Margo Price announces the release of Hard Headed Woman, a hell-bent collection of country music that reconnects with her roots, and further redefines what it means to be a modern outlaw. Out August 29 on Loma Vista Recordings, the album captures Margo Price at her wisest, funniest, toughest and most vulnerable. It is a promise and a manifesto, a tribute to both a city and genre, a defiant cry for individuality and deep exploration of America, doubling down not only on herself, but what she has always loved: classic songs written from the intellect and the gut, timeless and urgent all at once. Reunited with producer Matt Ross-Spang, recorded in the historic RCA Studio A, and featuring duets with Tyler Childers and Jesse Welles, Hard Headed Woman marks the first album that Price has made in Nashville, a town she has called home for more than 20 years, and vitally helped to transform, creating a lane where independent and insurgent country music can exist and thrive alongside the mainstream. Performed in the same room where late friends like John Prine and Loretta Lynn have all cut records, Hard Headed Woman looks forward and back, as it places her amongst her heroes as part of a new legacy. But this is country music as only Margo Price can make it: free of rules, cherishing tradition, hard-headed with a delicate heart.
Beginning with a proclamation that “I don’t owe you f*cking shit,” as Price paraphrases, Hard Headed Woman is about the unshakable instinct to never waver, especially when our values and our future are on the line. In an era of unprecedented uncertainty, that mission is embodied on lead single Don’t Let The Bastards Get You Down, a song that speaks for the overlooked and underserved, the downtrodden and forgotten. While the track’s titular phrase originates from a call for resistance in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Price was most inspired by the message that Kris Kristofferson whispered to Sinéad O’Connor when she was booed on stage at a Bob Dylan anniversary concert. Co-written with Jeremy Ivey, Kris Kristofferson and Rodney Crowell, one of the early champions who urged Price to create Hard Headed Woman, Don’t Let The Bastards Get You Down serves as a reminder to always keep fighting for justice and your beliefs. And when the norm is to shut up and sing, and short cuts lie around every corner, Price continues to show how her songwriting can pack the most potent punch of all.
Listen to Don’t Let The Bastards Get You Down out today via Loma Vista Recordings, and watch the new music video to see Margo Price get tatted up, rock a dive bar, and cruise around town in an ATV and busted pickup truck here.
“I always hope to do like Johnny Cash did, which is speak up for the common man and woman. But there have been so many threats and anger and vitriol over the years, when I am only coming from a place of love. So I made the decision to rebuild everything from the ground up. I hope this album inspires people to be fearless and take chances and just be unabashedly themselves, in a culture that tries as hard as it can to beat us into all being the same,” says Margo Price.
In the decade since working with producer Matt Ross-Spang on her first two albums – Midwest Farmer’s Daughter and All American Made – Margo Price has played Saturday Night Live, earned a GRAMMY® nomination for Best New Artist, became the first female musician appointed to the Farm Aid Board of Directors, and collaborated with everyone from Willie Nelson to Billy Strings, Chris Stapleton, Dolly Parton, Jack White, John Prine, Loretta Lynn, Lucinda Williams, Mavis Staples, Sturgill Simpson and many more. She released four acclaimed LPs and published a lauded memoir (Maybe We’ll Make It, out on paperback September 2), and fearlessly pushed herself to explore new sounds and places.
But while Midwest Farmer’s Daughter was about her journey from childhood to Nashville, Hard Headed Woman traces her battle since – from dive bars to tour buses, through parenthood and marriage, scrutiny and sacrifice in a town that prizes uniformity and the bottom line. In addition to collaborations with Tyler Childers and Jesse Welles, Hard Headed Woman features co-writes with Rodney Crowell, a Waylon Jennings song that his widow, Jessi Colter, urged Price to sing, and so much more, as it reveals a way to march forward when the path of less resistance is right there waiting.
Backed by a brand new live band, and armed with her newly-launched, signature Gibson J-45 guitar, Margo Price will bring the music of Hard Headed Woman on the road this summer and fall, including stops at Newport Folk Festival, date with Mumford & Sons, and more listed below and at margoprice.net/tour. The tour kicks off tomorrow, June 11, with a barn-burning night of country music and two-stepping at Ray’s Bar in New York City, presented in partnership with Honky Tonkin’ in Queens. Fans are invited to save their spot on the dance floor here.
Pre-Order Hard Headed Woman on limited edition vinyl, 8-track, reel-to-reel and more here.
