Margo Price

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