Margo Price is coming to Newport! Fresh off her debut release Midwest Farmer’s Daughter on Jack White’s Third Man Records and a memorable performance on Saturday Night Live, this Nashville based Country phenom is quickly building a national following with plenty of buzz. The Fader has called her country’s next big star and Daughter entered Billboard’s Top Country Albums chart at No 10, making it the first solo female artist’s debut album since the chart’s inception in 1964 to crack the top 10.
Price grew up in a small town in Aledo, Illinois, where she played piano and sang in church choir before studying dance and theater in college. She dropped out of school in 2003, at age 20, and moved to Nashville, TN.
In Nashville, Price worked a number of jobs including waiting tables, installing and removing residential siding, and teaching children dance at a YMCA. During this time she started the group Buffalo Clover with her husband, guitarist Jeremy Ivey and later formed Margo and the Pricetags which she says was “supposed to be a supergroup.”Sturgill Simpson and Kenny Vaughan, longtime guitarist in Marty Stuart’s band, have both been in the lineup at various times.
Price has been described by Rolling Stone Country as “a fixture of the East Nashville music community,” and appeared on that publication’s list of Country Artists You Need to Know in 2014. Fellow Nashville musician Aaron Lee Tasjan calls her “a singular and vital part of this scene, as a thing unto herself.”
Price joins the likes of Flight Of The Conchords, Norah Jones, Ray LaMontagne, St. Paul & The Broken Bones, Raury, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, Father John Misty, The Oh Hellos, Villagers and Joan Shelley, among others and will play the sold-out Newport Folk Festival on Saturday, July 23rd.
More acts will be announced soon.