Country star Margo Price on her wilderness years

Margo Price won industry recognition after years of playing gigs with little to show for it. Yet the singer remembers those tough early days with fondness in a memoir with no holds barred

Margo Price was 19 when she decided to drop out of college and make music instead. She had taken some mushrooms and had a psychedelic epiphany about her future that she likens to “a conversation with God”. Full of optimism, she moved from small-town Illinois to Nashville.

It would take 14 years for Price to land a record deal. In that time, she busked, worked as a waitress and taught dance to children. She endured grinding poverty, often subsisting on one meal a day and, at one point, slept in a tent. So what kept her going? “I was pretty stubborn,” the altcountry star recalls.

Price, 39, has documented her struggle in a vivid and poignant memoir, Maybe We’ll Make It. She was inspired, in part, by Patti Smith’s book Just Kids, a chronicle of her time as a young artist in New York. “I just loved how her book took place in those years that she was struggling,” says Price. “And I thought: ‘If I don’t write about this now, I’m going to forget all the details.’”

Price is talking from her home in Tennessee where she lives with her husband and musical partner, Jeremy Ivey, and their two children, Judah and Ramona. “We’ve got about six acres out here so I can be totally naked in my backyard,” Price grins, pointing to the leafy scene out of the window behind her. “I just got back from a hike with my dogs. I go about three miles every morning. I try to get lost out there every day, although my children go to school in east Nashville so I still get my fill of bougie coffee.”

Price found the process of writing cathartic and painful. The forthcoming book dwells on some of her lowest points, most notably the death of Ezra, her son Judah’s twin brother, 10 days after he was born, because of a heart defect. It also traces her long and problematic relationship with alcohol, which began when she was 12 and reached its nadir in the months following Ezra’s death. One night, after a long evening of drinking, she got into her car and crashed into a telegraph pole, resulting in a weekend in prison.

Price notes she was still drinking when she wrote the first draft of the book. It wasn’t until her editor said to her: “You do know that whiskey is basically a character in this book, don’t you?” that she found the impetus to quit.

In preparation for the release of Maybe We’ll Make It, Price has been having therapy. “I was having panic attacks, thinking about all of this being out there,” she explains. “I was imagining the names they were gonna call me. They’re gonna say I’m a horrible mother, that I’m a drunk. But I also [hope] that people are going to appreciate my vulnerability.”

She recalls sitting at home one night with Ivey and bursting into tears about what her parents and siblings would think. “I said: ‘What if I burn all my bridges? What if they won’t let me

come back home?’ He just looked at me and said: ‘You belong to no one.’” Price smiles and holds up an arm to the camera. “What he said meant so much, I went and got it tattooed on my arm.”

She is putting the final touches to an album, Strays, that is due for release in the new year. Its first single, Been to the Mountain, sardonically references her change in fortunes – “Used to be a waitress but now I’m a consumer” – and blends old-time country with 70s rock’n’roll.

In the book, Price bemoans the Nashville scene that labelled her and her first band, Buffalo Clover, as “too country for the rock scene and too rock for the country scene”. As a solo artist, she has found acceptance. “I don’t put any limits on what genres I draw on and what I put on my paintbrush,” she says.

Her early brushes with music industry figures were frequently grim. One would-be manager lured her to his house and then spiked her drink; she escaped by locking herself in the bathroom

What if I burn all my bridges? What if they won’t let me come back home?

and calling Ivey to come to get her. She also recalls a label rep who told her they already had two women on their roster, so couldn’t take on a third. Success finally came when she was signed by Jack White’s Third Man Records on the strength of her first solo LP, 2016’s Midwest Farmer’s Daughter. That album was widely portrayed as her last roll of the dice, having pawned her engagement ring to pay for recording sessions. (Ivey subsequently sold his car and bought the ring back.)

When I ask if she has seen a better side to the industry since she began making a living from it, she lets out a hollow laugh. “I feel it’s just like a web that is set up to eat artists. I know so many other talented friends that are still working at grocery stores, as their careers are not in a place where they can support themselves. And then when you do get there, you have so many people siphoning things off you.”

Still, Price revels in the high moments, such as her 2018 Grammy nomination for best new artist. “All those things are not lost on me because I spent so much time being the loser,” she says.

Despite the years of hardship, there are elements of her old life she misses. In her book, she recalls how she and Ivey would sell their belongings and hit the road; once, embarking on a lengthy cross-country tour in a battered RV, playing impromptu gigs and selling home-made CDs to cover costs.

“Those days were tough but, still, I think: ‘I’m so glad we did that.’”