Margo Price
Nearly a decade ago, Margo Price turned Nashville on its head with her breakthrough,
beloved debut solo album, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter. Released in the throes of bro-country
and before pop stars were crossing over into the genre left and right, it showcased an artist
completely unafraid to double down not only on herself, but what she’d always loved: classic
country songs written from the intellect and the gut, hell-bent on truth-telling and both timeless
and urgent all at once. Respected by her peers, praised by critics and beloved by her fans, Price
created a lane where independent-minded, insurgent country music can exist and thrive alongside
the mainstream, and became an ardent fighter for her beliefs in a genre where the norm is to shut
up and sing. A trailblazer and a champion for the craft, Price redefined what it meant to be a
modern country artist.
And now she’s back with an exquisite, truly timeless album that reconnects with her roots
and pays tribute to the art of the country song, inspired in part by the legends whom she now
calls colleagues and friends. Hard Headed Woman is both a look forward and a look back: a way
to march forward while staying true to yourself when the path of less resistance is right there in
front of us, and short cuts are around every corner. And a way to look back when we need to trim
what is no longer working, and to stay connected with where we’re from. It is a promise and a
manifesto, a love song to both a city and 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 to craft a deep exploration of love and America in a time of
unprecedented uncertainty. Featuring appearances from Tyler Childers, co-writes with Rodney
Crowell and a Waylon Jennings song that his widow, Jessi Colter, urged her to sing, it is country
music as only Price can make it: free of rules, cherishing tradition, hard headed to the core but
with a delicate, beating heart.
Since releasing Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, Price has barely slowed down. She’s made
four records, played Saturday Night Live, been nominated for a Grammy, toured the world
alongside artists like Chris Stapleton 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 member of Nelson’s Farm Aid. And she’s been fearless when it came to
genre, venturing into psychedelic rock on her most recent, Jonathan Wilson-produced record,
Strays. It would have been easiest to just stay that course, and keep running. But Price doesn’t
follow success or comfort. She follows the art.
It took a whole lot of hard work and honesty with herself and others to get there, but
that’s never stopped Price before. “I made the decision that I had to rebuild everything from the
ground up,” Price says. “There’s all this pressure to be pumping out content, and I felt the
opposite in the way I wanted to approach this record and my life in general.”
Price had also established herself as one of the most passionate, vocal artists in country
music and beyond when it came to standing up for political and personal causes, from the
presidential election, to abortion to gun control: happily hard headed when it came to the fight
for equality and justice, especially for the working class and underserved in our society. Price has
always brilliantly woven her activism into her songs, but her role as a spokesperson had startedto overtake, on occasion, her role as a songwriter. She wanted to focus on using her written word to deliver the most potent punch of all.
“I always hope to do like Johnny Cash did,” Price says, “which is speak up for the
common man and woman. But there have been so many threats and anger and vitriol over the
years, when I am only coming from a place of love.”
Price realized she just needed a break from everything outside of the bubble of family life
and her art. She started 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 around Nashville where
she got her start, sometimes just to play a country cover or two or dance with the crowd. She
refused guidance to write for pop stars or compromise her values for a quick buck. Most of all,
she turned the emphasis in her music back to songwriting, exactly where she began.
“So much of Strays was leaning into this psychedelic, textural territory,” says Price. The
music lent itself to vibrant, heavy stage jams, with Price often hopping behind the drumkit and
bruising her thigh from a tambourine beat. She found herself longing for the days when it was
just her and her guitar, playing at an East Nashville dive bar. “I always knew,” she adds, “I would
come back to this more rooted sound.”
Hard Headed Woman is rooted to its core. Rooted in Price’s history and struggle to make
it as a musician for so many years in a town that prizes uniformity and the bottom line, rooted in
the country and folk sounds that have become her signature, rooted in the simplicity of a few key
collaborators instead of songs-by-committee. At the heart of Price’s work is her creative
partnership with Ivey, with whom she describes as having a “soul connection.” “I’m a
songwriter,” Price says. “I’m not somebody who goes out and needs five people to craft a song,
and then tack my name on it. That’s never been my style. I have 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 a lover that is
infused with the sounds of the desert. It’s unfettered and truth-telling, accented by some
flamenco guitar and Price’s gorgeous, urgent vocals. “We played the jukebox while democracy
fell,” Price sings, never letting her songs fall out of the context 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, an early boost of confidence came from her friends
Rodney Crowell and Emmylou Harris, who heard some of the work at a political fundraiser and
encouraged Price to keep going. “I have both of them to thank for building me up and making
me believe in the songs I am writing in this season of my life,” Price says. Crowell remained not
only an inspiration and supporter of the album but a contributor: he co-wrote two songs with
Price and Ivey.
The album that unfolded from there is drenched in Price’s unique story and unshakeable
instincts: while Midwest Farmer’s Daughter was about her journey from childhood to Nashville,
Hard Headed Woman is very much her battle since from dive bars to tour buses, through
parenthood and marriage, through scrutiny and sacrifice all while fighting constantly for what
she believes in, and the music she loves. It begins with a proclamation on the prelude, whichserves as the album’s mission statement: or, Price puts it, “a disclaimer and reminder that I don’t owe you fucking shit.”
Songs like the album’s lead single, “Don’t Let the Bastards Get you Down,” speak for the
downtrodden and the forgotten, an “anthem for people who are being overlooked in society and
need to be lifted up,” Price says, “because we are up against so much right now.” As so many of
Price’s songs do, it speaks both for the personal and the political all at once. Price was inspired
by the message Kris Kristofferson whispered to Sinead O’Connor when she was booed on stage
at a Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary show, and even got Kristofferson’s widow’s blessing to include
his name on the credits. “I always admired Kris for how he stood by her in that moment, 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 of fighting for justice to keep going, especially when it would
be so much easier to capitulate and cower.
“The song was originally written for a movie that never happened, but it feels so timely
with everything that’s going on in the world,” Price explains. “The phrase, ‘Don’t Let The
Bastards Get You Down’ originates from Margaret Atwood’s brilliant 1985 piece of literature,
The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s referred to in Latin and used as a rallying cry for resistance against the
oppressive regime that symbolizes resilience and hope in the face of adversity. Nolite te
Bastardes Caborundorum.”
That spirit resonates all across the songs of Hard Headed Woman. The blistering “Don’t
Wake Me Up” was based around some writings that Ivey stumbled upon in one of Price’s
notebooks, inspired in part by her deep readings of Frank Stanford, one of her favorite poets due
to his freewheeling work free of boundaries. They spun it all into song in minutes that chugs with
the essence of Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”: “The way 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-worn but never broken, the call of someone who has been to the
mountain but never forgets the prairie below. And “Losing Streak” whirls in with an organ and
out with a weary, world-worn defiance: our worst times don’t define us, but they’re always part
of who we are.
There are songs that go back to the beginning 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 the years – and how important it is to stay true to exactly who you are despite it all.
Another, called “Red Eye Flight,” is about both leaving a lover and also leaving 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 familial bond, different than a friendship.”
There are a few choice covers and cuts, 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 to elevate the town’s incredibly talented but buried voices is one of Price’s
favorite pastimes). Friend Tyler Childers joins Price on that waltzing country ballad, while “I
Just Don’t Give a Damn” is Price’s “Jolene goes to Memphis” take on the Jimmy Peppers andGeorge Jones classic. And showcasing how Price has been trusted by the greats to lead the next
generation of country music renegades, “Kissin You Goodbye” was given to Price by Jessi
Colter, Waylon Jennings’ widow, when Price was producing her record. They’re songs chosen to
appreciate the past and the present as she sees it – not as Music Row or the algorithm might
dictate – and place Price squarely amongst her heroes as a living and breathing part of the new
country tradition.
When it came time to record Hard Headed Woman, it was important for Price to keep that
ethos alive, decamping to Nashville’s RCA Studio A and reuniting with producer Matt
Ross-Spang, with whom she made her first two solo albums. Though she has worked with
everyone from Sturgill Simpson to Jonathan Wilson since, it was Spang’s vocal rebuke of easy
studio shortcuts that made her eager to reunite again. “He’s so unpretentious,” Price says. “He
fully believes in me, he fully believes in my songs. He got us back to feeling it in your gut and
not needing everything to be so perfect.”
It felt truly significant for Price to make the album in Nashville, a city where she’s lived
for over two decades and played a seminal role in its transformation, yet somehow never
recorded an album in the place she’s called home. The historic RCA Studio A helped connect
Price even closer to the legacy of songwriting she holds so dear, a place where everyone from
Dolly Parton to John Prine to Loretta Lynn have made albums. “It felt like there were ghosts and
spirits just hanging out,” Price says. In perfect kismet, she also launched her own signature
Gibson J-45 guitar, inspired by her 1960’s Gibson she’s had by her side for years as her career
took off. It’s all part of the continuity that she wishes to create with her art, not just with timeless
songs but inspiring future generations of women, mothers and artists in general who don’t want
to sacrifice their vision, moral compass or family life 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’t ashamed, I just am what I am.”
“I hope this album inspires people to be fearless and take chances and just be
unabashedly themselves,” Price says, “in a culture that tries as hard as it can to beat us into all
being the same.”