Margo Price travels long road to 'overnight success' in memoir; see her in Austin

When Margo Price finished the first draft of a memoir she’d begun writing in 2018, she didn’t know quite what she had.

“I was 500 pages. It had no ending. There were no chapters,” explains the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter. “It was like (Jack) Kerouac’s scroll: It was just one big thing of word vomit.”

But, like the music career she nurtured for more then a decade until she broke through with her 2016 album, “Midwest Farmer’s Daughter,” Price knew she had something worth pursuing.

“I got on the internet and ran my mouth on Twitter,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘I think I'm actually writing a book.’ And then Jessica Hopper reached out, and she asked to read the manuscript.”

Hopper, a Chicago author and music critic, recently had become an editor for the University of Texas Press American Music Series, which has published two dozen music biographies and memoirs over the past decade. And just like that, the project had a home. UT Press published “Maybe We’ll Make It” last month, sparking a book tour that brings Price to Austin for a 3:15 p.m. Nov. 5 appearance at Central Presbyterian Church as part of the Texas Book Festival. She'll also sign copies of the book at 7 p.m. at Waterloo Records.

Editors helped her pare down her original manuscript, resulting in a 270-page journey that begins with Price’s childhood in rural Illinois and ends with her April 2016 appearance on “Saturday Night Live.” Most of her fans have followed the music she’s made since then, but “Maybe We’ll Make It” sheds light on the long road that got her there.

Along the way, she moved from Illinois to Nashville with $57 to her name; worked for years as a waitress while touring with the band Buffalo Clover; survived some harrowing episodes with alcohol, which she finally gave up two years ago; and had three children with husband Jeremy Ivey, including a twin who died a few days after being born.

More:Margo Price feels at home visiting the city Doug Sahm once roamed

Sharing such personal memories wasn’t easy. “You lose so much ambiguity when you're telling the story of your life,” she says. “With songwriting, it's really easy to be able to use metaphors, and you can be ambiguous.”

Price’s book is up-front about the hard living and hard times that dominated her teens and 20s. She took a lot of principled stands but also made her share of mistakes. “It was important to get all that stuff down, because who you see standing before you today (exists) because of all those things that happened,” she says. “And I'm really grateful for the struggle.”

We recently spoke with Price via Zoom. Here are some highlights from our conversation.

From the Carousel Lounge to the Devil's Backbone Tavern

American-Statesman: There’s a photo in the book of you performing at Austin’s Carousel Lounge in 2008 with your band Buffalo Clover. Do you remember much about that show?

Margo Price: We have a lot of photos from that night. We hung out real late; even when they closed the bar down, we just hung out in the front parking lot. We met a couple of girls who were in their 20s, and one of them told me I sounded like Cat Power. There weren't really that many people there, but everybody who was there was super cool. That was such a fun show.

More:Our review of Margo Price at Emo's in 2018

There’s also a colorful passage in the book about your visit to Devil’s Backbone Tavern, in Fischer southwest of Austin, on that same trip. What do you remember about it?

I love the Devil’s Backbone. I’ve been there maybe 10 times (since that first visit in 2008). The jukebox was amazing. I was listening to that Guy Clark record (“Old #1,” which was on the jukebox), and playing their piano, and hanging out with the locals and sitting out back and smoking weed. I'm going to do a show there someday. Mark my words, I've got to play out there.

How Willie Nelson helped her give up alcohol (but not weed)

Like Austin icon Willie Nelson, you’ve given up alcohol but not cannabis. (Price teamed with Nelson to produce a marijuana strain for the Willie’s Reserve brand sold in weed-legal states.) Has it been your personal experience that one is more destructive than the other?

I have never blacked out and forgot what I've done after smoking a joint. But I have had some hell-raising times drinking. And really, I don't even regret it all. I think at times, alcohol absolutely saved my life. Because I was in so much pain, and if I did not have the ability to numb myself with that, I don't know that I would be here. But at a certain point, it just wasn't helpful to me anymore. It just was making it hard to do what I loved.

I also really have Willie Nelson to thank for showing me the way and destigmatizing plant medicine. I had read that he threw away his cigarettes, and he just rolled 20 joints and put them in a cigarette pack and rolled them up in his shirt sleeve. He got off the whiskey and everything. And I thought, if he can do that, I can do that, and I can function better.

I've also been trying to destigmatize psilocybin and psychedelic medicine. I've really struggled with depression, and I've seen nothing but benefits from taking mushrooms. I'm not endorsing that to anyone. Everyone has to make their own decisions, and what works for me is not necessarily going to work for someone else. But this is just what's working for me right now.

How difficult was it to write about losing your son Ezra just after he was born in 2010?

It was hard. I went into a dark place when I was writing through some of that. But with a lot of things in this book that were hard to write, it just feels very freeing, like I can move on from a lot of it.

The first draft of my book didn't have everything in there. It made me look a little bit better than than I was. Going back in and deciding to add a lot about what what tore apart my band and everything that happened in my marriage — that was a decision that we made later as a family. It just felt like there were pieces missing in the story.

So I've been nervous to get this book out. But at the same time, I'm just trying not to worry about if people are going to judge me, because it's just what I went through. I was just a kid at that time. So even though people are like, “Oh, you're 39, you can't write a book,” I’m like, just read the book and then get back to me.

A new album, and a future that's wide open

You have a new album, “Strays,” due out early next year. From the two singles that have already been released, it sounds a good bit heavier and less country than your first three records. Is that the case?

I'm a little disenchanted with a lot of things about the country scene, but I just want to keep myself turned on creatively. And I think the album has a lot of different palettes. There still is some pedal steel in there, and it's just me and my band playing live in a room. But yeah, it's different. I think it's my favorite thing I've done yet. I’ve got to feel that way. Otherwise, what's the point of even putting it out?

I started writing it when I was still drinking, and then by the end of it, I wasn't drinking, but we were doing lots of psychedelics. So it's out there, but it's still grounded. I listened to a lot of Joni Mitchell and Patti Smith and Bob Dylan and Tom Petty when we started writing it. So it's all over the place, but it holds up. I'm really excited for everybody to hear it.

I know that I'll make country records again. And when it's going to be a country record, it’s going to be (expletive) country, too. (laughs) … But I don't think I see a lot of people that are doing psychedelic rock. Maybe they are, but it's weird to not have a scene for that in a lot of ways.

More:Our 2020 interview with Margo Price

This book is your life story up to now, but in many ways, you’re still just getting started. You’re now about the same age that Willie Nelson was when he moved to Austin and reinvented his career. What might the future hold for you?

I've been in a hard place. After my career took off, I think a lot of people assumed that everything just clicks together. But those first few years were really tumultuous. I was still going through a lot of stuff in my personal life. And when the pandemic hit, I really feared that it was all over.

I kept saying, “When this thing ends, I'm going to come back like Tina Turner after Ike.” (laughs) She just came out swinging. And hearing that Willie was the same age (when he moved to Austin), too, that makes me really hopeful. I think being a woman, I've had a lot of anxiety about getting older. But it's kind of different now. I'm just ready to get out there and kick some ass.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: How to see Margo Price talk Maybe We’ll Make It at Texas Book Festival