Chris Riemenschneider
When you hear her speak about giving up consuming and having a non secular awakening since her final album got here out, you may assume Margo Price has became some sort of teetotaling goody-two-shoes.
Yeah, proper.
“I count my psychedelic experiences up there with the most important experiences of my life,” the country-rock hero mentioned, “even as symbolic as it was to have children.”
Raised 350 miles downriver from the Twin Cities in Aledo, Illinois, Price has come a good distance musically, professionally and metaphysically since her Loretta Lynn-channeling 2016 breakout album for Jack White’s label, “Midwest Farmer’s Daughter.”
Her largest leap but arguably got here earlier than her latest file, “Strays.” An album that actually strays from her throwback nation sound into Southern rock and folky balladry, the LP was closely impressed by Price’s experiences writing her well-received, heart-tugging memoir “Maybe We’ll Make It.”
Talking by cellphone from the street, Price additionally cited her experiences taking psychedelic mushrooms with husband/guitarist Jeremy Ivey through the songwriting section as a serious affect on the album.
“We wanted to take this little vacation just the two of us to write some songs, and we brought along a bag of mushrooms and kind of just let them guide us wherever we wanted to go next,” she recounted. “I’m very grateful that we did.”
That bodily and psychological getaway, she mentioned, opened her as much as altering up the musical model on “Strays” to a extra kaleidoscopic sound. It additionally introduced extra of a “letting go” ingredient to the album’s lyrics.
The making of “Strays” paralleled the unpacking of many reminiscences through the writing of her very private ebook. In it, she recounts the struggles of creating it in Nashville and the ache of getting one in every of her twin sons die from a genetic coronary heart situation two weeks after he was born. (She and Ivey have since welcomed a daughter to the household, too.)
“Strays” additionally adopted a slightly critical run-in with COVID-19 at residence. All of which additionally led to her selecting to surrender alcohol and begin going to remedy.
“Jeremy had nearly died from COVID, he was that sick,” Price mentioned. “We were strictly isolated for almost 100 days with young children and no one else there. It was very intense.”
“From the very first time I launched into a (psychedelic mushroom) journey, it has modified the course of my life. I used to be going to school within the Midwest and was simply going to get a job in promoting, do what was anticipated of me — get the regular job, get the 401(ok). Anybody that decides they wish to be an artist as an alternative of that has to observe an odd path.
“Mushrooms really kind of opened me up to the idea that I could follow that path, I could just do what I wanted to do.”
Now 39, Price moved to Nashville at age 20 and started a decade-plus wrestle to carve out a music profession in Music City. She and Ivey had performed in just a few bands, together with Buffalo Clover, earlier than Price stepped out on her personal and obtained the profession enhance by way of White’s Third Man Records.
In the more moderen case of creating the brand new album, she mentioned, “I was wondering: ‘Are people going to like me if I don’t make strictly country albums?’ ‘Are fans going to say I betrayed them or I sold out?’ But ultimately I wanted to follow my muse and go wherever my inspiration took me.”
That change of course is overtly mirrored within the album’s lead single, “Change of Heart.” A bluesy, organ-laced rocker, it turned one thing of a mantra for the remainder of the brand new tunes with such telling traces as, “I quit trying to change the past.”
Another daring new monitor on “Strays,” the extra psychedelic epic “Light Me Up” — that includes Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell — is a fiery exposition on a subject that Price thinks is much too taboo for ladies nation singers: S-E-X.
“Men have been writing songs about sex for a long time, but at least within my genre of music it’s definitely still looked down upon for women to sing about it,” she mentioned.
“Especially now, with the challenges to Roe v. Wade, I think we need to celebrate women’s pleasure more and women’s freedom to do what we want with our bodies.”
Price mentioned she was principally considering of her personal bodily well-being when she determined to give up consuming alcohol.
“I didn’t need to check into rehab out of emergency, didn’t drink every day, anything like that,” she mentioned. “I went out and read a lot of books, got a lot of information and studied the science behind what alcohol is doing to my brain. It’s kind of like cigarettes: It’s a carcinogen, and it damages your body over time.”
Of course, Price had one in every of her heroes and now private buddies and his well-known treatment for stress and alcoholism to thank for encouragement: Willie Nelson, who has lengthy cited his marijuana use as a life savior. She’s even adopted Nelson’s lead and launched her personal line of hashish, Mom Grass, after extensively advocating for its advantages.
“Having Willie as a role model in that way was really huge for me, because I didn’t have to worry as much about being seen as some kind of pariah or seen as a broken person” in quitting alcohol, she mentioned.
The Midwest farmer’s daughter is even now a board member of Nelson’s Farm Aid group. She mentioned turning into buddies with the nation music legend is “just the best.”
“He’s just such a joy to be around, always telling jokes and always offering wisdom of some sort for us all to gain. Just sitting and listening to him, I’m grateful to do.”
Now, she mentioned she feels “freed up” with out alcohol. And she mentioned she is having fun with the same unburdened contentment after the publication of “Maybe We’ll Make It,” the writing of which she mentioned had lengthy been a private aim.
“I wanted to document that time of my life before it was erased from my memory,” she defined. “And I wanted to try to explain what Jeremy and I went through.”
“It wasn’t simply, ‘Oh, we lost a baby but just kept making records and finally had our breakthrough.’ Because it obviously was very painful and really ugly at times. I wanted to be really transparent with people.”
Between the ebook, the brand new album and the lengthy profession ascent — and people occasional psychedelic excursions, too — Price has discovered a reasonably clear message to cross alongside.
“I just want to be out here telling people you can absolutely change your life. You don’t have to do the same things as everybody else. You can be different.”
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Source: www.bostonherald.com”