EMMYLOU HARRIS AND MARGOT PRICE MEET AT THIRD MAN IN NASHVILLE, FOR MOJO!
“If you want me to sing, I’m going to make noise.” MARGO PRICE
“IFEEL LIKE when women voice their political opinion, especially through song, it’s like, ‘No. Shut her up. Just shut up and sing,’” declared rising country voice Margo Price at September’s annual celebration of American roots music, The Americana Music Festival and Conference. “You can’t shut up and sing. If you want me to sing, I’m going to make noise.” This sweltering Friday afternoon in Nashville, Price was sharing a stage with country legend Emmylou Harris for MOJO’s songwriters session at Third Man Records’ downtown premises. Price, the first country artist signed to Third Man, has often cited Harris as a major influence, not just as a singer, songwriter and peerless song interpreter, but as an artist who’s led three of country music’s great bands: The Hot Band, The Nash Ramblers, and Spyboy. As the two have sung together on-stage numerous times, the admiration is clearly mutual. During the hour-long event, the two artists went deep into the art of songwriting and played some of their own material for an intimate crowd of about 80, beginning with a gorgeous version of Love And Happiness, a song Harris co-composed with Kimmie Rhodes and recorded with Mark Knopfler for their 2006 album All The Roadrunning. “Most of my career, I’ve been an interpreter of other people’s songs,” smiled Harris, who prefers to write alone. “I’m so grateful to the songwriters for all of those songs I didn’t have to write. Because it is hard.” Unlike Harris, Price regularly co-writes, most often with her husband, musician Jeremy Ivey. “Sometimes he’ll send me like four [song ideas] a day,” Price said. “But then I’ll tell him, I don’t like the first two; the third one, I like the melody, and the fourth one, I like the words. Then sometimes we’ll kind of make a Frankenstein song.” She played one of their collaborations, the unreleased Salvation Store, for the Third Man audience. Later in the programme, she performed Pay Gap, causing Emmylou to break into a smile as she listened closely to Price’s lyrics: “It’s not that I’m asking for more than I’m owed/And I don’t think I’m better than you/You say that we live in the land of the free/Well, sometimes that bell don’t ring true.” “That’s the kind of song that needs to top the country charts,” Harris declared. Harris – whose My Name Is Emmett Till, a devastating ballad about the 14-year-old Till’s 1955 lynching, was the day’s most powerful performance – encouraged Price to continue speaking truth in her lyrics. “We all have to be shaken up sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes we have to hear something to make us think differently about things… Music is supposed to wake people up.” By the end of the programme, the two were clearly kindred spirits. On Sunday, the final day of the AmericanaFest, Price joined Harris on-stage at the latter’s Woofstock benefit concert for local animal rescue organisations. The two women teamed up with singer-songwriter Matraca Berg to sing To Know Him Is To Love Him, which Harris recorded with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt for 1987’s Trio album. Listening to their sweet harmonies combining, it felt like a torch was being passed.