Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Margot Price's new album, Hard Headed Woman, was recorded in
Speaker 2: the heart of Nashville at the legendary RCAA Studio A.
Speaker 2: That's the very place where the Nashville Sound was born
Speaker 2: and where greats like Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, and Charlie
Speaker 2: Pride have all recorded. It's the perfect setting for Margo,
Speaker 2: who's as much a student of country's rich history as
Speaker 2: she is a fan of its fearless rule breakers. She's
Speaker 2: never taken the straight path herself, a journey she tells
Speaker 2: in her twenty twenty two memoir Maybe We'll Make It.
Speaker 2: On today's episode, Bruce Headlam talks with Margot about the
Speaker 2: making of her new album and her creative partnership with
Speaker 2: her husband and longtime collaborator Jeremy Ivy. Margo also shares
Speaker 2: her thoughts on the inauthenticity of mainstream country and why
Speaker 2: she continues to stay committed to pouring both the extreme
Speaker 2: craft and care into every song. She writes, this is
Speaker 2: broken record, real musicians, real conversations. Here's Bruce Headlam's conversation
Speaker 2: with Margot Price. She starts by singing her new song
Speaker 2: Nowhere is.
Speaker 3: Where, nowherese Where.
Speaker 4: I Come from where nothing gros.
Speaker 3: Who's but the debuta who.
Speaker 5: In the dry rivers run, and the dry rivers run.
Speaker 3: Nowhere elsewhere nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 6: House speeding down the gravel road, Passers County Line, Passmbers
Speaker 6: County Line.
Speaker 4: On your way down, won't you pick me up?
Speaker 3: If there's.
Speaker 5: Room enough, you'vega gus in the truck. If you go
Speaker 5: in nowhere, I could use or ride point.
Speaker 3: The headline south and nowhere esewhere.
Speaker 4: Thoughts go along between the combine clouds and the waves
Speaker 4: of doud and the miles and miles of course, and
Speaker 4: the miles and miles of course.
Speaker 3: On your way down, won't pay me up?
Speaker 7: If there's.
Speaker 5: Room enough and you've got gas in the truck, if
Speaker 5: you're going over, I could use a ride. Put the
Speaker 5: headlights suth in, turn the radio along.
Speaker 7: Will be good.
Speaker 4: It's gone when the sun comes up, till the highway
Speaker 4: stops and the wheel's falled in me engine russ.
Speaker 5: Till the pavement turns, tomorrow burns into a blaze.
Speaker 3: Glory, got no regrets.
Speaker 4: Lot of cigaree red rewrite the story.
Speaker 3: On your way down? Won't pie me? If there's.
Speaker 5: Room love and you've got guas in trouble if you
Speaker 5: go in a could use all right, what the head.
Speaker 6: Lot so thing?
Speaker 1: Margot, thank you for coming in and we're talking about
Speaker 1: many things, but we're going to talk about Hard Headed Woman,
Speaker 1: which is your new album. Can you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the idea you had going into this album,
Speaker 1: how it might have differed from your last album.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm so happy to be here. I'm a big
Speaker 7: fan of this podcast, by the way, Thank you so much.
Speaker 7: I really just wanted to get back to the songwriting
Speaker 7: and the storytelling with this record. And I had so
Speaker 7: much fun on the last album exploring you know, more
Speaker 7: psychedelic rock territory with Jonathan Wilson, and that seeped over
Speaker 7: into our live shows with you know, we were doing
Speaker 7: lots of double drums and I jumped back there on
Speaker 7: the drum kit and lots of jams that you know,
Speaker 7: went on for ten to twenty minutes. But I really
Speaker 7: wanted to get back to, you know, more stripped down,
Speaker 7: raw storytelling.
Speaker 1: Did you come in with more finished songs for this
Speaker 1: one than the last one, which was a little more experimental,
Speaker 1: a little more ragged.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we I mean it took a really long time
Speaker 7: for me to get in the studio. I won't go
Speaker 7: into all the details on why, but we were writing
Speaker 7: on the road. We were writing. We went out to
Speaker 7: Joshua Tree and wrote some songs. My husband and I
Speaker 7: kind of stayed in the house out there, and then
Speaker 7: ended up getting together with Rodney Krall, one of my
Speaker 7: favorite songwriters in Nashville, and wrote with him. Wrote with
Speaker 7: another friend of mine, her name is Marien Negler. So yeah,
Speaker 7: we had we did a lot of pre production for
Speaker 7: this album. We went over to the friend's house. He's
Speaker 7: got a home studio and just the band and I
Speaker 7: were laying things down and trying things out before we
Speaker 7: got into RCAA, because I did want to have a
Speaker 7: very clear cut. I think country music is more exact
Speaker 7: than people think. I think a lot of people think
Speaker 7: it's so easy to you know, to play country music
Speaker 7: whenever folk Americana, But you've got to have all the
Speaker 7: parts there and everything has to give other things space.
Speaker 7: And so there was a lot of a lot more
Speaker 7: planning with this one, for sure.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned Jeremy, your husband, your partner in crime,
Speaker 1: and you're writing partner. How do you guys write together?
Speaker 1: Tell me about that?
Speaker 7: Yeah, so sometimes we sit down and you know, completely
Speaker 7: blink slate and work from the ground up. Other times
Speaker 7: we'll go off separately and then come back into the
Speaker 7: room and show, you know, show each other the idea is.
Speaker 7: Sometimes yeah, it'll be something that like he'll have an
Speaker 7: idea for a title, and he'll throw it to me
Speaker 7: and then I'll work on it and then we'll come
Speaker 7: back together. But each one is unique in the way
Speaker 7: that it's kind of born. I think the best ones
Speaker 7: come when the melody and everything is in the words
Speaker 7: and everything's all just rapid fire. That's kind of how
Speaker 7: Don't Wake Me Up really came about. Like that. He
Speaker 7: found this notebook of mine and a poem I'd scribbled
Speaker 7: down a couple of years ago, and just was like,
Speaker 7: this is such a great poem. We should make this
Speaker 7: into a song. And so then he just started playing
Speaker 7: this very simple blues progression and we had the whole
Speaker 7: thing written like ten minutes. It was like it was
Speaker 7: so fun, you know, I felt like I could have
Speaker 7: written ten more verses to that one.
Speaker 1: I love that song because it's like an encyclopedia song.
Speaker 1: People don't do it those things anymore. But like I've
Speaker 1: been everywhere the old I guess it was Hank Snow
Speaker 1: did that song end of the World as we know
Speaker 1: at ori em. You know, just people just like We're
Speaker 1: just gonna It's every.
Speaker 7: Variation, all the places. Yeah, it really started after I
Speaker 7: was reading a Frank Stanford poem and I loved that
Speaker 7: duality of like, what's going on in the world currently
Speaker 7: and still thinking about all the places you can dream.
Speaker 1: I should say this is primarily an album. It's about you.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of love songs, but the outside world
Speaker 1: does kind of weave its way in and out, sometimes
Speaker 1: in really unexpected places. There's a beautiful line in one
Speaker 1: song where you're talking about listening to the jukebox while
Speaker 1: democracy falls, and it's completely unexpected. It's like an easter
Speaker 1: egg in the middle of this.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think even yeah, when you're in the middle
Speaker 7: of a moment with with somebody or you know, with
Speaker 7: your family, that's kind of how it is, you know,
Speaker 7: those the dark things that they creep in there. But
Speaker 7: it's Yeah, I'm especially proud of that line.
Speaker 1: Tell me about meeting up with Rodney Crowell and how
Speaker 1: that came about.
Speaker 7: Yes, I've been covering his work for a really long time,
Speaker 7: and I think he shared a version of that I
Speaker 7: did of ain't living long like this and kind of
Speaker 7: started creeping into his world. Actually, him and Emmy Lou
Speaker 7: Harris and myself we were at a benefit and we
Speaker 7: were playing some songs, just passing the guitar, just me
Speaker 7: with the two of them. It was just so intimidating,
Speaker 7: and it was for a really good cause. And I
Speaker 7: was kind of, you know, wood shopping these tunes with them,
Speaker 7: and they were so support They were singing along like
Speaker 7: I'm close to you and on these songs before we'd
Speaker 7: even went into the studio, and I knew that was
Speaker 7: a good sign and don't wake me up. They were
Speaker 7: there in those early days and so just having them
Speaker 7: kind of building me up and going through these transitions
Speaker 7: that I've been in. I had left my managers, left
Speaker 7: my band, but Rodney was like more than happy to
Speaker 7: write with me. And really we were kind of pulling
Speaker 7: so directly from his style on like Red Eye Flight,
Speaker 7: that I thought, man, it would be killer to get
Speaker 7: Rodney on this song and went out to his house,
Speaker 7: got to hear some songs he was working on, and
Speaker 7: he helped us finish Bastards as well, and just watching
Speaker 7: him turn a phrase in real time and seeing kind
Speaker 7: of how he does it. He'd try one thing and
Speaker 7: then he'd keep taking it further, and well, what about this?
Speaker 7: What about this? He had this line in don't let
Speaker 7: the bastards get you down that he threw out I
Speaker 7: just let every time I hear it, he said, Cocaine
Speaker 7: and poontang pleasure don't make a man of measure. I said,
Speaker 7: I don't think I can sing that word in a song,
Speaker 7: but I love that you threw that out there.
Speaker 1: Wow, well cocaine made it in it.
Speaker 7: Sure did. Yeah, that was my line, mel the cocaine
Speaker 7: in existence couldn't keep their nose out of my business.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, he's a great songwriter. He is.
Speaker 7: He's unmatched.
Speaker 1: Can you think of something else in Red Eye, which
Speaker 1: I think is a great song on this album. Was
Speaker 1: there anything musical he provided for that as well? Or
Speaker 1: was it mainly lyrical?
Speaker 7: A lot of those chords were Jeremy coming up with
Speaker 7: those chords, but it was mostly getting the lyrics dialed
Speaker 7: in on both those songs that I don't know who
Speaker 7: you think you are, but I sure know who I
Speaker 7: ain't like that was all Rodney like twisting these things.
Speaker 7: I just love his Texas vernacular.
Speaker 1: Are there things you would the next time you sit
Speaker 1: down to write, You'll think, what would Is there a
Speaker 1: Rodney thing? Yeah? What would Rodney do? Is that?
Speaker 7: Yeah? What would Rodney do?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 7: We had so much fun over there that day, just
Speaker 7: swapping stories with him and passing the guitar around. And
Speaker 7: he has this really old black acoustic guitar that everybody
Speaker 7: has signed. It's got Johnny Cash's name is scratched into it.
Speaker 7: And at the end of the right he had me
Speaker 7: sign his guitar. Wow, it was like a rite of passage.
Speaker 7: And I had him sign mine too. I have a
Speaker 7: guitar with a bunch of signatures. But it's just really
Speaker 7: surreal after like I said, just kind of digging into
Speaker 7: his work not only as a songwriter and a lyricist,
Speaker 7: but I'm a huge fan of his memoir China Berry
Speaker 7: Sidewalks was brilliant, and so being able to kind of
Speaker 7: have him as a mentor and say, yeah, it's okay,
Speaker 7: it's okay if you if you pull from me, all
Speaker 7: I'll go ahead and put my name on it with you.
Speaker 7: And my blessing is.
Speaker 1: That one of the things that inspired you to write
Speaker 1: your memoir.
Speaker 7: Definitely had his memoirs beautiful. I've got a big thing
Speaker 7: about whenever I get into an artist, I immediately try
Speaker 7: to go see if there's any books written on them,
Speaker 7: or even better, like a memoir. And I think the
Speaker 7: reason I wanted to write my book was really just
Speaker 7: so I didn't forget all of the all of the
Speaker 7: coming up and you know, all those like times of struggle,
Speaker 7: because I never have journals really, and it's I was
Speaker 7: using a lot of substances and drinking very heavily in
Speaker 7: a lot of my early days in Nashville, and so
Speaker 7: it's kind of like putting together pieces of a crime scene,
Speaker 7: you know. I had had to ask sometimes.
Speaker 1: A literal crime scene. Yes, yes, yeah, you could have
Speaker 1: the same tagline as Keith rich and his memoir, which
Speaker 1: is surprise. I remember it all.
Speaker 7: Yes, it was so good too. I love I've read
Speaker 7: it and then we've also listened to it on tape
Speaker 7: back when we were touring in like an astro van
Speaker 7: with my old band Buffalo Clover. We would just always
Speaker 7: have Keith Richards life on and like his voice while
Speaker 7: he's saying it, it is just so it's so fun
Speaker 7: to listen to. I just remember him being like, you know,
Speaker 7: the purest cocaine was taro it.
Speaker 1: But I was going to mention Merle Haggard because there
Speaker 1: was such a there's such a kind of Roy Nichols
Speaker 1: guitar sound on a lot of these songs, but starting
Speaker 1: with the first one, starting with Don't let the Bastards
Speaker 1: Get You Down.
Speaker 7: I really love all the tones we were able to achieve.
Speaker 7: My guitarist Jamie Davis, who's been with me since the beginning,
Speaker 7: played on Midwest Farmer's Daughter and All American Maid. He
Speaker 7: is just so thoughtful in what he plays, and it's
Speaker 7: not ever too showy. It's like melodic serves the song.
Speaker 7: Him and Russ Paul, who came in to play pedal steel,
Speaker 7: and Russ Paul's the absolute legend and has just played
Speaker 7: on everybody's stuff. The way that they had this kind
Speaker 7: of musical conversation with each other throughout the whole album,
Speaker 7: it's just it's brilliant. And I think it was fun
Speaker 7: for Russ too, because you know, there were songs where
Speaker 7: we're like, let's gritty it up, like Red Eye Flight.
Speaker 7: He had his his pedal steel sounds like a semi
Speaker 7: truck just plowing through and I don't know if he
Speaker 7: gets to do that on all all of the sessions
Speaker 7: that he plays.
Speaker 1: And the other one, which I think is an absolute killer,
Speaker 1: is love Me like you used to do.
Speaker 7: Oh thank You. That song was actually written for me
Speaker 7: by a dear friend of mine. His name is Stephen Knutsen,
Speaker 7: and I've known him for nearly twenty years. Brilliant songwriter,
Speaker 7: brilliant singer as well, and painter and just kind of
Speaker 7: all around talented human who's just working at a grocery
Speaker 7: store in Nashville, not really doing anything with his music.
Speaker 7: And he wrote a song for me a few years
Speaker 7: back that I put out. It's called it Ain't Drunk
Speaker 7: Driving if You're riding a Horse, And so he sent
Speaker 7: me this one, and I just knew I had to
Speaker 7: sing it. And you know, there's a couple of lines
Speaker 7: in there, like using drugs for the masses and rose
Speaker 7: colored glasses until we can't even see what is true.
Speaker 7: It was like, I don't, you know, I don't often
Speaker 7: want to just cover a song that maybe I haven't
Speaker 7: had a hand in writing. But he wrote it almost
Speaker 7: from a perspective of mine and just knowing me so long.
Speaker 1: You could also close your eyes and imagine Tanya Tucker
Speaker 1: doing it, or any of the kind of I wish
Speaker 1: she would, Yeah, maybe she, maybe she will. Here that
Speaker 1: I thought that about a lot of these songs. I
Speaker 1: know you are the artist. You don't write to have
Speaker 1: other people cover your songs. I know they have, But
Speaker 1: on this album, I thought, well, who's not going to
Speaker 1: want to cover Close to You or Wild at Heart?
Speaker 7: It just seemed Yeah, I wanted it to feel timeless.
Speaker 7: I didn't want it to feel like current or too old.
Speaker 7: It just can live in a space that's a forever
Speaker 7: space hopefully.
Speaker 1: Well that's an interesting question because I was thinking about
Speaker 1: this album, and I was thinking about, you know, people
Speaker 1: who are performing now, and I know you're not on
Speaker 1: the sort of pop end of Nashville country songwriting. I
Speaker 1: just looked up out of sheer interest, the top thirty
Speaker 1: songs on the country charts this week, and I think
Speaker 1: there were three women. All the rest were men. All
Speaker 1: the rest may have been more than Walman actually, but they.
Speaker 7: Were Morgan who.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I get the feeling. His is the album everybody
Speaker 1: falls asleep to and it just keeps playing.
Speaker 7: And it's got you know, each song has like thirty
Speaker 7: co writers on it. It's ridiculous. Yeah, I try to.
Speaker 7: I try to stay out of their side of town
Speaker 7: and hope stay out of mind. That's why I covered
Speaker 7: that George Jones song and just don't give a damn right.
Speaker 1: So that's felt like a bit A couple of the
Speaker 1: covers felt a little bit like this is you talking
Speaker 1: to your hometown.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think you could even say love me like
Speaker 7: you used to. Is could be too. It could be
Speaker 7: to a lover and that's probably who was written for,
Speaker 7: but it could also be about you know, maybe fans
Speaker 7: who've turned their back on me, or maybe people who
Speaker 7: don't who don't like me because of you know, what
Speaker 7: I stand for or things I've said in the past.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll be right back with more from Margot Price
Speaker 2: and Bruce Hadlam.
Speaker 1: After the Break, your last album was far less country.
Speaker 1: Are you comfortable saying, yeah, I'm a country artist, I'm Nashville,
Speaker 1: this is who I am.
Speaker 7: Well, definitely, I've lived in Nashville longer than I've lived
Speaker 7: in my hometown or in Illinois, and it's a huge
Speaker 7: piece of my identity, of my soul and country music
Speaker 7: as well. I love it. I don't think anybody can
Speaker 7: own it. I don't think any one group of people
Speaker 7: can say this is country music. I mean, you really
Speaker 7: have to clarify when somebody says I like country music,
Speaker 7: you have to say, well, what kind? It's not cut
Speaker 7: and dry like that. And I'm not a cut and
Speaker 7: dry artist. I love so many different types of music,
Speaker 7: you know. I feel like when I started, I wanted
Speaker 7: to be like a folk singer and country and everything
Speaker 7: it all comes from the blues, even rock, and you know,
Speaker 7: it's all it's all in this great, big melting pot.
Speaker 7: And you know, I was in soul bands and had
Speaker 7: horn section and backup singers and have done James Brown
Speaker 7: covers and there's just too many things to want to
Speaker 7: just whittle myself down to I'm a country music artist.
Speaker 7: And that is why I think that the label or
Speaker 7: the genre Americana is helpful because it gives a space
Speaker 7: for people who are just we're writing, you know, story songs,
Speaker 7: We're using real instruments, we're playing from a genuine, deep
Speaker 7: down place, and so yeah, I hate labels, I hate genres,
Speaker 7: but it is a beautiful thing in a place to
Speaker 7: have Americana music. Oh, I just saw Machine Gun. Kelly
Speaker 7: came out with an album. It has an album coming
Speaker 7: out it's called like Americana Something's And we had Bob
Speaker 7: Dylan do the intro for Have you seen that yet?
Speaker 1: Is that really Bob Dylan?
Speaker 7: I think somebody confirmed it's really Bob Dylan. It's not Ai.
Speaker 1: Really. Yeah, At this point, the difference between Bob Dylan
Speaker 1: and Ai Bob Dylan is probably a pretty thin one,
Speaker 1: isn't it.
Speaker 7: Oh No, don't say that about my precious Bobby.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, we're going to talk about actually your early
Speaker 1: influences because you didn't grow up in Nashville. You grew
Speaker 1: up unlike the vast majority of people who play country music.
Speaker 1: You actually grew up on a farm.
Speaker 7: Did Yeah. I grew up in a very rural area.
Speaker 7: Three thousand people in my hometown, and we lived outside
Speaker 7: of the town, no close neighbors and down a gravel
Speaker 7: road and all that cliched shit.
Speaker 1: You talked very movingly in your book about the problems
Speaker 1: that farmers were having at that point, and started with
Speaker 1: the boycott of the Soviet Union. It was interesting. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that's what led to so many of the
Speaker 1: foreclosures in the eighties.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it took a lot of like interviewing my family
Speaker 7: to kind of find out why they lost the farm.
Speaker 7: It was, you know, I thought at times people said, oh,
Speaker 7: it was a bad drought and there was a bad
Speaker 7: drought that year. Other times it was, oh, you know
Speaker 7: this corrupt man in town who was laundering money and
Speaker 7: is in prison now, And other people were saying, oh, no,
Speaker 7: it was because the government had us put in these
Speaker 7: green bins to dry our own corn, and then we
Speaker 7: all went bankrupts. There's so many problems, and it's so
Speaker 7: hard for farmers to make a living. That's why I
Speaker 7: feel like, even though I'm not a farmer, I connect
Speaker 7: with them because it's the same. It's like a music career.
Speaker 7: It takes all the just the perfect environment to make
Speaker 7: it grow and to make it thrive. And they're up
Speaker 7: against a lot of challenges right now, climate change, politics.
Speaker 1: Right. You have a lovely song that I think is
Speaker 1: about growing up there called Nowhere is Where You Come From?
Speaker 1: Tell me bit about that song.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I am. Every time I go back home. It's
Speaker 7: very grounding. It always kind of resets my nervous system
Speaker 7: in a way and yeah, just talking about the things
Speaker 7: that I saw growing up was you know, a lot
Speaker 7: of crop dusting planes always going overhead and just massive fields,
Speaker 7: vast emptiness. And that song Jeremy and I started writing together,
Speaker 7: and it was taking a really long time to flush
Speaker 7: out the just kind of the tagline that if you're
Speaker 7: going nowhere, I could use a ride line, and I
Speaker 7: don't know why. I just couldn't quite get the phrasing.
Speaker 7: I couldn't figure out what I wanted it to be.
Speaker 7: There's a song that is actually a Beck song and
Speaker 7: Johnny Cash covers it and it's called row Boat, and
Speaker 7: that song's like haunted me. The lyrics of it are like,
Speaker 7: you know, pick me up in your truck, go in
Speaker 7: no place. I'll be down with the gasoline, You'll be strange,
Speaker 7: you'll be far away, And that song has just like
Speaker 7: seeped into my existence. I feel like I definitely pulled
Speaker 7: a bit from that. But Morgan Niggler, who has written
Speaker 7: a lot with Jenny Lewis and Phoebe Bridges, she came
Speaker 7: over and and really helped me get that kind of
Speaker 7: cool ending that we have on it, where it like
Speaker 7: picks up and I'm happy with how that one turned out?
Speaker 1: And so a song like that that takes you a well,
Speaker 1: how long how long will you work on a song
Speaker 1: like that?
Speaker 7: Yeah, that one was a couple months of like, you know,
Speaker 7: figure some stuff out, get to a good place, and
Speaker 7: they go back and listen to it and you're like, ah,
Speaker 7: something's still not right, and try to wrestle with it
Speaker 7: again and then set it down. And I think, how
Speaker 7: long did Leonard Cohen say he wrestled with writing Hallelulijah's
Speaker 7: times when I feel.
Speaker 1: Like three years or vias are something? And Bob Dylan
Speaker 1: told me he wrote a song in.
Speaker 7: Like two hours, write his favorite song. And I think,
Speaker 7: you know, there's sometimes it's lightning, and sometimes it takes
Speaker 7: a little bit more nuance and a little bit more
Speaker 7: attention to detail. And I really wanted to get that
Speaker 7: one right because it's so sparse, and sometimes the ones
Speaker 7: with less words are are a little bit harder to write.
Speaker 1: Now, Leonard Cohen was the writer who he had these
Speaker 1: notebooks and he would write dozens and dozens of verses
Speaker 1: and then whittle them down. Are you that kind of writer?
Speaker 1: Do you write a lot and then squeeze it in?
Speaker 7: Or I go through phases phases of like being very prolific,
Speaker 7: and then phases of drought where I'm working on other things.
Speaker 7: I've been writing another book, so I go in between
Speaker 7: those mediums, and you know, sometimes I've I've got seven
Speaker 7: or eight like frames of songs working at a time,
Speaker 7: and then I won't show them to anybody for a
Speaker 7: long time, and then I'll finally, you know, sit down
Speaker 7: with usually Jeremy, it's what do you think about these?
Speaker 7: But yeah, I think it just kind of depends on
Speaker 7: the on the season of where I'm at, But I
Speaker 7: definitely have Sylvia Plath always talked about how she felt
Speaker 7: like her work was never good enough. She just had
Speaker 7: little fragments of things, like you know, she was comparing
Speaker 7: it to furniture, like oh, I've got this little chair
Speaker 7: over here, and I've got a couch over here. Like
Speaker 7: building the album is like building a whole house. So
Speaker 7: it's good to have all those fragments lying around.
Speaker 1: Is there always an an aha moment with a song
Speaker 1: where you go, Okay, it's now it's working.
Speaker 7: I think, so yeah, there's a I love when it
Speaker 7: kind of unlocks itself. Usually I think that's when you
Speaker 7: don't need to refer back to the demo to remember it.
Speaker 7: Oh interesting, you've got it in your head all day
Speaker 7: and you just you get a new song high when
Speaker 7: you know you're like sitting on something good. I think
Speaker 7: the intro to hard Headed Women, there's some lines in
Speaker 7: there that I had been kicking around in other songs
Speaker 7: for a long time, like the I've been High as
Speaker 7: Heaven and Stubborn as Hell. That's in like three different
Speaker 7: songs I wrote along the way. We did these sessions
Speaker 7: out at Rancho de la Luna back in twenty twenty
Speaker 7: three maybe early twenty twenty four, and got a song
Speaker 7: called always Leaving that I wrote with Morgan Nigeler and
Speaker 7: Jonathan Wilson, and a few other songs that were good songs,
Speaker 7: I just felt like they didn't fit with this project
Speaker 7: or like, and so then I was like, well, I
Speaker 7: can scavenge from the bones the good lines and put
Speaker 7: them in what I'm working on now. I'm only ripping
Speaker 7: off myself.
Speaker 1: You mentioned Leonard Cohen because he did live in Nashville
Speaker 1: for a while.
Speaker 7: I didn't know that he.
Speaker 1: Lived in Nashville, And one thing he said was that
Speaker 1: living in Nashville, listening to country music. It gave his
Speaker 1: songs a better narrative sense that they were it just
Speaker 1: wasn't this first and then this verse, but that it
Speaker 1: had some momentum going through. And I thought of that
Speaker 1: a couple times when in this album, when you were
Speaker 1: writing Red Eye Flight, which just sounds like I'm finally
Speaker 1: sick of you, I'm leaving. But then there's the line
Speaker 1: about actually being the love of your life, which sort
Speaker 1: of is a little unexpected and kind of it gives
Speaker 1: the song a lot more narrative strength because that doesn't
Speaker 1: come right off the top. It's not you're the love
Speaker 1: of my life now I'm leaving.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that song was when I first started writing it,
Speaker 7: it was kind of directed it a group of people,
Speaker 7: and Rotting told me I needed to narrow it down
Speaker 7: and put my finger at one person. Oh, I thought
Speaker 7: was great, and it definitely you know, my husband Can
Speaker 7: has at times had to be my punching bag on
Speaker 7: stage and I'll sing mean lines at him, you know,
Speaker 7: just for effect. But that one is a bit about
Speaker 7: our relationship, and it was also about my previous bandmates too,
Speaker 7: And it's really hard to to write a song and
Speaker 7: be mad at like six people all at once.
Speaker 1: It's easier to be mad at one.
Speaker 7: Easier just narrowed down to one. But yeah, I was
Speaker 7: coming from a yeah, larger place.
Speaker 1: Can you write when you're angry?
Speaker 7: Oh not when I'm like an eleven, not when I'm
Speaker 7: that mad. But it is a good tool for me
Speaker 7: to process emotions. And I do feel anger very strongly sometimes,
Speaker 7: So yeah, I can write when I'm angry, just not
Speaker 7: at like the boiling point.
Speaker 1: Does that lead to good songs? Do you think?
Speaker 7: I think so? I like the finger pointing songs. I
Speaker 7: like angry songs. I think like this town gets around
Speaker 7: from my you know, my first record, and even like
Speaker 7: don't let the bastards get you down, I would say
Speaker 7: angry it's angry at people. And sometimes you can't tell
Speaker 7: the people that you're mad at that it's about them.
Speaker 7: But yeah, it's a great way to just move through
Speaker 7: the emotion and just now you've felt it, now you
Speaker 7: get a move on. It's like writing the letter that
Speaker 7: you never send.
Speaker 1: M So, when you were growing up, when did when
Speaker 1: did music enter your life? When you were growing up.
Speaker 7: I was always listening to the radio growing up. I
Speaker 7: was always my parents always had a stereo system with
Speaker 7: like the record player and the console the too yours, Yeah,
Speaker 7: and we had it in the summers. We would pull
Speaker 7: the speakers outside and just always had music on. I
Speaker 7: think I probably started writing some of my first like
Speaker 7: songs and poems. I was very young, I don't know,
Speaker 7: like six seven eight. I would just hit record and
Speaker 7: play on a tape recorder and I would just sing
Speaker 7: things a cappella with no accompaniment. I started piano lessons
Speaker 7: probably around that age as well, maybe like seven eight,
Speaker 7: and I was learning, you know whatever my piano teacher
Speaker 7: wanted me to learn. But when I got the guitar,
Speaker 7: that was really when it picked up. And that was
Speaker 7: like twelve thirteen. Right around that time I started playing
Speaker 7: the guitar and really getting serious about the songwriting.
Speaker 1: And was there a moment that you said, maybe this
Speaker 1: is my life, Maybe this is what I'm gonna do.
Speaker 7: I vividly remember the guidance counselor coming into classroom in
Speaker 7: elementary school and passing everybody a sheet and you had
Speaker 7: to write down, you know what you wanted to be
Speaker 7: for career day. You could leave school on this day
Speaker 7: and go work at whatever trade you chose. And I
Speaker 7: think I wrote down like Broadway actress or you know,
Speaker 7: singer something and missus erdman. She said, no, that's that's
Speaker 7: not a job that you can choose. And I went
Speaker 7: home and I was pretty crushed, you know. I told
Speaker 7: my mom, like, wow, she said, I can't do this.
Speaker 7: And so my mother fought really hard for me to
Speaker 7: go to this theater in the Quad Cities near where
Speaker 7: we lived, somewhere in like brock Island, Illinois, and I
Speaker 7: got to go shadow some actress that was working in
Speaker 7: the theater.
Speaker 1: That's an amazing story. Yeah, good your mom.
Speaker 7: Yeah, she was like, well, absolutely, you can do that
Speaker 7: if you want to. That's of course it's a job.
Speaker 7: But then when college started rolling around, everybody was like, well,
Speaker 7: but you got to go to college. You know, my
Speaker 7: father didn't have the luxury of going to college, and
Speaker 7: they were like, we're going to pay for it, and
Speaker 7: you're going to go. And so off I went to
Speaker 7: NIU Northern Illinois University, and after a couple of years
Speaker 7: of just being bored, not showing up to the classes,
Speaker 7: and drinking too much, had a psychedelic mushroom trip and
Speaker 7: I just decided that I wanted to be a musician.
Speaker 7: That was at twenty and I dropped out of school
Speaker 7: after my sophomore year and moved to Nashville.
Speaker 1: And who are your influences at that point when you were.
Speaker 7: Writing loosen To Williams, Gillian Walsh, Fiona Apple, Like I
Speaker 7: already said Leonard Cohen, I've already mentioned Bob Dylan, Joan Bias.
Speaker 7: I think every woman that picks up a guitar wants
Speaker 7: to be Joan Bias.
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 7: At least that's how I feel. That's Emmy Lou Harris
Speaker 7: told me that too. She said that's that Joan was
Speaker 7: the reason she picked up a guitar.
Speaker 5: I liked.
Speaker 7: I liked Jules first rec. I loved Pieces of You
Speaker 7: when that came out. I just thought that was one
Speaker 7: of the first songs that I that I learned how
Speaker 7: to play on the guitar was Pieces of You. And
Speaker 7: I sang it at a county fair. I was in
Speaker 7: sixth grade and I won first place.
Speaker 1: Good for you. That was also that was a good
Speaker 1: time for women's music. It was really much all over
Speaker 1: the radio.
Speaker 7: Absolutely. I mean I loved Alanis Morissett too, Like there
Speaker 7: was so many people, I mean in Fiona Apple as well.
Speaker 7: I just I was obsessed with Fiona Apple. Every record
Speaker 7: that she put out, I mean, go pick it up.
Speaker 7: And I'm so glad I had them to look up to.
Speaker 7: And that's what I think the real problem is with
Speaker 7: country music today is that there are an incredible amount
Speaker 7: of women in country music right now. They're writing the
Speaker 7: best songs, they're making the best records, but it seems
Speaker 7: they always just get one that is kind of let
Speaker 7: in to the room and to be on the radio,
Speaker 7: and then the rest of us have to kind of
Speaker 7: fend for ourselves.
Speaker 1: I know, there's no question all the best writers now
Speaker 1: are women and country music absolutely, We've interviewed lots of them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Mary Goche now, she's love.
Speaker 7: Mary Gachet actually did a writing session with her not
Speaker 7: too long. How was that amazing? She's her and I
Speaker 7: have a lot in common and had a lot to
Speaker 7: talk about, so I think we talked for nearly two
Speaker 7: hours before we picked up the guitars and started writing.
Speaker 7: But she really puts herself into her songs, and she's
Speaker 7: not afraid to, you know, the self deprecation or the
Speaker 7: vulnerability that I think it takes to really write something
Speaker 7: that breaks your heart and hopefully breaks the person's heart
Speaker 7: listening to it.
Speaker 1: Well, her album The Foundling about being Adopted is just
Speaker 1: an amazing I have a friend who is adopted and
Speaker 1: struggles with it in a way, and it wasn't until
Speaker 1: I heard her album I really kind of understood his
Speaker 1: those feelings.
Speaker 7: I think Gillia Wels does such a great job too
Speaker 7: of kind of sharing her experience as you know, like
Speaker 7: an I'm sure you feel like an orphan your whole life.
Speaker 7: My husband as well, he was adopted. He's got a
Speaker 7: great song called Orphan Child. Yeah, it's a lot to
Speaker 7: process when you grow up and you don't know who
Speaker 7: your family is.
Speaker 1: It is interesting that when you grew up there was
Speaker 1: in almost every kind of music like that's when Hole
Speaker 1: was big, and in alternative music it was Liz Fair
Speaker 1: was like totally everything.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean Lilith Fair was huge, you know, I
Speaker 7: think it was. It felt like a very liberating time
Speaker 7: to be a woman, and but then you had what
Speaker 7: would stock to happen, like, Okay, maybe we're not as
Speaker 7: far as we think, and obviously now just going backwards. Yeah, Unfortunately, one.
Speaker 1: Of the influences you talked about in your book really
Speaker 1: surprised me. It was the Kinks really Well, it's not
Speaker 1: that I don't love the Kinks, I do, but but
Speaker 1: there's so sort of arch and English and class obsessed.
Speaker 1: What was it about the Kinks that you loved so much?
Speaker 7: I think it was all the things you just said.
Speaker 7: I loved that they were class obsessed. I loved that
Speaker 7: they made albums that were about things other than love
Speaker 7: and I you know, they're the underdogs of the brit
Speaker 7: rock scene. They they didn't have the opportunities that the
Speaker 7: Rolling Stones or the Beatles did, and I think that's
Speaker 7: one of the reasons why I really gravitated towards them.
Speaker 7: Dead End Street, all those songs like we Lived in
Speaker 7: those albums, Lola Versus Powermanned Money go Round, talking about
Speaker 7: you know, like where all the money's going when you
Speaker 7: get signed, and stuff like that. Like that has absolutely
Speaker 7: still seeped into who I am. And I think even
Speaker 7: that first record, Midwest Farmer's Daughter, I was talking about
Speaker 7: some of those things. I've got to see Ray when
Speaker 7: he played in Nashville, and he did a record in
Speaker 7: Nashville with one of my friends, and I was trying
Speaker 7: so hard to get in there and meet him. This
Speaker 7: was like seventeen years ago or something and Muswell Hillbillies,
Speaker 7: like they were so obsessed with like Southern culture, you know,
Speaker 7: even during that album cycle. And it's really cool to
Speaker 7: hear how that kind of echo chamber goes back where
Speaker 7: it's like we're influencing brit Rock and they're influencing us,
Speaker 7: and it just I love it.
Speaker 1: And I mean the song Waterloo Sunset probably one of
Speaker 1: the greatest songs.
Speaker 7: So good and like Strangers, that song destroys me.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, there's a good song on this album. I
Speaker 1: think that about that period in your life called Losing Streak. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so tell me about that.
Speaker 7: Yes, that song is a pretty exact story of what
Speaker 7: was going on in those days and in my twenties.
Speaker 7: And I loved being homeless. I loved having that struggle
Speaker 7: of like, oh, okay, I'm going to have to sleep
Speaker 7: in my car at the state park. I don't know.
Speaker 7: It was just really whatever I had to do to
Speaker 7: not move back in with my parents and bruise my
Speaker 7: pride and let them know it really wasn't working out
Speaker 7: so great.
Speaker 1: Did you faith that whole time that it would work at.
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: Really what kept you going because most people would have
Speaker 1: dropped out by that point.
Speaker 7: Even now, and even if all you know, if Jack
Speaker 7: White had not scooped me up out of my obscurity,
Speaker 7: I would like to think I would still be writing
Speaker 7: songs and playing songs and making music. I mean, I
Speaker 7: might still have to have like a straight job, but
Speaker 7: it's just such a huge part of my identity, and
Speaker 7: like I said, it's my emotional processing and everything kind
Speaker 7: of goes through that. Done a lot of work with
Speaker 7: my therapist to kind of figure out where like musician
Speaker 7: Margo ends and the other one begins, because it's it's
Speaker 7: just very deeply wrapped up in who I am.
Speaker 1: Don't do too much therapy on that. You want to
Speaker 1: you want to keep the creative juices flowing.
Speaker 7: And she moved to Kansas City, so I hadn't been.
Speaker 1: Thank god, thank god, you won't be cured. That's the
Speaker 1: important thing.
Speaker 7: Oh there's not a chance for that. I don't think
Speaker 7: I have the funds.
Speaker 2: Well, last break, and we're back with Margo Price.
Speaker 1: You tell a funny story about I think a great
Speaker 1: uncle you had who was a songwriter, and I think
Speaker 1: a pretty successful one, wasn't he.
Speaker 7: For absolutely, he's still in Nashville. He's still sharp as attack.
Speaker 7: I just went over and wrote a song with him
Speaker 7: a couple months ago. Really that turned out beautifully and
Speaker 7: I'm definitely going to record it. His name's Bobby Fisher,
Speaker 7: and he moved to Nashville in his early forties, left
Speaker 7: his job. Him and his wife moved down there and
Speaker 7: she kind of supported him as a nurse until he
Speaker 7: got his foot in the door. But he hung out
Speaker 7: at Tootsi's with all the degenerates and you know, hung
Speaker 7: out with Roger Miller and ended up getting you know,
Speaker 7: George Jones Cuts and Tanny Tucker and Charlie Pride and
Speaker 7: just the list goes on. It's it's really impressive. But
Speaker 7: when I moved to Nashville, I think that my mom
Speaker 7: and my family kind of everybody thought like, oh, maybe
Speaker 7: maybe uncle Bob will plug you in, get you in
Speaker 7: the studio and get you an album deal. And so
Speaker 7: I went over to his home and I, you know,
Speaker 7: i'd only really met him like a few times in
Speaker 7: my life when we passed through Nashville on vacation. But
Speaker 7: played him some songs and he sat there and listened,
Speaker 7: and when I finished, he said, well, you know what
Speaker 7: you need to do, don't you? I said, no, what
Speaker 7: do I need to do? And he said, well, you
Speaker 7: need to need to get rid of your TV, you
Speaker 7: need to get rid of your computer, and you need
Speaker 7: to just you just really need to sit in your
Speaker 7: apartment and just write and just keep writing and just
Speaker 7: don't stop writing because you're not there yet. And that hurt,
Speaker 7: as you know, as a twenty year old who just
Speaker 7: thought that I was already great, it really really hurt.
Speaker 7: But it was exactly the tough love that I needed.
Speaker 1: And did you take his advice?
Speaker 7: I did? I did. I started going out to like
Speaker 7: every writer's round in Nashville and would go, you know,
Speaker 7: sign up on the list.
Speaker 1: And explained to people what the writer's rounds are.
Speaker 7: Yeah, writers round is like usually they're in a bar
Speaker 7: or like a little list room or a club, and
Speaker 7: it'd be like, oh, you know Wednesday nights like New
Speaker 7: Faces Night or whatever, so you can come out and
Speaker 7: you got to get there early, so you got to
Speaker 7: sign up on the list, just kind of like karaoke,
Speaker 7: but you know, you bring your own guitar and you
Speaker 7: bring your own songs. And there was this place that
Speaker 7: we went we started frequenting. It was called the Hall
Speaker 7: of Fame Lounge, and it was in a Best Western
Speaker 7: right down on Music Row. The inside was decorated like
Speaker 7: cracker barrel or something. It just had like all these
Speaker 7: chotchkeys and knickknacks and antlers and things up on the wall.
Speaker 7: And everybody there that was playing was like forty to
Speaker 7: seventy years old, and I was twenty. I don't even
Speaker 7: think I could drink at the time, but I would
Speaker 7: hang out there and I would hang out with all
Speaker 7: those old people, and they would buy me beers and
Speaker 7: I would just sit and study. Like what it was
Speaker 7: the audience reaction to, you know, somebody who finished a
Speaker 7: song or say a line. It was like, what makes
Speaker 7: the song good? What makes it memorable? And that was
Speaker 7: in lieu of like going to Belmont University and getting
Speaker 7: a degree in music, or you know, going to Berkeley.
Speaker 7: I just cut my teeth around town.
Speaker 1: At the Best Western, at.
Speaker 7: The Best Western Hall of Fame Lounge.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm. You said at the time you were writing
Speaker 1: a lot of minor chords. Sylvia Plath lyrics on this album.
Speaker 1: You mentioned in some of the publicity stuff you said,
Speaker 1: I want to do a one, four or five song.
Speaker 1: I want to go back to that very basic sound.
Speaker 1: Tell me about what you were thinking when you said that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the three chords in the truth, you know, cliche
Speaker 7: that you find it's so true. Sometimes sometimes you only
Speaker 7: need one chord. If you've got a melody and a hook,
Speaker 7: that's good enough. I think my husband, he can be
Speaker 7: quite cordy with things that he does. He's just got
Speaker 7: an incredible knowledge of, you know, how the guitar works.
Speaker 7: And I find that so many of the songs that
Speaker 7: I've kept in my catalog and the things that I
Speaker 7: play on stage that are older, a lot of times
Speaker 7: they are just the just a one four or five,
Speaker 7: and you know, you don't have to reinvent the wheel
Speaker 7: or like make something that has never been done before.
Speaker 7: I think building off of tradition and going back to
Speaker 7: these prolific songwriters like Christofferson, who definitely pulled from his
Speaker 7: vernacular on like Losing Streak. But it's a very I mean,
Speaker 7: those chords are they're one four or five. There's there's
Speaker 7: no magic tricks going on there.
Speaker 1: Although the magic trick is that it is a one
Speaker 1: four five, isn't it? That always amazes me. Sometimes I'll
Speaker 1: hear songs and I'll think, I wonder what that progression is,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh, it's a one four.
Speaker 7: Five less can really be more? Yeah times Yeah, but.
Speaker 1: It can sound so different and it's it's it's sort
Speaker 1: of disarming.
Speaker 7: Yeah. Yeah. I mean I do love, you know, doing
Speaker 7: a key change, having like a lift that happens so
Speaker 7: subtly you don't quite notice. Like on I just don't
Speaker 7: give a damn that last chorus moves up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you've got a modulation, yeah.
Speaker 7: Or even like kissing you goodbye. I think we added
Speaker 7: a really fun chord. Sometimes I don't know chord names,
Speaker 7: but I know how to play him like a kissing
Speaker 7: you good but I like, I don't know if the
Speaker 7: original had this in there, but it just adds passing chord,
Speaker 7: a nice little passing chord.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So your husband is the he's the coord nerd.
Speaker 7: He is a little bit more of a chord nerd.
Speaker 7: And I mean, you know, I know my circle of
Speaker 7: fifths and I there's definitely been times where I've been
Speaker 7: able to kind of break through something that's never been done,
Speaker 7: Like Hands of Time is an A but the chorus
Speaker 7: goes down and modulates down to G and when I
Speaker 7: initially wrote that song. My husband said, I don't think
Speaker 7: that works. That doesn't sound right, but it gives the
Speaker 7: illusion that you're that the key is being moved up
Speaker 7: because I'm jumping up into like my belting voice, but
Speaker 7: I'm actually moduling down. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1: It was such a great trick, isn't it when when
Speaker 1: you think it's going up, but it's going down. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like a little counterpoint with chords. You said in
Speaker 1: your book, that was the first the first time you
Speaker 1: said okay, now that's a song.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 7: And I really wasn't writing it for anybody but myself.
Speaker 7: It was really just like I didn't have a therapist
Speaker 7: back then, and I needed to get some things off
Speaker 7: my chest. And there's a lot of subliminal lines in
Speaker 7: there that you know, I say, like the men they
Speaker 7: brought me problems and the drinking brought me grief. I
Speaker 7: don't exactly go into exactly what my men troubles are,
Speaker 7: but it was, you know, just every line of that song,
Speaker 7: it was it was therapy, and it was finally me
Speaker 7: just saying like, okay, I'm I'm a loser musician. Nothing's
Speaker 7: happened for me, and this is where I'm at and
Speaker 7: people loved it.
Speaker 1: Were you conscious of those thoughts when you were writing it?
Speaker 1: Or is that something you looked back later and said
Speaker 1: that must have been what.
Speaker 7: I was feeling conscious of, like being self degrading, or like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what you just said, like here's a song about
Speaker 1: me is the loser musician?
Speaker 7: I think I really had just reached a breaking point.
Speaker 7: I remember so many times we would go on tour
Speaker 7: with my band Buffalo Clover, and we'd you know, set
Speaker 7: up a little weekend run and we come back, we
Speaker 7: hanging out in the bar and you're, you know, your
Speaker 7: friends ask you like, how is the run? How are
Speaker 7: the shows? How's the turnout? Oh? It was right, you know,
Speaker 7: you just lie through your teeth. Oh yeah. Everybody loved it.
Speaker 7: And then kind of at a certain point it was
Speaker 7: just like, man, this is this is not going the
Speaker 7: way that I wanted to. And it just felt like
Speaker 7: I just took off a heavy coat and was like,
Speaker 7: all right, this is who I am, this is where
Speaker 7: I'm at now, and not be afraid to look at
Speaker 7: myself in the mirror.
Speaker 1: Interesting, you had no money back then, This is what
Speaker 1: fascinated me. But you were determined that you were going
Speaker 1: to record your first album at Sun Records, and you
Speaker 1: managed to do it. I don't know how you knew
Speaker 1: somebody who could pick a lock or something. I don't
Speaker 1: know how you did that. Now this album, tell me
Speaker 1: about the recording of it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, yeah, the first album, we pawned a car,
Speaker 7: ponned a bunch of stuff so we could go in there.
Speaker 7: And it was luck that we got to do it
Speaker 7: because I ended up some of the money from the
Speaker 7: pond items had disappeared, and so then I had to
Speaker 7: borrow money from a guy who owned a pizza shop
Speaker 7: to pay for the rest of it because the check
Speaker 7: to Sun bounced. Anyway, I digress this this album.
Speaker 1: You know, it was probably not the first bounced check
Speaker 1: they've ever had. Yeah, I'm guessing.
Speaker 7: I need to reach out to that guy. Yeah, this album'
Speaker 7: You know, I've never recorded a proper record in Nashville
Speaker 7: as a solo artist since taking off. I have recorded,
Speaker 7: you know, in my twenties and stuff. We recorded at
Speaker 7: studios all around Nashville with my bands. But I've recorded
Speaker 7: at RCAA in the past. And I went in to
Speaker 7: do the song with billy strings two Stone to Cry,
Speaker 7: and I just was so blown away with how it
Speaker 7: sounded in there. I mean like we were all in
Speaker 7: the room live, playing everything live, and we had some
Speaker 7: you know a couple of dividers like blocking the sound.
Speaker 7: But it was amazing because if you didn't like anything
Speaker 7: and somebody needed to, oh I hit a wrong bass
Speaker 7: note there, you could go in and just punch it.
Speaker 7: Because the way that studio is built, it's just it's perfect.
Speaker 7: And the history that's there, just all the songs, all
Speaker 7: the artists that have recorded there. It's where you know
Speaker 7: chud Atkins like Refine, the Nashville Sounds, where Willie and
Speaker 7: Whalon and Leon. You know, we're making records that defined
Speaker 7: the outlaw movement. And also just knowing that Dolly Parton
Speaker 7: recorded nine to five and Jolene there. It was all
Speaker 7: those things. I just wanted to like pick up that energy.
Speaker 7: And that was how it was when we were in
Speaker 7: Sun as well. It's like, Okay, I'm in the room
Speaker 7: where Elvis was. I'm in the room you know where
Speaker 7: Johnny Cash saying these songs. And late at night when
Speaker 7: we were working at RCAA on Hard Headed Woman, sometimes
Speaker 7: you would you would hear noises and there would be
Speaker 7: nobody else in there, And I'm not saying that it
Speaker 7: was haunted, but I'm not saying it's not haunted all
Speaker 7: those ghosts and all those prolific recordings that were made there.
Speaker 7: I just I wanted a piece of that.
Speaker 1: Does the room change how you record, how you sang?
Speaker 7: Yeah. One of the main things I think about this
Speaker 7: album is the vocals that we were able to achieve
Speaker 7: because I was just alone in this massive room doing
Speaker 7: the vocals, and we didn't have to use like an
Speaker 7: echo chamber, we didn't have to use a lot of
Speaker 7: like reverb or things in post because it just sounded
Speaker 7: great right off the bat. We spent a lot of
Speaker 7: time and a lot of money, but I don't regret it.
Speaker 7: I really in the past, I've I haven't rushed things,
Speaker 7: but I just didn't have the budget always to spend
Speaker 7: all the time on all the extra little accouterments and
Speaker 7: the minutia. And like I would go back, I would
Speaker 7: listen to mixes and say, I've got to hit that
Speaker 7: vocal again. I can do that better. I know it.
Speaker 7: And really we went and made the record last June,
Speaker 7: and then the band and I went out. We went
Speaker 7: on tour with Tedesky Trucks, and we played all these
Speaker 7: all the songs that we recorded, and during that time,
Speaker 7: I was like learning how to sing them better.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 7: I think a lot of times it's like people make
Speaker 7: the record and then they go out and tour it,
Speaker 7: and then you've got all these other ideas of like,
Speaker 7: oh the melody could have actually went here and it
Speaker 7: would have been more effective. So that was really crucial.
Speaker 7: And you know, I had all these ideas, Oh, I'm
Speaker 7: going to get this record out like spring of you know,
Speaker 7: twenty twenty five. That was the goal. And now here
Speaker 7: it's like, well it's August, but this record's going to
Speaker 7: be around forever. And there's not one single thing that
Speaker 7: I would say, oh I want to go back and
Speaker 7: do that different. It's exactly the way I want it.
Speaker 1: Those are things you can do with your voice now
Speaker 1: that you couldn't do earlier in your career.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, I think being in the studio is such a
Speaker 7: different than singing live. And I've been working with a
Speaker 7: vocal coach on and off. His name is Rob Stevenson.
Speaker 7: He's just transformed the way that I think about singing
Speaker 7: and also just giving me a lot of different vocal
Speaker 7: warm ups and scales and things to do. And also
Speaker 7: I think in my early days you're kind of impersonating
Speaker 7: people the records that you've heard, other singers that you've heard.
Speaker 7: It takes a really long time to refine your sound.
Speaker 7: And of course some people just come out of the
Speaker 7: gate and you know, like Johnny Cash or something. It's
Speaker 7: like piecings Like Johnny Cash, his voice is there, everything's there.
Speaker 7: But for me, at least, it's been a long, arduous
Speaker 7: process of figuring out exactly who I am, who I
Speaker 7: want to sound like.
Speaker 1: And you've got a new band I do, and what's
Speaker 1: that like.
Speaker 7: It's amazing to have some fresh energy and just different
Speaker 7: ways of doing things. I've got some incredible singers out
Speaker 7: with me. There's this guy who sang all over the record.
Speaker 7: His name's Logan Ledger, and he's just got like a
Speaker 7: George Jones type voice where it's like he's just so gifted.
Speaker 7: And him and Rodney sang harmonies on Don't let the
Speaker 7: Bastards Get You Down and Red Eye Flight, and I
Speaker 7: just after I had him on the recordings, I just
Speaker 7: kept thinking, like, man, I've got to I've got to
Speaker 7: get him out on the road with me, and so, yeah,
Speaker 7: he's been out touring with me. I've got a fiddle player.
Speaker 7: I just I really wanted to switch up the instrumentation.
Speaker 7: It was time for a change.
Speaker 1: The fiddle opens this album. It seems like a real statement.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the intro I came intact on later. That was
Speaker 7: like one of the last things that I recorded, But
Speaker 7: I knew that it needed something. And it's crazy because
Speaker 7: it was like, first the album was going to open
Speaker 7: with losing streak and I had a sequencing is so challenging,
Speaker 7: I think, But once I had that that intro piece,
Speaker 7: it was like, all right, everything feels cohesive Now.
Speaker 1: It almost feels because of the shortage production. I hate
Speaker 1: to say concept album, but I mean a concept album
Speaker 1: in the way the Kings used to make them.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, I mean I keep pointing back to Redheaded Stranger.
Speaker 7: I mean I almost call it hard Headed Woman. It's
Speaker 7: like the same amount of silverles got headed in the
Speaker 7: middle of it. Yeah, which is like obviously the most
Speaker 7: incredible concept record of all times. And I did want
Speaker 7: it to have a really cohesive feel where it's like, Okay,
Speaker 7: everything supposed to be exactly this way.
Speaker 1: So tell me about your choice of covers.
Speaker 7: Yes, this Waylon Jennings tune that we interpreted here was
Speaker 7: passed to me from Jesse Coulter, who was obviously married
Speaker 7: to Whylon Jennings for a good long time, and I
Speaker 7: produced a record of hers. Gosh, it's been about six
Speaker 7: years ago now, and her and I were looking through
Speaker 7: this old suitcase of Whelan's, like all these songs, just
Speaker 7: songs he'd written, songs people had given him. I was
Speaker 7: so thrilling to rifle through there. But she said, oh,
Speaker 7: I've got this song so fun. It's called get your
Speaker 7: Tongue out of my Mouth I'm kissing you goodbye. You know,
Speaker 7: it's like the line in it, and she goes, I
Speaker 7: can't do that song, I'm too old, but you should
Speaker 7: do that song. And so I've literally been thinking about
Speaker 7: covering this song and doing this song for like six
Speaker 7: or seven years. And it just has such a like
Speaker 7: Loretta Lynne type feel of like don't come home and
Speaker 7: drinking or you know, just I needed a song like that.
Speaker 7: I changed a few of the words because it was
Speaker 7: actually inspired by Waylon Jennings lawyer slash drug dealer's ex wife.
Speaker 7: So she said, you know, she was really her. Jesse
Speaker 7: was hanging out with Whylon and said drug dealer and
Speaker 7: the ex wife, and he tried to give her a
Speaker 7: kiss and she said, gets you chunge out of my mouth.
Speaker 7: I'm kissing goodbye. Whylan went wrote the song, but it's
Speaker 7: kind of more aimed at like a woman. He's cutting
Speaker 7: her down by talking about her peroxide hair and this
Speaker 7: and that. I changed it to like your polyester suit.
Speaker 7: And that's one that I always like to to direct
Speaker 7: at my husband's you know, when we're on stage. It's fun.
Speaker 7: It's such a fun song.
Speaker 1: It feels like it's directed at the music business.
Speaker 7: Yeah, absolutely, it absolutely could be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, everybody you met in your book, like who said,
Speaker 1: I don't think so.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we picked up the temple on that one. It
Speaker 7: feels like a I mean when you hear Whyaln's got
Speaker 7: a version of it and it's just it's laid back
Speaker 7: and whatever, but like me and the band be tear
Speaker 7: into it. It feels more like punk than even country.
Speaker 1: And then the George Jones song, Yes.
Speaker 7: I just don't give a damn. This song I became
Speaker 7: I'm obsessed with. There's a podcast that I love. My
Speaker 7: friend Tyler Mayhanko does. It's called Cocaine and Rhinestones, and
Speaker 7: he has a wonderful book as well, and he played
Speaker 7: he does. His whole second season was about George and Tammy.
Speaker 7: And when I started getting ready to do this record again,
Speaker 7: I saved the podcast so I could listen to it
Speaker 7: during this time and when I was really focused and
Speaker 7: at home and writing, and I'd never heard this song
Speaker 7: and George does it super slow, so again we up
Speaker 7: to the tempo. I love the guitar riff that my producer,
Speaker 7: Matt ross Spang came up with that it just opens
Speaker 7: it and it feels very like Jolene goes to Memphis
Speaker 7: or something. It's just got this lick that just sticks
Speaker 7: in your head. I'm sure he you know, he was
Speaker 7: singing it probably did Tammy or whatever when he wrote it.
Speaker 7: It was written George wrote it with a guy named
Speaker 7: Jimmy Peppers. I just think it's the best name. But
Speaker 7: I I've just reason that if ever you try to
Speaker 7: call me, you know, I'll be on my side of town.
Speaker 7: I feel that in my bones. It's like I'll be
Speaker 7: over here. You guys can do your thing over there.
Speaker 1: Just mm hmm. Leave it. At that that East West
Speaker 1: Divide in Nashville.
Speaker 7: Right that river right there, that Cumberland River.
Speaker 1: Yeah, keep on your own side. Well, thank you, it's
Speaker 1: been wonderful talking to you.
Speaker 7: Of course, I'm so grateful.
Speaker 2: In the episode description, you'll find a link to a
Speaker 2: playlist of our favorite Margo Price tracks, as well as
Speaker 2: her latest album, Hard Headed Woman. Be sure to check
Speaker 2: out YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast to see
Speaker 2: all of our video interviews, and be sure to follow
Speaker 2: us on Instagram at the Broken Record Pod. You can
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Speaker 1: At broken Record.
Speaker 2: Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with
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Speaker 2: is Ben Holliday. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.
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Speaker 1: I'm justin Richmond.