Last fall, when the country singer Margo Price wanted to test-drive tunes from her fifth album, “Hard Headed Woman,” she turned to an expert: Willie Nelson. Price was spending Thanksgiving with the Texas hero in his home in Hawaii, part of an annual holiday tradition in which the musicians swapped stories and songs.
“He asked me if I was working on anything new,” Price, 42, said. “I’m kind of a shy person, and one-on-one is even more scary than performing for a whole room of people. But Willie listens so deeply. And he never stops thinking or creating.”
One of the tracks she debuted for Nelson was the defiant anthem “Don’t Let the Bastards Get You Down,” a homage — lyrically and spiritually — to their mutual friend Kris Kristofferson, who died last year. The song was partly inspired by Kristofferson’s onstage advice to Sinead O’Connor during a contentious 1992 live appearance, and Price gave Kristofferson a posthumous co-writing credit.
“Willie was always borrowing older songs, and resurrecting things,” she said, “and I wanted to do that.”
In a video interview from her home in White’s Creek, Tenn., Price talked about her must-have items — some borrowed, some resurrected and some new — ahead of the album’s Aug. 29 release. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
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