Early in her new book, "Maybe We'll Make It," Margo Price tells the story of blacking out after more than 30 shots of vodka. She was 18 and in her first semester of college.
"At the hospital I was asked whom to contact," she writes on page 22. "I didn’t have my cell phone on me, and the only number I remembered was my parents’. I refused to let the hospital pump my stomach, so they gave me a couple of glasses of water and sent me away with a $2,000 hospital bill. I was intoxicated for two days straight and felt like I had been run over by a car."
Price, a rising star in country music who was nominated for a Grammy as 2019's Best New Artist, writes that the incident in college helped motivate her to quit drinking.
It's one of a handful of stories in her memoir that spells out in plain, candid detail some of the things she only alludes to in her music. Writing the book, she says, was a long-term exercise in self-examination.
"It was just like holding a mirror up to yourself," she told IPR. "What do I have to hide? We're all just humans, we're all just flawed people walking around here trying to figure it out. None of us have the answers."
She hopes readers find equal parts joy and sorrow in her book.
Margo Price visits the National Writers Series in Traverse City on Thursday, Oct. 20. She recently spoke with IPR’s Ed Ronco. Listen to the conversation above.
