a music blog
This week I started using Substack for the first time. I know I’m seriously behind the times but after looking at the abysmal current state of social media, I thought an app focused on writing would be worth investigating.
Continue reading “Women in Music to Follow on Substack! “
After two albums where she strayed somewhat from her country music roots, Margo Price is back in the genre she started in with the release of this new album ‘Hard Headed Woman’. This week she played the Opry, wearing clothes loaned from Loretta Lynn’s archive, suggesting Margo has come home, all guns blazing, ready to take back the genre once again.
Continue reading “Album Review: Margo Price – Hard Headed Woman”
Back in 2019 news broke than the legendary queen of Outlaw country Jessi Colter was recording a new album, produced by none other than Margo Price. Since then fans of both women have been waiting for news of the release only to be met with a series of disappointing delays.
We can blame the pandemic for some of the issues but Margo hinted on Twitter that finding a record label to release this album has been fraught with difficulty, no doubt due to ageism and sexism plaguing the industry. Thankfully Appalachia Record Company have agreed to release the album, titled ‘Edge of Forever’ – a collection of songs which prove that being over seventy is no barrier to musical creativity.
Continue reading “Album Review: Jessi Colter – Edge of Forever”
To stray is to go off the beaten path, wandering without a home, scratching survival on your own terms.
No surprise then that Margo Price would name her new album ‘Strays’, since she has embraced that identity since the beginning of her career. In her recent memoir Maybe We’ll Make It she underlined how hard she’d worked to remain a stray – to never compromise the vision she had for her music.
Continue reading “Album Review: Margo Price – Strays”
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.
Continue reading “Book Review: ‘Maybe We’ll Make It’ by Margo Price”
On her debut album ‘Mid-West Farmer’s Daughter’ Margo Price described herself as an outcast who had been rejected by Nashville and the mainstream industry, eventually being forced to sell everything she had to just to make a record that no one wanted to release. After Jack White and Third Man Records signed her and propelled her to success that underdog narrative no longer applied. So for her second album All American Made she looked outward to issues facing her own nation, making political and feminist statements which led to Grammy nominations and further underlined her status as a modern Americana icon. Her new album ‘That’s How Rumors Get Started’ offers a glimpse into the musical and personal challenges that come in the wake of such career highs. Continue reading “Album Review: Margo Price – That’s How Rumors Get Started”
You could tell this was going to be a good day because it was unusually sunny in Glasgow, with thankfully no sign of the snowmaggedon conditions that had caused shows to be cancelled at the same venue last week. I was at the Hydro to attend Country 2 Country festival, which brings the best of Nashville to the UK for three days every March. The Friday evening show featured performances from Lukas Nelson, Ashley Campbell, Midland, Margo Price, Emmylou Harris and Little Big Town. Continue reading “Live Review: Country to Country Festival, Glasgow, Friday 9th March 2018”
When I was younger I couldn’t wait until Saturday so I could go to the next town and spend what little money I had on albums and singles. Of course I lived in the middle of nowhere so the next town only had a small Woolworths shop but beggars couldn’t be choosers. I want to tell my 14 year old self one day you will be able to listen to whatever album you want instantly for FREE. I’m sure my head would explode. Yet if I explained how we got here and what we lost on the way I don’t think I would be so overjoyed at the prospect. A system which threatens independent record shops and hurts the artist is not something to celebrate. When I was a kid all I dreamed of was shelves stacked with CDs and vinyl. I have that now but I admittedly buy a lot less, leaving my collection a little frozen in time.
With those concerns in mind, and inspired by the shopping haul posts of other bloggers I am committing myself to getting out to a record shop once a month and buying something by a female artist (to keep with the blog theme). I am also hoping to expand my second hand vinyl collection so I will also show you what treasures I find. Continue reading “October Music Haul”
The celebrated classicist Mary Beard in her lecture ‘The Public Voice of Women‘ outlined how and why female voices in spheres like culture and politics have been attacked and silenced across time. She traced it back to Homer’s Odysessy, through to Shakespeare where a raped woman has her tongue ripped out, right up to the present day and the online trolling of women. Beard goes on to explain that:
‘it doesn’t much matter what line you take as a woman, if you venture into traditional male territory, the abuse comes anyway. It’s not what you say that prompts it, it’s the fact you’re saying it.’
In the music industry this seems more tragically true than ever. Women are outnumbered in every aspect of the business, those who venture into its pit are treated like a novelty; they are sexualised, objectified and their voices ultimately sidelined.
So don’t underestimate how important it is that women like Alynda Segarra of Hurray for the Riff Raff, Juliana Hatfield and now Margo Price have released albums in 2017 that are fiercely personal and yet concern themselves with wider political ideas. Price has emerged as a true outlaw hero of country music since the release of her debut album last year and the EP ‘Weakness‘. Her follow up, ‘All American Made’ is a statement of intent: she’s here to sing about the social issues she sees in the world and she’s not ready to make nice. Continue reading “Album Review: Margo Price – All American Made”
Highway Queens 