This Saturday, July 4, is Independence Day. It marks the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and, effectively, the beginning of 13 English colonies in North America morphing into the United States through the Revolutionary War. The problems with how we’ve acted on — and often enough, even how we have practically and legally defined — “democracy” and “freedom” are fundamental, present from the start. And you likely don’t really need a reminder of the economic, political and social crises that make the Fourth of July not feel like much of an occasion to celebrate this year.
During turmoil like this, a bedrock tenet I hold onto is that dissent against injustice is patriotic — no matter how much some folks would like “patriotism” and “nationalism” to be the same thing. Art forms including literature and music are powerful tools in this conversation, and rocking Nashville country singer-songwriter Margo Price continues using her platform this way.
Today, she’s released “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)” backed with “Oval Room,” a digital single previewing an album called Days of Unrest that’s set for release on Friday. “Deportee” features the music of Memphis Mariachi and a verse from none other than Joan Baez. Woody Guthrie wrote the song after a January 1948 plane crash in California that killed all on board, most of whom were Mexican farm workers being deported after their guest worker contracts ended. Without that information, it’d be easy to believe that this lament for racist cruelty and shortsighted decision-making was written in our time of ICE raids and detention centers — a reminder that history may not always exactly repeat itself, but the ways it rhymes are sobering.
“Oval Room,” meanwhile, is a Blaze Foley cover that leans forward with minor-key urgency. It’s a bluesy rebuke for the venal, materialistic nature of the president of the United States. Again, it feels very contemporary to the Trump administration, but the late Foley wrote it in the 1980s about Ronald Regan.
Find the tracks in the Bandcamp embed or on your favorite streaming service, and keep an eye out for the full album on Friday. Watch Price’s Instagram profile for updates. She’s shared the full track list, which includes a collaboration with country singer Billy Swan on “Long Haired Country Girl.” Based on the album including a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Maggie’s Farm,” I’ll make an educated guess that’s a gender flip on Charlie Daniels’ kiss-off to authority “Long Haired Country Boy.”
