Margo Price
Wild At Heart Tour
with special guest
Ny Oh
Saturday, March 14th
16+
This show is standing room only.
Veranda Bar opens at 6pm (21+) for drinks and local food vendors
Venue doors open at 6:45pm
Show starts at 7:30pm
VIP ticket includes:
* One General Admission Ticket
* Intimate Pre-Show Acoustic Performance by Margo Price
* Q&A With Margo Price
* Group Photo with Margo Price
* Exclusive Limited-Edition Tour Poster, Signed by Margo Price (Exclusive to VIP Guests)
* One (1) Specially Designed Margo Price Tote Bag
* One (1) Commemorative VIP Laminate
* Pre-Show Merchandise Shopping Opportunity
* Venue First Entry
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Margo Price
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https://www.facebook.com/MargoAndThePriceTags] | Instagram [
https://www.instagram.com/missmargoprice/] | Tiktok [
http://tiktok.com/@margoraeprice] | Youtube [ https://www.youtube.com/@margopricemusic]
Nearly a decade ago, Margo Priceturned Nashville on its head with her breakthrough, beloved debut solo album, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter. Released inthe throes of bro-country and before pop stars were crossing over into thegenre left and right, it showcased an artist completely unafraid to double downnot only on herself, but what she’d always loved: classic country songs writtenfrom the intellect and the gut, hell-bent on truth-telling and both timelessand urgent all at once. Respected by her peers, praised by critics and belovedby her fans, Price created a lane where independent-minded, insurgent countrymusic can exist and thrive alongside the mainstream, and became an ardentfighter for her beliefs in a genre where the norm is to shut up and sing. Atrailblazer and a champion for the craft, Price redefined what it meant to be amodern country artist.
And now she’s back with an exquisite,truly timeless album that reconnects with her roots and pays tribute to the artof the country song, inspired in part by the legends whom she now callscolleagues and friends. Hard Headed Womanis both a look forward and a look back: a way to march forward whilestaying true to yourself when the path of less resistance is right there infront of us, and short cuts are around every corner. And a way to look backwhen we need to trim what is no longer working, and to stay connected withwhere we’re from. It is a promise and a manifesto, a love song to both a cityand a genre, and a defiant cry for individuality.
In creating Hard Headed Woman, Price brought all of her power as one of our most beloved and respected songwriters tocraft a deep exploration of love and America in a time of unprecedenteduncertainty. Featuring appearances from Tyler Childers, co-writes with RodneyCrowell and a Waylon Jennings song that his widow, Jessi Colter, urged her tosing, it is country music as only Price can make it: free of rules, cherishingtradition, hard headed to the core but with a delicate, beating heart.
Since releasing Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, Price has barely slowed down. She’s madefour records, played Saturday Night Live,been nominated for a Grammy, toured the world alongside artists like ChrisStapleton and Willie Nelson, released a lauded memoir (Maybe We’ll Make It, due on paperback September 2nd),became an in-demand producer and was appointed as the first female board memberof Nelson’s Farm Aid. And she’s been fearless when it came to genre, venturinginto psychedelic rock on her most recent, Jonathan Wilson-produced record, Strays. It would have been easiest tojust stay that course, and keep running. But Price doesn’t follow success orcomfort. She follows the art.
It took a whole lot of hard work andhonesty with herself and others to get there, but that’s never stopped Pricebefore. “I made the decision that I hadto rebuild everything from the ground up,” Price says. “There’s all thispressure to be pumping out content, and I felt the opposite in the way I wantedto approach this record and my life in general.”
Price had also established herself asone of the most passionate, vocal artists in country music and beyond when itcame to standing up for political and personal causes, from the presidentialelection, to abortion to gun control: happily hard headed when it came to thefight for equality and justice, especially for the working class andunderserved in our society. Price has always brilliantly woven her activisminto her songs, but her role as a spokesperson had started to overtake, onoccasion, her role as a songwriter. She wanted to focus on using her writtenword to deliver the most potent punch of all.
“I always hope to do like Johnny Cashdid,” Price says, “which is speak up for the common man and woman. But therehave been so many threats and anger and vitriol over the years, when I am onlycoming from a place of love.”
Price realized she just needed abreak from everything outside of the bubble of family life and her art. Shestarted spending more time at home, writing songs alone and with her husband,Jeremey Ivey. She started popping up in the dive bars and tiny venues aroundNashville where she got her start, sometimes just to play a country cover ortwo or dance with the crowd. She refused guidance to write for pop stars orcompromise her values for a quick buck. Most of all, she turned the emphasis inher music back to songwriting, exactly where she began.
“So much of Strays was leaning into this psychedelic, textural territory,” saysPrice. The music lent itself to vibrant, heavy stage jams, with Price oftenhopping behind the drumkit and bruising her thigh from a tambourine beat. Shefound herself longing for the days when it was just her and her guitar, playingat an East Nashville dive bar. “I always knew,” she adds, “I would come back tothis more rooted sound.”
HardHeaded Woman is rooted to its core. Rooted in Price’s history and struggleto make it as a musician for so many years in a town that prizes uniformity andthe bottom line, rooted in the country and folk sounds that have become hersignature, rooted in the simplicity of a few key collaborators instead ofsongs-by-committee. At the heart of Price’s work is her creative partnershipwith Ivey, with whom she describes as having a “soul connection.” “I'm asongwriter,” Price says. “I'm not somebody who goes out and needs five peopleto craft a song, and then tack my name on it. That’s never been my style. Ihave something to say.”
Something to say, nothing to prove.The first song they wrote for the album that would become Hard Headed Woman was “Close to You,” a simple, pining call for alover that is infused with the sounds of the desert. It’s unfettered andtruth-telling, accented by some flamenco guitar and Price’s gorgeous, urgentvocals. “We played the jukebox whiledemocracy fell,” Price sings, never letting her songs fall out of thecontext in which they exist. It’s the kind of thing that only she could write,carrying both love and fear in one single line.
As more songs started to form, anearly boost of confidence came from her friends Rodney Crowell and EmmylouHarris, who heard some of the work at a political fundraiser and encouragedPrice to keep going. “I have both ofthem to thank for building me up and making me believe in the songs I amwriting in this season of my life,” Price says. Crowell remained not only aninspiration and supporter of the album but a contributor: he co-wrote two songswith Price and Ivey.
The album that unfolded from there isdrenched in Price’s unique story and unshakeable instincts: while Midwest Farmer’s Daughter was about herjourney from childhood to Nashville, HardHeaded Woman is very much her battle since from dive bars to tour buses,through parenthood and marriage, through scrutiny and sacrifice all whilefighting constantly for what she believes in, and the music she loves. Itbegins with a proclamation on the prelude, which serves as the album’s missionstatement: or, Price puts it, “a disclaimer and reminder that I don't owe youfucking shit.”
Songs like the album’s lead single,“Don’t Let the Bastards Get you Down,” speak for the downtrodden and theforgotten, an “anthem for people who are being overlooked in society and needto be lifted up,” Price says, “because we are up against so much right now.” Asso many of Price’s songs do, it speaks both for the personal and the politicalall at once. Price was inspired by the message Kris Kristofferson whispered toSinead O’Connor when she was booed on stage at a Bob Dylan 30thAnniversary show, and even got Kristofferson’s widow’s blessing to include hisname on the credits. “I always admired Kris for how he stood by her in thatmoment, instead of pulling her off the stage like they told him,” Price says.It serves as a reminder to anyone who encounters resistance in the face offighting for justice to keep going, especially when it would be so much easierto capitulate and cower.
“The song was originally written fora movie that never happened, but it feels so timely with everything that’sgoing on in the world,” Price explains. “The phrase, ‘Don’t Let The BastardsGet You Down’ originates from Margaret Atwood’s brilliant 1985 piece ofliterature, The Handmaid’s Tale. It’sreferred to in Latin and used as a rallying cry for resistance against theoppressive regime that symbolizes resilience and hope in the face of adversity.Nolite te Bastardes Caborundorum.”
That spirit resonates all across thesongs of Hard Headed Woman. Theblistering “Don’t Wake Me Up” was based around some writings that Ivey stumbledupon in one of Price’s notebooks, inspired in part by her deep readings ofFrank Stanford, one of her favorite poets due to his freewheeling work free ofboundaries. They spun it all into song in minutes that chugs with the essenceof Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”: “Theway this world is going, ain’t where I’m at,” Price howls in her powerful,unmistakable voice. “Nowhere is Where,” turns slow and contemplative, road-wornbut never broken, the call of someone who has been to the mountain but neverforgets the prairie below. And “Losing Streak” whirls in with an organ and outwith a weary, world-worn defiance: our worst times don’t define us, but they’realways part of who we are.
There are songs that go back to thebeginning of Price’s early grind, like the western-tinged “Wild at Heart,”reflecting on how much her life and the city of Nashville has changed over theyears – and how important it is to stay true to exactly who you are despite itall. Another, called “Red Eye Flight,” is about both leaving a lover and alsoleaving her longtime band the Pricetags. “I’ve been with those players for ten,thirteen years,” she says. “But I could feel that I needed to make a change,and to change texturally what’s going on with the band. But it’s a familialbond, different than a friendship.”
There are a few choice covers andcuts, too: “Love Me Like You Used To Do” is by Price’s friend Steven Knudson,an unsung Nashville writer on whom she hopes to shine a spotlight (helping toelevate the town’s incredibly talented but buried voices is one of Price’sfavorite pastimes). Friend Tyler Childers joins Price on that waltzing countryballad, while “I Just Don’t Give a Damn” is Price’s “Jolene goes to Memphis”take on the Jimmy Peppers and George Jones classic. And showcasing how Pricehas been trusted by the greats to lead the next generation of country musicrenegades, “Kissin You Goodbye” was given to Price by Jessi Colter, WaylonJennings’ widow, when Price was producing her record. They’re songs chosen toappreciate the past and the present as she sees it – not as Music Row or thealgorithm might dictate – and place Price squarely amongst her heroes as aliving and breathing part of the new country tradition.
When it came time to record Hard Headed Woman, it was important forPrice to keep that ethos alive, decamping to Nashville’s RCA Studio A andreuniting with producer Matt Ross-Spang, with whom she made her first two soloalbums. Though she has worked with everyone from Sturgill Simpson to Jonathan Wilsonsince, it was Spang’s vocal rebuke of easy studio shortcuts that made her eagerto reunite again. “He’s so unpretentious,” Price says. “He fully believes inme, he fully believes in my songs. He got us back to feeling it in your gut andnot needing everything to be so perfect.”
It felt truly significant for Price tomake the album in Nashville, a city where she’s lived for over two decades andplayed a seminal role in its transformation, yet somehow never recorded analbum in the place she’s called home. The historic RCA Studio A helped connectPrice even closer to the legacy of songwriting she holds so dear, a place whereeveryone from Dolly Parton to John Prine to Loretta Lynn have made albums. “Itfelt like there were ghosts and spirits just hanging out,” Price says. In perfectkismet, she also launched her own signature Gibson J-45 guitar, inspired by her1960’s Gibson she’s had by her side for years as her career took off. It’s allpart of the continuity that she wishes to create with her art, not just withtimeless songs but inspiring future generations of women, mothers and artistsin general who don’t want to sacrifice their vision, moral compass or familylife in favor of mainstream success.
At its core, Hard Headed Woman is about that furious instinct to never waver,especially when ourselves, our values and our future is so clearly on the line.As she sings on the title track, “I ain’tashamed, I just am what I am.”
“I hope this album inspires people to befearless and take chances and just be unabashedly themselves,” Price says, “ina culture that tries as hard as it can to beat us into all being the same.”
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