Margo Price @ The Granada Theater
February 4th, 2023
Words & Photographs by Cassie Preston
Margo Price has grown from a Nashville honky-tonk to rock n’ roll drinking songs to the sand and salt of the West Coast. She is constantly refining her expansive portrait of the American music horizon. Just shy of two weeks into 2023, Price released her fourth studio album, “Strays”, a record that can hold the duality of mysticism and reality at once. She can seamlessly narrate the past, present, and future, under the setting of rural and urban landscapes of American life. This past October, she released her memoir, “Maybe We’ll Make It”, proving she can move forward, unbridled by personal history. Margo Price isn’t slowing down for anyone. In fact, she’s showing up. She kicked off her “‘Til the Wheels Fall Off” tour five days prior only to eventually brave the icy Lone Star interstate for a crowd of weather-traumatized Dallasites.
Margo Price launches her 90-minute set with the same opening song as her most recent album, “Been to the Mountain”. The song is equally domestic and mystical; a reflection on the past from the present and how to maintain freedom in the future. And she is ethereal. Her blonde hair is tousled, half pinned back, and she wears a sheer, floral dress that hangs freely on her small frame, and bare feet. Price seems to float from right to left on the stage, taking up as much space as she can. She sings So many seasons that I've been adrift, Sometimes I wonder if I even exist … This stanza strikes me with precise accuracy for the current season in my life.
It’s 4 songs in and at “Hell in the Heartland” is when I take in the crowd and it’s-truly- amateur hour. The girl directly behind me is slurring to her friend in a way I can only describe as “in cursive”. As she sways a little too much in one direction, over her shoulder, my eye catches another woman going down. During the opener, Cosmic Country, a dude with a Hurricane Katrina bald spot reach out in front of me, grab me, and shove me back, out of his way. I hear her bubbly voice ring like a bell, “The ice melted so you had to come party with me”. For “Change of Heart", she sits at a second drum set on the stage. The lighting bathes her in red and yellow, and the slight frizz in her hair gives this glowing look, like a true country-music angel.
Price returns to the front of the stage, “This next song is for my husband,” she gestures to the man next to her who has been juggling a guitar and harmonica. “And it’s about the female orgasm”, she adds coyly. “Light Me Up”, begins as a lullaby meant to soothe only to build and burst … just like the mysterious female orgasm. Her words are steamy and sensual, Make the world explode, Rivers quake levees break, Make the wind blow, Take it slow … Society is so focused on the sexual experience as a male, it’s refreshingly feminist for Price, a country music singer and songwriter, to vividly paint female sexual identity. Especially because it isn’t rooted in the objectification of my beauty or lack thereof.
“I brought my sister on tour with me, she’s at the merch table, please don’t hit on her … unless you’re like good. Like really good.” As the crowd yells, “I love yous”, I feel a hand on my shoulder, and I turn around to an exasperated dude directly behind me, “Can you please just move? You are in the way”, as he gestures angrily at me. Bless his heart, … maybe he should just be taller…? I maintain eye contact with him as I sarcastically throw my leg out, to take a dramatic step forward.
“I live in Nashville, I love it and I hate it … but I can’t leave it. It’s like a bad abusive boyfriend you can’t leave, so I just write songs about it like this one.” Price is so incredibly charming. The funk opening of “Cocaine Cowboys” begins, a song about men who are into the lifestyle of cowboy boots, booze, and blow but no substance. Cocaine cowboys, they're bad in the saddle But they're coming from New York, LA, and Seattle … With their bloodshot eyes, their cigarette teeth, I wish that someone warned me, Stay away from them cocaine cowboys … After living my whole life in Dallas, I promise you, there is nothing cool about a trust fund baby in a Stetson.
“So - uh - 50 years ago today, Rumours by Fleetwood Mac was released … and three years ago, I released, “That’s How Rumors Get Started”. Her picky guitar notes, pointed lyrics, and melancholy makes me wonder who was spreading lies about her. As the song comes to an end, Price slinks off the stage, and the band goes into a jam session.
When she returns, she is adorned in a hot pink, bedazzled one-piece with beaded fringe. She wears glitter stilettos and you can see the stickered tattoos on her body. She picks up the cowbell and drumstick, striking it, unapologetically as she sings, “Twinkle Twinkle''. Eventually, she returns to the additional drum set to give the song a strong send-off. The end is met with cheers for her unstoppable performance, the outfit change, and once again, plenty of “I love yous” in the mix from the crowd.
She picks up her guitar and throws the strap over her shoulder, I see her name scrolled in turquoise on it, she faces the crowd and gingerly picks up the pastel yellow phone that has stayed propped on a bar stool. She chants the opening stanza of “Radio” as the audio is tuned to be warm and muffled like a rotary phone. By the lyrics in “Radio”, Price must have found herself at a crossroads in her career. Because we know that the entertainment industry has been particularly cruel to women. People try to push me around, Change my face and change my sound, I can't hear them, I tuned them out …
Price closes her night in Dallas with “Heartless Mind”. She pulls a bouquet of roses from the side of the stage and begins picking them out one by one, launching them into the crowd. Before you use me, Try to treat me kindly … As someone who has a loyal and patient heart, I also have the bad habit of staying in doomed relationships (or situation-ships) for a little too long. She hands the last few flowers to the front row, smiles big and bright, “Thank you for showing up tonight!”
Margo Price and the band briefly leave only to return for their most sensational encore, “Y'all are wild” she chuckles. As a Beatle fanatic, I adored her cover of Wings’ “Let Me Roll It”. She plays “Hurtin’ on the Bottle” and covers Merle Haggard’s, “I Think I’ll Just Stay Here and Drink”. The crowd erupts in cheers as we anticipate the final walk off stage. “Well, we actually have one more for you, we’re closing every show with this one, it’s a fellow Texan’s song, this is Janis Joplin’s, Mercedes Benz”. My heart smiles because as a gentle child of only two or three, with an old soul, this was the first song I could sing. As an adult this Saturday night, I sang that song all the way through with the same vigor as numerous times before.
All words copyright allcaps M A G A Z I N E. Please contact for any inquiries for use of any images.