Entertainment
Ahead of her Boston show, the Grammy nominee discusses her inspirations — and reveals her unexpected Massachusetts connection.
Joan Baez once told me something that has stood out in my mind ever since as embodying the Baez Ethos.
I interviewed the former Belmont resident and one-time Boston University art student to ask about her paintings in 2020 — portraits of MLK, John Prine, Patti Smith.
“In these times, there are bastards and there are heroes. And painting the heroes is a no-brainer,” Baez told me.
The line surfaced somewhere in my head when I heard Margo Price’s song, “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down.”
Because Baez, 85, has long been a torchbearer for Truth and Peace in this world. And Price carries that fire. That flame lights Price’s path, and she walks it with a Johnny Cash-don’t-eff-with-me swagger.
“Oh my gosh, Joan Baez is the queen for me,” Price tells me in our recent phone call, ahead of her Boston show Feb. 21 at The Royale.
Baez, who cut her teeth on the Boston folk scene, is “the whole reason I operate the way I do,” Price tells me. Everybody can learn a lesson from Joan Baez on how to lead with your heart, and use your voice for a bigger purpose.”
Read about Margo Price, and you’re bound to see the description “outlaw country.” If supporting women’s rights and speaking up for what you believe in is “outlaw,” well, call her Calamity Jane.
With a voice that harkens back to early Grand Ole Opry days and John Prine-esque writing chops, Price, 42, has bushwhacked her own path in a mainstream Nashville paint-by-number country algorithm. Like Baez, she does not paint the bastards.
Her latest album, “Hard Headed Woman,” nominated for two Grammys last month, begins with “Prelude,” a near thesis statement: “I’m a hard headed woman and I don’t owe you sh—“ Price sings in a near-lullaby, a la old-school bluegrass gospel singer.
On CBS Saturday Morning last month, the hard-headed woman covered Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos).”
Last fall, she played “Don’t Let The Bastards Get You Down” on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” just hours before the show was pulled off the air for “indefinite hiatus.”
She later posted a clip of that performance — in which she sings: “From Aberdeen to Austin, Saint Augustine to Boston … Don’t let the bastards get you down”— to social media with the caption: “If this was the last word, I’m glad it was mine.”
The daughter of an Illinois farmer who lost his farm, she became the first female board member of Farm Aid. Her 2016 debut, “Midwest Farmer’s Daughter,” released, as her press release describes, “in the throes of bro-country.”
I called Price for a wide-ranging interview. We talked Baez, Newport, her unexpected Massachusetts connection, AI, bros, Beyonce, Bob Dylan and more.
You’ll be here in Boston this week. But you usually stop in New England in the summer–you’re a Newport Folk Fest regular.
Oh, man. I love Newport Folk Fest. Anytime I can make it up there, I do. It’s one of the best festivals in the world.
You’ve duetted there in the past with John Prine, who was the king of Newport Folk.
I did. He came out during one of my sets in 2017, and gave me a really beautiful introduction. It made me cry so hard I couldn’t get on stage. He also sang “In Spite of Ourselves” with me during that set. He was so special.
You did an awesome cover of Dylan’s “Maggie’s Farm” with John C. Reilly and Jesse Welles at Newport last summer. You covered it again with Welles and Billy Strings at Farm Aid a few months ago.
Thank you! I’m a huge Bob Dylan fan. I’ve heard a lot of dudes say, “So cool that Billy Strings and Jesse Welles covered ‘Maggie’s Farm.’” It’s like, “Excuse me. That was my set, my song choice, and they joined me. But somehow I get omitted from the conversation. But I digress. That’s fine. [laughs] You feel me.
I do. I’m also a huge Dylan fan. It seems like we share so many of the same heroes — Dylan, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Johnny Cash — artists who seem to have a predominantly male fanbase, with mostly men who write about them. So I feel a connection with you because of that.
I used to joke that I play female-fronted dad rock [laughs.] I love Tom Petty. I love so many women writers, but Dylan is still my all-time favorite.
Lucinda Williams is a poet of a songwriter. She was a hero of yours growing up.
Absolutely. One of the greatest to ever do it. I’ve had the pleasure of becoming her friend, and asked for advice over the years. Got to hang in her hotel room and spill secrets. There was a night [when] red wine ended up all over a white leather couch. [laughs] She’s the coolest. I shout her out in my [latest] album on “Close to You” because that song was heavily influenced by Lucinda’s writing.
I read Joan Baez has given you some advice.
Yes. Through all this political unrest, people get really overwhelmed and don’t know where to start. There’s so much coming at us. But several months back, I got the opportunity to see her perform in a circus.
Wait what?
Yes, she did a month’s run with this circus — she sang, she danced, she acted, there was burlesque.
Iconic.
[laughs] It was outside of San Francisco. Gosh, I have videos and everything. It was one of the most inspiring things I’ve seen. But at that time, we were [talking politics] and basically she said: “One small thing at a time. Each day, wake up and try to do one small thing.” You can’t eat a horse all in one bite. [laughs] She’s such a special human.
Speaking of that feeling, what went into your latest album?
Just this sense of defiance I have, that I want to continue to bring to country music. There’s no originality. You start to see it in the culture, in the way people are dressing — everything is muted colors. Everything’s beige and preppy American — this Ralph Lauren thing going on. I want to stand out. I want to stand out in a sea of blonde girls trying to make records in mainstream Nashville. People [who] get on mainstream country radio, there’s a reason: they’re not willing to use their platform [to speak out.]
I cannot be silent during this time. That’s what they depend on. They depend on women’s silence. They depend on us to be things to look at. Men get away with saying so much more. They can have opinions and be lauded as great leaders, but the second a woman tries to, it’s like, “shut up and sing.”
True. You played Woody Guthrie’s “Deportees” on CBS recently.
I had to resurrect that song. It’s a song I’ve been singing for 20 years, and it just feels so pertinent. As well as singing “Don’t let the Bastards Get you Down” on Kimmel because look what happened [the next day.] It happened to be the perfect song.
I’d figured it was a reference to “Don’t let the bastards grind you down” from Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.” But you said it was inspired by Kris Kristofferson’s message to Sinead O’Connor at the Bob Dylan 30th anniversary concert. [Kristofferson said that line to comfort O’Connor after she was booed off stage.]
It was. I love Sinead O’Connor. Margaret Atwood is brilliant. All of those things went into the melting pot. I met Kris and got to know him pretty well before he passed. That’s his voice at the end of the song that [speaks] the line.
I was wondering if that was him! So do you have any other New England connections besides being a Newport regular?
My husband [and co-writer Jeremy Ivey] lived in Athol, Massachusetts. And he was homeless in Boston when he was in his 20s, before I met him. This is pre-cellphones — he went up to Massachusetts with a friend, and then ran out of gas money. He was selling poems. I think he was only [unhoused in Boston] for a week.
How did you meet?
He ended up moving to Nashville after his marriage fell through. We met there at a college party where neither of us was going to school. We were both there buying weed. He played a song on guitar. I was like, “Oh, man, I really like this guy’s writing.” We’ve been together ever since — 22 years.
So he grew up in Athol?
No, he’s got kind of a cool story. Born in San Antonio, given up for adoption. [Got adopted] and lived in Texas for the first five years of his life. Then Georgia, then back to Texas, then got married to a Waffle House waitress. They ended up in Massachusetts. Then got divorced. Then came to Nashville to try his hand at becoming a songwriter.
That story sounds like a country song.
[laughs] It sure does.
He’s your collaborator, too. Congratulations on the Grammy nominations. You were the only woman nominated for Best Traditional Country Record.
Sure was. Had to represent. It’s a new category, and there was controversy around it: a lot of people assumed it stemmed from Beyoncé winning Best Country Album [in 2025], but from what I’ve heard, this has been in the making for over five years.
We have such a problem, bro-country mainstream [artists], that we think: If you do real country, then you have to call it Americana.
True.
They think they own the word “country.” Beyoncé is not the problem. It’s folks [who] don’t even make good music. Whatever you want to call that, it’s not country music.
[laughs] What does that title, “Hard Headed Woman” mean to you?
It just perfectly describes me. I’m a woman. I’m hard-headed. I do things my way. The origins of that phrase go all the way back to Proverbs in the Bible. It describes a “hard-headed woman” as stubborn, self-willed, quarrelsome, ruiners to peace.
[laughs] I didn’t know that. That’s amazing. Any causes you’re feeling right now?
I think everybody should stop using AI immediately because it’s tearing down our green spaces. I recently was in Memphis; there’s an AI plant there. The air smells terrible. It’s just the downfall of humanity. Friends say, “Oh, I have ChatGPT!” I’ve been texting everybody: “You have to erase it.”
It’s a waste of water. It’s a waste of natural resources. We already have so much climate change happening, I can’t bear to see beautiful forests and trees torn down just for the mining of our data.
True. And it also must scare you as a writer.
Yes. It doesn’t have the same humanity. If you cannot replicate a human lens. I’ve seen people making show posters with AI. We all need to just go back to analog: books, records, dancing, poems.
Interview has been edited and condensed. For concert information, see here. Lauren Daley is a freelance culture writer. She can be reached at [email protected]. She tweets @laurendaley1, and Instagrams at @laurendaley1. Read more stories on Facebook here.
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