A Conversation with Audry Pryce

Same Career, New Town

So, how is everything with you?

Pretty good, just mostly getting ready for my upcoming tour and moving out to Philadelphia.

Are you touring by yourself?

I’ve actually got Athena Dewitt who will also be joining me for dates in Corvallis and Cincinnati, Ohio. She’s in the sort of Big Thief ballpark, vocally.

I’m assuming you’ve done tours before.

Actually, no, just small strings of west coast shows, but nothing outside of that. This is going to be my first time touring internationally.

How comfortable are you with touring?

Honestly, not really. I’m pretty stressed at whatever could happen, like broken equipment, accidents, and not to mention all the different scenes and different people involved with it. Matter of fact, Seattle doesn’t like acts touring from out of state. I’ve actually booked several from Seattle before, and have always been very kind to them, but I guess it’s not reciprocated.

Strange, considering how rich the musical history of Washington state is in general. I think you’ll be fine, I’ve known you to be very resourceful.

Frankly, it’s all booked already, so I’ll have to commit. No house shows in Seattle would book me, so I had to get booked with Factory Lux, which does seem like a nice venue.

How long have you been working in or on music for?

I started really getting into playing music when I was 12. I started out in the country where I grew up with just an acoustic guitar, and formed a duo with my friend at teh time. We played shitty folk punk in abandoned barns for a while before I decided to move out to Portland, completely homeless. When I got here, my mind was blown, I went to so many punk shows, and I swear I’ve met 500 people over the course of all those shows. I got situated in the scene and started a band called The Pigeon and the People, a sort of sludgey grungey type deal. I’d sing and play guitar and I had a guy named River on the drums. I would play around with an octave pedal and do real White Stripes type stuff, very minimal punk, which I was really into at the time. At our first show, River actually threw up into someone’s water bottle and got way too drunk, so the venue organizer ended up banning the both of us. I tried to petition to get myself unbanned, but no dice. We played a few more shows before I eventually got fed up and started putting out solo material under the band’s name.

Doing ‘em dirty, very powerful.

Later we ended up reforming with a bassist, but River ended up flaking and cancelling last second to a show, and we had to recruit a random drummer on the fly who ended up being way better than River’s ever been. Eventually COVID hit, and we barely practiced up until September of 2020, when I pretty much threw in the towel with music for a while. I was working as a manager at a Dollar Tree, and my solo projects mostly all fell apart. I ended up having a mental breakdown and was at an outpatient facility for about a month, and after I got out, I took to busking by the waterfront. I started noticing a lot of people liked my songs, and I started booking a lot of shows in the Mount Tabor area, which is around the same time I met Athena. Around September 2021, I dropped my first project, What Would You Like, Sir? which was mostly about being queer and feeling alienated and alone. Then I started hosting these shows at Speed’s Auto Body near the Hawthorne Bridge last year, and I started working on a follow-up project called What’s Done is Done, which is way more electric and about nothing in particular. Now I’m just focusing on moving out.

When you say nothing in particular, do you mean things that are more general, more universal or quotidian?

It’s honestly more generally about resolution. Resolving things, closure, moving forward, and things about whatever.

So more apathetic?

Yeah, I guess.

I’ve known you to be a very personal, confrontational, emotional sort of songwriter. What spurred the change?

I focused more on technique, experimenting with song structures. I got tired of the old verse chorus verse chorus sort of thing.

What inspired you?

Bob Dylan. Just kidding, I felt really limited within punk music and I had to break out.

Punk itself is very broad, and can encapsulate a lot of different styles and formats, even the ethos itself is inherently freeing. Do you feel like it still limits you strictly based on personal experience?

I still find it limiting, though I’m always going to be ethically or morally punk. I’ve always been someone who lives by the do-it-yourself style of music making.

That’s the spirit. Are you working on anything currently, or is the tour in promotion of What’s Done is Done?

The tour is pretty much built on coincidence. When I was first planning on moving out to Philly, I found I could take a train straight there for 200, or have 10 stops for 500. I took the 10 stop ticket and built the tour around that, strictly for the experience rather than promoting anything.

Why Philly? Have you spoken to anyone from there or are you just planning on winging it?

When I was booking shows at Speed’s Auto Body, I met a lot of touring acts from Philly and it ended up being on the top of my mind. I also just want to spend this year conquering my fears, pushing my boundaries.

Awesome. We’ll start wrapping it up here, but I have a very important question. Favorite Bob Dylan?

Desire. Such a good record. I love the lyrics, even though they have aged pretty poorly. It has a nice, somber mood, and I think it’s just generally very underrated.

It’s no Self Portrait, but I’ll take it. Thanks for chatting with me!

Thanks for asking me to chat. I’ve actually also got a farewell house show coming up in North Portland on March 17th, hosted by a friend at Citrus Productions who handled all the booking because I definitely wasn’t going to organize it myself.

Where can anyone find details on that, and where can people generally hear your music?

All of my music is on Spotify, and you can find details on that show on my Instagram: @audryprice.