On her new album, Mary Gauthier channels the restlessness and heartache of being given up for adoption at birth.

Click Here for  The Advocate.com Lost and Foundling, Mary Gauthier

Today NPR ran another interview with me, this one on Here and Now.   I like how they edited it, we taped for about a half hour and they edited it down to a manageable 10 minutes or so. I am thrilled to be on the show, it’s a first for me. Two NPR interviews in a short period of time is unheard of, not sure how the heck my publicist pulled it off, but I am grateful.

Also, The Advocate came to my hotel in Santa Monica and shot some video of me and Tania playing The Orphan King sitting on the bed in my room, and we videotaped a Q and A session as well out in the Courtyard. I think both sessions came out well.

We’re working our way up the coast, playing shows all the way up. The West Coast is fantastic this time of year, cool at night, beautiful during the day. I played in San Diego, then two sold out shows in LA at McCabe’s Guitar Shop, the a couple days off at my friend Lana Lewis’s great little inn on the water outside of Santa Cruz in Capitola The Monarch Cove Inn, then up to San Francisco and then Eugene where we played a great house concert hosted by Michael Strain. To get there we drove thru the Redwood Forest, up the Avenue of the Giants, where we witnessed the giant redwoods, just amazing.

The beautiful artwork from The Foundling that Lilli Carre created (under the art direction of Gail Marowitz) was recreated by Lisa Beyer for our in-store at Millenium Music in Portland, OR today. NICE!

Millenium Record Shop Portland OR.

My friends in the Adoptee Rights Coalition are holding a protest in Louisville this July, as they continue working hard to get our birth certificates unsealed. Adoptees in the US  in all but 6 states are not allowed access to our original birth certificates, and we feel it’s way past time to open up the records. More info HERE. It affects me personally, cause I wanna know who my dad is. I want a copy of my original birth certificate, but the state will not give it to me.

Ever wonder about the article that inspired me to write the song The Last Of The Hobo Kings? Here it is in the NY Times Archives. A great story on Steam Train Maury, even if it is his obituary.

Here’s a video link, live footage from the Joe’s Public Theater gig Tania and I did in NYC a few weeks ago. I don’t look too old or too fat, and I am not singing too flat. These are the things I look for in Mary Gauthier Video’s..LOL!

I just got an e-mail from my friend Jason Wilbur who plays guitar for John Prine that the radio interview I did with him is now edited, up and running. He’s not only a great guitar player, he’s a great radio host. Here’s the link to his show, In Search of A Song

On another note, it’s they day before we head out West, and I am ready to roll. I’m starting the next leg of the tour in San Diego July 9th, then two shows in LA on the 10th and 11th, then I work my way up the coast for a couple weeks, ending up in BC at a little folk festival in Duncan, on Vancouver Island. I’ve been home for about two weeks, and thats enough for me. I wanna get going again, get on the plane and go do what I love, play songs for people.

It’s a great time of year to be on the West Coast, and i am looking forward to three days in Santa Cruz and a show there..walks on the beach, great vegetarian food, and re-connecting with friends along the way. I love my job, I love knowing people all over the world, I love being a citizen of the world. I’ve just found out that i be be returning to Australia and Europe in the next few months, and that’s good news to my ears.

I’m trying to be better about taking and posting pictures…here’s a shot from a festival we played outside of LA called Stage Coach. We played the same day as Brooks and Dunn and Toby Keith. I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, me playing that festival…but it worked out great. They ( the big famous Country music Stars) played at night, we played during the day, and everyone got along just fine. Every day is an adventure on the road to God Know Where. It even got me a big feature write up in the LA Times.

More soon…..

Mary

Ed, Mary and Tania Elizabeth/ Stage Coach Festival 2010

Mary Gauthier, storyteller in song

One of the most electrifying moments at this year’s Stagecoach country music festival had nothing to do with the high-wattage, big-budget stage productions that accompanied performances by the event’s main attractions, Toby Keith, Keith Urban, Brooks & Dunn and Sugarland.
In fact, it came as the result of a technological breakdown. Inside a tent with the noontime sun blazing above, Louisiana singer and songwriter Mary Gauthier was in the middle of a song from her new album, “The Foundling,” when a loud pop was heard over the PA, and then the sound system died.
Gauthier and her two accompanists looked momentarily perplexed. The she led them to the front of the stage and, literally unplugged, continued playing “The Orphan King,” a redemptive song centering on one person’s adamant faith in the power of love in the face of overwhelming disappointment and betrayal.

Several hundred fans on hand for the first set of the festival’s second day cheered Gauthier, some with tears streaming down their cheeks, as she sang the song’s refrain, “I still believe in love.”

“I didn’t know which way it would go at this event — it was Brooks & Dunn and Toby Keith day, for God’s sakes,” Gauthier, 48, said several days later from London, while on a trip to Europe to stump for the new album. “But I found a connection with a good number of people there.”

cont’d