Margo Price announces expanded album, Strays II and shares Act I: Topanga Canyon

Presented as three distinct acts, the double album delivers nine new songs and today releases Act I: Topanga Canyon, which features collaborations with Big Thief’s Buck Meek, Strays producer Jonathan Wilson and multi-instrumentalist Ny Oh.

Recorded at Wilson’s Topanga studio during the same life-changing sessions as the rest of Strays – and partially written amidst the formative, six-day psilocybin trip that Margo Price and Jeremy Ivey took the summer prior – all three acts of Strays II further complement and intensify the proclamation that Price delivered across the initial album, earlier this year.

Accompanied by a three-part short film directed by Chris Phelps and recently previewed at the GRAMMY Museum in Los Angeles, Strays II will continue to unfold throughout the coming weeks with the release of Act II: Mind Travel and Act III: Burn Whatever’s Left. All nineteen tracks will then combine into the double album’s digital release in October.

""Malibu" was written with Mike Campbell in his Malibu home after Jeremy and I had driven through the canyon fleeing a forest fire to get my guitar from our Airbnb. I had the start of the song and brought it to him looking to finish it out. I wanted to write something with a country funk/Bobbie Gentry feel, a good long rambling story about the minutiae of the day, like ‘Ode to Billy Joe.’ Mike added the long ‘California’ yodel and the bridge and was exactly what the song needed," Price reveals.

“The title track is the story of how my husband Jeremy and I met and fell in love in Nashville two decades ago. I wrote most of the words and Jeremy wrote the chords and melody. It also reflects how we have always tried to stay true to who we are as people," she continues.

""Closer I Get" was originally meant to open this double album with the line, ‘Being alive costs a lot of money but so does dying.’ I’ve always thought it was unfair that the moment we are born, we immediately start racking up debt just for existing. This song was conjured from the ashes of our initial psychedelic trip – sometimes your perception and depth of field changes depending on where you’re at in life."