Live Review: Margo Price, Mick Thomas

Mick Thomas offers up a variety of bluegrass-inflected country ballads to a roomful of plaid patrons with a surprising number of cowboy hats. Thomas continues the grand tradition of country music storytelling, both within his songs and between them. Backed by mandolin, banjo and piano accordion, tonight’s performance is by turns playful and plaintive. A lovelorn cover of Bob Dylan’s Most Of The Time provides the highlight of the set. 

Her band has already torn into a country stomp by the time Margo Price enters the stage. She morphs their jam into a defiant Don’t Say It and we’re off to the races. In a brown pantsuit and cream-coloured cowboy hat, Price regales us with older, more familiar songs like Weekender and Tennessee Song before singing the goddamn out of a powerful new ballad we are told is called "I Would Die For You". 

Price’s five-piece backing band sounds so full and spirited on Weakness and Leftovers, another new song, about friends dating her exes. After the last verse of Cocaine Cowboys Price saunters over to a second drum kit, sits down, and suddenly it becomes a Grateful Dead-style dual-drummer extended jam band extravaganza. Her band then leaves Price alone at a keyboard to sing a gorgeous rendition of Neil Young’s oft-covered (but rarely this well) After The Gold Rush. Continuing to showcase her impressive range, Price sings It Ain’t Drunk Driving If You’re Riding A Horse, a ditty written by a friend of hers with a country song title if ever there was one. 

A Little Pain is a great, herky-jerky romp, although the violin from the recording is missed. Price dedicates a rousing Four Years Of Chances to her “future ex-husband”. Hurtin’ (On The Bottle) evolves into a cover of another in the long history of country songs about whiskey, Willy Nelson’s Whiskey River. 

After a mercifully brief break, Price and her band return with a cover of Kris Kristofferson’s Me And Bobby McGee, which incites a joyous singalong. As the song reaches its climax, Price picks up an armful of roses and tosses them into the crowd before making her final departure. Say what you want about folks from the American South - they know how to show you a good time and leave you wanting more.