turns them into raw poetry."
Blues Blast Magazine
Rooted in Memphis.
Built for the world.
A Memphis vocalist and songwriter carrying the blues forward with grace, fire, and a voice that commands every room it enters.
Who She Is
Tierinii Jackson Naftaly built her voice inside Memphis church culture — the call-and-response, the restraint before release, the discipline of making every note count before you earn the right to let go. When she lets go, you feel it in your chest. A two-time Grammy nominee and Blues Music Award winner, she has carried that voice to Farm Aid, Bonnaroo, Austin City Limits, and Americana and blues stages across four continents. The blues has always had powerhouse vocalists. Rarely has one arrived carrying this much evidence of what Memphis can produce.
Frontwoman of Southern Avenue on Alligator Records · Featured vocalist on the Sinners original motion picture soundtrack · Collaborator on Morgan Freeman's Symphonic Blues Experience
A Ryan Coogler Film ✦ Grammy Award · Best Compilation Soundtrack
Sinners
Her voice, her songs, on a Grammy-winning soundtrack.
Sinners found her because she already lived inside that story — the pull between where you came from and where the music wants to take you. Both tracks were co-written and performed with Cedric Burnside, a direct descendant of the Hill Country blues lineage, and produced by Boo Mitchell at Royal Studios in Memphis — the room where Al Green, Ann Peebles, and generations of soul history were made — under the musical direction of Oscar-winning composer Ludwig Göransson.
With Ryan Coogler · Sinners Premiere
In Her Own Words
"Memphis taught me how to grow, and the road taught me how to bloom. Now, I use my songs to plant seeds of joy, ensuring every room I touch is a little brighter, more vibrant, and more alive than when I arrived."
— Tierinii
That's not a performance. That's the whole reason.
"A dynamic, high-energy vocal force on stage."
American Blues Scene
"Commanding vocals anchoring everything in place."
No Depression
"A beautifully distinctive, velveteen voice."
The Rocking Magpie
Watch
Press play.
The cleanest way to understand Tierinii is the oldest way: turn it up and watch what happens when a singer stops asking for space and starts taking it.
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Southern Avenue
Named for the street.
Signed to the legend.
The band's name is not a coincidence. Southern Avenue runs directly past the original site of Stax Records into the heart of South Memphis — and when the band formed, they became the first Memphis-based act signed to the reformed Stax Records imprint since the 1970s. Stax had been quiet for decades. The names it carried — Isaac Hayes, Mavis Staples, Carla Thomas, Otis Redding — were not small ones to inherit. Tierinii took that weight seriously.
Built alongside guitarist Ori Naftaly and her sisters T.K. and Ava Jackson, Southern Avenue released their self-titled debut and Keep On under the Stax banner before moving to Alligator Records. Their 2025 release Family earned a second Grammy nomination and cemented their place as headliners on the international blues and Americana circuit.
Morgan Freeman
A Memphis voice inside a century of blues.
On Morgan Freeman's Symphonic Blues Experience, Tierinii sings "I'll Take You There" — the Staples Singers' anthem, carried for decades by Mavis Staples, a woman who spent her entire life at the same intersection Tierinii has navigated: gospel and secular music, devotion and the open road. The choice of that song for that voice is not incidental. It is precise.
Recorded at Royal Studios Memphis and Abbey Road in London, with the Stax Music Academy Choir behind her — the next generation of Soulsville talent sharing a stage with the woman whose band was named after the street that runs past their campus. The circle is complete.
Listen Now
All the music.
Every platform.
Start with Sinners. Stay for Family. Find it everywhere.
On Stage With
Willie Nelson · Farm Aid
Dave Matthews
Keb' Mo'
Cedric Burnside · Grammy Museum
Ryan Coogler · Sinners