Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Margo Price

Transcript

Margo Price · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Pushkin, Margot Price is no stranger to struggle. In early March,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: a tornado raged through her home base of Nashville, just
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: as she was preparing to release her third album. A
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: month later, as Tennessee residents were ordered to shelter in
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: place to prevent the spread of COVID nineteen, Margot's husband
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: and longtime collaborator, Jeremy Ivey, tested positive for the coronavirus.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: While taking care of her sick husband and two young kids,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Margot decided to push back the release of her new album.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: It may seem like a no brainer, but for Margot
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: it was a really tough decision, and with her simultaneously
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: not being able to be on the road like she
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: usually is right now, things in her life just feel
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: a bit upside down. But Margot Price is a gifted
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: songwriter who always manages to turn adversity into a great song.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: In the past, she's written her way through personal a
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: station like the loss of a family farm and the
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: death of an infant son. Her new album, That's How
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Rumors Get Started pulls from that same well, but musically
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: it was a debt to more carefree rock music like
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: The Stones, Tom Petty and Fleetwood Mac. In this interview,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Margot tells Bruce Headlam how playing an open mic at
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: a Best Western hotel made her a better songwriter. She
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: also talks about hockey, her wedding ring to record her
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: first album, and how spending a weekend in jail was
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: all the inspiration she needed to refocus her career. This
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: justin Richmond. Here's Bruce Headlam and Margot Price, who connected
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: recently on zoom. So you get at home with your
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: two kids now for two months? Yeah, sixty six days.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: I'm one of the psychopaths still keeping fresh. Who Well,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: my son was asking the other day, So I sat
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: down and did the math and your husband got sick
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: in the middle of all this, didn't he he did? Yeah,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: your husband who's also your co songwriter and you know, yeah,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: a great musician. Yeah, partner in crime. How is he now?
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: He is still not fully recovered, but slowly getting better
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: every day. It's been a long it's been a long road,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: and yeah, I'm just glad that he is not going
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: into the hospital and we've been able to treat it here.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: He's been doing like nebulizer treatments, the breathing treatments and
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: sleeping twelve hours a day, taking a lot of vitamins,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: drinking a lot of water. Just there's nothing you can do.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: So you go into the emergency room. And then they
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: just were like, yep, I hope you make it. We're
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: just going to send you home now because you're not
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: bad enough to admit and we can't really give you anything.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: So they gave him like an inhaler and wished him luck. Yeah,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: and you've had to postpone releasing your new album, which
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: is what we're here to talk about. Yeah, I mean
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: I didn't have to. I just everything came on so quickly,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: and I thought, Okay, well we'll be able to tour
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: this summer, so I'm just going to push it back
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: a little bit. And then I've finally came to the
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: realization that, like, no, there's not going to be tours
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: for probably the whole entire year, and so now I'm
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: just focusing on getting it out. But at the beginning
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: of quarantine, we could just been hit by the tornado.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Our friend John Prine died and Jeremy got sick, and
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: all those things combined plus having two small children at home.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: I just I couldn't proper release a record. I didn't
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: have any like any more music videos to put out.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: I didn't really have any content to work with. You
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: mentioned John Prine, who's you know, at the head of
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: the list of great musicians who've been lost to this.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: You know, there's a terrific version online of you doing
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Unwed Fathers with him. When did you first meet him?
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: I met John on his seventieth birthday at the Rhyman
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: and I was asked to come sing in spite of
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: ourselves and Unwinded Fathers with him, And it was just
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: really surreal because I'd been a student of his songwriting
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: for decades and he was so down to earth and
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: so nice and funny and real. I just feel like
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: there's very few people that remained that grounded throughout that
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: kind of success, and he was one of the realest
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: people I ever had the pleasure to. Still kind of
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: doesn't seem like he's gone because we're not seeing anybody,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: so I just kind of feel like I'm going to
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: see him down the road. But every once in a
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: while kind of like clicks that you know and you
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: remember it. Yeah, just such a loss. Yeah, I mean
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: you guys, you have the same tendency. I think, particularly
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: in sad songs, you both come up with the kind
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: of perfect image, you know, riding high and low expectations
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: and why don't you do the math pay gap, ripping
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: my dollars in half? You know, there are things you
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: can't turn money back into time, which is a line.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: I just love those. A line sound like John Prime
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: lines to me. Have you ever sat down and said, yeah,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: I'm going to write a Joeing Prime song? Or is this?
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: Is this just? Is that just Midwestern sensibility? Well that's
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: very high, and I thank you for that. I don't
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: I don't think I've come close to his greatest works
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: in any capacity, but I definitely have, you know, studied
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: what he's done. And I just the thing that I
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: love about John is that he uses his entire vocabulary
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: and he's not afraid to use quirky, strange words that
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: most people would think were too ugly to put into
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: a song. You know. And my husband and I actually
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: wrote him recorded a couple of summers ago an album
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: that we shelved, and it was a psychedelic gospel record,
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: and I think on that album, I was you know,
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: really trying to mimic his work because we had been
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: on the road with him a lot. And of course
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: I haven't put that out yet, but there's a couple
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: like songs that are floating around out there on YouTube.
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: Once called the Devils in the Details, and I've played
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: that acoustic for John and he told me that he
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: really liked that song, and that was the highest compliment
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: I ever got. Really, you're so good at those kind
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: of lines. I'm just wondering and what I'm jumping ahead
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: because we'll talk about songwriting more, but do those lines
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: kind of emerge and then you think that's a great line,
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: I'm going to put that in a song at some point.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Are they just things in a notebook that find their
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: way in or do they emerge while you're writing the song.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Some of them just emerge as I'm writing a song.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Can't Turn Money Back to Time. That was something that
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: happened like while I was strumming and my husband and
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: I were kind of I had written most of the
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: song and then we talked through a little bit of
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: that chorus and we like it just clipped at that point.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: But I do tend to find lines like that and
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: make a note of them, or like if somebody in
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: the room says something that's really witty, I'm like, Okay,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: you're not going to write a song about that, and
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: I'll write it down. Well, yea the album title. That's
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: how rumors get started. That actually was something my guitar
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: player said in the bus when we were drunk one night,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: and I just was like, I'm taking it all right. Nice,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Actually that one another I'm thinking about it. That that
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: line you can't you can't turn money back into time?
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: What's the line after that? Take it from me, Darlyn
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: of mine? Yeah, that's what makes that line that there's
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: such a shift, and to take it from me Darlin,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: that to me is just you know how everybody remembers
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: the first line of Hallelujah that they say there was
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: a secret cord David played. What makes it is the
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: second line, which is but you don't really care about music,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: do you, which I think is that people always leave
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: off that and that's just that's the killer. And I
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: when I heard that, I know, but when I heard
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: that song, that's what I thought of. Well, I wanted,
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: you know, I had written Hands of Time long ago,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: and I remember this woman in North Carolina. She said
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: she was an old family friend and this old hippie lady,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: and she was all drunk one night She's like, you
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: gotta write a song for your other kid, and I said, okay,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: I will. And so that was me kind of writing
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: like a note to him, like you know, when I'm
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: gone on the road, but also when I die. And
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: I've been thinking so much of that line as I'm
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: home these last couple months, like Okay, well here's your time.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm not bringing in money, but I have time,
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: and I'm really trying to enjoy it and savor it.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: So I mentioned you and John Prime were both Midwesterners,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: ended up in Nashville. Where were you born. I was
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: born in a town called Rock Island, but my folks
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: always lived in Aldo, Illinois, and it's like, you know,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: west of Chicago. It's just how I explain it. And
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: the town had three thousand and seven hundred people in it,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: and it gets smaller every year. More and more people
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: move away because there's less opportunity and there's a really
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: desolate area. I mean, after the eighties farm crisis and
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: how things have kind of continued to go with corporate farms,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: and it's a great place, but I just I don't
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: think I could ever live there because it's it's a
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: hard way life. I think for a lot of people,
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: how did music start then? For you? I think because
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: there was nothing to do. It felt like such an
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: important lifeline in my life. You know, my father always
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: had the oldies station on, and so there was a
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: lot of like classic rock, and he always liked to
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: play the dad game in the car that was like
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: you know who this is, lots the Beatles, you know who?
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: That's Carol King, you know, and he wanted to like
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: school me on that's Rod Stewart. So it annoyed me
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: and I didn't like that music at first, but then
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: it really started to grow on me. There was there
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: a particular song or a particular moment that it really
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: hit you musically. I loved Tom Petty songs. I loved
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: like you know, American Girl and a lot of those songs.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: I felt like he was talking directly to me, and
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: he made it seem like it was like okay to
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: be from Middle America, like a small town and being nobody.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: He like romanticized it in a way that I really appreciated.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: And in school we still had some good programs, Like
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: in fourth and fifth grade we did like these show
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: choir things, you know, singing and dancing. And in fourth
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: grade the theme that year was like country music, and
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: so I got my first a little solo to Patsy
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Klein walking after Midnight, and I did, you know, kind
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: of start at that point to enjoy country music more.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: I wasn't always sold on what was on the radio,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: but my grandmother she played a lot of the old
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: stuff for me, Loretta and Dolly and Johnny Cash, and
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: that was cooler to me than even the nineties country.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: There's still some nineties country that's like okay, you know,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: and now it's like obviously having a big resurgence. But
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: my heart is in across the board, whether it's rock
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: and roll or country music. It's like the sixties and seventies, right, Yeah. Now,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: I'm always it's always funny to me when people are like,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: you know, I like the old stars like Garth Brooks,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: like Rooks. You know, it's like I thought you meant, like,
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: you know, Ray Price or Merle Haggard or something, you
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: know exactly. We'll be back with Margot Price. We're back
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: with Margot Price. So when you decided to become a musician,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, you could have gone to Los Angeles or
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: New York. You chose Nashville. And why was that? Well,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: I wanted to go to Los Angeles and I wanted
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: to go to New York, and I think my parents
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: were just terrified to let me go that far away
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: from them, you know, just being nineteen years old and
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: fearless and you know, very trustworthy. And I came to visit.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: I had a cousin living here in Nashville, and she's like,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: I swear it's not all you know, cheesy country music,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: because at that time, I just wasn't into any really
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: a lot of the music being made on you know,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: top forty radio or country radio. I just I didn't
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: feel like I was going to fit in. But I
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: came on my spring break of my sophomore year of college,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: and she took me down to like Rock Block, which
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: was like Exit in in the End and all these
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: cool like rock clubs, and I went to the spring
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Water and just you know, lots of grungey dive bars
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: that kind I kind of started like go into these
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: open mics and go into shows at Mercy Lounge and Canary,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: and I thought, okay, I can I could live here,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: and I dropped out of college and moved here just
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: two months after I visited. How long had you been
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: writing songs by that point? Well, I started writing just
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: poems and making like acapella demos when I was I
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: don't even know, maybe seven years old or something. Wow.
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: And then around that time too, my mom put me
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: into piano lessons, and so I took piano for several years,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: and then with my eighth grade graduation money, I bought
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: a Japanese guitar, about a salmon guitar. My parents were like,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: we really think that you should buy a computer for
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: your school work, and I was like, well, I had
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: my eye on this guitar, and I immediately started learning
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: how to play chords and learning how to play songs,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: just kind of self teaching. That was. That was when
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: I really got bit by the bug. I'd say, like
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: thirteen fourteen. I mean, you did have an uncle who
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: was a songwriter in Nashville. Yes, Bobbie Fisher who wrote
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: You Live for the McIntyre. He has written so many songs.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: He's still writing songs and he's in his eighties and
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: just sharp as ever, he sent me a song last week,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: and I'm going to try to put and put some
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: music too, if I can find five seconds to pick
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: up my guitar. But he I mean, he wrote for
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: George Jones, he wrote for Charlie Pride, Tanya Tucker's. He
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: was just really driven and also came from the middle
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: of nowhere and got a start later in life. So
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: it was inspiring to see that. And we'd come down
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: to go to Florida and we'd always stop in Nashville
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: and stay at his house and I'd like look at
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: his gold records on the wall, and you know, he
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: had stories about Garth Brooks and stuff then too. That's
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: who he was hanging out with, like Rebot and Garth
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: and all the top Nashville cats at the time. Right,
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: did you play your stuff for him? I did when
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: I first moved down here. I think, you know, my
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: mom thought it was going to be easy to like
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: connect the dots, like, oh, you go to your uncles
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: and you play him your cute songs and he's just
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: going to find you record label and you know, a
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: manager and plug you in with the right people. And
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: I went over to his house and we went in
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: his writing room and he's like, all right, well seeage
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: you up. He sits there and I tune up and
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: I play him a song that I wrote. It was
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: called no Love Lost, and I thought it was pretty
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: decent and played him to other songs and he just
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: sat there in complete silence, stared at me, and he's like, well,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: this is what you need to do. I need to
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: go to your apartment. You need to get rid of
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: your TV, get rid of your computer, and you just
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: need to sit and just keep writing songs. Just write
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: a song every day and you'll figure it out. And
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: that tough love like hurt so much because I knew.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, he didn't say. He didn't say it, well
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: I like this, but I don't like this. I mean
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: he basically was just like, just keep trying, and so
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: I would, Like I said, I was going to all
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: these like open mic writers nights, and one that I
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: was going to pretty frequently. I'd go almost every week.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: It was it was the best Western and there was
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: a bar in there. It was called the Hall of
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: Fame Loud and there was never really a wait, like
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: to play, and there was a lot of good unknown
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: you know, I didn't know who a lot of these
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: writers were, and I assumed that, you know, not many
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: of them had a lot of cuts because they were
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: just playing in the in the hotel bar. But but
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: I made friends with some of the like older pickers there,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: and you know, I was hanging out with like sixty
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: year olds as a twenty year old, and they'd buy
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: me drinks and kind of would sit and swap stories
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: and I'd get advice, and I was really just studying
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: the crowd's reaction to like everybody who played, like, okay,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: well why did everybody laugh and like clap for this guy?
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: But nobody nobody reacted when you know the next person played.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: And I think at that point, you know, I was
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: just trying to get my head around, like what is
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: a good song. There has to be humor and darkness,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: a lesson, but not too many cliches that you know,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: all these things started kind of firing off, and that
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: is where I really began to study, you know, what
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: makes a sound good. But you know, in retrospect, your
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: uncle gave you great advice, oh, without a doubt. But
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: it must have hurt at the time. I cried. I
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: called my mom. I was like, I don't know if
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: I should be here. He said my songs weren't good.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: She's like, did he say that? I'm like, oh no,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: But I'm reading between the lines. And he's really proud
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: of me now though, and he's very complimentary and he's
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: always sending me different articles and telling me stories. He's
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: got this guitar that just everybody has like tattooed this
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: guitar with. He has like a tattoo gun and you
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: at your name in it. And the day that he
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: asked me to sign that guitar, I really felt like
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: I'd accomplished something amazing. There are two things I do
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: want to ask you about from your early days, which is,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: did you really hawk your wedding ring so you could
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: make your first album? I did, Wow, I got it back.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: I got it back at the last minute. But yeah,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: there was We sold a ton of music gear, a
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: lot of cool microphones and reels, real machine, and of
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: course my husband sold the car, which I thought he
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: was absolutely nuts for doing. But once he did that,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: I was like, okay, well, let's just try to get
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: as big of a budget as we can and do
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: this right. Because I didn't want to do another kickstarter.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: I had done that. I didn't want to ask anybody
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: for money. I didn't have anybody I could ask for money.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: I'd already begged my way out of multiple problems at
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: that point, so there, Yeah, that was seemed like the
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: only option at the time. The other thing I wanted
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: to ask you about is after you did your first album,
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: you signed with Jack White's company. How did that come about,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: because you've gone through a lot of rejection. Yeah. I
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: sent that album out to probably fifty record labels, but
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: I had this write up in Rolling Stone. We did
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: a video in a hotel room for Since You Put
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Me Down, and Rolling Stone wrote it up and they
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: said sounds like Jack White produced Loretta Lynn. So I
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: always wonder if that's how it got on his radar.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: But my Pedal Steel player, Luke Schneider, he told me
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: that Ben Swink was interested in hearing my record. And
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Ben is, you know, Jack's right hand man, and so
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: I sent it to him and he was like, oh,
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: this is good, Okay, I'm coming to a show. And
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: he came out to a show at the Basement East
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: and I heard he was there like afterwards, and I
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: was like, I can't go talk to him. I'm too nervous.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: I don't I don't want to go talk to him.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: My friend Amanda was like, no, come on, I know
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: I'd be super nice. He's really down to earth. And
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: I went out there and he was like kind of
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: slur in his speech, and he was just really drunk.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: He's been, he's sober now. He's one of my very
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: best friends, and I'm so grateful that he came out
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: and washed our watched us perform. Like the record was
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: very instrumental in everything coming together. I don't want to
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: talk too much about your early Nationville days because you've
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: written about it so beautifully. Your first album starts with
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: the Hands of Time, which is like a memoir that
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: would take somebody else three hundred pages, it takes you
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: six minutes. Are all your songs still that autobiographical? Um?
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: I think this third album that I am putting out
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: here is it is still autobiographical, but there's other elements
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: of like I don't know that really could be more
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: about anybody else. And some songs have you know, it's
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: like I I wrote them to multiple people, if that
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: makes sense. Like that's how rumors get started. It's not
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: just to like one of my friends that didn't make it.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: It's to like multiple friends that are kind of struggling
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: and like caught in their same bad habits, and and
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: then there's um like I'd die for you that that's definitely,
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: you know, Jeremy and I's relationship based off of that
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: letting me Down. Jeremy and I we each wrote a
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: verse and we wrote to both of us wrote to
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: different people in our past that we went to high
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: school with that you know, we had different experiences with
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: both of them. But like, his friend was a burnout
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: drug addict who like joined the army, and he wrote
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: it to that friend, and I wrote it to a
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: friend of mine who had been raped and had a
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: really tough childhood. And so we we wrote them towards
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: different people and then worked on the chorus together. So
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: it's each one's different. We'll be back with more Margo Price.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: We're back with the rest of Bruce's conversation with Margo Price.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: So you've switched labels on this one, right, Yeah. I
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: had two albums with Third Man, and then for this
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: third one, they're still doing their pressing the record at
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: their pressing plant in Detroit, which I think is really cool. Yeah,
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: I just had the opportunity to Loma Vista was like
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: there and ready, and I wanted to get this out. Actually,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: last spring within I pregnant, so it's just taken a
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: while to get it out. Did you make the album
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: while you were pregnant? Then, yeah, I started making it
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: in December of twenty eighteen. This is going to sound
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: like an odd question, but you've got such a powerful voice.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Does it Does being pregnant affect how you sing? Does
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: it affect you physically in a way? Well, you know,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: early on, when I was in the studio, I was
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: I was wearing a baggy Fleetwood mac T shirt. You
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: couldn't even tell I was pregnant, really, But I worked
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: on it for months and months, and as time went on,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: it didn't get harder to breathe. I mean, you've got
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: child pushing on your rib cage and your diaphragm. But
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: at the same time, I was being so good to
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: my body, and I was like working out and sleeping,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: you know, eight nine hours every night, and I wasn't
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: drinking and I wasn't smoking any weed, and I felt
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: like I had incredible control over my voice. I was like, oh,
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: I think I gained a few notes up here in
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: my head voice, so I felt like it benefited me
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: in a way. And I was even I performed just
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: a few nights before I had Ramona, I sang with
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: Mavis Staples. I mean, I was massive and it was
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: harder to sing at that point. But right, well, that's
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: not too intimidate any being on stage with her. She's
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: so nice though, and she just was like, had her
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: hands on my stomach. She's like, I'm going to be
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: the godmother's She's like, I don't have babies anywhere on
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: my own, but I got babies all over the world.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: I'm a godmother to hundreds of babies. You can name
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: you baby Mavis if you want. It was incredible to
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: be up there with her, and she was grabbing my
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: arm and helped lead me on stage like it was
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: it was something else. It was her eightieth birthday with
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: the Rayman and your Your daughter's middle name is Lynde,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: isn't it? And that's for that's for Loretta. Yeah, yeah,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: Now were you friends her? I am? I am? I am.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: I was talking to her daughter. When Loretta's last album
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: came out, she felt ill and so they asked me
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: to come up to Ernest Tube record shop and do
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: a little interview and kind of talk about her and
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: sing a song for her. And I was pregnant at
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: the time. I had just found out. I hadn't told anybody,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: and I was talking to her daughter, Patsy, and I
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: just started kind of picking her brain. I was like,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: you did never like present your mom because she was
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: on the road all the time, did you? She was like,
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: oh no, we never knew any other way, you know.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: It was just Daddy was home and he took care
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: of us and mommy went out and made the money.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: And sometimes we go on to her and it was great.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: She's like, are you thinking about having another baby? I
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, maybe, I don't know. And a couple
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: of weeks later, Loretta called me and I told her
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: at that point and she's like, well, I tell you
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: what you can use. Lens is a middle name, is
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: a boy or girl name. I give you the blessing
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: and I hope you have you know, I hope you
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: have five more. She's like, you can do it. I'm like, no,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: I'm done. Uh. You know what. A lot of fans
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: loved your first couple of records. Um, you had like
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: a kind of pitch perfect seventies Nashville sound. I don't
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: want to confine it just to that, but you had
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: the kind of telecaster, the bright telecaster, that the pedal
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: stee You had a great band. So I was a
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: little unprepared for this new album, which first of all
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: starts with this beautiful little piano part by Tom Petty's
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: collaboratory Ben Montage. How did, first of all tell me
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: how it came about that you recorded the album the
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: way you did, and what you were thinking about when
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: you recorded this album. Well, obviously, country music, I think
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: it always goes through these kind of resurgencies where it
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: becomes really you know, popular and um like. Instead it
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: becomes fashionable, like both in just what people are wearing,
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: but also in people trying to have that more traditional sound.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: And once the mainstream Nashville kind of caught onto what
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: the underground was doing, and once they started to mimic
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: that and regurgitate it, I wanted to jump ship. And
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of things about the country music industry
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: that I don't agree with that I've never agreed with,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: and I just wanted to try to get away from that.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: The sexism, the racism and just the overall bullshit politics
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: that comes with it. And it's like you speak out
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: about one thing that they don't like, and then they
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: blacklist you, and then you know, when you die, like
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: with Meral Haggard or something, they're like, oh, well, we're
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: going to tribute you anyway. So I wanted to get
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: out of that, and I wanted to make something completely
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: different because I just I see a lot of singer songwriters,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: A lot of people get into the habit of like
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: making the same album with the same themes, like over
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: and over again, and I just didn't want to become
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: stale in what I was doing. And I've always loved
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: rock music just as much as I've loved country. And
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: that's why I think people like Neil Young, Linda Ronstat,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: people who started the line of both and never were
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: confined to a genre. That's the kind of career that
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: I want to have something that outlasts like the fad
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: of just a genre. But it's one of those albums that,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: like lots of people do their California album or their
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: different kind of album, when your album it just doesn't.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: You can hear influences here there. I think particularly letting
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: me down. But I think the ghost of Tom Petty
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: kind of hovers over that one in a good way. Yeah,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: thank you. But you know, there's that old line about
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: originality is when people can and figure out your sources
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: or something like that. I like that. I kept thinking,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: I kept thinking, oh, I think I know what she's doing,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: but this is the sound of it is really quite something,
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: thank you. You know, like, Hey Child, I could see
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: a lot of people doing it as a big kind
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: of gospel number and you sort of go there, but
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: you don't. It's just it's a really interesting combination of things.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: What were you listening to? What were you thinking about? Well,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: you definitely said Tom Petty and Heartbreakers, Fleetwood Mac that
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: was like the kind of overall thought and sprinkle in
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: some Bruce Springsteen, maybe the Pretenders. Hey Child. I think
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: it was our most Stones influenced song. And we wrote
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: that song almost maybe eight should nine years ago and
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: we were just super into the Stones and Sturgil was like,
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: what happened to that Hey Child song you used to play?
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, oh man, I've already recorded that. I
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: don't I don't want to do that song. I don't,
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: you know, feel connected to it. And I had sixteen
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: other songs, but we ended up recording sixteen songs. But
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: I was like, all right, you're right, no one's heard it.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: Let's give it a shot. And everybody on the session
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: was like, this is a killer song. I really wanted,
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: you know, with the background vocals. I wanted to get
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: that like Mary Clayton give me Shelter, kind of like
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: vibe going at the end. Oh okay. But yeah, I
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: mean I think the fact that, like, maybe because I
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: am a woman like doing the Stones, like, people aren't like, oh,
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: where is this? It's not like if I was just
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: maybe directly pulling from Emmy Lou hair a sort of
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: Loretta in like I have in the past. I think
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: that's more easy to pinpoint. Right. Can I ask you
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: about a couple of the songs that I thought were
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: just stand outs and you just mentioned one stone me? Yeah,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: where did that from? Well? My husband threw me the title.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: He's like, hey, I had a song time I thought
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: you should write too. I was like, Okay, what is it.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: He's like stoney right, It's like, okay, I know you're
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: coming from. And I think he wanted some kind of
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: like last dance with Mary Jane, or like let's get
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: to the point, throw another joint, you know, like just
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: like a stoner anthem. And I tried to write it
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: like that and just nothing came out. And then him
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: and I had an argument actually when I was on
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: the road and he called me a bit and so
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: I wrote, I wrote stone me, and I just I
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: typed it on my phone in my notes, and I
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: was like, it was just a poem, and I sent
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: it to him and he's like, oh, that's good, and
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: then he sent back like two hours later. He sent
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: back the melody and was singing my words in it. Wow.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: And so he got a co write on a song
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: that was like about him. But like I said, you know,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: with like some of my songs being about two different people,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: it was like I started writing it about him, and
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: then I deflected my anger towards this like hack journalist
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: that writes like these smear pieces on me, and so
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: it kind of became about this like this blogger that
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: have a lot of disdain for But okay, yeah, it's
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: a it's a combo song. Well, I'm not going to
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: say anything bad about you now because I don't want to.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: I don't want to show up in the next album,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: and I mentioned Hey Child, which I think is just stunning,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: and I keep listening to it. Tell me about that one.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: Where did it come out of? I mean, around the
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: time that we wrote it. It was after my husband
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: and I had lost our son, and we were hanging
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: out with a couple bands and all of us would
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: play the five spot together in our respective rock and
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: roll bands. It was being called the Lonely Age that
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: had just moved here from Portland. They were a little
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: bit younger than us, and we started hanging out with
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: them and like partying a lot. And there's a lot
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: of drugs going around that scene at the time. I'm
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: and so a lot of those lyrics are kind of
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: about how everybody was more or less had like a
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: death wish and just but it was such a such
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: a different time because there was something really exciting happening.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: There were a lot of really good bands, and you
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: knew that it wasn't going to last that way forever.
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: We were all partying like we had made it, you know,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: like we were partying like we were the Rolling Stones,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: but everybody was like broke and throwing in like four
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: dollars for a bottle of like Benchmark whiskey and getting
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: blind drunk probably four or five nights a week. Um,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: that's around the time that child was written. Okay, you
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: know you mentioned the loss of your son Ezra, and
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: you know you've had other losses. A lot of your
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: songs are about loss. In fact, even your songs are
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: they're about success or about loss, like Twinkle Twinkle or
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: Prisoner of the Highway. Just is that kind of the
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: way you see the world. How m Glass happened to
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: a girl? I you know, I do try to find
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: the good in this situation. I found myself recently really
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: trying to keep a positive attitude about, you know, well,
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: something bad in my life. Every time something bad happens,
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: something good does always come out of it. But I
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: do like the the melancholy, like a sad song in
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: a major key, or a major key song with really
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: sad words like a little pain. It's like a happy song.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: But I just never like songs that are like all
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: one way or you know, just how much is that
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: doggy in the window of you are My Sunshine? That's
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: a good song, though, that's a bittta Lynn and Merle Haggard.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: That's kind of the way they did it. It can
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: be in there, yeah, I mean, it can be sprinkled
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: in there. But I I've always found myself attracted to
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: darker lyrics. I mean, I loved Johnny Cash growing up.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: I loved his attitude. He didn't care what anybody thought,
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: and he had kind of this like chip on his shoulder.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: And you know, even after he became successful, he was
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: still singing the song of the working man, and you know,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: I mean the whole story of man in black and
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: just people who who still carry that burden. I still
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: feel for people that are in a bad situation right now.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: You know, even though I'm very lucky, I have to
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: remind myself and and do what I can to help
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: people that are not as fortunate, because I've I've been there.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: You know, Johnny Cash wasn't really in fulsome prison. When
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: you write your songs about your weekend in prison, that's
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: the real thing, unfortunately. Yeah, I feel like I learned
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: a lot that weekend because I was seeing women that
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: were in there for much longer than me. And when
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: I wrote the verse about the girl who was in
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: the cell with me, she would get up in the morning,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: and I would see all the women line up and
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: get their paper cups and swallow their pills, and you know,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: basically she's like, oh, you just should tell them that
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: you were, like are coming off of heroin because then
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: they'll give you pills and you can sleep all the time.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: And I just had so much compassion for what I saw,
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: and you know, like thought to myself, I can never
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: come back here. I'm I'm not going to find myself
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: back in this position. And so I really did get
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: sober and pull my life back together because I was
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: in a really dark mental space, like just you know,
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: I really debated checking myself into a mental institution. I
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: called a friend of mine who had been through AA.
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: She was much older than me. Your name was roy Anne.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: She used to hang out with Towns Vand's aunt and
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: sing with him back in the day. And she was
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: sober and she's like, whenever you're ready to quit your
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: rowdy ways, you give me a call and I'll get
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: I got a chip for you, you know. And I
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: called her and I was like, I think I'm going
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: to check myself into a mental institution. She's like, don't
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: do it. She's like, we'll have your name forever. It'll
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: be a mark on your on your record, and you
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: just if you can work through it, you should. But then,
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: of course I went out and I drank and drove
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: my car stupidly. I did try to call a cab,
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: but they never came, and I hit a telephone pole
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: in East Nashville, less than a mile from my house,
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: right in front of two police officers and about two
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: in the morning, and I tried to outrun the cops
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: because I had weed on me, I had a pipe,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: I had was in the car, and I'd been drinking
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: for like six hours. And I did not obviously outrun them.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: I've eventually pulled over. I thought maybe I could pull
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: into a driveway and turn my lights off, like maybe
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: I can get all the way home. But they got
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: right up on my ass and I pulled over in
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: front of a Baptist church and walked the line in
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: the rain and failed. And it was humiliating. I mean,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: I had a young son at home, and at that
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: point I just knew I had to quit being a
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: deadbeat and and focus on my goal again. So is
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: music still important to kind of keeping you centered and focused? Oh,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: without a doubt, I've been feeling more depressed in the
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: past two months, as I'm sure everybody in the entire
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: world is feeling. And I've even before the Pandemic hit,
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: I was just kind of feeling like some postpartum depression,
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: and I was really looking forward to getting back out
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: on tour. I thought, you know what, I just need
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: to get back to myself and get back to my work,
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: and this album is going to come out. Everything's gonna
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: be fine. And then when this hit, I just started
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: feeling really hopeless. But I, you know, I have two
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: kids to take care of, and I get up in
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: the morning and I brush my hair and I fixed
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: myself some eggs, and I do typically put a record
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: on because whether it's a sad song that I'm listening
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: to or a happy song, it's just good to have
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: those feelings with music kind of playing in the background.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: And I feel like I've kind of fallen back in
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: love as a listener, you know, because there's not a
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: lot to do. It's like, oh, I can really fully
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: immerse myself into where this song wants to take me.
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: And what have you been listening to in particular, Well,
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: I've been listening to every Bob Dylan song that he's
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: been putting out. I've been listening to the new Lucinda
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: Williams a lot. I adore her, so as far as
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: you know new music that's being released. Oh and Fetch
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: the Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple. I've been a huge
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: fan of hers for a long time. Every day, every
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: day is something different. I'm just trying to, you know,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: think about starting to write again myself, and I'm going
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: to really throw myself into recording a lot of music
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: because I can't travel and I can't play songs. And
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: I think what's really inspiring about the Fiona album, the
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: Fiona Apple record, is just that how long she was
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: making that and how you know, she just focused all
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: of her energy into that. And I think that there's
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: a lot of people that are hopefully writing their true
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: feelings and you know, getting back to the core of
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: who we are as people. So what's it like to
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: think that there are many many people out there who
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: are getting through this listening to your music. That's that's
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: a good that's a good feeling. I think I've still
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: I don't really see myself as that successful. I don't know,
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: I don't know why, but I feel like I spent
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: so much time like playing dive bars and clubs, and
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: I even wrote about it and stone me, you know,
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: I won't forget what it's like to be poor. I
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: could be there again, that's for sure. And then here
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: I am like, Okay, there goes my main source of income, touring,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: and not like, you know, I'm trying to say any
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: poor me thing, because I'm doing fine. But I never
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: wanted success to change who I am at the core,
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: and so it is nice, you know. And my husband
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: like reminds me, He's like, you got a lot of
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: people out there that enjoy your gift, and it's a
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: gift to both you and them. And you know, he
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: tries to both, you know, keep me grounded, but also
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: make me realize what I have. And I am grateful
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: that people are listening. And I just can't wait to
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: get this new record out. I just can't wait. You
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: really are from the You really are from the mid
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: quest Yeah, I can't enjoy this, It's true. Well listen,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for doing this. It's been great.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: Thank you for asking great questions that doesn't always happen.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: And before we go, we wanted to share a quick
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: interview Bruce did with the uncle Margot mentioned here's legendary
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: country songwriter Bobby Fisher. So what was it like in
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: the set when you would when you would go plug songs?
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: What were you doing? You're going around to different labels, Yeah,
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: wherever you could, you know, I found out just how
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: how could you do it? Like? You know, I used
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: to drink beer with a guy to his wife was
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: kin which what he's made? And I'd give him something
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: my rote. You know, he'd take a and she didn't.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: Maybe the Conway would be doing breakfast and if it
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: felt right, she would show him, showing the song that's
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: terrible or whatever. You know. I ended up with two
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: Conway cuts, you know, just somewhere down the line. And yeah,
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: I mean when Conway breeds life into a lyric, you
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: really got to sell, you know. Yeah. I had these
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: two guys, great writers, Charlie Black and Austin Roberts, were
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: playing playing poker one night and they said, uh, you know,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: we ought to work together. We laughed and have such
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: a great time. We're all writers. So they said, you
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: find an artist and we'll produce some free write all
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: the songs, and then you take over because we don't
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: want none of the business part. So I said, oh
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: that's great. So we found this artist and I named
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: her CC Chapman. It's a great singer, and uh so
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: then we uh wrote all ten songs. I got her
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: on Curb Records. We put out a couple of you know,
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: Mike Kurb had like very tight fishing. He didn't put
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: out much for promotion. And so they called me one
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: day and said, you don't have anything strong enough left
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: in there. You know, we had these singles out and
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: they're not going anywhere. And I said, oh, man, you
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: should listen to them, and they said no, no, let's
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: move on. So anyhow, I was sitting there, I took
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: three of them out and I went out to a
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: Reba McIntire's office. Never had met her, but as it
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: turned out, this is how to me things happened. Did
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: you turn the writer or left? That day, I come
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: in the lobby. I was going to give them to
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: the secretary. But this kid that I just met at
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: a little party, he was walking through the lobby. I said,
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: would you hand these right to read? He said yeah, yeah,
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: it looked good on him. You know. So about a
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: week later she put two of them on hold, and
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: she cut two of the three, you know, yeah and
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: down the line because one of them was you live
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: that we had written each happening, you know. And so
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: then somewhere time when we went number one, Curb Records
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: called me and said, I didn't think it was a
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: hit until I seen him selling uly T shirts. So anyway,
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: that was just pitching. But I mean, if I wouldn't
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: have walked over there and that guy was walking through,
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: you don't have that, dude. Yeah. Yeah, so so far,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: the secret your success is you drink beer, you go
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: to parties, and you play poker. That's pretty well it. Yeah. Yeah,
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: the world has changed, you know. I know, I hate
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: that for people. You know. I've had seven hundred and
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: two cuts on my songs. Yeah, so I just most
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: of them never come out, you know, it's just just
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: shotgun and a lot of them maybe they get a
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: cut and they turn out to be something. You know.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: I'm still righting. I got a living song. It's going
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: right now that I've writing, so I'm still getting something
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: and it's really fun doing it. Somebody likes your lyric enough,
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: you know, to work with it. And Margot uh Laurie,
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: and I wrote with her husband and her way back
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: and right now I've got one with her center a lyric,
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: and she e mailed me back and she liked it
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: and she's going to work on it. He's a very
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: good talent. To hope she broably come up with him. Now.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: She told us the story of when she first went
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: there and played you some songs. Huh, Now, what's what
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: do you remember of that meeting? I remember you knew,
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: you knew that she was talented. I didn't hear her
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: really good songs for what they were. My thought always was,
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: can can we get something in the charts to make
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: some money, you know, because the charts is what it's
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: all about. I didn't. I didn't hear that, but I
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: heard really great writing and it sounded like a from
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: years ago, with the kind of music that I really liked.
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: But I thought, you know, you can always grow from that.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, she's that good and uh, you could always
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: tell there was something there, but there wasn't a lot
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: I could do. Said. I tried to win to write
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: with her, and we were with different new toss stuff
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: back and forth. You know what she's doing right now? Yeah? Yeah, oh, man,
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: she tuning wonderful. Yeah. Well, and then later on I
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: didn't realize how much other talents she had. She uh,
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: you know, she did the operator here quite a while back,
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: and I mean she goes over and plays the drums
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: and the piano and everything go. Well. Yeah, I took
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: another pitch, another pitch story. Uh. My wife and I
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: went to a cracker barrel one morning, and so after
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: we got done and we come out, and she stayed
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: in looking at the knickknacks, and I went out on
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: the deck there and this sports headline said this team
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: had they got deep, but it said they hit the
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: ground running. And my head said, hit the ground running
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: when your heart gets hurt. And so in about an hour,
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: I wrote hit the ground Running and when your Heart
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: gets hurt and corny little song, you know, And I
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: got with us Rick Giles, he's a great writer, and
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: he cleaned it. He added a Cajun yodo to it,
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: and then he was the main thing. But us. He
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: was able to do a demo, didn't costlessness. He could
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: put that picking on here and everything, and so then
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: I would have the demost. My job then to go
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: try to get it cut for us, you know, yeah.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: So I was down on music row there and I
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: ran into Budd Logan. It's a great producer, musician, and
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: he was producing John Connelly and he'd read where he
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: was going to be a project for the new upper
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: Land Records. I ran into Budd Logan. I know he's
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: a real cut and drag. I don't want to hear
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: anything that's a wasting time. Now. I ran into him
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: and I was pitching cassettes, you know, And I said, Budd,
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: to hear you doing John Connolly for Operland and he said, yes,
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: I am, And I said I got four songs. I'd
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: like to see it. He said, come over to you know,
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: like so too. I grow with my four songs, just
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: him and I in the office and now hand in
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: the first one he listened all the way through. I
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: thought he must like it, you know, he said a
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: lot of talk about nothing. So I hand him the next.
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: He said next, and he listened to he said yeah, yeah,
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: like enough for John. And in the third one he
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: said yeah, I like it. Yeah, yeah not. And so
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: I had him hit the ground running the demo that
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: I've gotten and halfway through he said that would be
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: John's new single on opery Land Records. Wow, that's just
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: how he did. Yeah, how was first of all, how
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: did you find Garth Brooks to do your demos? Or
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: how did he find you? I was writing with another guy,
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: let's see, there was three of us were writing, and
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: he said, next time you do some demos, you ought
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: to use this guy that I'm writing with and and
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: maybe use him on a demo. Sometimes his name is
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: Garth Brooks, and so I said I to try to
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: line up with him. Well I never did line up
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: with him to write. But anyhow, then another guy named
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: Charlie Quill and I wrote a couple of songs. So
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: we just hired him to because as Kem Kent Blazie
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: had told us to try it. Yeah, and he come
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: in and you know what I remember about him, and
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: he was in recording in the booth with that big
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: cowboy I had on. And so we're just in the
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: control room, just me and him and the engineer. He's
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: in there singing and we stopped everything and we're talking
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: something over. He's looking like worried in there, and he
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: comes in. He took his hat off and stood in
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: front of us. He said, I'll sing this over as
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: many times, as you guys want me to, and I said, no,
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: it's not, you know, we're just getting study in it.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: And so yeah, but that's how he is still I think,
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: you know, can you could you tell he was going
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: to be a star or did you did he impress you? Then?
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: I don't think exactly. I mean, because when you're done here,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: you hear so many great talents they're all they could
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: all make it, you know, Yeah, you look at the
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: ones that are never good that have me. It's just
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: you know, there's lots so many more that a great
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: talent that didn't make it. What's that? Then? What do
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: you think separates is it? Is it as you said,
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: just luck didn't make it? People who don't luck? Yeah,
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: and you know, and then it gets down to maybe
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: it's a great voice, but did you get the rats home?
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: Did you get you know, did Kenny Roger get the
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: Gambler right at the right time or you know the
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: Gambler that had been cut like a couple of times
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: before Kenny ever got it right. But it was that
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: productions and there that ended into it was the right
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: production that he had around it. You know, Larry Butler
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: produced those I don't know how people plug songs like, Yeah,
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: you must have been very sure of yourself and very
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: optimistic that you could do that. I was sure of
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: the songs. You know. I don't know how many names
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: you're familiar with in country music, but you know, I've
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: had maybe four Roy Clark scuts and Roy Clark, Julie
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: Greenwood's two ReBs, two Charlotte Rides. I mean, just names.
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: Do you think I would have sit back and think, oh, man,
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: if they just say hello to me. You know you
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: were fair and young, didn't you. You've had a lot
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: of I had a couple of fair and youngs and
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: one a nut. He was that yeah, oh my god. Yeah,
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: egotistical but fun. Him and I got throwed out of
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: place one time, which was our own fault, but yeah,
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: he was always getting in trouble. Yeah. And here's another
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: thing I got. I guess you can't see it this year.
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: I pull up. Is this the guitar? Yeah? Wow? Yeah?
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: And then there's the back so this is all what
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: do you you use like an etching tool and put
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: their names in it? Yeah, it's like one of them,
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: like a Dennis thing, you know. Yeah. I started out
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: with an ice pick where you had to try to
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: scratch in your hand, just killed your hand finally, but
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: trying to get it in there, you know. And so
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: I bought one of those little engravers, so now everybody
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: put him in any house. So let's see. I was
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: gonna tell you two hundred and sixty names on the guitar,
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: and I mean it's names that are just you know,
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: Chit Acting is on there. Yeah, Garth brook got God
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: bless you, Bobby on there and just on and on.
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: Just wow, great name and a lot of people you'll
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: never hear of, you know. I heard Margot Prices on there,
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: Bargo is on there. Jeremy her husband, is on there.
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: Ye man. Yeah, well this has been fantastic. Thank you
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: so much. Yeah, well great talk to you. I just
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: appreciate you guys so much doing that. Thanks to Margot
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: Price for taking a time to check. Make sure to
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: look for her new album when it drops, and you
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: can check out all of our favorite Margot Price songs
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: but heading to Broken Record podcast dot com. Also be
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: sure to check out our YouTube channel. You can subscribe
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast. Broken Record
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: is producing help from Jason Gambrell, Mila Bell Leo Rose
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: and Martin Gonzalez for Pushkin Industries. Our theme musics by
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond. Thanks for listening.