Margo Price is wearing her heart on her record sleeve

Margo Price is one of the rising stars of the American country scene, and her music is all the stronger for being informed by her experiences with addiction, prison and tragedy, writes Ed Power

MARGO Price has seen a few things in her 33 years. When she was a child, the bank foreclosed on the family farm in Illinois. A recovering alcoholic, she has spent time in prison for drunken misdemeanour. In 2010, she gave birth to twins only to lose one to a rare heart defect.

But she has drawn strength from such reversals rather than submit to despair. You can hear it on her remarkable debut solo record, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, released to widespread acclaim in 2015.

Here, gushed reviewers, was an album which wore its scars openly and with a provocative pride. On stand-outs such as Hurtin’ (On The Bottle) and World’s Greatest Loser, she sung with searing directness, accompanied by bare-boned “Old Timey” country arrangements. Loretta Lynn and a pre-rhinestone Dolly Parton were influences — yet the pain so movingly articulated was Price’s own.

“Singing about my life is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made,” says Price. “It lets people know who I am and where I am coming from. If you don’t like it… well that’s me.

“But if you can get past all the bad things I’ve done and all that I’ve gone through, then maybe you can connect with it. Honesty is a powerful quality. It is freeing, not having to hide anything. For so long, I felt these were things I shouldn’t talk about.”

She’s a classic late bloomer. Price moved to Nashville in her early 20s dreaming of breaking into music. She passed through several bands and formed, with her husband, the cult ensemble Buffalo Clover. Yet nothing she did seemed to stick — a situation not helped, she has stated, by her lifestyle.

As is often the case in music, success, when it finally came, seemed to drop out of the clear blue sky. She recorded Midwest Farmer’s Daughter in just three days (the maximum for which her budget allowed). Some 30 labels rejected it until it was finally picked up by Third Man Records, the imprint founded by Jack White.

“I was all on my own when I met Third Man,” she says. “They’ve been great… helped me find management, booking agents, publicists. Jack is always ready to advise. They let me be myself but if I have questions, they’re on hand.”

She has been on a steady upward trajectory ever since. Gushing write-ups in Rolling Stone and Billboard led to an invitation to perform at the secular temple of country music, Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry.

“I was nervous — but they say that if you don’t get nervous before playing the Grand Ole Opry then you shouldn’t be there. The history is so rich — yo’d be a fool not to feel the pressure.”

Several tracks on the record are inspired by her upbringing in Aledo, Illinois, a one horse town deep in the state’s rural west. She left as soon as she could, yet is proud of her roots and takes issue with the depiction in the media of smalltown America as a hotbed of the prejudices that swept Donald Trump to power.

“It is a small and humble town,” she says. “Growing up, there wasn’t a lot to do. You can find trouble if you are looking for it — but mostly there was a lot of boredom. We pride ourselves on being good people and in creating a good environment in which to raise a family. I have a lot of respect for the people who lived there.

“Just because you live in a small town doesn’t mean you have a small mind,” she says. “I know a lot of people from there who didn’t vote for Trump. You can have a small mind and live in a big city.”

• Midwest Farmer’s Daughter is out now. Margo Price plays The Button Factory, Dublin next Sunday.