Margo Price Gets Grateful at the Fillmore

It’s one more Saturday night at the Fillmore in San Francisco here on 7 March, and the vibe is high with Margo Price back in town for her second performance at rock’s most hallowed hall. The Wild at Heart Tour finds the Nashville-based troubadour returning to her outlaw country roots behind her 2025 album Hard Headed Woman. However, she’s also earned significant credibility in rock ‘n’ roll circles in recent years, thanks to albums that leaned more into rock, including 2020’s That’s How Rumors Get Started and 2023’s Strays. 

“Country Music to me is like a toxic ex-boyfriend, I love it so much, but I needed some space,” Price explained in a 2024 Instagram post. She’s reached the point where she can go both ways, though, and guest spots with artists like Widespread Panic, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, and Goose have also helped boost Price’s profile within the rock ‘n’ roll counterculture. So too has her outspoken progressive voice on numerous social justice issues in recent years, identifying the 42-year-old singer-songwriter as a bold artist who not only isn’t afraid to speak truth to power but feels a duty to do so. 

Margo Price made her overdue milestone debut at the Fillmore in early 2023 and delivered a barnburner show that was lit from the start when she opened with her then-new psychedelic rock banger “Been to the Mountain”. The sold-out show also included special tributes to the San Francisco music scene with emotionally charged covers of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” and Janis Joplin‘s “Mercedes Benz”, much to the delight of the enthusiastic audience.

The tour trail found Price returning to the Bay Area in 2024 for an appearance at the Mill Valley Music Festival, then in 2025 at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. It was a pleasure to catch her and her band on sunny afternoons in beautiful outdoor settings, but local fans have been eagerly awaiting another headlining show. 

A picture of the dearly departed Bob Weir sits above the Fillmore’s traditional apple bin as fans enter the venue, with the Grateful Dead guitarist’s recent passing in January still weighing heavily on the scene. Price was one of the countless musicians who posted on social media to share condolences and fond memories of getting to know Weir and collaborating with him, so it feels uplifting to have her back in town. Shannon McNally opens the show, and during her set, she notes that she got to play with Weir a couple of times, including a performance of Bob Dylan‘s “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues”. She reprises the song here, earning a crowd-pleasing moment. 

Another poignant moment comes when McNally says she’d like to send the next song out “to those little girls killed in Iran last week”, victims of the errant bombing of a school in the unpopular war on Iran recently launched by the Trump regime. “I’m really tired of old men killing kids,” McNally remarks before a heartfelt performance of “Banshee Moan” from her 2017 album Black Irish. “Well, you’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t, Trouble if you will, goes double if you won’t,” McNally sings at the start, before the chorus where she concludes with “Woman weep for your sisters gone, Let their names be known with a banshee moan.”

When the lights go down again after the set break, Grateful Dead’s “Jack Straw” plays on the PA in tribute to Weir. Margo Price and her band open with “About to Find Out” from her 2016 debut album, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter, an upbeat country tune in which she sings about putting a classless liar in their place. “I’m so happy to be in this city right now,” she says sincerely, before playing a handful of tunes from Hard Headed Woman. She notes that Jesse Welles sang harmonies on “Don’t Wake Me Up”, winning a cheer for another outspoken troubadour whose soaring career led to his Fillmore debut this past November. Price championed Welles on social media last year, helping fans discover another rising talent. 

The energy level isn’t quite where it was in the 2023 show so far, but it’s still early. A special treat sends the vibe soaring when Price busts out a cover of “Easy Wind”, a bluesy Grateful Dead deep cut from 1970’s Workingman’s Dead sung by the legendary Ron “Pigpen” McKernan. Even more special is the sight of lead guitarist Sean Thompson playing Jerry Garcia’s “Alligator” Fender Stratocaster, which has been making the rounds with worthy players at Bay Area shows in recent years.

It also turns out that Price is playing Garcia’s 1943 Martin D-28 acoustic guitar on the first verse, before moving to a second drum kit while Thompson tears up the guitar solo. Guitarist Logan Ledger, drummer Brandon Combs, and bassist Alec Newnam are all rock-solid as well, generating a vibrant sound on the local favorite.

The Garcia guitars are out on loan from the Grateful Guitars Foundation, and the vibe is most definitely lit now as the Fillmore’s timeless rock history is activated. The rocking continues on the blues-tinged “Tennessee Song” as Price belts out the song from her first album about getting away from city life. “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down” is an endearing tune from the latest album, with Price preaching about not selling one’s heart “to no businessman.” She continues in a similar direction on “I Just Don’t Give a Damn”, shaking a tambourine in stylish fashion as she sings of going her own way.

Margo Price notes that “Too Stoned to Cry” was recorded with Billy Strings, the jamgrass phenom who has taken the music world by storm over the past five years. Ledger sings Strings’ part on the country duet, which pairs well thematically with Waylon Jennings‘ “Kissing You Goodbye”. Price explains that the song was about how Waylon’s lawyer and drug dealer were the same person, an amusing anecdote that boosts the outlaw country flavor. Ledger sings his own tune, “All the Wine in California”, an upbeat number that gives Price a chance to exit for a wardrobe change.

When she returns to the stage on the second drum kit, Ledger is in the middle of singing the Grateful Dead’s “Ripple” for a heartfelt tribute to Bobby Weir. “Oval Room” takes aim at America’s Commander in Chief and turns out to be a song by late Texas singer-songwriter Blaze Foley (who was shot and killed in 1989 at age 39). The song about a grifting president feels quite timely as Price sings, “Everywhere he goes, make the people mad / Makes the poor man pay, and the rich man glad / He’s the president, but I don’t care,” ending with her middle fingers in the air. It’s a popular sentiment here in San Francisco, where few care for the corruption and warmongering taking place under the current occupier of the Oval Office. 

It’s already been another great Saturday night at the Fillmore when Price lets the audience know that the encore is now taking place. Thompson is back on Garcia’s “Alligator” Strat for Price’s “Hurtin’ (on the Bottle)”, an instant classic from her debut album about “drinking whiskey like it’s water” to escape from heartbreak. Price gave up booze a few years back after she read that women who have three drinks a week are twice as likely to get breast cancer, but her page-turning 2022 memoir Maybe We’ll Make It is filled with entertaining tales about her rowdier days, including the origins of this song. 

The rowdy vibe continues as Margo Price and her band go back to the Grateful Dead songbook with “Casey Jones” for their third Dead tune of the night, marking this as a special setlist for the Fillmore. Price is back on drums to capture the Dead’s two-drummer sound, as the audience delights in rocking out while knowing that the Fillmore is receiving a special treat tonight. The set has oddly featured zero songs from Strays or That’s How Rumors Get Started, but playing three Dead songs has filled the void. 

A raucous rendition of “Maggie’s Farm” follows to close out the show, one of the Bob Dylan classics that became a Grateful Dead staple and which Price recorded her own version of last year. Shannon McNally returns to the stage to help out as she, Price, and Ledger each take a verse in the manner that Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and Phil Lesh would split up the vocal duties on the song. The song from Dylan’s influential 1965 album, Bringing It All Back Home, remains a zeitgeist number six decades later, a working person’s lament about the struggle to make ends meet in the capitalist race to the bottom. 

The world may seem like it’s going to “Hell in a Bucket” in 2026 as the “Masters of War” lie and deceive to conduct their foul schemes for profiteering and imperialist conquest yet again. However, hope for a better way lives on with artists like Margo Price calling out the powers that be, enabling fans to feel that sanity can still ultimately prevail.