Strays Margo Price

• 1 Been To The Mountain 05:28
• 2 Light Me Up 05:05
• 3 Radio 02:49
• 4 Change Of Heart 04:04
• 5 County Road 06:08
• 6 Time Machine 02:46
• 7 Hell In The Heartland 04:28
• 8 Anytime You Call 03:48
• 9 Lydia 06:12
• 10 Landfill 05:34
• Total Runtime 46:22

Info for Strays

Produced by Margo Price and Jonathan Wilson (Angel Olsen, Father John Misty), Strays was primarily recorded in the summer of 2021, during a week spent at Fivestar Studio in California’s Topanga Canyon. While the songwriting began the summer prior – during a six-day, mushroom-filled trip that Price and her husband Jeremy Ivey took to South Carolina – it was amongst the hallucinatory hills of western Los Angeles that Price experienced the best recording sessions of her career. Instilled with a newfound confidence and comfortability to experiment and explore like never before, Margo Price and her longtime band of Pricetags channeled their telepathic abilities into songs that span rock n roll, psychedelic country, rhythm & blues, and glistening, iridescent pop. Having been together since the days before Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, her 2016 debut that Rolling Stone named one of the Greatest Country Albums of All Time, Price and her band tracked live in the same room, simultaneously expanding upon and completely exploding the notions of every other album they have made together. With additional vocals from Sharon Van Etten and Lucius, plus guitar from Mike Campbell, strings, synthesizers and a breadth of previously untapped sounds, Strays is also Price’s most collaborative record yet.

“I feel this urgency to keep moving, keep creating,” says Margo Price. “You get stuck in the same patterns of thinking, the same loops of addiction. But there comes a point where you just have to say, ‘I'm going to be here, I'm going to enjoy it, and I'm not going to put so much stock into checking the boxes for everyone else.’ I feel more mature in the way that I write now, I’m on more than just a search for large crowds and accolades. I’m trying to find what my soul needs.”

Margo Price

Margo Price
It only takes Margo Price about twenty-eight seconds to convince you that you're hearing the arrival of a singular new talent. “Hands of Time,” the opener on Midwest Farmer's Daughter (coming Spring 2016 on Third Man Records), is an invitation, a mission statement and a starkly poetic summary of the 32-year old singer's life, all in one knockout, self-penned punch: “When I rolled out of town on the unpaved road, I was fifty-seven dollars from bein' broke . . .”

Throughout Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, Price recalls hardships and heartaches – the loss of her family's farm, the death of her child, problems with men and the bottle. Her voice has that alluring mix of vulnerability and resilience that was once the province of Loretta and Dolly. It is a tour-de-force performance that is vivid, deeply moving and all true.

From the honky tonk comeuppance of “About To Find Out,” to the rockabilly-charged “This Town Gets Around” to the weekend twang of “Hurtin' (On The Bottle)”, Price adds fresh twists to classic Nashville country, with a sound that could’ve made hits in any decade. Meanwhile, the hard-hitting blues grooves of “Four Years of Chances” and “Tennessee Song” push the boundaries further west to Memphis (the album was recorded at Sun Studio).

Price grew up in Aledo, Illinois (pop. 3,612), and after dropping out of college, she moved to Nashville in 2003. She soon met bass player – and future husband – Jeremy Ivey, and formed a band called Buffalo Clover. They self-released three records and built a local following, but it was personal tragedy that brought Price’s calling into even sharper focus. “I lost my firstborn son to a heart ailment,” Price says, “and I was really down and depressed. I was drinking too much. I was definitely lost. I did some things that I regret very much now that resulted in a brush with the law. Thank god I had my friends and family to keep me going. Coming through that, I thought, 'I'm just going to write music that I want to hear.' It was a big turning point.”

After recording the album with her band at Sun Studio and shopping it to a number of Nashville labels, Price reached another critical career moment when a friend brought up Third Man Records and told her, “You're on Jack's radar, he wants to hear the record.” Price says, “I sent it over, and it just felt like home. A good creative space to be involved in, and everyone is so down to earth. It was awesome when I met with Jack. He told me he thought my voice was a breath of fresh air, and that he loved the record.”

As Price looks ahead to a busy 2016, full of touring and promoting Midwest Farmer's Daughter, she reflects on her hopes for what listeners might get from these songs. “I hope that the record helps people get through hard times or depression. That's ultimately what music did for me in my childhood, and especially in my early adult years. It's about being able to connect personally with a song, and hopefully, it makes you feel not so lonely.”

This album contains no booklet.