Before Third Man Records: Margo Price's Nashville Years and the Decade of Preparation

Margo Price released her debut album Midwest Farmer's Daughter on Third Man Records in March 2016, and the music industry response was immediate and substantial: critics called it one of the best country debut albums in years, and it launched a career that would include Grammy nominations and headline festival performances.

But the story of Midwest Farmer's Daughter began nearly a decade earlier, when Price moved to Nashville from Illinois with her husband Jeremy Ivey and began the process of building a career in a city that was, for most of those years, largely indifferent to what she was doing.

The Nashville Years

Price arrived in Nashville around 2007-2008 and spent the following years playing various roles: performing in bars and small venues, recording demos, attempting to navigate the Nashville music industry's structures, and writing songs that reflected her specific perspective and background rather than the commercial formulas that mainstream country success seemed to require.

The Nashville bar circuit, particularly the honky-tonk strip on Lower Broadway, provided performance opportunities but not necessarily career development ones. Playing Broadway honky-tonks was how many Nashville musicians earned income while working toward other goals, and Price spent time in this circuit during her formation years. The experience was formative in some ways and frustrating in others: audiences were often tourists and casual drinkers rather than engaged music listeners.

The more valuable development happened at smaller, more music-focused venues and in the songwriter circuit. Nashville's community of serious songwriters, working outside the mainstream publishing system, provided the environment where Price developed her voice as a writer.

Commercial Nashville's Resistance

Price was rejected by mainstream Nashville record labels multiple times during her years of development. The reasons given generally related to her sound being too traditional, too personal, or too commercially uncompromising for the mainstream country market of the early 2010s, which was dominated by the bro-country and pop-country sounds that had little room for an artist working in a classic country tradition with explicit literary ambitions.

This repeated rejection was painful but ultimately productive. Each refusal reinforced that her artistic direction was her own to determine, and the accumulated frustration became material for the music. Songs that addressed miscarriage, financial ruin (she and Ivey sold their car to fund the eventual recording of Midwest Farmer's Daughter), and the specific indignities of trying to make it in Nashville were not commercial pitches; they were honest accounts.

According to various interviews Price gave around the 2016 debut release, including coverage in Rolling Stone and The New York Times, the recording that became the debut was financed with the proceeds from selling their car, which became one of the more vivid financing stories in independent country music.

The Third Man Connection

Jack White's Third Man Records was not a conventional choice for a classic country singer-songwriter album. Third Man was associated primarily with garage rock, blues, and White's own diverse projects. But the label's commitment to vinyl and to artists working outside conventional commercial frameworks made it a logical fit for Price's independent-minded traditional country.

The Third Man connection gave Price distribution and promotional infrastructure without requiring her to compromise her musical vision. The label's credibility in the indie world, combined with her music's genuine quality, created conditions for the media reception that followed.

What the Formation Years Produced

The decade of development in Nashville between approximately 2007 and 2016 produced an artist who had earned her perspective. The songs on Midwest Farmer's Daughter were not the work of someone who had made a strategic artistic choice to sound traditional; they were the work of someone who had actually lived in financial difficulty, lost a child, been rejected by the commercial system, and found her way through it with her values intact.

This biographical depth was audible in the music and was part of why critics and listeners responded to it with the recognition they did. The songs were not trying to prove anything; they were reporting honestly on lived experience.

For the story of 2010-2015 independent country music, Price's formation years represent something important: a reminder that the artists who eventually changed the conversation about what country music could be were typically the ones who had been quietly working on the margins, developing specific and uncompromising visions, for longer than anyone outside their immediate community knew.

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FAQ

When did Margo Price move to Nashville? Around 2007-2008, from Illinois, with her husband Jeremy Ivey.

Why was her debut delayed for nearly a decade? Repeated rejections from mainstream Nashville labels, financial difficulties, and the time required to develop the specific songwriting voice that made the debut possible.

How was Midwest Farmer's Daughter funded? Price and Ivey sold their car to fund the recording, which became one of the more dramatic independent financing stories in country music.

Why did Third Man Records make sense for Price's debut? Third Man's commitment to vinyl, its indie credibility, and its willingness to support artists working outside conventional commercial frameworks aligned with Price's approach, despite the label's primary association with garage rock and blues.

What did the formation years contribute to the debut's quality? A decade of lived experience (financial difficulty, personal loss, commercial rejection) gave the songs biographical depth that was audible to listeners and critics, distinguishing the work from a calculated traditional country aesthetic.