“One morning I woke up with my head in the shower and my feet by the toilet. The children were with their grandparents for the weekend, and I used that as an excuse to binge. My knuckles were bleeding, my face was red, my body was bloated, and my mind was on edge. It scared me. All the rules I had set years before when I reentered the drinking world had gone out the window by the end of that first year of the pandemic. I was drinking away my crippling fears about the end of the world and how the children I’d brought into it would navigate it. Meanwhile, I couldn’t navigate it myself.” (p. 267-268)

Margo Price, a Nashville-based singer and songwriter with three albums, a nomination for a Grammy for Best New Artist, and a performance on Saturday Night Live, narrates this harrowing story of her difficult life.

Margot struggled as a kid, never fitting in. But she was drawn to music and taught herself how to play the guitar. For years, Margot worked as a waitress while she pursued her dream of becoming a singer. She wrote songs and performed on street corners. She fell in love with another musician, Jeremy, but their relationship was stormy.

The music industry, as Margot describes it, is harsh and difficult. As a result, she and Jeremy turned to drugs and alcohol. That did not improve their relationship. As far as I can tell, it did not improve their chances at success in the the music industry, either. Only years of persistent performing and touring finally brought some acclaim and a growing audience for Margot’s songs.

If you want to read a no-holds-barred description of life as a performer today with endless tours and a myriad of problems navigating life on the road, Maybe We’ll Make It is the Real Deal.  GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

• Prologue
• Chapter 1. The Unpaved Road
• Chapter 2. Rearview Mirror
• Chapter 3. Fifty-Seven Dollars
• Chapter 4. Strays
• Chapter 5. Lay Around with the Dogs
• Chapter 6. This Town Gets Around (and Around and Around)
• Chapter 7. Black Water
• Chapter 8. Stealing from Thieves
• Chapter 9. Floating
• Chapter 10. Pearls to Swine
• Chapter 11. Hell in the Heartland
• Chapter 12. Everywhere
• Chapter 13. Mesa Boogie
• Chapter 14. C for California
• Chapter 15. Aimless Fate
• Chapter 16. Ball and Unchained
• Chapter 17. New Mama
• Chapter 18. Ezra and Judah
• Chapter 19. Drowning
• Chapter 20. Uppers, Downers, Out-of-Towners
• Chapter 21. Burn Whatever’s Left
• Chapter 22. Treading Water
• Chapter 23. Weekender
• Chapter 24. A Band of My Own
• Chapter 25. Midwest Farmer’s Daughter
• Chapter 26. One Dark Horse
• Chapter 27. The Recent Future
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgments

“Singing is not a real job,” a guidance counselor once told a teenage Margo Price. What she shows us in her moving memoir is what a heck of a lot of work it is. She arrives in Nashville as a 19-year-old college dropout. She drinks too much, does drugs, duct tapes a bloody foot because she doesn’t have health insurance—and that’s in her first weeks. Ms. Price is a deeply original singer-songwriter—her sound is influenced by alt-country, folk rock and psychedelic music. Her songs veer from autobiographical to almost novelistic, like “Lydia,” about a woman at the doors of an abortion clinic. “Maybe We’ll Make It” gives us a glimpse into the life of a touring musician (“small spaces, bad sound equipment, and hordes of drunk folks”) and the rejection she faced (“We are aware of who Margo is and we are not interested,” one label writes). It wasn’t until she was in her mid-30s, and had been writing and performing in Nashville for close to two decades, that she was nominated for the 2019 Grammy for best new artist. Here, you sense, is someone who has fought every day for what she wants to do—and a reminder of how much unseen toil goes into a creative life.

You can read the complete article here.

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/margo-price-on-her-two-year-sobriety-reinventing-herself-with-new-album/