Margo Price On Motherhood, Loss, Politics & Country Music

Country singers love to write songs about big struggles, hard times, deep loss, and surviving it all. But when Margo Price writes a tune, it’s because she’s been there and done that. The 42-year-old mom of two dropped out of college to move to Nashville and try her luck at becoming a star. Six albums later, Price is a fixture in Music City and an internationally-known singer-songwriter. She’s also suffered incredible loss, fought addiction, and come out on the other side — even though she admits she’s still learning and still striving.

On Friday, Price will release her sixth studio album, Hard Headed Woman, which, after a few albums that experimented with new sounds and genres, is a return to country, folk, and a girl and her guitar. It’s also, like all of her albums, a deeply felt truth-bomb that sounds straight from the heart.

Price sat down with Scary Mommy over Zoom to talk about it all, from her new alcohol-free life, to her political activism, to what it feels like to grieve the loss of a child after 15 years.

Scary Mommy: Let's start off talking about your new album. What's exciting about it? What's the same, what's different?

Margo Price: It definitely feels like home to me. I've really tried to center the storytelling and the lyrics in a big way.

These last couple albums were maybe exploring some different sonic territory that I had not embarked upon, and I had so much fun doing it and don't have any regrets. But I just wanted to get back to a place where I could pick up the guitar and — the whole song's there. You don't need a lot of extra drums or synths or any of that. That's always been appealing to me. Just the folk and country storytelling aspects of songwriting.

SM: Is there a song or two that you want to highlight and tell me a little bit about?

MP: There's a song that is called “Nowhere is Where,” and it was written with my husband Jeremy Ivey and another friend who's a songwriter, Morgan Nagler. It's a piece about where I come from. It's really just paints a picture of middle America and kind of a desolate area, but it's a place that still is very dear to my heart and it's got a fun little kind of outro that is about burning the past and starting over and moving on. I'm always eternally in search of that.

SM: You got sober a couple years ago. Has that influenced your album at all and how has it affected your life?

MP: I'm always very careful to use the word sober, but I'm alcohol free.

I still partake in cannabis and psilocybin and plant medicines — so not sober — but feeling so much healthier without drowning myself in the liquor and the wine. I think that when you're a musician and an artist and a writer, there’s thinking that you have to destroy yourself just to be able to produce. And I definitely have been addicted to some of that masochistic way of thinking that being a failure is part of the process.

Now, I am feeling my feelings in a way that I ran from as a child of the 80s and 90s when were were taught, don't talk about anything, just keep it all happy on the surface.

So I'm doing all that “my inner child” bullshit, and it's great drinking my magnesium at night and waking up not having to worry about who I slept with or what I said. So it's good.

I still hang out in bars all the time, which is the most hilarious thing — it's all wrapped up in there with the bartending and the singing in the bars and living in that way. So it's like I've got the best of both worlds because I'm still socializing and still able to go out and see bands.

I just read a couple books and had what you call almost spontaneous sobriety. It wasn't really anything planned. I wrote a memoir about my wild days of struggling in the music business, lost a child, relied very heavily on booze, and quite frankly, it saved my life and I'm very grateful that I had it for that time and season. But now I'm just in a different season and it happens to be psilocybin and coffee and hiking in the woods and telling all my troubles to the trees.

Joan Baez gave me some really great advice, and it's like just every day, just do one thing, one thing, moving in the right direction.

SM: You mentioned child loss and I know that you lost one of your twins. A big part of our Scary Mommy community is dealing with similar losses. Is there anything that you want to share with our audience about what it looks like 15 years down the road?

MP: It's funny because I've come a long way on my healing journey, but there's a definite before and an after, and I think it's something that you never get over. You just learn to deal with it differently.

Actually just two days ago was the anniversary of losing my son. It's been 15 years, but it still hurts. And some years it hits you a little bit harder. I know a lot of women were just taught to not speak on miscarriages and loss. It makes people uncomfortable. But I think being able to talk about it and to do some therapy, it was transformative for me.

I would just say to anybody who has dealt with something like this, a mother or a father, just be careful with yourself. And if you are married and you have a spouse, I think they say that the statistics are 85% of couples that lose a child divorce, and we already know that 50% of couples just divorce anyway, so don't judge your partner for how they're grieving. Just continue to try to be with those uncomfortable feelings and not run from them. I definitely didn't do all the right things right off the bat, but I'm in a much better place now.

SM: And really, how can you be expected to do everything right?

MP: I think we forget that when you have grief, that's actually because there was a whole lot of love there. So I've even grown really attached to my grief and love the person that I've become because of it, because I just have this completely different outlook and a sympathy for people who are going through loss in any way that it happens. Just seeing all these parents who lost their children in Texas, in the flood, and I mean obviously just the wars that are going on, it's hard to exist in a world where there's so much pain. But we do have to enable ourselves to feel joy after great losses and continue to know that it's okay to feel happy again.

SM: I'm sorry for your loss. Did you do anything to mark the day?

MP: I actually have a community of mothers that I keep in touch with, and we all reach out to each other on those days. And so I had a couple really deep phone calls with some friends, and I have an aunt who lost my cousin, her only daughter, and we always connect. So I think just being together through those hard times — it’s just good to have people to lean on.

SM: You mentioned war. You're really active politically, and I feel right now that moms maybe don't know how to how they can get out there and make a difference. Can you talk a little bit about your activism?

MP: I have tried to be present at a lot of the protests, especially around gun violence. When the Covenant shooting happened in Nashville, I went out and sang and protested, and I did not bring my daughter because I fear for her safety.

I do think that one thing that we can all do right now is call our representatives, write our representatives, email them.

There's so many things going on that it can feel really overwhelming, but I think Joan Baez gave me some really great advice, and it's like just every day, just do one thing, one thing, moving in the right direction.

I think you really have to spend your time wisely these days. And in the past, it does feel good to get on the internet and blow off some hot steam and fire off a hot take. But what really goes a long way is calling the people that are stripping our rights. Flood their inbox, leave them a message.

SM: You have an age gap between your kids that's pretty significant — nine years. What's your experience been with it? What are the pros and cons?

MP: Oh my goodness, there are so many of both.

People often ask us, whoa, what happened there? The answer simply is that we are not planners. But they have both been the joy of my life, and I've raised them both so differently because I was a different human at 27 than I was at 37.

I grew up seven and a half years older than my youngest sister. We are best friends now, and I would just do anything for her. And I think my children, despite having this large age gap, they still argue. They find ways to manipulate us and pit us against each other. But my son, he's the older one, he has been very helpful with babysitting here and there, reading books to her. But it was definitely a big adjustment. He was used to being an only child. And my daughter Ramona is a very outgoing, very steal-the-show kind of character. She's big character energy for sure, but she loves him so much and she looks up to him. We're still figuring it out.

You’d think it would be easier with them being far apart, but sometimes I just want to pull my hair out.

SM: What's your best parenting advice?

MP: My best parenting advice is let your children make their own mistakes. Let them do things that are a little bit dangerous. We're living in a time where we're trying to wrap everybody in bubble wrap, and we really need to let our children live messily and get dirty and climb trees and go break into abandoned buildings and do all the things that we were doing in our early years.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.