Margo Price and Jeremy Ivey Sing Out in the Fight for America

It’s the summer of 2026, and Margo Price is still riding high on tour behind 2025’s Hard Headed Woman album. Price is doing it her way, which has made her one of the music world’s leading musical voices for sanity in this world gone mad. She’s also got more new music out with Days of Unrest, an EP released on the 3rd of July. It’s a timely collection of covers and deep cuts with a popular theme of patriotic dissent against creeping authoritarianism. Her “Wild at Heart Tour” brings Price back to the Bay Area for a gig at the intimate Sweetwater Music Hall in Mill Valley here on this Friday night in scenic Marin County on the 17th of July.

Days of Unrest features Woody Guthrie‘s “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)”, recorded in tandem with the great Joan Baez and Memphis Mariachi, Bob Dylan‘s “Maggie’s Farm”, and a reworked outlaw country classic from Charlie Daniels. There’s also “Can’t Stand Still”, a vibrant tune from Price’s former band Buffalo Clover. The song from before she hit the big time synchronistically foreshadows the camaraderie she’s developed with Willie Nelson and classic tunes of his like “Still Is Still Moving to Me”. It seems Price has a similarly restless creative soul that needs to stay active, and her fans are the winners with more music and now more shows. 

“I love America, that’s why I continue to fight for her,” Price explained in an Instagram post on the 6th of July, after playing at Nelson’s traditional 4th of July Picnic show in Austin, Texas. Price also has a portion of proceeds from sales of Days of Unrest going to benefit the Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, a nonprofit that provides free legal and social services for adults and unaccompanied children in immigration custody.

Margo Price and her band played a stellar show at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco in March. Yet, it’s wonderful to have her back in the region sooner rather than later this time around for a North Bay show at the Sweetwater (and a South Bay show at the Guild Theater in Menlo Park the next night). Long-time musical cohort (and husband) Jeremy Ivey is billed to open the show with a solo acoustic set, which provides an extra treat since Ivey is known for his own timely songwriting in service to manifesting a more harmonious world.

Jeremy Ivey is a savvy lyricist with a finger on the pulse of the modern zeitgeist, so fans in the know make sure to arrive on time for his opening set. The venue’s signature cocktail, the Rock & Rye, hits the sweet spot here as Ivey dons a cowboy hat for a troubadour-style set of musical commentary on this foul year of our lord. He introduces the first song as being about our fears and how if a meteor takes us out, none of that will matter. Heady lyrics include: “When the earth falls from the sky / As the aliens cheer / The monkey race is gone / Will your politics matter any more / When the moon hits Mount Everest / Will you blame the socialists?”

“Someone Else’s Problem” from 2020’s Waiting Out the Storm by Jeremy Ivey & the Extraterrestrials (produced by Price) is one of the deeper socio-political songs of the decade. Ivey aims at all the hypocritical conservatives and out-of-touch centrists who wave off society’s bigger-picture issues, as long as they’re not personally affected. If Bob Dylan had put this song out, it would probably have been a big hit with critics saying Dylan’s got his groove back. Yet it’s a Jeremy Ivey classic that feels ever comforting in the sense of hearing a lament like this and appreciating that somebody gets it with all the social injustice in modern society.

“House with Wings” has more wry commentary as Ivey sings, “I’m gonna meet some aliens / Bring ’em over, get ’em high / Give ’em pie / Kick their asses out / Shooting star might just be me.” Another song is said to relate to a film script Ivey tried to write but struggled with, so he decided to write the song “Runner” about the story of a drug runner in Louisiana. “Greyhound” is a wistful song from 2019’s The Dream and the Dreamer with the charming line, “Greyhound, oh Greyhound / We’re all insomniacs / I don’t care where you take me / Just don’t take me back.”

A flatpicking lead guitarist joins Ivey to add an extra element to the sound, then Price joins them for “Edge of Darkness” from 2026’s Its Shape Will Reveal Itself. It’s a treat to see Price and Ivey sing together on an upbeat duet that features more deep lyrics about the chaos of the modern world: “Floods in the South / And the West is on fire / Barbed wire on the borderline / But out on the edge of darkness / Another war where children play / And it only happens in America, God bless the USA.”

The room has grown full by the end of Ivey’s set and a mood for Friday night fun is in effect. Margo Price comes back on with her full band after a 20-minute seat break and cranks up the energy with “I Just Don’t Give a Damn”, an outlaw country type of song in which she declares her independence from expectations. She speaks of having had a beautiful day hiking and how “It just feels good to be in your city” because Mill Valley is indeed a pleasant place to be, here in the shadow of majestic Mount Tamalpais and the rolling green hills of Marin County.

Price also comments on how it feels weird to be back at the Sweetwater without Bobby Weir around, and indeed it’s been a local disconnect since the psychedelic rock pioneer and one-time proprietor of the Sweetwater checked out in January at age 78. Price fondly recalled her friendship with Weir for Relix magazine’s commemorative issue on the Grateful Dead guitarist, and it’s heartwarming to see her carry the counterculture flame forward with her own rebel voice. “Wild at Heart” keeps the set going with a personal anthem for Price from Hard Headed Woman, though the title feels as if it could also explain her connection with Weir. 

“Don’t Wake Me Up” is described as being “about the chaos going on”, and the upbeat bluesy tune is a winner with verses that recall Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, before a chorus of “Don’t wake me up, I ain’t up for that, The way this world is going, ain’t where I’m at.” Lead guitarist Sean Thompson rips a fiery solo on a black Gibson Les Paul after earlier tearing it up on a Fender Telecaster. Meanwhile, Ivey plays keyboards and adds some hot harmonica.

The studio track features backing vocals from insurgent troubadour Jesse Welles, whom Price championed on social media last year to help introduce him to a wider audience. Like Price, Welles would develop a kinship with Joan Baez that led to her sitting in with him at recent Bay Area shows and recording a duet on his timely protest anthem “No Kings”.

“Long Haired Country Girl” is Price’s reworked version of Charlie Daniels’ “Long Haired Country Boy”, and it plays well here as Price sings, “I get stoned in the morning / Get drunk in the afternoon.” Ivey enhances the song with his harmonica now turned up for more prominent impact. Meanwhile, the flat-picking lead guitarist from earlier brings Price a smoking joint that she takes a rip from in the middle of the song to enhance the crowd-pleasing performance.

Another highlight comes with “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down”, an outlaw country anthem that functions as an antidote for the 2020s. The song also has a charming video, featuring an opening shot in a tattoo parlor where Price is reading a “Nashville” tabloid-style magazine with a cover story of a flying saucer descending and a headline of “Alien Landing in Downtown Nashville”. Have Price and Ivey had close encounters of their own? He recorded his 2020 album with a band he dubbed the Extraterrestrials, while she sang about “silver ships at dawn” on the powerful “I’d Die For You” from her 2020 album That’s How Rumors Get Started. 

Price lets it be known that Joan Baez will make a guest appearance at the following night’s show at the Guild Theater in Menlo Park, before playing “Des Colores”. The mariachi-style tune sounds great here in the intimate confines of the Sweetwater, followed as it is on Days of Unrest by an inherently moving performance of “Deportee”. There’s been an ongoing campaign by the Marin chapter of Democratic Socialists of America to get ICE out of Marin plus regular anti-ICE protests around the region, so there’s plenty of solidarity here. 

Guitarist Logan Ledger shines with his lead vocal on the Grateful Dead’s “Ripple” while Price goes backstage for a wardrobe change. The poignant song about a loved one on the verge of moving on to the next realm hits in the feels again here as it did at the Fillmore in March, with Margo Price returning in a glamorous silver-fringed dress before the end to harmonize on the conclusion. A rousing performance of “Hurtin’ on the Bottle” gets the Sweetwater dance floor rocking again, as Price sings about heavy drinking days from her past before she went “California Sober” as her friends Willie Nelson and Billy Strings might say.

Her remake of Blaze Foley’s “Oval Office” from the Reagan era is another track from Days of Unrest that hits deep here, as Price turns the song into a straightforward critique of the corrupt Trump presidency. “It feels really good to sing these words,” she says as the audience claps in unison on the intro. “Everywhere he goes, makes the people mad, Makes the poor men beg and the rich men glad, ‘Cause he’s the president, but I don’t care,” Price sings in a bluesy lament before giving a one-finger salute. The Sweetwater is in full solidarity as the band cranks it up with a smoking guitar solo from Thompson for a big finish.

“Maggie’s Farm” makes for a fitting encore as Price and the boys rock out on the Dylan classic, while the audience stomps the floor. Price released her own version of the song last year, and it’s been a staple of the repertoire ever since, so it fits right in on Days of Unrest as a timeless ode to the working-class struggle against the “Big Boss Man” class. 

Those with prior commitments for Saturday night lament missing the team-up with Baez at the Guild in Menlo Park, but Margo Price has delivered another fantastic performance here at the Sweetwater.