New Music 2016 - Part 15 - Margo Price - Midwest Farmer's Daughter

The first I heard about what is to follow was just a song.  Three things struck me about it all at once:

• The vocals - my first thoughts were Melanie and Lindi Ortega.
• The lyric and attitude - reminiscent of those of Loretta Lynn, not to mention the above.
• The falling-scale slide guitar arpeggio.

'Desperate and Depressed', for that was clearly its title, is not perhaps the most welcoming of introductions but that wasn't going to evince anything other than an immediate need to find who was singing and what is going on here.  A fourth thing and an assumption, which turned out to be correct, was that it wasn't a cover of a song that I simply hadn't heard before.  If it had been such then it was certainly due some time in the sun anyway...

Let us start with the lyric, if only because I haven't featured them so much of late.

Desperate and Depressed

I'm pissed off at the number of people that I meet

Who go to shake my hand with a viper up their sleeve.

They freeze me out in winter, burn me up all summer.

Try to take my money when I'm desperate and depressed.

Ain't it a mess.

I've played for free and paid for the miles on my truck.

Got no sleep in motels cause the worry keeps me up.

It almost drives me crazy thinking about my baby

And how he's gonna love me if I'm desperate and depressed

Can't get no rest.

Momma never told me that things would be this way.

Daddy tried to warn me that there'd be hell to pay.

If I can't find the money then I can't buy the time.

I'm stuck here making someone else's dime.

We busked in Sarasota. I made twenty-seven bucks.

I wept for Richard Manuel thinking I might have his luck.

You talked behind my back but only stabbed me in the front.

But don't think you can hurt me cause I'm desperate and depressed.

Ain't it a mess.

Please, somebody tell me how to make it stop

This world feels like a roller coaster I just can't get off

Tried rehab and probation, tried self-medication

But none of that can cure you when you're desperate and depressed

Ain't it a mess

Momma never told me that things would be this way.

Daddy tried to warn me that there'd be hell to pay.

But if I can't find the money then I can't buy the lie.

Oh, ten percent of nothing ain't a dime.

So don't you try to sell me back what's mine

I'll be desperate and depressed until I die

This song is the b-side of a vinyl 7".

You can give it a virtual spin here...

...but this track didn't make it on to the LP.*

The a-side is Hurtin' On The Bottle (a co-write with Caitlin Rose and others) and the single was released in late 2015 to promote the soon-to-be-released début LP, Midwest Farmer's Daughter, by East Nashville's Margo Price.

Midwest Farmer's Daughter - Margo Price (Third Man Records, 25 March 2016).

A point that is worthy of note is that this LP was recorded, mixed and mastered before it was presented, fait accompli, to would-be labels. Most of them simply said "no" or, if not exactly that, wished to mould it to the sensibility of their perceived market; in other words suck all the originality out it.
This is the track-listing:

Margo Price - Midwest Farmer's Daughter

1. Hands of Time
2. About to Find Out
3. Tennessee Song
4. Since You Put Me Down
5. Four Years of Chances
6. This Town Gets Around
7. How the Mighty Have Fallen
8. Weekender
9. Hurtin' On the Bottle
10. World's Greatest Loser

Taken from it is this, recorded live:

Since You Put Me Down

Note added 8 March 2016:

Margo Price was today confirmed as appearing at End The Road Festival 2016.

Writing in The New Yorker last month, this is what Sarah Larson had to say about Midwest Farmer's Daughter:
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/sarah-larson/listen-to-margo-price

Note added 15 April 2016:
* Desperate and Depressed was, in the event, added to the UK release of Midwest Farmer's Daughter. At least on Spotify about five minutes after it's release there.