When I first heard Dolly Parton sing as a little girl, it was a heartbreaking ballad about a dead child. When I first heard Loretta Lynn, she was singing about coal mines and honky tonk angels; Tammy Wynette was lonely in Apartment #9; and Reba McEntire was pining for a straying husband in New England. That first time hearing them was memorable. Margo Price just became memorable.
Not a Cinderella glass slipper wearing waif in a fairy tale world, Price writes and sings from the gut and the heart and the scars on her skin. Unlike Taylor Swift who swoons and pouts over puppy love disasters, Price goes drinking hard and spits fire onto the loins of the ones who scarred her. She also loves deeply, whether she is singing about family or a farm, and it’s an emotion that leaves pockmarks and lesions or lifelong imprints on the soul. As she poured her heart out at the Manship Theatre in Baton Rouge on February 1st, she proved just why her star was rising.
A long hard road this gal has been on. She has known happiness, unbearable sadness and what it’s like to sit in a jail cell. She has fought, worked hard and persevered where others would have given up. She became when some in the industry believed she didn’t have the goods to make it. It must feel good to prove so many wrong.
Price, who spent most of her Manship set in a dark blue pantsuit, fringed open-toe boots and a cowboy hat, started out as you might expect: strumming a big acoustic Gibson guitar, centerstage. She joked about the first time she played in Louisiana, in New Orleans with a burlesque act, “with fire tassles,” opening for her. “Tennessee Song,” from her 2016 debut album, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, kicked up the vibe three songs in. By song #7, “Cocaine Cowboys” from her latest record, All American Made, she was lighting the fires and kicking the glitter off as she dropped the hat and hopped on the drums to join her band in a psycho funk hard rocking jam that put the crowd on their feet. It was the song that won me over.
After such a barn burner, Price then took over the piano and sang the title track to the new record, alone onstage, adding another glimpse into her musical diversity. Not allowing herself to be chained to her guitar, she’d put it aside and just sing, kick up her heels, shake a little tambourine and eventually hop back onto those drums, which were set up beside those of Dillon Napier, a beast of a drummer who pounded away all night like he was Brian Tichy’s little brother.
A lot can be said of Price’s band. Not your average easy-on-the-harmony players, they upped the ante and joined Napier in producing a southern rock sound behind Price that lasted all night: Jamie Davis on guitar, Luke Schneider on pedal steel and dobro, Kevin Black on bass and Micah Hulscher on the keys. When these guys jammed, they jammed.
As a special treat for the Louisiana crowd, Price played two songs that she said they had been working on during soundcheck: a cover of Rodney Crowell’s “Leaving Louisiana In The Broad Daylight,” and a burning hot “Proud Mary” that should become the encore for the rest of her live sets. It was that good.
Another cover, the Conway Twitty-Loretta Lynn elbow-poking duet, “You’re The Reason Our Kids Are Ugly,” brought opener Paul Cauthen back onto the stage to sing with Price. The Texas singer/songwriter, who has also seen his share of hard work and struggles to make it in this business, had a fine set himself, sounding at times like a throwback to when country singers had a classiness to them while singing about cheating and whiskey and God. “Once You’re Gone,” “Have Mercy” and “Saddle” were highlights as was his closing number, the title track from his 2016 release, My Gospel, which brought on a standing ovation for the talented ensemble.
In all, Price, who encored in a short sparkly dress and high heels, sang seven songs from each of her two albums. Other highlights included “Weekender,” a song she wrote after “a bad weekend … in jail”; “4 Years Of Chances”; “Wild Women,” where she talked about Waylon Jennings as an intro into the song; “This Town Gets Around,” an honest sneer at “the music business and how messed up it is”; “Hurtin’ On The Bottle,” her so-called “drinking song” that jumped into a few bars of the Willie Nelson classic “Whiskey River”; and “Paper Cowboy” where Price got back on the drums and rode with her band on another swirl on the mushrooms psychedelic jam.
After the show, Price, still in her sequined dress, met a very long line of fans at the merch table to sign autographs, answer questions and take selfies, always with a bright smile on her face. If this is what the future of country/Americana looks like, she’s a great addition to music’s most honest-talking genre.
SETLIST: Don’t Say It, Do Right By Me, Tennessee Song, Since You Put Me Down, Just Like Love, Wild Women, Cocaine Cowboys, All American Made, Hands Of Time, Weakness, Hurtin’ On The Bottle, Leaving Louisiana In The Broad Daylight, This Town Gets Around, Weekender, A Little Pain, Paper Cowboy ENCORE: 4 Years Of Chances, You’re The Reason Our Kids Are Ugly, Proud Mary.
