Country singer Margo Price’s debut has even got Jack White excited
Randy Lewis, Los Angeles Times
Don’t get Margo Price wrong. It’s not that the Illinois-reared, Nashville-based singer-songwriter isn’t flattered by comparisons to such respected country forbears as Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris.
It’s just that such compliments only tell half the story.
“I don’t just want to listen to music made by women, and I don’t just want to listen to music made by men,” said Price, 33.
“I just want to listen to good music,” she said. “Bob Dylan and Neil Young are two of my greatest influences. I love Willie Nelson, I love Porter Wagoner.”
Price’s debut, “Midwest Farmer’s Daughter,” was recorded at the fabled Sun Studios in Memphis, Tenn., and it sounded sufficiently fresh to indie music tastemaker Jack White that he opted to put it out on his Third Man Records. When tickets for her Southland performance Thursday at West Hollywood’s Troubadour went on sale last spring, they sold out so quickly a second show was added Oct. 12, which sold out as well.
The artist, sitting next to a leaf-strewn swimming pool of the Beverly Hills-adjacent Air BnB house she and her entourage rented recently on a short swing through Los Angeles, is focused on being the first Margo Price rather than “the next” somebody else.
“I wonder if Loretta’s getting tired of seeing my name,” she said. “People have said, ‘Oh, she’s the next Loretta Lynn,’ but there’ll never be another Loretta Lynn. What made her so wonderful is that she was so original. If there’s anything I pull from her, it’s to have that originality and to be different.”
Read the rest of the Los Angeles Times article here.
See Margo Price live in Loeb Playhouse on Thursday, September 19 at 7:30PM.
About Margo Price
In 2015, Margo Price called it a win if she had enough gas in the tank to make her next gig. By 2016, she was among country music’s most celebrated new artists. Price’s debut album, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, made numerous top-10 lists; NPR called it “the hard-won arrival of an artist who feels like she’s always been here.” Her 2017 follow-up, All American Made, earned widespread acclaim and a 2019 Grammy® nomination for Best New Artist. Price’s voice is a brassy, sassy clarion call to wry, weary, and wise stories of heartache and determination. Fusing Nashville country, Memphis soul and Texas twang, she tips her cap to Waylon, Willie, Loretta and Dolly while challenging country conventions through brutally honest, beautifully poetic portraits of everyday life.
PRE-SHOW TALK | 6:30PM | PMU West Faculty Lounge
Join McKenzie Isom, a Ph.D. student in the Department of History, for a discussion about the evening’s performance.