{"id":2520,"date":"2020-08-25T08:12:18","date_gmt":"2020-08-25T07:12:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=2520"},"modified":"2020-08-25T08:18:56","modified_gmt":"2020-08-25T07:18:56","slug":"we-are-the-music-makers-margo-price-knows-her-worth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2020\/08\/25\/we-are-the-music-makers-margo-price-knows-her-worth\/","title":{"rendered":"we are the music makers: MARGO PRICE KNOWS HER WORTH"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

MARGO PRICE KNOWS HER WORTH<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Norman Warwick<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Now four years in the music spotlight, Margo Price (left)<\/strong> is not sure how to summarise the whole experience. \u00b4I\u00b4ve been frustrated,\u00b4 Margo admits, speaking to Esquire magazine, via Zoom, about her experience with the mainstream country music establishment. \u00b4She speaks of the racism, the sexism, the ageism and the gatekeepers that flag anybody. Those are kind of big topics to tackle but being willing to tackle big topics has always been seen as one of Price\u2019s most wonderful calling cards. She does this through her music, on social media<\/a>, and in interviews, but she clearly feels that she similarly vocal artists, have all too frequently been locked out of the genre’s awards shows and radio rotations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4It\u2019s like getting your name on the communist list,\u00b4 she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mimicking the perceived industry response, she adds: \u00b4Alright, you\u2019re a troublemaker. We want to keep these ideals out of our organizations.\u00b4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the years since, Margo has toured with the likes of Chris Stapleton and Willie Nelson, collaborated with greats like John Prine, and released a massively lauded follow-up<\/a>, 2017\u2019s All American Made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was a good friend with Justin Townes Earle, the successful musician son of country rocker Steve Earle who was named after his father\u00b4s friend, the late great Townes Van Zandt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sadly we learned the news of Justin\u00b4s sad death, at the age of only 38,  just a few hours prior to posting this piece. Margo Price wrote: \u00b4sending love and condolences to Steve Earle and the entire family of Justin Townes Earle… he was always kind to me and he’s gone too soon \u00b4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Of her several albums, That’s How Rumors Get Started, released in July, is perhaps her most, punchy, raucous, and rocking, work yet, so clearly the frenzied media debates about the right classification of her previously released music has not phased her:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4The idea of success and money will poison your creative process\u00b4, she says. \u00b4I still look at myself like this outcast and an underdog.\u00b4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If anything, the attention has culled waves of disillusionment. Almost as soon as Price arrived on the scene she became a lightning rod in the ever-raging, and ever tiresome, debate over what constitutes real country music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Jason Isbell<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The tone of her first two albums \u2014 socially conscious folk rock with a honky tonk kick, says Esquire \u2014 has enjoyed a renaissance of late as artists like herself as well as Kacey Musgraves, Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson, and Chris Stapleton have all gained acclaim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4I feel like everybody is trying to make a throwback country record right now\u00b4, she says of the crowding. \u00b4I\u2019ve been doing that for years at this point.\u00b4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their creations, full of well-worn sounds and heaping amounts of soul, stand in stark opposition to the over-cooked nothingburgers that currently dominate airwaves. That sentence by the interviewer, and writer of this Esquire piece, seems to tell us right there what she thinks constitutes real country. In fact \u00b4nothingburgers\u00b4 has just become one of my favourite pejoratives !<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Madison Vain, author of the piece, is a writer and editor living in New York, covering music, books, TV, and movies; prior to Esquire, she worked at Entertainment Weekly and Sports Illustrated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each of Musgraves, Isbell, Simpson and Stapleton have, as too has Price, stood as \u00b4heir apparent\u00b4 as the next saviour of country music<\/a>, but none have been welcomed by radio programmers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
\u00b4Whispering\u00b4 Bob Harris
BBC Radio 2 presenter champions Margo\u00b4s work<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I feel like I ought to interject here, to say that BBC Radio 2 presenter Bob Harris has always, and did at the time of Margo\u00b4s break-through, and no doubt always will, champion artists who wear their heart on their sleeves and tell it like it is. I remember how he played the hell out of Price and Musgraves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, Madison Vain laments the fact that Luke Bryan earned his 25th <\/sup>(!) No.1 cut this week with \u201cOne Margarita<\/a>,\u201d which includes the visual, \u201cTiki bars tik\u2019n, pouring all weekend\/Clouds ain\u2019t leakin\u2019 no rain.\u201d That Price instead writes, beautifully, about topics like the gender wage gap<\/a> and the plight of small-time farmers<\/a> all but signed her airplay death certificate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4It doesn\u2019t bother me that they don\u2019t like me, though,\u00b4 Price assured her interviewer \u00b4I knew that going into it.\u00b4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leaving the \u00b4country\u00b4, then, was easy. And That\u2019s How Rumors Gets Started is unmistakeably a rock n\u2019 roll mission statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4Change is good,\u00b4 Margo says. \u00b4When you do the same thing over and over, you\u2019re going to get the same outcome. My goal is to transform\u00b4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The up-tick in energy is immediately palpable as songs like Letting Me Down, a chugging kiss-off for someone who has a knack for inspiring disappointment, Heartless Mind, which shreds a selfish lover, and the soulful Prisoner Of The Highway\u2014her howl at the call of a life spent on the road\u2014leap out of the speaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4I went into the studio wanting to get out of that country realm,\u00b4 she explained to Madison. Pausing at her own video feed, she adds, with a laugh, \u00b4I say that as I\u2019m still wearing a cowboy hat\u00b4. Plus, she adds, \u00b4I never wanted to fit in with any of them anyway. I\u2019ll say whatever the fuck I want to say, and that\u2019s that\u00b4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything that followed, however, proved difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Madison Vain tells us thatThat\u2019s How Rumours Get Started is, \u00b4without question, one of the best sets of music that 2020 will witness\u00b4. But as the new album loomed, Price found herself battling \u00b4the baby blues<\/a>\u00b4 after the birth of her new daughter, Ramona Lynn, and even the COVID-19 pandemic. Her husband, musician Jeremy Ivey, fell gravely ill this Spring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4I really didn\u2019t know if he was going to make it,\u00b4 she says, now on the other side. \u00b4There were days when he just looked so bad\u00b4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hospital turned Ivey, who has cerebral palsy and is borderline diabetic, away each of the three times he appeared, claiming his condition didn\u00b4t warrant admitting. At the same time, Price was experiencing what she describes now as \u00b4bad, blackout dizzy spells\u00b4 while her daughter, still shy of a year, kept getting sick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4It\u2019s really scary out there\u00b4, she says matter-of-factly. \u00b4We don\u2019t have a general practitioner and in times like this, it\u2019s like, \u2018why don\u2019t we just have a regular doctor that we can go see?\u00b4<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The album\u2019s epic closer, I\u2019d Die For You, which begs for better for all of humanity, wasn\u2019t written in that moment, but it could have been.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cEveryone is struggling with healthcare and gentrification\u00b4, the singer says. \u00b4These are very strange times\u00b4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She then adds, \u00b4Some learn hate that others teach\u00b4<\/em>, quoting the song by way of explanation. \u00b4That line has really been sitting with me lately. It\u2019s the way the world has always been\u2014and there are always going to be people that are good and are trying to fight it\u00b4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the first time in a long time, Price saw spring from her Nashville home this year. The last half-decade has seen her maintain a non-stop tour schedule, but as the outbreak of COVID-19 side-lined the live music industry, waylaying countless stopovers and shows, she was forced to stay put. Now on the winning side of several health scares, she\u2019s found a modicum of peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4I\u2019m missing the road\u00b4, she says. \u00b4I am wishing that I could be working, but I\u2019m enjoying everything that I can. I walk and run every day; I\u2019m always seeing different flowers popping up\u00b4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a continuation of the sense of calm that enveloped the recording process of That\u2019s How Rumors Get Started. A few months before getting in the studio, Price was surprised to learn she was pregnant with Ramona Lynn, her third child. The alignment of timing soon felt inevitable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4I found myself really using it to my benefit\u00b4, she says. \u00b4I knew that I was going to be really clear-headed. I knew that I was able to solely focus on growing a human and making music. I was home more, and I could focus on getting everything perfect\u00b4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Price and her husband became parents for the first time in 2010 to twin boys, Ezra and Judah. But, as long-time fans will know, Ezra died of a heart complication just two weeks following his birth. Hands of Time, off  Midwest Farmer\u2019s Daughter meditates explicitly on the experience, but the sorrow, and the destructive tendencies that followed in grief, bleed throughout the rest of the LP too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A loop gets closed, beautifully, with the release of a single, Gone To Stay, a swirling rumination on leaving her heart behind at home with her children while she sets out on tour. Price said she was inspired by fabled tracks like Bob Dylan\u2019s Forever Young and Neil Young\u2019s My Boy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She recalls: \u00b4I just kept thinking, \u2018Okay, I have a son here. I need to write something for him.\u2019 As I was finishing it, I got pregnant, and it became [a note] to both of my children\u00b4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Sturgis Simpson on stage with his band<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

When it came to who was handling the sound board, Price called on Simpson, her long time friend and fellow musical shape-shifter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 42-year-old Kentuckian first made headlines in 2014 with his psych-meets-traditional country LP, Metamodern Sounds In Country Music, and he\u2019s stayed there as his ensuing two albums\u2014plus one anime film<\/a>\u2014ripped through a variety of rock and blues influences. His bona fides as a producer are equally compelling: Just peep the recent releases from Tyler Childers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4There was no doubt we were going to make an album together\u00b4, says Price of eventually linking up, though it didn\u2019t happen perhaps as early as Simpson might have hoped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4He approached me about producing All American Made,\u00b4 she recalls. Feeling confident from having tested much of that set\u2019s fare on the road, she declined in favour of placing herself at the helm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That changed here. And that Simpson was so familiar with her songbook\u2014the two first began playing shows together a decade ago\u2014proved a win. Hey Child, a chest-thumping rallying cry for, as she says, \u00b4people to get their shit together, in one way or another\u00b4, is nearly as old their friendship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4That was our closer in our rock n\u2019 roll band years ago\u00b4, she remembers. He asked her to work it in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4Humour me,\u00b4 Price recalls Simpson saying. After initially resisting, its inclusion soon became obvious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She says, with a laugh: \u00b4Everybody in the studio was like, \u2018This is a great tune! What\u2019s up with this one?\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018Ugh, it\u2019s old\u2014this old thing<\/em>\u00b4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For both artists, fame has proved its own sort of anti-muse; something to lash out at. For Simpson, it was strewn across 2019\u2019s blistering Sound & Fury LP. For Price, it\u2019s here, on the sauntering Twinkle Twinkle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4We do definitely have some rants\u00b4, she says of their agreement on the topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4He didn\u2019t have a manager forever. He\u2019s like, \u2018You need to do it. You need to fire everyone working for you. You\u2019re going to save so much money.\u2019 I was like, \u2018I don\u2019t know about that. What do I do when I have a question about something?\u2019\u201d His response? \u00b4Just ask me. Every question, I\u2019ll charge you a dollar\u00b4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s one piece of advice she didn\u2019t take. \u00b4Well, I got a lot of questions\u00b4, she quips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Price had initially planned May 2019 for release, but with her daughter arriving just a month later, she pushed it back to that fall, which, soon also became impossible as Price found herself between label contracts. Her last two releases came via Jack White\u2019s Third Man Records, but she recorded her latest totally on her own before finding a business partner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4I wanted to do what I did the first time around,\u00b4 she explained to Esquire, referencing the three-day session in which she laid down Midwest Farmer\u2019s Daughter, unattended. Shooting off a flare gun in hope, she and her husband pawned her wedding ring and sold her car to foot that bill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b4I wanted to make my creative peace\u00b4, she says now, \u201cand not have anyone from a label sitting there and giving me their opinion on songs or mixes. I just wanted to make a record, then find the best place for it\u00b4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Affording studio time is, thankfully, no longer an issue, so in December of 2018, she decamped to East\/West studios in Los Angeles on her own dime. And, inclined to stick with an indie, the set will through Loma Vista Recordings, home of St. Vincent, Iggy Pop, and the Avett Brothers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As this spring dawned, so did uncertainty as tour dates were wiped out and Ivey fell ill. Margo moved the album once more, to July 2020, which is when it has, at long last, arrived. As concert halls remain closed and the pandemic still rages, the future for the industry remains shrouded in mystery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Price is resolute: \u00b4I [feel] like, \u2018I\u2019ve got to get this out,\u2019 no matter what happens, if I\u2019m touring or if I\u2019m at home, I\u2019m still a writer and I\u2019m still a musician. That\u2019s never going to be taken away\u00b4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MARGO PRICE KNOWS HER WORTH By Norman Warwick Now four years in the music spotlight, Margo Price (left) is not sure how to summarise the whole experience. \u00b4I\u00b4ve been frustrated,\u00b4 Margo admits, speaking to Esquire magazine, via Zoom, about her experience with the mainstream country music establishment. \u00b4She speaks of the racism, the sexism, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2520"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2529,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2520\/revisions\/2529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}