Singer-songwriter Margo Price has never been a conventional country artist and she is one of the very few to make outspoken statements in favor of stronger gun-control laws in the U.S.
She and her husband prominently attended memorial ceremonies for the victims of Nashville’s Covenant School shooting this spring and today she posted a deeply moving essay in Rolling Stone titled “Sit Beside Me in the Darkness.” It is marks her first piece of writing since her 2022 memoir,“Maybe We’ll Make It,” in which she addresses many hard life subjects, including the death of her infant son due to congenital heart disease.
It’s a long and detailed essay that covers the meeting she and fellow singers Amy Grant, Sheryl Crow, Ruby Amanfu, Allison Russell and Will Hoge had with Gov. Bill Lee and the unexpected empathy she felt for him, the faith she has in Gen Z, and the change she believes women can create when working together.
“On that dreadful Monday, March 27th, when six souls lost their lives in theCovenant shooting,” she begins, “my father-in-law called me to break the news. “There’s been ashootingat a school in Green Hills,” he started, and I dropped to the ground. I couldn’t breathe, my head was spinning. I felt like I might have a nervous breakdown when he continued,“It’s not their school. It’s not their school.”Tears were rolling down my cheeks. My two children were at a different school in the area, and while I breathed a sigh of relief that my kids were safe, my heart was already breaking for Nashville.
“At the same time, I got a text message from my kids’ teachers saying they were in lockdown but not in danger. My hands trembled as I tried to reply. I thought about driving to go pick them up and bring them safely home, but the roads were closed. In the days that followed, I contemplated quitting my career and homeschooling them.How can we send our children into this evil world with broken people? How can we send them straight into danger?They were safe, and for that, I thanked God.
“My 12-year-old hugged me when I picked him up. They were placed on lockdown immediately when the sound of sirens began screaming through the neighborhood. “The sirens lasted all day,” he said. I kissed both their heads, buckled them in, and tried to hide the tears in my eyes as we drove home. It was a traumatic day for the city, and my mind was far away. I couldn’t stop thinking of the parents and families who lost their loved ones. It’s a loss so devastating, so unthinkable, that it has us all thinking very deeply about how we can make it so something like this never happens again.”
Read the entire piece at RollingStone.
