Margo Price has released a 9-track EP entitled Days of Unrest, featuring five timely covers of protest songs as well as three original instrumentals as well as Price’s song “Can’t Stand Still.” The protest songs include the Mexican folk song “De Colores,” Bob Dylan’s “Maggie’s Farm,” Blaze Foley’s “Oval Room,” and Woody Guthrie’s “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos).” On the Guthrie song, Joan Baez joins Price and the Memphis Mariachi.
We previously have written about how Guthrie was inspired to write “Deportee” by a 1948 plane crash that killed 28 undocumented immigrants. In the case of the album, Price sings “Deportee” as part of a statement about our current times and treatment of immigrants in the U.S. These are songs have meant a lot to her for a long time (such as playing “Deportee” at Farm Aid 40), as her embrace of protest music is not something new for Price.
Margo Price recently explained to Salon about her choice to include “Deportee,” a song she has been singing for some time, on Days of Unrest: “[I]t needs to be sung and we cannot look away from what is happening right now. We cannot act like this is normal. I mean, I think a lot of people think that I’m radical because I’m talking about this stuff. But I think 20-30 years from now, we’re going to say, ‘Why are more people not concerned about the way that folks are being treated right now. It’s inhumane.”
Check out Price’s cover of “Deportee” with Joan Baez in the official lyric video, which includes current events.
Part of the proceeds from sales of Days of Unrest will go to The Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, which helps immigrants facing detention and deportation. The members of Memphis Mariachi are José Patiño, Eniel Pineda, Alejandro Quijano, Martín Granados, José Pérez, and Juan Viamontes.
Days of Unrest is available at Amazon and other locations. Leave your two cents in the comments.