Like so many wannabe country singers, Margo Price moved to Nashville, Tenn., to pound the pavement, do the hustle and hopefully catch a break.
Soon after arriving from her home in rural Illinois in 2003 at the age of 20, she thought she found one when a prospective manager and producer invited her to a private meeting to work on some demos.
After one drink, she felt sick.
“They said, ‘We put something [alcohol] in your drink because you didn’t look like you were having enough fun,’” Price tells The Post. “They straight-up admitted it to me.” Sensing danger, she quickly left, and has never spoken the names of the people involved.
‘I feel lucky that I wasn’t raped … and I shouldn’t have to feel lucky about it.’
As news of sex-abuse scandals and outrageously predatory behavior by powerful men rocks many areas of the entertainment industry, it’s depressingly old news for Price, who plays Barclays Center this Friday, opening for Faith Hill and Tim McGraw on the Soul2Soul: The World Tour.
“I’ve been dealt with aggressively, and been in some dangerous situations,” she says. “I feel lucky that I wasn’t raped … and I shouldn’t have to feel lucky about it.”
Price has survived industry mistreatment — and her own personal tragedies, including losing her infant son, Ezra, in 2010 due to a rare heart defect — to become one of country music’s most lauded new acts.
After more than a decade of hustling to get noticed by the music world (and doing everything from waitressing to selling tuxedos in order to get by), she released her first album, “Midwest Farmer’s Daughter,” on Jack White’s Third Man label in 2016. Painfully honest, and aided with Price’s sublime voice, it hit the Top 10 on Billboard’s Country Chart, and ranked at No. 3 in Rolling Stone’s Country Albums of the Year. She also appeared on “Saturday Night Live” last year — an unusual feat for such a new country act.
Now she’s back with a follow-up, “All American Made” (released last Friday), which highlights how women are treated as inferior not just in the music industry, but in the wider world. On the song “Pay Gap,” Price sings, “No more than a maid/To be owned like a dog/A second-class citizen.” Although some traditional country fans balk at the idea of Price touching on social and political issues, she refuses to tow any lines.
Now 34, Price is has racked up countless rejections from the music world — one label passed on her because they already had two female singers on their roster. She’s a late bloomer, but Price is still determined to enjoy the perks of being a rising star.
Margo PriceDanielle Holbert
She has been in New York City all week on a promotional tour before starting her run of shows with Hill and McGraw, stopping at Katz’s Deli (“I ordered the pastrami, even though I haven’t eaten red meat since April”) and hitting up the jukebox at Flaming Saddles in Hell’s Kitchen for some classic Dolly Parton cuts.
“I work harder here, play harder here, but also sleep harder here, which is good, because normally I suffer from insomnia,” says Price.
Part of her week has been spent reconnecting with her new friend Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, who played Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night. The two met on the set of the BBC music show “Later … With Jools Holland” last year, and ever since, Price has been pouring her own drinks.
“The night we met, it was his birthday, so we were shooting tequila before the show and it made us all feel relaxed,” she says. “So I thought, ‘Maybe we should just do this every time we play?’ Now, we [she and her band] have a bottle of Espolon on our rider, and we all do a single shot before going onstage. It’s our ritual, and it’s because of Josh!”
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