Margo Price’s debut album ‘Mid-West Farmer’s Daughter’ told the story of a harrowing, hard-fought struggle to make it in the music industry, exploring grief, marriage, poverty, addiction, prison and the desperation of depression.
That story is recounted in her stunning new memoir ‘Maybe We’ll Make It’, an unflinching and unapologetic manifesto of personal and artistic freedom.
Margo’s talent, integrity and passion for music leaps from every page. The story of falling in love and making music with her husband is told with the honesty of all the country music greats before her.
Margo forges her own path through life, searching for a break and refusing to give in or give up despite the rejections and failures they face. When tragedy strikes her family, the pain and grief she writes about is unimaginable and devastating.
After that loss, her life spirals out of control. It’s in the aftermath of that horror where she finds the inspiration she needs to channel these stories into songs. With nothing left to lose she gives it all, selling everything she has to made the album she dreams of. The knowledge that ‘we might be failures but that we were talented failures in a business that championed mediocrity’ actually helps her to find a way to much-deserved success.
By never selling out and, maybe more importantly, by never compromising on her dreams of ‘wearing a rhinestone Nudie suit, sharing a joint and cowriting with Willie Nelson, singing on the Grand Ole Opry stage’ she actually made it. Look to your heroes and see what they do to survive and thrive in this world and you will find the examples you need to follow.
Musician’s memoirs often they fall into two camps for me: great writing by artists whose music I don’t particularly enjoy (Patti Smith, Viv Albertine) or average writing by artists whose music speaks to me more than the memoir (Chrissie Hynde, Carole King). ‘Maybe We’ll Make It’ is one of the rare exceptions of great memoir writing that stands alone but also makes me appreciate her music again, anew.
Thank fuck people like Margo still exist. Buy the book, listen to the music, support the artist because we need her, and more like her, in this world.
BUY: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/product/margo-price/maybe-we-ll-make-it-a-memoir
Highway Queens 
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