“WHEN I sing this song, I get really emotional,” Margo Price says, standing on the makeshift stage in her band’s rehearsal space. It’s a drab, windowless warehouse, with a few couches tucked away in the corners and tables full of snacks and lukewarm Chinese takeout. Today, she and her backing musicians have been working on the transition from “Change Of Heart”, a country-rock barnstormer with a heavy riff, into “County Road”, a piano-led ghost story that recalls late-’70s Springsteen and serves as the tender heart of her fourth solo album, Strays.
It’s a tricky tonal shift between defiance and remembrance, between kiss-off and eulogy, yet that contrast only makes “County Road” sound more haunted. Dressed in a black T-shirt with Bob Dylan’s silhouette on the front, a fannypack around her waist, Price slams a tambourine against her hip as she leads the band. It’s only a rehearsal, but she doesn’t hold back, belting the tune and conveying a bone-deep heartache when she sings, “Hey kid, you know it’s been three years since the change/The band broke up, the boys don’t talk, and this city’s rearranged”. It looks for a moment like she really is trying to maintain her composure behind the microphone.
Beside her on stage stands her husband, Jeremy Ivey, strumming an acoustic guitar and looking on sympathetically. The couple wrote “County Road” about a friend of theirs named Ben Eyestone, a drummer for a band called The Lonely H and a member of her ever-evolving circle of friends, musicians, peers, mentors, mentees, heroes and hopefuls. After moving to Nashville from Washington State, Eyestone gigged around town, played with Price and other local singer-songwriters, until he developed colon cancer and died. Like many musicians, he didn’t have health insurance.
“The song,” according to Price, “is about those five to 10 years when we were all struggling and hanging out at The 5 Spot. It’s about how everything has
