Case Histories
30 Jan
If you’ve been watching the new PBS series Case Histories, you very likely have heard Mary’s song “Mercy Now”.
On their home page for the show, they are featuring Mary and her music. Check it out!
Mystery and Manners
23 Jan
I’ve been re-reading Flannery O’Conners Mystery and Manners, a collection of her unpublished essays and lectures, brilliantly edited by her lifelong friends Robert and Sally Fitzgerald. This book is a must read for her fans, but I think everyone who reads or writes would get something from reading this collection. Her wit and her wisdom shine like diamonds in the sun, and I find myself laughing out loud as I read this book again for the third time. Here’s a great paragraph about about writing fiction.
” One of the most common and saddest spectacles is that of a person of really fine sensibility and acute psychological perception trying to write fiction by using these qualities alone. This type of writer will put down one intensely emotional or keenly perceptive sentence after the other, and the result will be complete dullness. The fact is that the materials of the fiction writer are the humblest. Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn’t try to write fiction. It’s not a grand enough job for you.”
Is this perfection or what?
The same things that Flannery says about writing fiction can be said of songwriting. Tom Waits says the songwriter is the Queen of the Teacup, the King of the Thimble. In other words, it’s all the seemingly little things that matter most in a song. They add up to a great story, or they don’t. They make you feel, or they don’t. For me, the hard work of songwriting is finding the patience to sort through all of my BIG and GRAND ideas, sift them and sift them again until I end up with the bits of dust that matter most. A great song, like a great book, is not a collection of great lines, nor is it a collection of ”acute psychological perceptions”. An artist creates a world for the reader/listener to enter into, and it’s done by the careful and deliberate use of small details, speaking with character and action, not about character and action. It’s hard, emotionally exhausting work, and as Flannery puts in Mystery and Manners:
“Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I’m always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It’s a plunge into reality and it’s very shocking to the system. If a writer is not sustained by the hope of money, then she must be sustained by a hope of salvation, or she simply won’t survive the ordeal.”
ditto songwriting.
The hope of being of some kind of service, to ones self, to truth itself, to other soul’s out there in the dark looking for connection, or as Flannery puts it, salvation, is the sustenance most artists live on. It’s gotta be enough, or there’s no point even getting into the business of writing. If money is what you’re looking for, there’s about a billion easier ways to make money than writing. It was true in the 1950′s, when Flannery wrote these essays, and it’s even truer now.
Enough of that..here’s a true treasure, it’s Flannery O’Conner at Vanderbilt University reading from her novel A Good Man Is Hard To Find
and here: Flannery O’Conner reading “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Literature”
The internet is fantastic for treasures like this, enjoy!
2 Responses to “Mystery and Manners”
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Nancy Anderson says:
Mary,
You are a brilliant poet. We only discovered your work at 30A this year. What an experience to see and hear the poet perform her work!
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Dawn says:
Mary,
Yesterday morning, I asked Rick to read “A Good Man is Hard to Find” out loud to me so I could hear it orally. All before I read your blog post and saw that you were writing about Flannery and referencing her work. Next, hearing her voice reading the same story at Vanderbilt confirmed to me that there are no coincidences in life. It’s a tribe thing.
We are all swimming in the collective unconscious together and the stardust of Flannery O’Connor is still swirling around us all.
Yes, it’s the little things in life (like this) and these kinds of moments that makes life so very meaningful.
Thank you for sharing.
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Winter Solstice is Behind Us Now
22 Dec
If the early evening gloom is getting to you, (yes, it’s getting to me), we can take comfort in the fact that the days are about to start getting longer. The winter solstice–which marks the beginning of winter and the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere — came last night at 11:30 CST.
Yesterday was the shortest day of the year. Today the days begin to lengthen, and for me that means my walks on the red trail at Warner Park will slowly start getting pushed back. This gives me more time during the day at my writing desk which is a good thing, as I am in the process of writing new songs and feel rushed to get out to the trail in the early afternoon to beat the encroaching darkness. Right now I have to be out there by 3 to walk the 5 mile trail, because it’s been getting dark at 4:30pm.
I love hiking the hills at Warner Park here in Nashville, and I especially like hiking them in the winter, because I don’t have to worry about snakes. I have an irrational, primal fear of snakes, and I have run into timber rattlers several times in the park, and every time I do, it scares the bejesus out of me. They come out in the spring, and they’re out all summer, but in the winter, NO SNAKES.
I like it, this walking in the cold, no snakes anywhere.
The timber rattler is a beautiful animal, but I can’t get past my crazy fear (and healthy respect) for it’s majesty. I got very, very close to one in March….here’s a video taken from my iPhone….
Click on this picture for my video of the timber rattler rattling...
Warner Park in the winter time.
I am a daily walker (snakes or no snakes). Somewhere a long time ago I read that writers walk, and I find it particularly helpful to walk the hills when I am writing. Its part of my creative process, the songs marinate as I climb the hills in silence and listen to the leaves under my feet and hear the occasional train rolling down the tracks in the distance. Problems in the songs somehow sort themselves out without me having to fix them, rhymes reveal themselves, and melodies write themselves as my legs move my body through the woods. There is something bigger than myself at work in these moments, and while the information bubbles up into my conscious mind through my subconscious mind, I don’t think it originates there. I am just the vessel, the recipient of the story. In other words, the songs come through me, not from me. There’s something else at work in those hills, and don’t want to name it because any name I could give it would diminish the experience. Lets just say there’s a power greater than myself working on me. My job is to show up, be patient, trust my gut, and allow for that power I can’t name to do it’s work. Creativity is a magical thing, it flows though humans in the most simple and complex ways, and we are allowed to literally co-create the universe when we embrace our creative powers. The key word here for me is co-create. Of course I can force songs and push them into shape with my will, but if I do, I lose something vital, I lose the spirit of the original inspiration. I lose the magic. Forced songs sound like forced songs, they sound crafty…and I don’t want to write crafty songs. I want to write well crafted songs, of course, but there’s much more to it than that. I want to be an artist. I want to move people, and be useful in the greater scheme of things. Crafty songs have their place, but craft without art, without that magical divine spark, does not interest me.
This idea is articulated beautifully by one of my favorite writers Jame Lee Burke. James wrote a piece for the NY Times in 2002 about it in a series called Writers On Writing. Here’s a nice quote from James from that article, read the whole thing if you get a chance, it’s time well spent if you have an interest in these things:
” You write a day at a time, and let God be the measure of its worth; you let the score take care of itself, and most important, you never lose faith in your vision. God might choose fools and people who glow with neurosis for his partners in creation, but he doesn’t make mistakes.”
6 Responses to “Winter Solstice is Behind Us Now”
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Darlene P says:
Mary, Saw you and Tania last night at Bean and Burlap. Just magical. Tania is a great fiddler and I just ordered her last two CDs from Amazon to send to family members. My grandfather (Pepere) was a fiddler. Spent this morning listening to The Foundling (purchased last night) and was moved by the maturity, depth and breadth and poetry. It’s bubbling at the surface now. I am a psych nurse and author (psych) and love how you peel back each layer with your narrative and poetry. I hope you soon record your World War vet “via the train vehicle” song on a CD soon. As I said last night, ” I am so glad you were born!” You are special! Keep wandering….
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I saw you last night at the Burlap & Bean in Newtown Square Pa. It was another great show. What I like most about you is your personal intimacy, both on-stage and off. If you could’ve only brought one person with you on the tour, you chose wisely in bringing Tania E. She is such a talented complement to your music. Thanks for the show. You played the blues, and now I feel better;-)
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I saw you in Holland once and I just wanted to say how your music is food for the soul…
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chefdixie@mac.com says:
“A laborer works with hands. A craftsperson works with hands and mind. An artist works with hands, mind and heart”
Ken, this is beautiful. I’ve not heard this before, and I’m probably gonna use it for the rest of my life…it’s says exactly what I’ve tried to say in way too many words!
Thank you,
Mary -
Ken Talbert says:
I appreciate your discussion of inspiration. There is something in that word that sounds of breathing, and something that sounds of spirit, which of course is not a thing at all. I heard this recently, and you reminded me of it when discussing the forced manufacture of songs over the artistic flow. A laborer works with hands. A craftsperson works with hands and mind. An artist works with hands, mind and heart.
Thanks for sharing your inspiration. Your art. -
Melanie says:
On this New Year’s Day, I wanted to thank you, Mary, for this particular blog posting. It inspires me as I look to cultivate more deeply my own creativity this year, and especially gives me an extra reason to go walking as often as I can!
Thank you as well for the link to the James Lee Burke essay; I love him, too, and that may just be the finest meditation on writing I’ve ever read. I plan to print it, this blog entry, and Kerouac’s “Belief and Technique for Modern Prose” and keep them all at my desk. Thank you again, and Happy New Year!
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Inspiration
7 Dec
I’m inspired.
My friend Gretchen Peters has inspired me. With her wonderful blog on Huffington Post, and her fantastic new CD Hello Cruel World, she’s got me thinking about art….in a good way. Really thinking.
In her blog, Gretchen writes, “As a songwriter, singer and musician, I explore the emotional terrain of everyday life on a regular basis. I am interested in shining a light into some dark corners, even compelled to do it, to take the secrets that we all keep and bring them into the light, give them a name, treat them with compassion and humility, but, above all, to tell the truth. Art has the power to transport us into other people’s lives, and thus, ultimately, into our own hearts. The act of empathizing with another, no matter how different, breaks down the walls built by secret-keeping and fear, and forever binds us together in our humanity. So many people prefer you to assume a role that makes them comfortable. But life is not about making other people comfortable. This idea seeped into the songs that were coming out of me — the old adage, “Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” I wanted to say what seemed unsayable. That life is tough, heartbreaking, unfair — and short. And that there is unspeakable beauty to be found.”
I couldn’t agree more.
I’m home now, in Nashville, sitting at my writing desk, contemplating these ideas while I try to write some songs. And I’m wondering, whats left for me to say? And I realize that writing and performing my most recent project The Foundling has changed me. There’s plenty for me to say, because I have changed. I am not the same person that I was three years ago when I decided to take on the most confusing and complex part of my own story by writing songs about it.
I love this quote by the great playwright, three time Pulitzer Prize winner, and fellow adoptee Edward Allbee . (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf)
“All serious art is being destroyed by commerce. Most people don’t want art to be disturbing. They want it to be escapist. I don’t think art should be escapist. thats a waste of time.”
Sometimes, the greatest thing an artist can do is be disturbing. To disturb the comfortable, and comfort the disturbed is to answer to a higher calling. It takes courage, self awareness, confidence and audacity to go against the grain, to shake things up, to stand alone and speak truth to power.
The writing of The Foundling was a key that opened a dark room inside my head, threw the lights on, and ran some of the monsters out. I feel lighter, less anxious, and more at peace now. Somehow, by revealing the hardest thing I’ve ever had to face, it’s lightened my load. The songs of The Foundling have made many people uncomfortable. They’ve made ME uncomfortable at times. They’re not for the faint hearted. They are heavy, and the story does not end well. But, is that REALLY true? Because here I sit, feeling a sense of peace and serenity thats flows like a river deep inside me. I’ve never felt better in my life. I feel connected to people, to myself and to a power greater than myself. There’s a great gift in being an artist, and for me that gift is being the recipient of what Gretchen was describing in her blog, being returned to my own heart through the sharing the truth of my humanity with others. Sometimes people tell me things like “That song you wrote was a life raft for me when I was going through x,y,z….” I always smile and nod and say sweetheart, we’re floating on the same little boat. It goes both ways; thats the nature of art. If it’s the kind of work that has a deep moving effect on a listener, you can be assured that is has had the same effect on the artist. The artist saves his/her own life by the work he/she does. Thats certainly been my experience. I write, I learn, I grow, and I move on. The work helps me to move on, to not stay stuck. I learn the lessons by writing about my experiences — making art from these experiences frees me to move on. My work gives me a powerful reason to get up in the morning. I am dedicated to it, and I love it. Ten years into being a professional songwriter, my passion for it continues. Writing helps me understand who and what I am, and it helps me understand the human condition and my place as a member of the human race, afflicted and gifted by the human condition just like everyone else. I’ve travelled the word now for a decade, and I am certain of one thing, we are all made of the same stuff. The human heart does not vary all that much, we humans are all much more alike than different, despite what the politicians and corporate media types try to tell us.
As a songwriter, I have no desire to do anything other than try to describe whats going on around me and inside me. I look out and see so much worth loving, so much worth singing about, writing about, worth trying to gently capture like a butterfly in my little song net. There is plenty left for me to say. Sometimes the greatest songs in the world are simple love songs, honest and true, without irony or cynicism. I think it’s high time I write a few songs like that.
I’m working on it now.
8 Responses to “Inspiration”
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Ruth Lister says:
Mary
Reading what you wrote was certainly an inspiration as is your music. I have seen you a number of times now in the UK and every time you and your music have touched me in some way. I have all your albums and very much look forward to the next one and to hearing the songs that you are working on. It is good to read that you have never felt better about your life – because you have had to go through so much to reach that place of peace and serenity.Wishing you peace and happiness for 2012
Ruth -
Dear Mary, I discovered you through Mercy Now playing at a oneness blessing circle and within a very short time, I had 5 of your CD’s in my car player which stayed there cycling through continuously for over 2 years. Through the arduous process of breaking up a 19 year relationship, every song touched my heart deeply, inviting the tears, witnessing and containing the grief, the shame, the loss of time and youth and hopefulness, the relief, all of it. I have seen you 4 times – in Austin, San Francisco, Berkeley and Santa Monica. I could speak to so many things – of course, the music, your aliveness and truthtelling, your body of work which is deep and prolific and magnificent, such incredible songwriting that doesn’t falter or compromise, the stories, your generosity, openness and spark with your fellow musicians, it is not easy to pinpoint exactly what occurs, but just being in your presence, I feel elevated, hopeful, deeply touched by this human journey that we are all on and soulfully connected to something bigger than me, something so vulnerable and so precious. I experience you as radiant, courageous, willing, an inspiration, a trailblazer, willing to name all that you see along the murky path of life with such curiosity, clarity, depth and insight that somewhere in the midst of it, perfect and unique alchemy happens. Thank you for being you.
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Roy Scherff says:
Mary, I first became aware of you and your music through KPFT radio here in Houston. From that time forward you have been my very favorite singer/song writer. Please continue with your work. You have so much to tell. Looking forward to seeing you in Houston. Do you have any idea when that may be?
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Jack says:
Mary, I just wanted to let you know how much you and your songs have helped me through the years.You have a unique way of putting into words the emotions and feelings I could not explain or even think of a way of expressing.Your words have taught me about truth and letting go which has truely set me free. It is true that being honest and true to yourself and your beliefs releases an enourmous amount of pent up anxiety that a lot of us are holding inside. I think if more people would be honest with themselves and others the amount of drug and alcohol dependencies would decrease enormously. Being honest and telling the truth, exposing yourself to others, isn’t always easy, But I know you’ll sleep better at night. Thanks for everything and I hope to see you soon.
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Evie Clark says:
I’ve always thought that art (no matter the medium) is worthless unless it makes you think and that’s precisely how it stays with you and makes an impact on you. All else is the equivalent of junk food. I remember when we first saw you perform and were literally stunned by the honesty and rawness of your songs. We so admired your guts in putting yourself out there.
Life is life- sometimes painful, sometimes hard, sometimes pure ecstasy. It’s odd to me when people want to avoid dealing with the tough stuff because I’ve found that I’ll deal with it sooner or later. And later seems worse to me.
You are right, Mary and so is Edward Albee. We have the drug industry that has marketed itself so well that many think that they shouldn’t have to process anything troubling. The music industry rewards utter fluff.
Your passion and honesty makes you uniquely beautiful. (Not to mention all that talent, too….)
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Mary, your work is always an inspiration. It captures the bittersweet note of everyday dreams, disapointments and hope. Thank you for sharing your talents and your art with us. Ginny
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Linda White says:
I am enjoying getting to know you through your songs and your writing. I was completely blown away when I heard “I Drink” for the first time last week. Your incredible voice and your emotion hit me first, and then the words sank in. As someone who had alcoholic parents, I recognize the pervasive feeling of hopelessness you were able to convey in that song. I escaped that cycle of self-destruction but the song has made me feel more compassionate about those who get trapped in the mess. Thank you for sharing your art with us. We need to hear what you have to say.
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Mary – Having heard you perform “Foundling” live, I agree that it is disturbing – but as my favorite Jungian therapist and author pointed out, the point of being here in this world may not be happiness – but rather meaning. And sharing our stories and what they mean to us not only allows us to understand our own lives better (as you’ve said)but it can also be a life preserver thrown out to another soul who is going down for the third time purely out of a sense of complete aloneness. If our experiences, yours and mine, are different – what Pema Chodron calls “the genuine heart of human sadness” is not.
And as to simple songs – “Mercy,” for me, is one of the most authentically simple, beautiful and compassionate songs, I’ve ever heard. It’s become a talisman for me, guarding against the temptation to close my heart.
May you write well, always.
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It’s Raining in Cambridge Tonight
16 Nov
I am writing this from my room at Irving House, a great little Bed and Breakfast in the heart of Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA. The owner, Rachel Solem, always takes great care of us, and we look forward to staying here whenever we play the Boston area. It’s raining out tonight, and I’m getting some laundry done downstairs, grateful to have a washer and dryer on site so that we can head to Colorado tomorrow with clean clothes. I’m tired, we’ve been on the road now for so long I don’t even know how long, but I feel good as well, knowing that the shows have been successful, and that I am doing what I was put here to do. A sense of flow comes with this traveling life, and the tiredness comes when I slow down. Tonight we are off. I know I’ll be able to get some rest soon, but tonight, it’s get a few housekeeping things done, find a nice little place to eat dinner in Chinatown, probably The New Golden Gate, ( I love their Lobster with Ginger and Scallions and Salty and Spicy Squid), and go to bed reasonably early, tomorrow is a fly day, off to Colorado for three shows.
I’ve been reading a lot about the Harlem Renaissance lately, and enjoyed one of Langston Hugh’s Memoirs called The Big Sea. It lead me to a book I absolutely fell in love with called Cane by Jean Toomer. What an amazing book! Jean Toomer was unknown to me before I read about his work in Langston’s memoir, and now I am fascinated by him. Alice Walker has written that she can’t live with Cane, she loves the book so much, and here’s a review from Amazon:
“By far the most impressive product of the Negro Renaissance, Cane ranks with Richard Wright’s Native Son and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man as a measure of the Negro novelist’s highest achievement. Jean Toomer belongs to that first rank of writers who use words almost as a plastic medium, shaping new meanings from an original and highly personal style.”
Langston Hughs also reminded me of what an amazing human being Josephine Baker was, and this lead me to discovering that she’d performed her own version of The Times They Are A Changing.
Coretta Scott King asked her if she would take over leadership of the American Civil Rights Movement for the slain Martin Luther King, (she was by his side on for the March on Washington, and spoke to the crowd before him), but Josephine decided that her children were too young to loose their mother. She was an amazing, amazing human being, and now I am on the hunt for a great book about her life. One book leads to another…..
4 Responses to “It’s Raining in Cambridge Tonight”
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Are you likely to come for a few dates to the UK? England specifically? If not, well, just know how much your music touches me and how I relate. I knew from the first time I heard your voice I would like you and bought all your albums there and then. We survivors need to be out there to show other survivors we can have wonderful lives despite the black hole we had to crawl out of. xo
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So good to see and hear where your light is shining now. Thanks. Had not heard Josephine Baker for a long time, and had not heard of Jean Toomer. Such a blessed richness.
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M. Gordon LaRusic says:
..so odd ..this just came across the wires …as I was re reading “If (and only if) You Want To Write”….which has sortta become my Bible…after you had recommended same a few years back…and found just ,dare I say, exactly what you found in that miniature masterpiece…that over and over…told us what we really knew already…and the great error in ever thinking that though our expressions are as varied as the species on the planet.. there is but one origin …and it is in the delivery of the Obvious that excites us..and if by extension it excites another…fine …if not ’twas a great trip back to the womb anyway…guess we are all flowers in the same field…but you Mary …have a great way of distribution of the Seminal, so all the other flowers have to thank you…While most thought I was really going off the deep end playing the album Mercy Now over and over ..while getting back up from a destroyed relationship…they had no idea that your genius in finding Truth in Anguish and Pain …was only the Mirror Image Of Beauty in Redemption…and “Mary is just saying what I already know”…it’s just done so well and with the Precision I needed…(it also helps that I drank in Olympic fashion for 30 years always fighting it by Guilt…rather than it’s opposite Weapon of Mercy)….denial is a hard nut to crack…and to get used to loving yourself requires the skill of Courage…AKA …Mercy. Mercy is no pious grace…but a Warrior one…and I suppose , like many, I want to gush with platitudes and gratitudes.. on how your work has made such a difference in my Life…but I know you’d have none of that…but say rather..”Get out in the Field and start Seeding”…well, I’ll try…but in the meantime…armed with that film clip .. the Performance Art it truly is…and possibly a new book to read…I’ll do my Homework…Honestly…and Mercifully ..cause Mary told me.
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A Review From the Distinguished Writer Michael Gray
25 Oct
One Response to “A Review From the Distinguished Writer Michael Gray”
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Richly deserved praise and Michael Gray pretty much sums up how I felt watching Mary a couple of years back. Reading this brings to mind the wonderful uplift of seeing these songs performed in person… can not wait until Mary is in the UK again. Really, I can’t…
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Fall, Fred, Holland, France and Rosanne
9 Oct
I am on a plane to France tonight, looking forward to a few days off in Saint Antonin Noble Val, a village outside of Toulouse, where Arnold, my Dutch booking agent for the last 10 years now lives. He’s had enough of Amsterdam, and has moved his family to the South of France. Sure sounds good to me! He has invited us to come visit for a few days, and relax a little. We will play a single show there in the village, then go to Amsterdam for 10 days, driving from our base in the city to the gigs throughout Holland. My first record deal was on a Dutch lable, and I feel very at home in The Netherlands, so returning is a great joy for me. There will be a lot of driving, but it is a small country, and I find it easier to base a tour out of one hotel and drive a couple hours to and from a gig, than to pack up and change hotels every night. My favorite hotel in Amsterdam, The Schiller Hotel (where I wrote at least three songs that I recorded on my Lost Highway records including The Last of the Hobo Kings) was fully booked, and way too expensive now anyway…so we are trying a new hotel this time. I am a creature of habit and will miss my old haunt, but over the years I’ve been saddened by the demise of Rembrandt Square, the square where the Schiller is located. They’ve put neon billboards and flashing signs and tried to turn it into a sort of Dutch Times Square, and there’s massive amounts of drinking and rowdiness there on the weekends. The last time we stayed at The Schiller when we returned to the hotel after our gig the scene was downright threatening. Roving bands of drunk young men, yelling and agressive. All good things must pass, I guess. No matter, we will have a great time in Holland, and find our way to wonderful food, shops and walks in the cities where we will play.
I am reading with great admiration Rosanne Cash’s memoir, Composed. I bought it at the airport in Nashville, and I have not put it down since. We had a three hour layover in Charlotte and I am now on the plane again and almost done reading it. She is a fantastic writer, and has a wonderful sense of herself, and she puts it out there in an engaging and generous way. She has me totally captivated. I am trying to write my own memoir of sorts, and I am well aware of how difficult it is to tell your story and be objective, fair, even handed, interesting, honest and funny. It ain’t easy! Especially when addiction is a large part of the story, but she’s done a fine job of it, and I will refer to her work as I trudge through my own. We performed with her this summer at The Vancouver Folk Festival, and Tania played a few songs with her, she was charming and warm and I thrilled to recommend her book to everyone. It’s a page turner!
Tania Elizabeth, Rosanne Cash, Vancouver Folk Fest 2011
I spent last week on musical train trip through the southwest with my dear wonderful talented friends Karyn and Lindford who bill themselves as Over The Rhine, and Richard Shindell, has whose work I have truly loved over the years. Tania took a much needed 10 day vacation, and I went to New Mexico and Colorado, solo. The adventure was put together by Roots On The Rails, which is more or less my friend Charlie Hunters vision and passion, and his right hand helper Sarah Ovenden’s logistic genius. They do several of these trips a year, and if you’re up for a musical adbenture, it’s an adventure of a lifetime.
Richard and I hit it off quite well, and I found myself on stage singing country songs directly to him, as he played guitar with me. He was a sport and allowed me to indulge him, and we ended up writing a song together in an old wild west hotel in Silverton Colorado called Black Eyed Susan’s Looking Back. It’s got Richards classic sound, and I can’t wait till we finish it so I can play it on the road.
Fred's Birthday! Me and Bill and Fred and Blue on Fred's B'day this summer.
I’ve taken to playing a great song called Cigarrette Machine, off of Fred Eaglesmith’s FANTASTIC new record 6 Volts. I love the song and totally enjoy singing it. I played it with Over The Rhine, their band, and Richard at a Roots On The Rails show in New Mexico, and I did not want it end it was so much fun to perform. Can’t wait to play it with Tania in Holland.
As we fly over the ocean now, I am visualizing Tania Elizabeth and I sitting in a little French Café’, eating avec de l’ail et vin blanc and pommes frites avec la mayonnaise a l’ail for dinner, croissant and black café for breakfast, and I am filled with anticipation for our little four day holiday. We have been traveling nearly non-stop over the last year and a half, and a couple of days in the same place has resonance with me. I will rest, I will write, and I will eat French food…. all three things I truly love doing.
Getting ready for the show, Sisters Folk Festival, Sisters Oregon, 2011
8 Responses to “Fall, Fred, Holland, France and Rosanne”
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Renate says:
Hello Mary and Tania,
I was at your concert yesterday in Groningen and I am still blown away by the whole experience. Last week I bought the tickets in an impulsive moment. I sort of discovered your music when I heard ‘mercy now’ played in a BBC detective series some months ago. Then I saw your name on the Oosterpoort website and bought tickets. What a quality performance it was! The lyrics, your voice and the sound of the violin pierce right through you. I was really surprised to see you two after the show, selling Cd’s en talking to fans. So approachable for such great musicians! Thanks for shaking hands! Hopefully see you next year again in Groningen. In the meantime I will listen to ‘the foundling’ a lot. -
Arjan Post says:
Hello Mary and Tania,
I was at your concert last night at the Amer. It was wonderfull and i enjoyed it very much. It was the second time that i saw you(last year in Groningen – Oosterpoort) and again i was moved and touched by your performance. I think your a wonderful personality and your songs are not other than the best there are to find in the genre. The Foundling is one of my favorite records from the last ten years and very well be one of my so called Island records. I hope that there will be a live cd/dvd from The Foundling in concert at one time. Your other records are also great. Great personal lyris and poetic stories, great compositions and a moving voice and guitarplaying. Thank you Mary(and Tania) for making such incrediable music. I hope we can enjoy your music for years to come. Thank you and have a great tour in Holland and elsewhere.
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Plien Brouwer says:
Hi,
Yesterday I was at your show in Bovenkarspel. Enjoyed it quite a bit, and my mom, in hospital, was very pleased with the CD you signed for her.
Plien
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marja says:
Hej Mary (and Tania)
I had to miss you at Wolfville’s Deep Roots in 2007.. but last week in Hengelo (close to my hometown) I finally made it to attend a life performance. It was more than great. As far as I’m concerned it could go on and on and on. You two are such an inspirational ‘couple’. I do love this music and I specially loved your good spirits this evening! Hope to see you both again sometime. In the meantime I’ll play you CD’s on and on and on… -
Michael Peltier says:
Mary,
I stumbled on an article about you in the Daily Comet online. I’ve often wondered where
life lead you. I’m so happy and inspired to so where you ended up. I’m going to look for
your tour coming to Florida. I’ve been in St. Petersburg since 1989 practicing as a veterinarian. Enjoy your European tour, and be sure to eat some waffle cookies for me
in Holland. I spent my senior year at the University of Utrecht. -
Gary Cooper says:
Have just driven home from St. Antonin through a beautiful, clear full moon night having seen you and Tania play; listening to “Between daylight and dark” on the CD player. Thank you for coming and playing here – I never thought I`d ever get the chance to see you – and please, please, please come back again soon. An amazing incredible evening was had by all. Merci (now)!
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What a wonderful musing Mary. Roseanne is a dear friend from my years in Nashville. You are a continuing inspiration. I have finished that album I told you about a few years ago. Next on to mastering. Music is a wonderful and strange road through the swamps and the highlands. Reading about your trip in Europe took me back to the many places over there that I hope to play again. Keep on keepin’ on sister and thanks for your support in finishing this record…
further…
Brad Parker
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Mary !
It’s great to ‘have’ you on this side..
i wish i could have seen you…
Vous aussi, vous êtes une source d’inspiration.Bon séjour !
Mayonnaise à l’ail = aïoli
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We had a GREAT summer
21 Sep
It’s been an amazing summer for Tania Elizabeth and I, from the Stan Rogers Folk Festival in Canso, Nova Scotia to St. Olav’s Festival in Trondheim, Norway, from Edmonton Folk Festival to Rocky Mountain Folk Festival, Vancouver Folk festival to Sisters Folk fest….all in all, we played 9 festivals this summer, and loved every single one of them. Folk festivals are a gathering of the tribe, of the folk music community in the regions where they are held. It’s always a joy to see everyone and get caught up on what’s been going on with old friends since I’ve seen them last, make some new friends, and listen to great music.
Vancouver Folk Festival, Stage Shot
In Norway, we made our way around Trondheim by foot, and came across a few amazing sites, a couple of them I took pictures of and posted below. One is an old fashioned organ grinder on the street with his grand daughter imitating him, and the other is a shrine erected to the victims of the mass killing on the island off of Oslo. Both are shot with my i-phone, which takes decent pictures, especially with the Hipstamatic app.
We played St. Olav’s Festival in a venue they called an “open church”, a nine hundred year old church that stays open for homeless street people and lets them sleep there. Our host called himself a street minister, and he works beautifully with the people who end up there, holding an open mic for the community, playing piano, and being an all round example of love in action. It was wonderful to watch him with the folks who gather, the broken hearted, the alcoholics, the mentally ill, the wounded dreamers, the lonely, the lost and wandering souls. He is true minister, and I admire his mission. It was great to meet him, and to play for his audience. I learned a few things about what a true church can be for people who really need one.
Norwegian Organ Grinder with his Granddaughter
Street Minister and the 900 year old Open Church
We left and went on to the the Rocky Mountain Folk Festival, and I was able to show up a week early and teach at the songwriting school, which was a blast. It’s always nice to be in one place for a while, and I love teaching out there in Lyons CO., It’s a great week for the teachers as well as the students, we all re-set out engines and get our heads on straight about writing and being creative. The setting is pure Rocky Mountain beautiful, the songwriters are there to learn and connect with each other, and there’s enough time to get some all of it done. If the students had half as much fun as I did, then they were doing just fine. This is such a wonderful way to spend a week of summer, it always renews me and reminds me I have much to be grateful for.
Tania and I loved the afternoon show we played at the festival after the school ended, and a photographer got a great shot of her feet on stage, with the stomp boards she is using to get some percussion sounds.
Tania's Feet
Me and Tania Elizabeth, Rocky Mountain Folks Festival 2011
We went on to play and teach at Sisters Folk Festival in Sisters Oregon, another fantastic festival and wonderful song school, then worked our way down the West Coast, picking up our dear friend Lori McKenna in Sacramento who came with us for a few days, playing LA and San Francisco with us, and making the journey all the better. We have a shot of us in Chinatown in San Francisco, with a guy busking on the street near the restaurant where we had dim sum.
Mary, Lori, and Chinatown Busker
Summer’s not quite over yet, as I am in New Mexico now, preparing for a musical train trip with Over The Rhine and Richard Shindell. The trip begins in Albuquerque, NM, an, meanders through Colorado, and winds up in Chama, NM. Along the way, there will be jam sessions, open mics, parties, concerts, great food, boisterous celebration, high jinks, and revelry. The road goes on and on for us…we will be off to Europe again in two weeks, then on the East Coast of the US for some dates. More soon…..
10 Responses to “We had a GREAT summer”
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That bed and breakfast in Cambridge sounds so cozy me and the wife were planning a trip there next week will check it out
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Ben says:
Tonights concert was just fabulous. The two of you created a great atmosphere. Voices and fiddle together with the stompboard sound and the guitar made the concert an incredible experience. Hope to see both of you again.
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Rob Herman and Carla van Rooij says:
Last friday we attended the concert you and Tania gave at Metropool in Hengelo, Netherlands. It was a truly mesmerizing performance and this gig has already become one of the most memorable concerts we’ve ever attended. I’ve been a fan since Drag Queens and Limousines so I was happy to be able to introduce your music to my wife Carla during this great concert in our hometown. She has become a fan of you and Tania instantly. We hope you will release a live duo album someday !!
Wishing you love and happiness,
Rob and Carla -
vivienne says:
Beautifully written newsy post. Loved how you and Tania walk with the people, rather than just watch them. Great to read about a church that is for the people rather than judging them. Safe journeying for you both.
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maryellen harrison says:
hi Mary, I am a huge fan of yours and wish you would please come to Philadelphia. My doggie, cody, loves your music also. I just saw k.d.lang last Thursday in Phillie for the fourth time. She was, as always, really great. Please, please Mary come to Philly. I am a cousin of Buddy Miller’s mother Elaine.
love from your biggest fan,
maryellen i.e. m.e. xx -
James Ingle says:
Hello Mary, just wanted to send a note to let you know the Last of the Hobo Kings was a great tribute to a wonderful man. Steamtrain Maury was a friend of mine. He was a great conversationalist and truely a warmhearted guy. Thank you for writing a nice song to play and remember. I’ll watch for you in southeast Michigan. James Ingle Tecumseh, MI
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Msry E. Gauthier says:
Hey, Mary, just a note to say Thanks for your usual good summary. I note your schedule regularly, as faithful fans do. So enjoyuable to know you had some times with Lori, sharing performances, good times. So glad to know you’re “doing what you love to do.” Love and prayers. Mary E.
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Meredith says:
We need you here in Ontario, Canada! Toronto, Kitchener, Guelph, Hamilton, London? Anywhere would be just fine.
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We’d love to come back to New Orleans, I think we might find our way back to the Museum of Southern Art at some point, so stay tuned!
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anna fontenot says:
Hey Mary when will you be heading to New Orleans to play any gigs? Would love to catch you live.
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Live Show Review in The Telegraph, UK National Paper
27 Apr
One Response to “Live Show Review in The Telegraph, UK National Paper”
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Tom Barrett says:
Just saw Mary and Tanya 3 times at he Edmonton Folk Fest. What an inspiration! Thank you Mary for sticking it out, finding your way and sharing the pain and the laughter. My daughter experienced high school hell and depression, but finally discovered she was gay, moved to Europe and found love, happiness and acceptance in Barcelona. I sent her the YouTube video of you and Tanya singing Drag Queens in Limousines. Too bad I couldn’t find one of the Wheel Inside the Wheel. You two are one precious pair.
Cheers
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Spring Tour
13 Apr
My last few weeks off at home in Nashville have been wonderful. I managed to get my garden dug up, built up, fertilised and planted, and I set up an auto watering device so that the garden self waters every other day at 6 am. I closed in the extra garage to create a studio/office, and I got to hang out my with friends, getting re-connected to people I’ve missed all winter because of my travels. But the nesting is over now, and I am looking at a very full schedule till through the fall.
Our two month spring tour started in Texas and winds through Italy, England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Germany and Switzerland. There’s plenty to look forward to, and while the amount of travel is daunting, the adventure of it all still thrills me.
In Texas, my guitar started acting up, so I brought it to Mark Erlewine to fix her up for me, and lo and behold….Trigger, Willie Nelson’s guitar was in there for some work. I got a couple of shots of her.
Trigger at the doctor's office
Ain't she beautiful?
Tania Elizabeth and I will perform songs from The Foundling at the American Adoption Congress Conference in Orlando, then fly to Milan for day off before the Italian tour and head to the public baths for an affordable day of sauna and jet lag healing. We’ve already booked a massage, and I am very much looking forward to being pampered Italian style after the long flights.
We’ll perform The Foundling again at The Foundling Museum in London, then we will play a couple festivals in Ireland. After that, we are all over England for two weeks. then Scotland for a show in Glasgow.
We return to Berlin May 16th to play at the lovely Quasimodo, one of my favorite places to play in Europe. And after ten years of touring Europe, I finally get to play some shows in Switzerland, May 19th in Lucerne, and may 22nd in Zurich.
PLENTY to look forward to, all of it interesting and challenging. Life is good!
Check out this video from Australia, loved talking with Brian from RockWiz before the show:
Recently, I have been honored to be included in a couple of books by amazing women writers. The massively talented Marshall Chapman has written a book called They Came To Nashville, where she talks to artists about their move to music city. She interviews everyone from Willie Nelson to yours truly , and I am thrilled to be given my own chapter in this wonderfully entertaining contribution to the history and lore of Guitar Town.
Jewy Height, a brilliant and gifted music writer has also written a book, Right by Her Roots, Americana Women and Their Songs and it’s fantastic. She looks deeply at 8 Americana women songwriters, from Lucinda Williams to Julie Miller, and once again I am thrilled to be included with my own chapter in the mix.
Coming up this fall after the summer touring will be my return to the musical train trip, this one called the Roots on the Rails Narrow Gauge Train Trip, with Over The Rhine and Richard Shindell. We even have a Facebook Page for the event. We will be riding from Albuquerque, NM – Durango, CO., and it’s going to be an AMAZING journey. This will be a spectacular journey filled with unforgettable scenery, great train rides and fantastic music as we travel into the magical San Juan Mountains of Colorado and New Mexico. Last time I did the Roots On The Rails train trip we went across Canada with Tom Russell, Nanci Griffith and Gretchen Peters, and it was a trip I will never forget. Seeing the country by train is a great way to really see it, and the connections formed on these trips can last a lifetime, the groups really do enjoy each others company, sharing meals, drinks songs and stories, the journey is one of joyful play, and everyone shoots out the other end fulfilled. I am really looking forward to this one, I hope you will consider joining us.
More soon from the road as we wind through Spring in Europe.
Just In: A rather large write up just posted on yours truly, on the web site of Proper Music.
6 Responses to “Spring Tour”
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Steve Allsobrook says:
Hi Mary and Tania,
saw you in Birmingham, England last year, are you coming back soon,
Bye -
David Stalcup says:
Saw you again at Moonlight on the Mountain in Birmingham, you made my wife cry for the sadessand joy she felt then. We loved the show. Please keep doing what you do.
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Nancy Brown says:
My Husband and I are such fans and keep up on your tours hoping someday you will perform in New York City. Have you ever considered looking into a little venue called the Stephens Talkhouse? Its located in Amagansett Long Island. We are anxious to some day see you perform!
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Andrea says:
Beautiful, beautiful concert on Sunday night at the El Lokal in Zurich. We’d been waiting so long for you to come our way and it’s been more than worth it.
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Albrecht says:
Hello Mary and Tania,
Thank you for the wonderful evening in Dachau. It
was like in the Seventies with friends, hope, beer and good
music! and it remembered me a lot to a small bar, French Quarter, New Orleans, not the tourist stuff;-)Have a good tour!
Albrecht -
Hey Mary-
Thanks for the book shout out!
Now, about that train ride …
xox,
Marshall
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The Foundling Alone
30 Jan
The Foundling Alone
A few years into writing the songs that were to become The Foundling, I flew up to Toronto to play them for Michel Timmins from Cowboy Junkies, to see if he’d consider producing when the time came to make my next record.
Great producers roll tape all the time to capture everything that happens in their studio so as not to miss something special, and in keeping with that tradition, Michael recorded me performing these songs for the first time. Time went by and I forgot about the afternoon I threw these down in his garage studio. Several months later, we went on to make The Foundling in earnest.
A year and a half later, a worldwide CD release, over 250 shows playing these songs from Peoria to Perth, Austin to Auckland, Birmingham to Brussels, we listened back to these early recordings, and realized that they marked a turning point in the creative process – when my foundling song dreams first became a reality.
We felt as though there was something worth keeping here, so I took the files to Ray Kennedy (4-time Grammy Award winning producer, engineer and musician) and had him master the original tracks in his studio in Nashville. He did a gorgeous job, and the result is what we’re calling The Foundling Alone. The songs are captured in their early development; many of them went through more changes as they revealed themselves further, and in sharing them, I’m revealing to you part of my creative process – a sort of behind-the-scenes look at “Mary and the Muse”. Here’s a free download of one of the songs -Sweet Words- if you want to hear it. Click here for a free download of the song “Sweet Words”
The whole lot of them are available in the store right now. We printed up 500 hard copies, and have digital downloads available as well.
3 Responses to “The Foundling Alone”
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Bought the download noticed it was available in a hardcopy so i purchased that as well since i do like to see what i have rather than just hear it, but anyway it was nice to hear it stripped down as the songs are really strong and any kind of production often take away from the song itself, although not sure if i want to hear the rolling stones stripped down but then again their words aren’t the focal point either, so Mary Gauthier in concert and was blown away i actually knew every song she played that night because i didn’t think I listened to her that much…i’d have to rank her near the top and one of the very few writing songs about social issues in the present so for that alone Mary Gauthier is an important artist and hopefully can continue making CDs and writing songs even if it means just getting released on her website, long as the songs keep coming…oh yeah the material on this was great stripped can hear everything just fine as the words are clear.
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lebe says:
The Foundling Alone just beautiful
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Mike Cervantes says:
Best cd I have heard in a very, very long time. Just like the live show… full of feeling. I have both Foundling and Alone… I play Alone… except for Sideshow…. I like that better on Foundling. If you have seen Mary live… Alone is the cd for you… you will be knocked of your horse.
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Resting and Waiting
10 Jan
Jason Wilbur, John Prine, Me, Iris Dement, Dave Jacques
(click on the photo to enlarge – it’s a really good one)
I am home in Nashville, watching it snow, and deeply grateful to be in my own house, in my own office, sitting at my on desk, drinking tea from my own mug. I am a good traveler, and I love the road, but I am learning the joys of being home these days. I used to get stir crazy at home, feel the pull of the highway after a couple weeks off. I used to worry about my career going away if there weren’t any new gigs on the books, if there wasn’t road work in front of me. Lately, I am just glad to be home, and the old fears of having to get a day job ( or open another restaurant ) are not creeping in. So far. Mostly, I am tired and I wanna get my strength back, wake up rested instead of still tired, and I wanna get back to writing songs. I need to be home for a while to find my center, to find that voice that tells me what I should write next. I have not heard that voice in a year or more, and my new worry is that it might be gone. A writer never knows when our last song has been written, do we? But I know the voice is still out there, still in there. I’ve just got to get centered, rested, and get busy listening again.
So, I’ve been going through my CD’s and books, sorting out what I want to give away and what I want to keep. Cleaning house. Getting rid of things I don’t love. Pruning, sorting. I am moving my office into my bedroom, and my bedroom into my office. I want a bigger office, and a smaller bedroom. I’m re-arranging things, shaking it up, making it feel new around here again. I suppose this is a pre-writing ritual. Making space in my office, making space in my habits, on my bookshelf’s..for something new.
I remember being on the road with John Prine a few years ago, opening a string of shows for him in California, and a couple in Chicago. One night I was sitting in the green room with him, and asked him, “John, where do you think your songs come from?” He said “Hell Mary, I have no idea. I went to Ireland for three months last summer to write, and didn’t get a single thing until the day I was coming back home to Nashville. The morning we were leaving, three songs suddenly came through, before we went to the airport to fly back home. I had no idea they were coming through, none.” He laughed. ” This whole process is a mystery to me still.”
I feel the same way. I don’t know where the songs come from, or when they are going to come. I keep the faith ( with some fear around the edges) that there are more songs left for me to write. I do what I can while waiting on them to arrive. I clean my office, I move my office. I make soup. I light a fire in the fireplace. I change the strings on my guitar. Read books. Watch movies. Listen to music. Hike the hills in the snow. Call friends on the phone. Strum my guitar. And I wait.
38 Responses to “Resting and Waiting”
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Janet says:
Thank-you. I am starting late in my life to make music on my guitar, but I’ve always sung. My mom used to say “Sing before breakfast you’ll cry before supper.” Maybe not true still I can’t forget it. Anyway, they come up from deep within and it does not matter at all if noone else understands or even shares them but when they do it is so wonderful! I just shared my first one with my guitar teacher–it was from a bit of courage and a lot of love from those of you who inspired me. Thank-you again.
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First time I saw you was at the Columbus Music Hall opening for someone. I could see you in the back hallway getting ready and you were visibly nervous. Talked to you again in Columbus the night we went into Iraq. Sad,rainy night and you drank coffee while I slipped in to get a ticket. Nervous again and you wondered what to say in your show. Saw you at Fur Peace Ranch and in this video. Confident! You are do good! Keep at it and see you again when you are near Ohio.
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Firstly, I want to say congrats on receiving the #3 album from the LA Times, as that is a huge accomplishment.
I want to comment on you coming home to relax to find your center. I think that we get so busy in your lives that we forget to listen to that little voice in our head. However, we forget that most good things happen in our life when we find that center. Your success has come because you are very connected with the voice inside of you and the more you listen to it, the more you will write beautiful words for your songs.
I wish you all the best on your journey of life.
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Mary you are just an amazing person. Seeing you play was what initially brought me in, but now its just so much more. Keep bringing joy.
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Mary, I, along with probably everyone else on this site will agree that you are the songbird of our generation. Just keep doing what your doing and putting smiles on thousands of faces across the world
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I clean my office, I move my office. I make soup. I light a fire in the fireplace. I change the strings on my guitar. Read books. Watch movies. Listen to music. Hike the hills in the snow. Call friends on the phone. Strum my guitar. And I wait. Sounds familiar?:)
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JudeObscure says:
Dear Mary,
I’m not sure when you actually wrote “The Foundling” but that piece being your most recent release, I wouldn’t worry for a moment about whether or not more songs will come, yet. What an enormous purge of emotion writing that must have been for you. It was for me, and I’m only the listener. You are the miner of these emotions and I imagine you would have to go digging in a cold dark place to unearth these nuggets of pain and bring them out in the light of day, look at them and face them head on so you can continue on to a brighter more peaceful you. Give yourself a break, enjoy the free time and space while you are in it. Sounds like you’re de-cluttering your soul with these songs. That’s a good thing! Creating space for something new to come in. You’re description of being home, that last paragraph, well, it sounds like heaven on earth. Walk in the woods, in the snow, the fire… all of these things will bring you to your next place wherever or whatever that may be remains to be seen. Trust that the wherever or the whatever is where you are meant to be. Those beautiful songs you’ve written (so many) weren’t an accident. That was you. You did that. You’ll most likely do it again. When? Who knows? But I’ll bet you will. I think I just gave myself a much needed pep talk without realizing it.
Thanks. : / -
Hazel says:
Mary, I love reading what you write, I love listening to you speak, and your song-writing is among the best there is – spare and poetic, real and true. There will be more and I’m looking forward to hearing it all!
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Mary, be assured, the songs will come because they are how you sort and file the pages of your life. Like a volcano, you just have to wait for the lava to build up pressure and explode again. Some day when you are just driving or even looking at the box of items you are throwing out of your life, the seed to another album is going to erupt. Thanks in advance for the next piece of work.
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Dear Mary, a huge THANK YOU for such a great learning experience at the songwriters workshop here in Halifax, (Dead of Winter Festival). I am writing feverishly and have cast aside my fears thanks to you my friend.
St.George’s Church had a true vessel on the alter; indeed a fantastic concert. Can’t wait to see you again!
Much love , Wanda Rose Milne -
“I want a bigger office, and a smaller bedroom.” – WoW!! This is a great idea! I will try this at home thanks!
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Just read your comment old fears of having to get a day job ( or open another restaurant)”
Well, I did just do that. Been a musician since I was 11 years old and at the age of 18 had to open my first restaurant to support my family (Mom, Dad, and brother). I have absolutely no regrets about opening my restaurants and being one of the top San Diego Caterers, but I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I stuck to music and singing instead. Check out my San Diego catering restaurants http://www.surfbrothers.net when you have a chance.PS. Great music
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Red Dirt Girl says:
Miss Mary,
Every time I listen to your music, it’s like I’m hearing it for the first time all over again. Mercy Now is healing 3 generations of pain in my family. The video, It Gets Better, brought tears. I’m in awe! I can’t wait to see you for the first time all over again in Earlville.
Keep the faith (and the fear). That’s what makes you real. -
Today I was on KC’s local NPR stations website to check out the playlist from ” The Fish Fry” and decided to check out Bill Shapiro’s (Cyprus Avenue) “Top Five Albums Of 2010″ and there was your latest album “The Foundling. This made me get out my copy of “Filth & Fire” which I’ve had since ’02. I listened to “Sugar Cane; “Camelot Motel; and “After Your Gone” for a couple of hours and was so moved I decided to go to your website, and there it was! You’re playing tomorrow in KC! I will be at the show, there is a higher power, thank you.
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I just picked up Foundling Alone and I am blown away. It sounds like the show you gave in Cedar Rapids, Iowa last fall. The emotional range of your writing and singing is amazing. This cd is the closest thing to being with you in a dark auditorium…slowly being transported through life. I hope you make it back this way again soon.
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Squash Rackets says:
Mary,
Something struck me with your comments regarding cleaning out your unwanted CD’s, Books and belongings. It is a beautiful quote from what I think is one of the most prolific philosophers and word smiths ever, Henry David Thoreau“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”
While perhaps Woman is more appropriate, I am sure you see the similarity. There is something truly delightful about having a clean slate, no clutter, less racket, more simplicity! It seems to naturally lead to a fresh mind, perfect for new projects!
Keep strummin!
Fran. -
Mary Murphy says:
Well I just discovered you, Mary, based on my music selections for Pandora. Just listened to “Mercy Now” – I’ll definitely be getting one of your CD’s soon. Wish you would get together with John Prine and Iris Dement and come to Minnesota for a concert. I would go. Do you ever play concerts in Minnesota? It’s pretty cold here now so wait until it’s nicer here – maybe June :-/
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hmmm…lost my comment!
Heard you at St. George’s Round Church, Halifax – thank you so much – have been listening to you for years but this was our first chance to catch you live.
I love your mixture of puckish stage presence and hurtin’ music – it is lovely.
Thanks for Mercy Now – it was just what I needed right then… -
Mary, I saw you last night at St. Mary’s Round Church, and I woke up with your songs
and your voice, and that incredible violin
in my head. I don’t think a concert has ever affected or touched me so deeply. You looked tired at the end, after the standing ovation and the last song. No wonder. You project the feeling of those songs so perfectly, so intensely, that they could penetrate steel. Thanks for the wonderful music. -
enjoy that winter fireside. there’s no place like home. drink deep of the hearty soup. have no fear. it will find you, even as you don’t look for it – whatever it may be. and besides, what we create is just a part of who we are. in the end it is all like so much snow falling from sky to earth.
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I have a severe depression. I last now now 4 years. Your music is a kind of therapy for me. I like your songs so much. The reason why you don’t write songs now is easy. You are now (and it ook a couple of years) happy.
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what a pleasure
“I feel the same way. I don’t know where the songs come from, or when they are going to come. I keep the faith ( with some fear around the edges) that there are more songs left for me to write. I do what I can while waiting on them to arrive. I clean my office, I move my office. I make soup. I light a fire in the fireplace. I change the strings on my guitar. Read books. Watch movies. Listen to music. Hike the hills in the snow. Call friends on the phone. Strum my guitar. And I wait.”
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Larry King once wisely said, “I remind myself every morning: Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening.” That’s precisely how I feel. I am grateful to have learned something new today. – Tenis
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Incredible pic, I wish I was there! Mary stay just the way you are, wherever these songs come from, I just love it so much, so hang in there and keep em comin’!
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debbie jane says:
Mary, your raw and beautiful honesty IS the hot tea on a snowy day — we all have been blessed with the gift of life and you, Mary, surely enrich ours. Listening to you story-tell in lyrics so deeply rubbed in always, always leaves me becalmed — something like a sailboat sitting motionless until the wind picks up again. All the best to you in life and in your career! Peace.
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rusty says:
Mary, I just discovered your music a week ago when I heard “Mercy Now.” Simply awesome. I’m recently divorced and trying to quit drinking. Just reading how you were chilling at home, sipping tea, waiting patiently for the next song to come to you helped me. Take care.
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Jo says:
We were so lucky to catch you 3x at 30A Songwriter’s Festival! Your music always touches a place in my soul, and I’m so thankful for you. Thank you!
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Peter says:
Just checked your web site to see where you are….such a wonderful surprise to learn also how you are. Stay warm, drink tea eat chocolate, think.
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Hey, Mary. Rest well; you deserve it. I’m going to start the process to see if we can get you back at the Rose Garden Coffeehouse in Mansfield, MA. Once every 15 years is not enough! Mac
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Mary, love your thoughts. Just let it flow naturally, I see a song title in there already-I keep the faith(with fear around the edges). Looking forward to more songs from you and catching you in person. Have a wonderful and wonder-filled year.
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Alessandro says:
Oh Mary, i look forward to see you in Italy next spring: and believe me there’s for sure more room for an indefinite number of songs to be written. We wait too and this is a pretty good feeling! My very best to you for your life and career
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The Foundling named #3 Record of the year in the LA Times
21 Dec
I want to thank Randy Lewis of the LA Times for selecting The Foundling as his pick for his #3 best album of the year. It sure feels good to get that nod from such an acclaimed and well respected music journalist. Thanks Randy!
“The acclaimed Louisiana singer and songwriter tackles the most powerful story of all — that of her own life — in this extraordinarily powerful and clear-eyed song cycle encompassing issues of abandonment, adoption, identity, blame, forgiveness and love set to music as richly diverse as the thematic content.” – Randy Lewis
9 Responses to “The Foundling named #3 Record of the year in the LA Times”
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I just picked up Foundling Alone and I am blown away. It sounds like the show you gave in Cedar Rapids, Iowa last fall. The emotional range of your writing and singing is amazing. This cd is the closest thing to being with you in a dark auditorium…slowly being transported through life. I hope you make it back this way again soon.
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I used to record my own music in my own recording studio. One day I had a mix tape of the songs I recorded from many years back and my heart was broken that I didn’t pursue my music career. Keep Up the good work:)
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Bob Croce says:
Hell, Mary. You DO know where your songs come from. YOUR SOUL and YOUR HEART. I don’t want to believe that you wrote your last song. I have all your albums and have gone through all your life stages with you. You are not done yet! The Foundling was a courageous and bold production. I respect your willingness to share with others your deepest feelings. There are few artists who can do that – John Prine, Nancy Griffith, and Merle to mention a few. I’d love to hear you perform with John Prine. I just missed your performance at Stone Mountain but will try to keep up with your visits to New England in the future. Keep it up, Mary. You and your music are very special and unique.
Rest well,
Bob -
Congratulations, I will also search for this the foundling on youtube… I hope the success keeps up
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Real Music, Glad to see more and more blogs dedicated to the Foundling. Great Blog.
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Nick in Spain says:
Congrats, Mary, no less than you merit – I was playing Sugar Cane, I Drink and Can’t Find the Way to my friends today and I was trying to explain why you’re one of my favourite artists ever. It’s about the combination of your music, your lyrics and your attitude – call it bravery, outspokenness, poetic genius, whatever, I love your music and I just know that as society crumbles in the way that it is, people are gonna be looking for voices to articulate what’s going on and that’s exactly what you do. Rock on Mary.
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Congratulations on getting on a list for best album of the year. I will search for these songs on youtube and check out the music.
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Home Sweet Home and Bliss
12 Dec
I am finally back home in Nashville, where it’s freezing cold, the first snow of the winter is falling, and it’s beautiful sitting by the fireplace in my little house tonight. After nearly 11 weeks of travel, after playing songs in Harrisburg, PA., Stone Ridge, NY., Philadelphia,PA., New York, NY., Ridgefield, CT., Provincetown, MA., Raleigh, NC. Then off to Oslo,Bergen and Trondheim (Norway)–Gothenburg, Malmoe, Orebro, and Stockholm (Sweden)…..Brighton, London, Birmingham, Bristol, Nottingham, Norwich, Manchester and Gateshead (England)……Galashiels and Edinburgh (Scotland)….Brussels, (Belgium) …..Melbourne, Queenscliff, Mullumbimby, Adelaide and Sydney, (Australia) and finally…Aukland, (New Zealand), I am home. Whew! Literally, Tania and I flew around the world in the last two months.
Brussels, Belgium Nov. 13, 2010
It’s been an amazing journey, meeting people in different cities every night, playing songs and telling stories to audiences from so many different cultures in such a short time. Everywhere I went I saw tired, stressed out adult stares looking up at me from the audience, expressions that I watched slowly melt into childlike wondrous gazes as songs and stories broke down the walls of time and space to briefly relieve them of their burdens, bringing us together into one human experience…for a short while, for the duration of a song.
From the stage, the process is amazing to watch. Before I became a performing songwriter, I had no idea that performers watch the audience as the audience watches them. But we do. It’s different every night, but yet…good nights are always the same. I look out into the audience after a few songs, after my own nerves are calmed down by the music. Then I look into people’s faces. After that, no matter where I am, I focus all the weapons at my disposal on transcendence. Transcendent relief for all of us..from all the wedges that politicians and religions have used to separate us since the beginning of time…age, race, nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, our indoctrinated belief systems. Songs and stories can transcend oceans of differences and unite people, they have the power to connect us like no other medium. Woody Guthrie was well aware of this, when he wrote “THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS” in bold letters on his guitar. Nixon was aware of this when he tried to have John Lennon deported for his work to stop the war in Vietnam. Songs are powerful things.
On good nights, I forget that I am on stage, I forget that I even am. I lose my awareness of myself, (self awareness?) and disappear into the songs I sing and the stories I tell. Even when the song stories are about me, it’s no longer ME I sing about. The stories, if told right, are about all of us, all people..humans, mortals trapped in the human condition, and I am not fully there while I sing them. I slip away into the song, into the story. Even after the final chord has been played, during the milliseconds before self consciousness returns, all that exists is the fading ring of the music. This is artists’ bliss, to be relieved of ego, of separateness. I suppose its one of the big reasons why musicians put themselves through it, all the difficult , painful travel racing through multiple time zones in short periods of time, bone chillingly early flights to the next town carrying heavy suitcases, guitars, heavy boxes of gear, and bags and boxes of CD’s, the hundreds of hours in filthy graffitti covered green rooms with their broken chairs and worn out soiled, sunken in couches sitting on disgusting sticky floors…. the cold, bad road food, the constant abuse from airlines, the disrespect from those promoters who are only in it for the money, the aching loneliness. We do it for the moments of bliss. And as tired as I am right now, I am already starting to think about getting up there on the next stage in the next town and doing it again. And again.
7 Responses to “Home Sweet Home and Bliss”
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I missed you at Harrisburg and Philly but am glad to see such a positive response you are getting from your music.. I guess if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.
Kudos! -
Saw Mary Gauthier perform this remarkable work in its entirety at Godfrey Daniels in Bethlehem, PA this year. It’s among 40+ recordings on my 12th annual best of the year list. The entire list (in no particilary order) will be aired and streamed worldwide on WDIY’s The Blend on Monday 12/27/10, 1-4pm EST and will be viewable on Spinitron.com.
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Ase says:
The words You write about bringing us together, it´s because of Your story from life and Your love to life which You have put down in Your words that describes it so well, that we all can relate. Joined You in Malmoe and it was magic. Such a amazing evening with beautiful tunes, lyrics, power and love. Your music and lyrics will heal forever. Wish You a relaxing Christmas and a happy healthy New Year!
See You next time in Malmoe!! -
Sage says:
And we SO very much appreciate that you put up with all of that to bring us your beautiful stories (though often they are about not so beautiful things, which is what makes them beautiful, and heartfelt and soulful, in and of themselves;).
Happy to have you back in the States safe and sound. Would be even happier to have you back in Knoxville
Rest up and take your time, then come see us when you need a fix! SM:)
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Jane Vaughn says:
Ah….the warmth of a crackling fire.
Those embers draw you in like a moth to a flame.
Seems like they capture your heart and soul and suddenly every wrinkle the world has placed on your forehead are “poof” GONE!
Big ole cup of tea with honey to sip and maybe a cookie or two and suddenly you are in a land that time forgot!
Enjoy your break and your fire and “Thank you so much for sharing your gifts with us. We are so Thankful. -
Beth Lee says:
Nicely said. Thankfully, I have experienced that unity through your performances and am always looking forward to the next time. Very appreciative of your candor and your willingness to put yourself out there.
Enjoy your rest!!
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I appreciated your words and reflections. You gave me a view of what you and others do that I didn;t have before. Though I am not a muscian I aim for transcendence with those I work with as well. Your connections with Woody Guthrie and John Lennon give me hope and appreciation for the the role music and muscians play…and hope for me too. Thanks for putting it out there for us all and above all Welcome Home.
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The Guardian
17 Nov
Mary Gauthier – review
Union Chapel, London
4 stars
guardian.co.uk, Monday 15 November 2010 22.31 GMT
Songs about rebels and outcasts may be commonplace in countrymusic, but true mavericks are harder to find, and don’t necessarily look like Nashville stars. Mary Gauthier carried an acoustic guitar and had a harmonica strapped round her neck, like the young Dylan, and her opening song, Last of the Hobo Kings, was a true story that had echoes of Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie. Then, with the dry, sadly humorous I Drink, came a reminder of her own tough upbringing. Abandoned as a child in New Orleans, she was adopted but ran away from home, battled with drink and drugs, and only started singing in her 30s. And, she reminded us, she’s been named gay country artist of the year by Glama (Gay and Lesbian American Music awards).
She has used her experiences to write thoughtful songs that are highly individual, never mawkish and often unexpectedly warm-hearted. She said she was worried about singing in the chapel, a former church, “because of the words that might come out of my mouth”. Next came stories about her adoptive mother, and Sugar Cane, an angry, vivid childhood memory of the pollution caused by the burning of the Louisiana fields after harvesting.
A cool and evocative singer, she was helped by the harmony vocals and inspired five-string violin work of Tania Elizabeth. Gauthier ended with pained songs from her last album, The Foundling, a concept work based on the search for her birth mother, but left out the most harrowing track, March 11 1962, and instead veered off optimistically into Lennon’s War Is Over, and her own more cheerfully autobiographical Drag Queens and Limousines. She deserved the standing ovation.
3 Responses to “The Guardian”
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Wow, that’s kind of crazy that musicians look at the audience and study them, too. I guess I kind of thought that it would be a bit distracting, but I guess if your that skilled and once you get into a groove it wouldn’t matter. My uncle’s from Tennessee, too. I’m actually visiting him for christmas, so I’ll be in your home state within the next week
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Very nice and sensitive. Im not a musician. But i love music and i’ve just wanted to be there while you were singing. Traveling, meeting new people everyday, telling and learning their stories, sharing life and peace with so many people must be a great thing! You’re so lucky! Believe me! Wish you could come to Turkey someday
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Jim Condon says:
Damn, if that Sugar Cane doesn’t make me sing out loud and lusty every time. You got fans in Ireland…come and see us again sometime!
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For National Adoption Month The Foundling YouTube Channel
21 Oct
No artist ever knows quite where the muse will lead, but there’s something in the trusting and willing yourself over to the unseen that is magical, priceless, and necessary… if you want to continue to be creative. I had no idea where the muse or these songs would lead me, but the road the writing and releasing of The Foundling has taken me down has been adventurous one, to say the least.
I wrote my own adoption story in song, that I might know it. Simply put, I write that I might know.
I’ve been told that the release of such a “dark” record was not advisable in these “uncertain times”, but I wasn’t in a position to dictate what kind of art I was going to make. Years of writing, creating, recovery and therapy led me to the source of my own personal strife, and to move through it to the other side, I had to embody it, then create from it. I had to write my way out of the hole. The muse, the source…she tells me what to do, I don’t tell her. Knowing that others had gone before me into their own mysteries was a great relief, and having the support of so many friends and colleagues around me was the torch that lit my way to the discovery that, as large as the darkness in me was, it was surrounded by light, by life, by love.
Having passed through pain and fear, my experience of sharing my journey with others has been life changing. I have come to realize that not only am I not alone in that there are other adoptees who understand what it feels like to be “falling through space”, and who know what it feels like to eventually dare to wonder out loud where they came from, and to finally acknowledge the need to look for their origins, only to be met with resistance, rejection, and state sanctioned closed birth records. Many of us have decided to become activists, to try and change the system, to work for changes in the laws so that all adoptee’s birth records are opened once and for all, and the horrors of closed system adoption might become a thing of the past.
There are so many people involved in the Adoptees Rights Movement. There are birth mothers who have grown and changed and come to a place where they want to meet their children, or have lost the chance to meet their own but recognize how valuable the knowledge of origin could be to the children who do seek. There are adoptees who are working together to counteract the shame and deep loss they’ve experienced, and to co-create a world where children are no longer seen as commodities. There are adoptive parents who see in their children their true natures, and honor them by letting the children keep their original names, taking them to where they came from, keeping in contact with birth parents when possible, showing them, quite literally, that their love for them does not hinge on them pretending to be something they are not.
These brave souls are working towards one of the last to be recognized ciivil rights issues – the right for human beings to know their origins, for all adoptees to know where they came from, to have unrestrained access the their own birth certificates. As of now, we do not have that right. In all but 6 states, adoptees birth records are sealed shut by the state, and upon adoption birth certificates are re-issued…. with adoptive parents names on them.
As a species, we devote so much time to tracing our history – archaeologists spend years out in the fields, hoping to uncover clues about our past, astronomers search the skies for the smallest clues to our most fundamental beginnings, spiritual people seek the inner realm to find truth, and yet…… there is a group of people who are being denied the right to view a piece of paper that would allow them definitive and sometimes lifesaving answers, that would allow them to see themselves as part of a continuum, that would give them practical information that could profoundly affect their mids, bodies and spirits.
November is National Adoption month here in the USA, and while you’ll find the official website has a slightly different slant on things than we do over here (well, maybe a bit more than slightly), we also want to honour those who are working every day to create the best possible situation for adoptable children who need a home and a family. Click here to add your name to the Adoption Reform Action List.
In November, I am going to post videos of live performances from a show Tania Elizabeth and I did at Joe’s Pub in New York City in June 2010 on The Foundling You Tube Channel. We’ll be posting every song on The Foundling, two a week in November, until we have made the entire concert available. Just a little something to add to the conversation for National Adoption Month.
2 Responses to “For National Adoption Month The Foundling YouTube Channel”
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The Humble Craftsman: An Interview with Mary Gauthier
(NOMOREPOTLUCKS.ORG)http://nomorepotlucks.org/article/rage-no-12/humble-craftsman-interview-mary-gauthier
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I thank Mary for this very generous contribution to adoption rights. It will be a prelude and a platform for discussion as well as a gentle healer for the gaping wound of adoption.
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It Gets Better
18 Oct
Last night Tania and I watched about an hour of video’s on the It Gets Better YouTube channel. The channel was created to address the recent crisis of gay youth suicides in America. We both were moved to tears, and decided to make our own video to contribute to the It Gets Better website, since the YouTube channel created by Dan Savage reached the maximum allowed video’s (650) very quickly. Check out some of those YouTube videos if you can- there are some wonderful and moving pleas posted by people from all walks of life talking to the kids and trying to help them see that it gets better after high school. For me, high school was unbearable, and I quit when I was 15. Being a gay kid was hellish, and clearly, its still hellish for gay kids now. I wish I could go into schools and play this song and tell the kids there’s nothing wrong with them, but thanks to YouTube and the web, people like me can go directly to the kids, we don’t have to go through school administrators who would never let gay adults into their schools to talk to kids. Anyway, here’s our little contribution to the project:
3 Responses to “It Gets Better”
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Suzanne Simpson says:
So beautiful. My heart breaks every time I see in my mind’s eye the photo of one of the young men with his kitten. I hope that many people hear your message.
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Jon Teague says:
An absolute classic from one of the best, thanks Mary
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Outlaw Country, and a new video
9 Oct
Hello again from the road! We are on the east coast of the USA this week, driving thru some lovely fall color as the seasons change.
Tania Elizabeth made a video of a song from my first record called Goddamn HIV. We shot a lot of the video with a little flip cam HD on the road this year, in Provincetown,MA., Santa Cruz, CA., and up in the redwood forest in Northern California. She edited it on her mac book and I think it came out great. It brings me back to the place I was when I wrote the song in 1995.
News from Nashville:
When home I’ve been hanging around the set of a new TV pilot/series shooting in Nashville called Outlaw country. It’s my first time on a TV location, and I’ve learned a lot, mostly that a TV series is very hard work and it takes hundreds of people doing their jobs in unison to pull it off. Here’s a shot of me with the star of the series, Mary Steenburgen. After watching her sing the same song over and over again for days as the camera’s shot her from every conceivable angle, it dawned on me just how hard acting really is. Doing a scene over and over and over again is just how its done. I had no idea.
on the set of Outlaw Country with Mary Steenburgen
One Response to “Outlaw Country, and a new video”
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Watching the beautiful and sad ‘Goddamn HIV’ video was a very moving experience. I thought back to friends who had passed and to the aching grief. The visuals and transitions were very good, and drew me to aspects of the song that hadn’t come to mind listening to the album. It was important to be reminded of the tragedy of HIV and the heavy toll it’s taken. All of society’s hate and rejection seemed to be expressed in that one terrible, horrible illness.
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Mary Gauthier on Mountain Stage
6 Oct
Singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier tackles very heavy and personal subject matter on her latest CD, The Foundling. The autobiographical concept album chronicles a child put up for adoption and the life experiences that follow.
Accompanied by Tania Elizabeth (formerly ofThe Duhks) on violin, Gauthier performs songs from The Foundling on this, her fourth appearance on Mountain Stage since 2002. She wrote “Blood is Blood” as a “protest song” to allow adopted children to have access to their birth records. Included in this concert is a performance of “Mercy Now,” from her 2005 album of the same name, not heard on the radio broadcast.
Gauthier will tour across the U.K. in November.
One Response to “Mary Gauthier on Mountain Stage”
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Heartbreakingly beautiful.
The personal is political, and laws protecting the adoption industry must change.
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ASCAP Audio Portrait for The Foundling
20 Sep
Click on the image to visit the ASCAP media player. Steven Rosenfeld has outdone himself!
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Story in The Tennessean Mary Gauthier finds comfort in darkness of ‘The Foundling’
16 Sep
Mary Gauthier finds comfort in darkness of ‘The Foundling’
PUBLISHED
BY
PETER COOPER
ON SEPTEMBER 15, 2010
Mary Gauthier
Mary Gauthier hates to use the word “healing.” It’s a fit, but a cheap fit, and the wordsmith in her grimaces at such things.
“Writing and singing these songs, you’d think it would be a bummer,” she said, and she’s correct. “These songs” are the ones that make up The Foundling, an autobiographical song cycle about Gauthier’s experiences as an orphan. (She’ll play songs from that album Thursday night at the Belcourt.)
Those experiences aren’t limited to childhood: As an adult, Gauthier hired a private detective to locate her birth mother, and she eventually contacted the woman, who rejected any notion of a meeting.
“It sounds sad,” she continued, sitting outside a coffee shop on a sunny Nashville day. “But it actually makes me feel better. I play a song, look out at the audience and see people nodding, like, ‘Yeah, me too.’ People who have blood family are going, ‘I know that feeling.’”
Since The Foundling’s May release, Gauthier’s job has been to travel all over the world and sing to audiences about isolation, despair and rejection. She even sings one called “Sideshow” that’s about the singing itself: “Another truly troubled troubadour, writing songs to even up the score/ A tune for every single body blow, and I sing ’em at the sideshow.” Her shows these days find her doing what Tom T. Hall called “telling the untellable.”
The fact that the concerts aren’t exercises in communal misery is testament to the songs and their craftsperson. The healing might not be possible if Gauthier weren’t fussy enough about the details to detest the word “healing.”
“In the end, hopefully it’s a story of just how amazing we are as human beings,” she said. “It’s about how adaptable we are, and how capable of rising above circumstances that on paper look hard. The ‘I’ thing doesn’t really work in songs. I’ll use myself as an example of the human condition, but this is not about me so much as about human nature. It’s in the tradition of the great orphan stories. Like Dickens, but not British.”
The album’s emotional centerpiece is “March 11, 1962,” a poetic documentation of the phone call Gauthier made to her birth mother.
“Hello, this is Mary,” she sings. “March 11, 1962. It took me $500 and 40 years to find you.”
The rest of the song is the rest of the wrenching conversation. And though it seems to be an internal excavation, Gauthier wrote it with Grammy–winning songwriter Liz Rose.
“The song is just what happened, and we wrote it in 10 minutes,” she said. “I was so sad and disappointed and hurt, to finally find my mother and then learn that she doesn’t want to meet me. She can’t meet, because it would blow up her life. She’s lied about having me, no one in her life knows she even has a child. But the sadness was overwhelming.”
At song’s end, though, there is gratitude rather than anger: “I’m not looking to lay blame,” Gauthier sings. “I just had to thank you once before this life went by.”
“It’s primal and complicated and complex,” Gauthier said. “But intellectually, I know it’s not her fault. In the 1960s in the south, the unmarried pregnant woman was a shamed woman in very deep trouble. And she did have me. In the end, she made a supreme sacrifice, and so it just didn’t seem I had the right to be angry.”
That said, she was looking for a different outcome, one that involved physical reconciliation and answers about ancestry. Many adoptees, Gauthier included, are denied access to original birth certificates through laws meant to protect birth mothers’ privacy, and Gauthier has no idea who her father might be, where he might live or whether he’s alive. And yet The Foundling’s ending, Gauthier insists, is happier than what it might seem.
“In the end, it’s good,” she said. “It’s good to continue, to believe in love and to know that human connection saves us. Isolation is death, and art brings people together. People see themselves in it, and they feel less alone, and the artist feels less alone, too. It can either be a bummer, or I can turn it into something useful. I’m a songwriter, so my work does the work.”
Reach Peter Cooper at 615–259-8220 or pcooper@tennessean.com.
3 Responses to “Story in The Tennessean Mary Gauthier finds comfort in darkness of ‘The Foundling’”
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I feel a lot of comfort in Mary’s repertoire, I think many of her audience do. As well as every crucial and essential word, Mary also makes great use of silence, pauses, variations in rhythm, as well as the well tailored pace of the song itself. I need these variations and silences to digest and process what I’ve just heard. They also add to the narrative and emotional impact of the song.
Listening to say Prayer Without Words, dripping with metaphor and alliteration, putting great emphasis on the density of imagery, I am taken at almost-frenetic pace to a place I’ve never been. And this little agnostic has been changed for the experience.
There is much to love and enjoy about Mary’s work, but above all for me it is her humanity. I feel a bit shamed by her nobility sometimes, she’ll not want to judge someone, and I’ll be thinking “Go in there girl, judge the hell out of ___”. But these decisions are hers alone to make. And so, I learn more about myself.
So Mary means many things to each person who has been lucky enough to hear her. For me she is wise woman, strong woman, fragile woman, beautiful woman, songwriter and above all poet – America’s Poet Laureate.
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Kaz says:
Every word is
extraordinary.Whispers on paper boats
waved off from the pier,
bonny mots wreck on
jagged reefs because
they are not.Our Titanics of tragedy
have their truthteller.Merci beaucoup à Mary
Bien à vous. -
sally says:
acknowledging pain, feeling it, maybe even talking about it can be a way of getting through it and beyond it. the really hard part is undoing the damage i’ve done and the hurt i’ve caused. and if i ever forget, people are ready to remind me all about it. it takes a strength sometimes i don’t have, but am basically moving on.
habits i’ve used to cope with the pain, wanting to numb out and be out of it are hard to let go. the love and support of other people helps, but when i most need it, i push it away. still don’t understand that one.
biggest helps are from music and poetry like mary’s, and from books and talking with people who are also hurting and alone.
didn’t mean for this msg to be a downer, just want to say thanks to mary for making a difference, for being a soul sister to us waifs and strays across the planet. take care of yourself mg.
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Mary Gauthier Pulls Into the Station With Personal Tunes
11 Sep
Mary Gauthier‘s wry sense of humor brought so much good cheer to the audience gathered on September 9 at Nashville’s historic Station Inn, it was as if a pressure valve had released pent-up tension leaving jubilation behind.
Not that those at the Americana Music Festival take themselves overly seriously, but Mary’s showcase did almost immediately follow the festival’s star-studded awards ceremony that had everyone from Dierks Bentley to the Avett Brothers, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Jack Whiteand Robert Plant as presenters, performers and recipients at the Ryman Auditorium event.
“I won a few awards in this business,” Mary told the crowd. “Two to be exact. One was an Americana Award. The other, well, you are looking at the gay country artist of the year … before me, nobody was stupid enough to do it.”
Of course, Mary was referring to coming out before Chely Wright, Jennifer Knapp and others, and receiving the GLAMA (Gay and Lesbian American Music Awards) accolade in 2000.
As the audience happily clapped and cheered, Mary continued: “Mama wasn’t quite sure what to do with that one. Before you adopt anyone, think about it. You might get me.”
Those who don’t understand the point need only listen to the songs on Mary’s latest album ‘The Foundling.’ After facing down demon addictions and going on to write her first song at age 35, Mary moved to Nashville five years later and found critical success with her 1997 debut album, ‘Dixie Kitchen.’ Her breakthrough album ‘Mercy Now’ was released in 2005 and still holds a place in many fans’ hearts as evidenced by the calls for the song of the same name.
“I knew it was a late start but thought I could pull it off when I was 35,” Mary tells The Boot about her career. “As I got sober and was able to read books and as my language skills opened, I moved more toward songs as a way of expressing myself.”
That’s why Mary could write so openly about the heartbreak she felt when, at age 45, she found her birth mother who again rejected her, setting off events that led to Mary writing the songs of abandonment, loneliness and despair and finally emerging somewhat philosophical.
“I have got my story. Adoptees rarely get our stories,” she says. “There is some power in going in and doing this terrifying work and being able to say ‘You know what? I have the right to ask these questions.’ It’s taboo. You’re not supposed to ask. But you have a right to know.”
And to tell what you know, of course, about your life. That’s just what Mary did during her Station Inn set, singing fan favorites including “For Rose,” “I Drink” and ’Drag Queens in Limousines.’ Perhaps the song that received the most heartfelt cheers, though, was ‘Last of the Hobo Kings,’ which Mary wrote after reading a New York Times obituary about Steam Train Maury who held the king of the hobos title longer than anyone else. Mary delivered the lyrics, “he knew how his nation’s doing by the length of a sidewalk cigarette butt/born with an aching wanderlust/Embedded in his gut,” almost as if they were about the songwriter herself. Little wonder the filled-to-capacity crowd gave her a long, hearty standing ovation.
Mary’s next show is September 10 in Austin, Texas. For a complete list of dates and cities, check here.
One Response to “Mary Gauthier Pulls Into the Station With Personal Tunes”
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I hope it’s ok to mention this here.
The night before this showcase, Mary participated in a riveting discussion/performance with author Jewly Hight, Tania Elizabeth, and singer songwriters Elizabeth Cook and Abigail Washburn. It related personal approaches to the process of songwriting and about a book by Jewley, ‘Right by Her Roots: Americana Women and Their Songs’.
I sort of fell over a videorecording of it while trying to learn more about Country Music and Americana. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the process of writing. (It’s about 1 hr long). It’s at:
http://countrymusichalloffame.org/watch
Go to Archives, and it’s under ‘Special Programs’ – and it is very, very special.
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A Few Months Ago….
26 Aug
I ran into my friend Tift Merrrit in London, we were both on a publicity tour for new releases, and we were staying in the same hotel, right next to the BBC Broadcasting building. We managed to find a time to go out for Chinese food, and she asked me if I’d join her in her room the next morning for yet another interview, this time, with her. She has a fine radio show, and I was happy to able to work this interview with Tift into my schedule.
Here it is, I hope ya’ll like it..
Marfa Spark KRTS 93.5 Tift Merrit interviews yours truly.
One Response to “A Few Months Ago….”
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Jennie says:
Mary, what a great interview. I enjoy listening to you because you don’t hold back. You tell things, your story mainly, like it really is. You express your feelings so well. Guess that’s why you’re a great songwriter. Thanks for sharing your words and music.
I hope you can find your father. My hope is that he would be a kind soul and want a relationship with you. Let me know when you find out about him.
Take care,
Jennie
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WSM AM Radio, Buddy Miller, Nashville is great!
18 Aug
Tania and I played this morning on historic WSM radio, home of the Grand Old Opry Radio show. They are broadcasting from the original home again these days, because the flood took out the new building. It felt like a short walk thru the history of Country Music. WSM is the reason Nashville ended up as the Business center of country music.
Last night, Buddy Miller performed another installment of his three part series/artist in Residence at The Country Music Hall Of Fame, and my friend Darrell Scott invited me to come down..here’s a shot of the band. Buddy Miller, Darrell Scott, Patty Griffin, Regina and Ann McCrary and Byron House and Brian Owens.
Tonight we play a benefit concert at the Loveless Barn for the Nature Conservancy. What an honor to be part of such a great group of artists, activists and industry folks who care about each other and the world and are working to improve it! Living in Nashville can be wonderful, and today is one of those days!
2 Responses to “WSM AM Radio, Buddy Miller, Nashville is great!”
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Mary, I absolutely love your voice! You were great yesterday! Keep it up! You’re one of my favourite artists!
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Denise says:
The notion of community is such an important one.
Musicians can create whilst alone and then come together to share and learn and create new works. This benefits the musician or artist, the music community and the larger community such as the beneficiaries of the Loveless Barn for the Nature Conservancy [what an ironic name].
Our communities, whatever shape they take, or wherever they are on our planet can learn much from the example of these gifted and generous artists.
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NPR Radio Interview on Here and Now, LINK
15 Aug
Here is an interview with Here and Now, from NPR station WBUR in Boston. Scroll down a little, and hit the play button, and there it sits. Till it doesn’t anymore. LIVE ON HERE AND NOW
2 Responses to “NPR Radio Interview on Here and Now, LINK”
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Mary’s music breaks my heart and then mostly lifts it up again.
I agree with Mary about the drum break. When I heard it at the Enmore Theatre, the reality of separation was made real and personal, it stopped being about someone else whose experience I could maybe try to distance myself from. The drums crashed, and it took everything for me not to vomit up, even though I’d heard the song before and loved it for its painful truth.
My government is soon to make a formal apology to children who have been left in care, and to their relinquishing mothers. I am both yearning for it hoping for healing, and dreading it for the pain it will bring.
[Truly, I am never satisfied].Thank you Mary for your honesty and truth, and thank you for your bravery in taking that first step, and the thousands of scary ones after.
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Brett says:
Very nice to see you are coming to Toronto again…and Guelph and London too. Looking forward to one or three of those.
Thanks!
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Charlotte, NC The Evening Muse
5 Aug
Played tonight in Charlotte, at The Evening Muse. A split bill with Peter Case. The weather was wild, lightening thunder, wind and plenty rain. A summer squall roared thru, with a pretty big back end punch.
It was wonderful to see Peter again, he looks great and sounds great, he had a fantastic little rock band with him and he was jamming out on an electric guitar. YEA!
I met several adoptees tonight at the show, and some folks active in the AAC ( American Adoption Congress).
Also, my mother drove up to see Tania and I play. She sat beaning from the third row, and it was fun to have her there. Of course she held court after I was done and told people stories, and several people told her their stories. It was a good night. I think the weather worked in my favor. I never did have the right songs for a sunny summer day….my songs sing better in the rain. The bigger the storm, the better my songs sing. it’s always been that way.
Off to the airport in the morning for my first trip to the Michigan Women’s Music Festival. Looking forward to the adventure!
2 Responses to “Charlotte, NC The Evening Muse”
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Lori says:
Just last week I discovered Mary Gauthier; it was through her NPR interview. After hearing that broadcast and a few of the songs they played from THE FOUNDLING I was converted. I went home and straight to ITunes to download her music. I immersed myself that evening…looked up her lyrics and read “her story” and almost felt like it was some divine intervention that brought me to that NPR interview. While THE FOUNDLING songs were beautiful and chilling, PRAYER WITHOUT WORDS struck me the most…it was so Dylanesque…but it wasn’t merely her profound and/or witty lyrics that stirred me. It was also her voice, her melodies…the blend of it all was so superb. And only a few weeks after discovering Mary, I had the fortune of hearing her live in Charlotte, at The Evening Muse. What an ideal intimate venue. She and Tania E. were as crisp and clean as a studio recording; they were the perfect complement to one another. What beautiful lyrics, harmonies, strings and chords! I hope our paths cross again.
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Terri says:
I was at there last night — and Mary, I hope you’ll see this… I just want to say how great the show was.
Yes, Peter was as good as ever — in his adorable, somewhat fumbling way. I wasn’t sure what to expect, to be honest, after his health issues, but was pleasantly surprised at how strong his voice and attitude were. (‘Course no real surprise about the attitude…
But the stars of the show as far as I’m concerned, were you and Tania E. I must confess that I just “found” you when I learned that you were co-billed last night… Oh, I had heard your name, but hadn’t heard your wonderful music until recently. As a bit of a writer myself, I am blown away by your wordsmithing and cadence — makes what you say all the more touching interesting.
I sat with tears in my eyes during several of your Foundling songs. What a poignant, searching, powerful and hopeful story of redemption!!! Your story touched me deeply in a way that was unexpected and oh-so-thought provoking; in fact, I’ve lain awake half the night thinking about it. I am now a fan forever and will be at your next show here… and the next…. etc. Most of all, I hope this album has given you whatever answers you needed — or at least the beginnings of them. I can’t imagine living your life; I’m sure it’s had its rough patches and deep holes.
But I surely am glad you’re here to tell the story — and all the others you tell!!! Cheers to discovery and hats off to you and T.E. for an OUTSTANDING show!!!
Thanks also for taking the time to play Mercy Now. Best and safe travels………..Terri
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Review in US Catholic
5 Aug
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Danny Duncan Collum
Mary Gauthier (Razor and Tie, 2010)
Singer-songwriter extraordinaire Mary Gauthier (“go-shay”) has a voice like a rusty string on a slide guitar. But that never held Bob Dylan back, and in Gauthier’s musical vision, pretty is hardly the point. That same jarring, unvarnished quality runs through her lyrics. A recovering alcoholic, early in her career Gauthier laid her disease on the line with a song that proclaimed, “fish swim, birds fly?.?.?.?I drink.” At the center of many of Gauthier’s best songs is her harrowing life story, a tale that makes some recent recovery memoirs sound like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. At 15 she stole the family car, ran away, and spent the next 20 years drunk, high, and/or institutionalized. But on this new album she cuts to the painful, bleeding core of her biography and turns it into a jewel of poetic narrative, with accordions and fiddles on the side.
Gauthier was the foundling of the album’s title. As a newborn she was left on the steps of St. Vincent’s Infants Home in New Orleans to be adopted into a family dominated by a raging alcoholic father. But she says a sense of not-belonging dogged her from childhood and well into her sober years. Recently she tracked down her birth mother and called her up, receiving a painful brush-off that is transcribed in The Foundling’s central song, “March 11, 1962” (Gauthier’s birthdate).
Gauthier’s artistic template for The Foundling was Willie Nelson’s 1975 album, Red Headed Stranger. Like that classic, The Foundling features consistent instrumentation and repeated musical themes (including two “Interludes” and a “Coda”) that lend coherence to the narrative. It suffers for the lack of Nelson’s pipes and mad-genius guitar work, but The Foundling’s emotional wallop far outstrips the model. But Gauthier’s tale is never played for bathos. Indeed, her matter-of-fact, off-handed restraint, which makes the tragedy so disturbing, also renders credible “The Orphan King’s” affirmation: “I still believe in love.”
This article appeared in the August 2010 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 75, No. 8, page 42).
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The Advocate.Com Video Interview
28 Jul
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
2 Responses to “The Advocate.Com Video Interview”
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I like what you guys are up also. Such smart work and reporting! Carry on the excellent works guys I¡¦ve incorporated you guys to my blogroll. I think it will improve the value of my website
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Working Our way UP the West Coast
20 Jul
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.
2 Responses to “Working Our way UP the West Coast”
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My wife & I caught the show tonight at Mississippi Studios!! What a great time and thank you.
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Mary, that was a wonder full performance at Music Millennium yesterday. Looking forward to your show tonight.
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July 2010, Heading WEST
7 Jul
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
5 Responses to “July 2010, Heading WEST”
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Mark Noonan says:
Thanks so much for coming to Providence Farm.The venue is a great space for people and music to hang around together for a few days.
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Excellent! I look forward to seeing you again soon. I innocently suggest The Koerner Hall at the royal conservatory as a venue for such a show in Toronto. Make it BIG!
Hope the road is treating you well. Well Done!
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We will get there soon, I am working on it!
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Toronto would have seemed like a place to play already for this Bastard Love tour. And me being from T.O., I have sat back just assuming that you will be making your way here soon. Hugh’s room seems the obvious venue but a nice folk festival was also in my hopes or even a show with the Junkies somewhere………but nothing……
What’s up?
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Becky says:
I always knew Mary would make it. She is a surviver like most of us. We all want and should know where we came from. God Bless You Mary. Love Becky
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LA TIMES, July 8 Mary Gauthier, storyteller in song
7 Jul
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.”
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Atlanta Music Guide Live Review/Eddie’s Attic
28 Jun
Review of the Eddie’s Attic Show.
One Response to “Atlanta Music Guide Live Review/Eddie’s Attic”
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The Word PODCAST, a chat with David Hepworth.
28 Jun
The Word was voted the UK’s best music Magazine in 2008 and 2009. Here’s a podcast of my interview with David Hepworth. He’s a great interviewer, and I enjoyed speaking with him.
One Response to “The Word PODCAST, a chat with David Hepworth.”
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Roots On The River 2010 ( Fred Fest)
22 Jun
The 11th Annual Roots On The River in Bellows Falls VT took place June 11,12 and 13, and for the 6th time I was honored to share the all acoustic Meetinghouse Show with Fred, in the old Meetinghouse on the hill. Tania Elizabeth and I had a great time performing in the church, as the rain softly fell outside keeping the temperature down and the mood perfect for songs from The Foundling.
Fred was his usual amazing self, and put on a heck of a show, then was off to NYC to tape Letterman, which I watched last night, he nailed it. I am more than a little proud of him. I met Fred when Charlie Hunter invited me to play the first annual Roots on The River event 11 years ago, and he’s been my mentor for a decade now. YEA FRED! Rock on!
Here’s the link to Fred on Letterman.
Roots On The River 2010
One Response to “Roots On The River 2010 ( Fred Fest)”
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mary,
i can’t begin to express my gratitude for your friendship and kindness over the years. you own the meeting house show and this year’s set was almost beyond description. as many times as i had listened to “the foundling” again and again, i was unprepared for the raw, unplugged version you and tania elizabeth offered us on the sunday show. i sat transfixed on the floor of the 225 year old rockingham meeting house, completely unaware of my surroundings. the tears began to flow from the opening a capella keening of the album’s title to the incredibly powerful “mercy now” closing song. of the hundreds of sets i have heard over the last 11 years, this will live in my memory as my favorite for a long, long time.
love, ray
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All Things Considered NPR Radio Interview
20 Jun
Click Here to listen to Listen to Mary discuss The Foundling on All Things Considered, National Public radio.
3 Responses to “All Things Considered NPR Radio Interview”
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Mary, your album is a modern classic…in all aspects. Thanks so much for the privilege of “sitting in” on your NPR interview. You were so “yourself” as this friend enjoyed spending a few minutes with ya. Peace.
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Lucy Alfriend Thacker says:
Once again, I’m intrigued by the way you have chosen to tell us your story… in little precious pieces, without vengeance or ill wishes…. but with a big, gushy heart and an bigger, yet softer whisper of love and introspection. All the while, we ride your ride with you. As you said on NPR, everybody has a story to tell. Thanks for being brave enough to tell yours, so the rest of us can think about ours. Come on back to Norfolk! xxoo
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Stockholm, Amsterdam, Ottersum, Groningen, London
8 Jun
Big Big Picture
My run of dates in Europe have been wonderful, the venue’s have been amazing, the food, the audience’s…all lovely. The show in Stockholm made a giant billboard picture of me for promotion, it has to be the biggest picture of me I’ve ever seen. We teamed up with a Swedish group called Society’s Stepchildren, who are working for the rights of foster children of Sweden, and working to get restitution for people who were abused in the system. There is an ongoing investigation into the governments practices around fostering and children’s homes in Sweden, and one of the government investigators came to the show. I had a good meeting with him, and I had an amazing evening overall, I met so many people who moved me with their stories.
We then went to play in Holland, and the first gig was in an old church/nunnery that was used as an orphanage and home for children with special needs, for a hundred years or so nuns took care of children in the building where I played, the marble stairs were worn down from all the years of nuns and children going up and down there. The Nazi’s bombed the orphanage during the war ( it’s only a few kilometers from Germany), and the building was in disrepair for many years. It’s been build back up, and they hold many different kinds of shows there every season. Playing The Foundling in that church was spooky and electric for me, we had candles burning on stage and throughout the room, and I could feel the history of the place inside me.
The next night we played a church in Amsterdam from the 17th century , Amstelkerk built in 1666. The show was produced and promoted by The Paradiso, and they did a great job for us. Once again, the room was perfect for The Foundling songs, from the stage we faced a beautiful old organ with huge pipes on the wall, it was fantastic AND walking distance from the hotel, which is always nice. After soundcheck we went to drink coffee at an old bar that had a jazz band, we sat in there by an open window and listened to music and watched the rain for a couple hours, then went and played our show. What a wonderful day, I loved it. Amsterdam is one of my favorite cities in the world, it’s so diverse and welcoming and open. I love the crooked buildings, the cafe’s the shopping, the food….and the Dutch people. I can’t wait to come back again.
2 Responses to “Stockholm, Amsterdam, Ottersum, Groningen, London”
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anne skaner says:
Hello, thanks again.your consert was great..we wont you back to sweden.
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Annika says:
I was in the audience in Stockholm, and it was just a great night! It felt like you looked straight at me — you have such presence. Please come back soon!
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The Scotsman Interview with Mary Gauthier
26 May
Mary Gauthier’s new album is a story of searching for, finding and being rejected by your birth mother
I GOT issues. Boy, have I got issues.” Mary Gauthier is nothing if not honest. It is that same emotional honesty which is scored deep into her five acclaimed albums to date and has won her tentative comparison with the late, great Johnny Cash. Some of her issues are already well documented. Gauthier (pronounced Go-shay) was born in New Orleans to an unmarried mother, was adopted as an infant, left home at 15 years old and fell into a cycle of drug and alcohol abuse which determined her life for the next 15 years. When she eventually escaped that vicious circle, the songs began flooding out of her. She released her debut album when she was 35, pouring all that pain and experience into her music.
But nothing she has recorded to date is, or probably ever will be, as raw or significant as her new album, The Foundling, a song cycle about “relinquishment and adoption,” at the heart of which is a story of searching for, finding and being rejected by your birth mother. The punchline being that the story is hers.
“I can’t even begin to describe how excruciating it is to not know where you come from,” she says. And yet she has managed to do so, viscerally and intimately, on The Foundling. “I guess I find it easier to talk when I have a guitar in front of me,” she admits.
There is nothing easy – though plenty that is rewarding – about The Foundling. The title alone is a very loaded, emotive expression. Gauthier nods. “Yup, it is.” Even the individual song titles – Mama Here, Mama Gone, The Orphan King, Blood Is Blood – are dripping in agonising pathos.
Gauthier had dealt to some degree with the whirlwind of emotions by the time she sat down to complete the album she now feels she was put on this earth to make. She doesn’t see much of her adoptive parents anymore. Her memories of her life with them are largely defined by her father’s alcoholism and her mother’s depression. She remembers one Christmas when her father drunkenly trashed the decorations and decreed there would be no Christmas for the family that year. She remembers her mother crying, all the time. She got out as quickly as she could, stealing the family car to make her getaway – a getaway that included spending the night of her 18th birthday in a police cell.
“All that teenage delinquent stuff got really exaggerated. People were saying I spent time in jail – I was never in prison,” she says. “But adoptees have troubles. I don’t want to stereotype us, but if you look into it, there’s an incredibly high rate of alcoholism and an extremely high rate of suicide among adoptees. Check the numbers of people in prison who are adopted. I think these problems come from not knowing who we are and how to fit.
“Adoptees historically are made to have to feel grateful,” she continues. “And, y’know, I am grateful that I was adopted. I’m extremely grateful because I didn’t want to live in a frickin’ orphanage – y’know, two nuns, 70 babies. That’s horrible. But you can also be grateful and have questions.”
Gauthier had those questions from an early age, but she didn’t ask them “because I was afraid I would lose the only parents I had ever known. That if I were to appear ungrateful, I could lose everything.”
A few years back, Gauthier returned to New Orleans to play a gig. On the spur of the moment, she visited the site of the St Vincent’s Women And Infants Asylum, now a flophouse, on Magazine Street, where she had spent the first year of her life. Although she had no recollection of her time there, she was surprised by the intensity of emotion – what she calls “that orphan feeling” – stirred up by stepping inside the building.
Even sober, Gauthier had found that she was still running into the same problems in holding down long-term relationships. At the persuasion of her therapist, she agreed to go looking for her birth mother. It took three days to trace her, but six months to pluck up the courage to phone her. Her quietly devastating account of what happened next can be heard on the album’s centrepiece, a semi-spoken song called March 11, 1962 (her own date of birth) which recounts Gauthier’s side of that fateful and profoundly painful phone call when her mother told her she could not cope with meeting her. She had never told anyone about her illegitimate daughter. For a long time, that rejection was just too upsetting for Gauthier to contemplate but, gradually, she was able to pour her feelings of abandonment into a song suite which is as powerful a statement of the human condition as any you will hear.
The Foundling is deservedly garnering awestruck five-star reviews for its organic mix of lachrymose country, haunting folk, mountain music and Cajun swing and a lyrical integrity which bears comparison with Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen. Emotionally, it ranges from the tormented folk maelstrom of “adoptee identity crisis” number Blood Is Blood to the gallows wit of The Orphan King, which ends with a declaration of hope: “I still believe in love.”
Gauthier may not enjoy family in the conventional sense of the word, but she has built up what she calls her tribal family of friends, loved ones and associates. As her birth mother has no desire to meet her, Gauthier acknowledges that that avenue is now closed to her, but based on the little that she did learn from their brief encounter, she has not ruled out researching some family history. “At least now I know that her family comes from eastern Canada which I knew instinctively,” she says. “I knew I had that Cajun heritage, that Acadian heritage, I just feel it. And my gut says Irish on the other side. Irish and French, that’s what I feel. When you’re young, it doesn’t matter so much but as you get older I would suspect part of the ageing process is to wonder about your ancestors – who were they? What were their lives like? And how I am like them? Children are not blank slates – they come programmed with a lot of stuff.”
She cites the story of a man she met on a talk show who made sundials and only later discovered that his great-great-great-grandfather had also been a sundial craftsman. “Do you think that’s a coincidence? Come on, it’s not! If I start tracing, I bet I will find a writer in my family tree.”
Gauthier has been getting a lot of this since making The Foundling. She perks up noticeably when she talks about the uninhibited way that strangers have been moved to share their adoption stories with her. Whether adoptees or adoptive parents, it is as if her work has given them permission to talk openly about their experience.
Gauthier herself has become passionate about adoption rights. In the US, adoptees are not entitled access to their birth certificate, so Gauthier has joined the campaign for open records. “I believe it’s a fundamental human need to know where you came from,” she says. “To deprive someone of that knowledge is criminal. I think it’s a civil rights issue. So I believe in adoption, but I believe in open adoption.”
Now she’s fired up and feeling vindicated that she has confronted all that hurt in her past. There is even a memoir in the works. “The truth’ll set you free,” she says. “It might feel like it’s gonna kill you but when you get through that pain it can set you free. At least, that’s been my experience.”
Mary Gauthier, the foundling, can now look back and say that she feels like she has been working up to making this album for her whole life. But now that she has delivered it – and so brilliantly at that – where does she go next? “That’s a very good question. Maybe I’ll start writing happy songs!”
• The Foundling is out now on Proper Records
5 Responses to “The Scotsman Interview with Mary Gauthier”
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Dave Harrop says:
Saw MG at an amazing gig in Newcastle about 3 years ago..Afterwards we had a quick chat about adoption. I have the album and have played it twice.. I think I’ll use it for training for prospective adopters if that’s ok.So sorry about the contact with birth mother.. it left me shiney eyed and with a lump in my throat
Lots of love -
Maureen Day says:
Wow – I haven’t heard the album but am eager to now. I really love Gauthier’s work -and am so inspired by her journey as described in the review. I don’t know if great artists like her feel somehow dismissed when compared to others. But her work -in terms of it’s bareboned imagery and emotional understow- reminds me of John Prine’s. Who knows — I come from an alcoholic family so there are common themes in their respective songs that resonate with me.
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Album was recorded in Toronto….but no show for Toronto?……I am sure this will rectify soon….right?
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It’s a brave and brilliant, emotion-charged, maudlin-free album with words you really must stop to listen to. No wonder the likes of Dylan rate her so very highly.
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The Sunday Times ( London)
22 May
Back to her roots
Being adopted has inspired Mary Gauthier like no artist before her
Over 13 years and six albums, singing in that cracked voice that channels Johnny Cash’s last days, Mary Gauthier has established a reputation as one of the finest American songwriters around. Although tracks such as I Drink, Mercy Now and Different Kind of Gone are snapshots of a life laid bare, nothing prepares you for the searing honesty of her new album, The Foundling — a song cycle about adoption.
Most female songwriters — even those for whom soul-baring, self-loathing, angst and unrequited or broken love affairs are sources of inspiration — have skirted round the subject. One might think that being abandoned at birth would prove fertile ground for creativity, but perhaps this is too raw an emotion to expose. While Gauthier has tackled the pain head on, other adoptee songwriters — Diana Jones, Gillian Welch, Sarah McLachlan — have been more oblique.
In literature, the foundling has always been a popular subject. Read the Old Testament, fairy tales, Greek tragedy, Shakespeare, novels and comic books, and you will find Moses, Snow White, Oedipus, Perdita in The Winter’s Tale, Tom Jones and Superman. Because life likes to imitate art, reuniting adopted children with their birth mother is a popular media story — especially if, like Clare Short or Joni Mitchell, the mother has a high profile — with an upbeat message.
In fiction, the foundling is a blank slate on which to create a life unburdened by the past. In reality, says Gauthier, “it feels like you’re falling through space eternally”. More than 40 years after she was left in St Vincent’s Women’s and Infants’ Asylum in New Orleans, she tracked down her birth mother. That first stilted, apologetic conversation is recounted in March 11, 1962, the emotional centre of both the album and her current live shows. In the third verse, the lyrics hit you like a slow-motion car crash: “You say that I’m a secret nobody knowsyou can’t talk about it nowyou really gotta go.”
Yet the question that had dogged Gauthier all her life — “Who am I?” — had in part been answered. “I had found my birth mother. It wasn’t what I wanted to find, but there’s not a question mark any more. The little kid in me is gonna be dealing with abandonment until my last breath. I’m driven to write songs as a way of making sense of my life.
Most songwriters — like most people — have a family and know where they come from. Adoptees can lack that sense of place. Raised in an emotionally troubled family, Gauthier always felt she “didn’t belong”. “I always knew I was gay. I was an alcoholic from my first drink. There was just a hole. I had to get sober and start to heal from addiction before I could create art,” she explains.
“The interesting thing about being adopted,” says the singer-songwriter Diana Jones, “is, potentially, you could be from anywhere, from any kind of family, any kind of background. I grew up having all these fantasy families in my head. All my childhood, I had a sense of longing for home, a need to belong. I had to find me before I could figure out what I wanted to write, and that took time.”
Growing up just outside New York listening to show tunes, the Stones and the Beatles, Jones had fallen in love with Johnny Cash’s At Folsom Prison and found herself drawn to roots music. She finally tracked down her mother’s family in Tennessee. Her grandfather Robert Lee Maranville, who had once played with Chet Atkins, had a similar-sounding voice.
“I do believe there is a genetic connection between where I come from and the music I play,” she says. “Finding my biological family explained so much about who I am, but it took me a while to feel like I could claim it.” After her grandfather died in 2000, Jones, who had previously released two indifferent albums, found her voice — My Remembrance of You (2006) and Better Times Will Come (2009) are gems, more roots than country, full of beautifully observed songs set off by the warmth of her voice. Pony, about a Native American child taken from a reservation and placed in a settlement school, and All God’s Children, about kids who leave foster care at 18 with nowhere to go, are songs not just informed but enhanced by her experience. “I’m only interested in true stories,” she says. “For me, it’s to make sense of my story, but also to make sense of it in the context of the world.”
Gillian Welch’s adoptive parents were entertainers who moved to LA to write for The Carol Burnett Show. Her biological mother hailed from the mountains of North Carolina and her father was a drummer. Like Gauthier, she doesn’t do happy, preferring to chronicle the misfortune and torments that befall the disconnected living on society’s edge. Abandonment in all its forms — drug addiction, poverty, the wreckage of love — is the spine that runs through her songs.
Some adoptees, however, have fewer issues. “I got told I was adopted when I was nine, and it was never a big deal to me,” says the Canadian singer Sarah McLachlan. “I met my birth mother when I was 18. It was neat, because so many things I felt started to make sense, but, especially after I became successful, she wanted too much. I have a mother already. The older I become, the more I realise I am more like her through environmental conditioning.”
As Joni Mitchell has discovered, giving up your child for adoption is both a catalyst for creation and a scar that never heals. In 1965, when she was a penniless art student, she handed over her baby girl. She didn’t speak about it publicly for 30 years, but the clues were stamped all over her songs — especially Little Green, from Blue. “It left a hole in me,” she said, “that I didn’t fill until the day I saw her again. In some ways, my gift for music and writing was born out of tragedy and loss.”
When touring with Jones, Gauthier found they had much in common. Both had been adopted into dysfunctional families, left home at 15 and lived rough; and both have adoptive brothers with drug problems. Music was not part of their childhood — “There were no books, no music, no art,” Jones says — and they came to it relatively late. Jones was an artist, Gauthier a chef who wrote her first song at 35.
During their discussions, Jones introduced Gauthier to the work of BJ Lifton, an advocate of adoption reform. “Her books helped me to understand, to the point where I knew I was ready to write this record,” Gauthier says. “I wanted to write it as a song cycle, like Willie Nelson did with Red Headed Stranger; to start at the beginning, work to some sense of redemption and, in the end, come out and say, ‘I still believe in love.’”
“On a good day,” she says, “I believe. On a hard day, I need to believe.”
The Foundling is out now; Mary Gauthier is touring in June
One Response to “The Sunday Times ( London)”
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She’s done a lot more than most people who weren’t adopted. That’s impressive in and of itself.
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The Foundling Review in The Daily Dose
17 May
Confessional albums are certainly nothing new in the singer/songwriter idiom, but there’s a continuum. I mean, there are personal songs, and then there are songs that take your breath away with their honesty. Mary Gauthier’s seventh album,The Foundling, will leave you gasping for 46 minutes and 37 seconds.
Gauthier has lived a life straight out of a country song — she spent her 18th birthday in jail; she opened a Cajun restaurant in Boston; she didn’t start writing songs until she was in her 30s — but all those colorful details pale beforeThe Foundling, which tells her most personal story. Given up for adoption shortly after birth, Gauthier struggled with what she calls “the ‘orphan feeling’” for most of her life. At the age of 45, she was finally successful in finding her birth mother, only to discover that she’d kept Gauthier’s existence a secret from everyone in her life, including her deceased husband and grown children. Denied a meeting, Gauthier had to heal herself the only way she knew how: with music.
It’s a sad story, but make no mistake, The Foundling is a cathartic album; it’s shot through with mournfulness and a desperate longing to be loved, but there’s a grace to the sadness. There’s no bitterness here, only unblinking reflection. When she sings “I still believe in love” toward the end, you know Gauthier has come by that belief the hard way, and you feel richer for sharing her journey. Heartbroken, but richer. And heartbroken in a good way — it’s important to stress that even though The Foundling probes a profound wound in its creator’s heart, it’s a warm, uplifting piece of work, and one drawn across the spectrum of Gauthier’s musical roots. You hear a lot of country-inflected folk, with high harmonies and keening, whipsawing fiddles, but there are also hints of her New Orleans heritage (the drunken carousel of “Sideshow”) and moments of pure, stark, simple beauty (“Blood Is Blood,” “Walk in the Water”). And the album’s emotional centerpiece — the one-sided conversation “March 11, 1962? — will cut you wide open.
It isn’t the kind of album that’s destined to be a hit, obviously. But if songwriting matters to you, and you look to music to move you, then The Foundling is a gift you’ll cherish for a good, long while.
4 Responses to “The Foundling Review in The Daily Dose”
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Majah says:
Amstelkerk Amsterdam 06-06-2010 How happy we are that we came to this concert. Heartmoving, in a way very silent but deepfeeling lyrics and music. Prachtig
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Jannie de Brouwer, The Hague, Netherlands says:
I was at your concert in Paradiso on November 26th, 2006 and tonite will be my second sharing with you. ‘Live’ in the Amstel Church in Amsterdam. Since 2006 your music and lyrics have had a great impact on me and they have enriched my life in many ways. For that I thank you.
I am SO looking forward to tonight! -
Scot Plemmons says:
I just finished listening to “The Foundling” for the second time and I believe it’s one of the most important records to be released so far this century. There’s not a more provocative songwriter out there, and her previous albums are some of the best I’ve ever heard. It’s a shame that more people haven’t discovered her but most people are just interested in the “flavor of the month”. Keep writing and recording, Mary, and I’ll keep listening.
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Tom Mehan says:
In Northampton, MA, Mary did quite a bit of “The Foundling”. We were so happy that she shared with us. One song in particular, called “Sideshow”. I was eight feet from Mary while she performed at Bellows Falls, VT, and that was special. But I am so anticipating my copy of “The Foundling”. In the meantime, I cannot get “Drag Queens and Limosines” off the CD player. Mind you, I am a 62 year old grandfather. I just love what she delivers.
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The Bastard Love Tour Highlights SO FAR
10 May
I’ve decided that the tour for The Foundling should be called the Bastard Love Tour. Sounds right and true to me. So from here on out, as the bastard love tour rolls in circles around the circular globe we all live and love on, I will try to update this blog and share highlights of my experiences as I present my new songs to folks around the world in places big and small. My first round of shows for this record were in Australia with my friend Ed Romanoff. We spent a month running around the land of Oz without much time to stop and think. I played bars, theaters, rock clubs, folk listening rooms, dozens of radio shows, record stores, a performed a song with the house band for a TV game show at a huge sold out legendary theater in Sydney for a TV show called RockWiz LIVE. Flew across the continent(5 hours) from Melbourne to Perth with only three hours of sleep to play a festival for 50 minutes. Got our feet wet in the Indian Ocean.
Taj Mahal, Me, and Ed Romanoff at the Perth Blues and Roots Festival
Everywhere I went people had their own stories to tell. It turns out Australia has a long troubled history around adoption but has gone to extraordinary measures to make up for prior wrongs. Adoption activists there actually got the government to apologize for practices that removed Aboriginal children from their birth families. Over and over again people told me their stories, and it was amazing for me to witness the same emotional processes in people on the other side of the world I’ve gone thru in the good old US of A. We humans are all so much alike the world over. Whats the old cliche? People are people. Turns out, we are all exactly that. The same.
I got back to Nashville jet lagged and weary, but soon enough I was ready to take on the next leg of the tour, which brought me to the east coast of America, Boston, NYC and upstate New York. Tania Elizabeth, the amazing Canadian fiddle player/vocalist, joined us at The Iron Horse in Northampton,MA, and is now an official part of my touring group. She played all over the record, and having her on the road with me is a huge treat. She’s a road dog of the olympic gold metal variety, having been on the road non-stop for the last 8 years with the Canadian band The Duhks. She knows her way around soundchecks, airports, festival stages, hotels and CD tables, and she is mesmerizing on stage. It’s a thrill to have her up there with me. Tania, Ed and I opened several shows for The Cowboy Junkies, and played our own shows in upstate New York ( where Woodstock locals Rachel Yamagata and Tom Pacheco came by to say hello, two of my favorite singer songwriters writing songs today).
We then went on a three show run with Mindy Smith, played Minneapolis and Chicago and Cedar Rapids Iowa (near the hallowed halls of the Iowa writers workshop where Flannery O’Connner studied writing as a young woman).
Mindy Smith, Lex Price, Ed Romanoff, Me, Tania Elizabeth in Cedar Rapids Iowa
Tonight I am in London, where I will be for the next week doing radio and press interviews. It’s cold tonight, they say a frost is possible, but Ed and I are going to walk to Chinatown for some hot and spicy food no matter what.
The bastard love tour is not afraid of a little frost…..in mid May. Not afraid at all. If I can get my feet to Chinatown in any town for some spicy salty squid and sauteed Chinese green veggies, I always will.
7 Responses to “The Bastard Love Tour Highlights SO FAR”
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Helen Murnane says:
Hi Mary,
When you come back to Australia it would be great if you could time it to be here for the Cygnet Folk Festival in Southern Tasmania in early January each year. Lots of music here and Tassie is sensationally beautiful. It would make a lot of fans very happy. I saw you in Brunswick and was so moved that I only let myself play The Foundling when I am very still and can be completely focussed on the music. -
Tony L says:
Hi Mary,
Just wanted to say a huge thank you for a terrific gig at Bury Met the other night. From the moment you came on stage with Tania it was electric, soulful, funny and above all mesmerising.Your music and the words has such a depth its like being drawn into a story one that everyone can relate to. The violin/fiddle playing by Tania Elizabeth makes the sound amazing as well as adding a new dimension to it. The whole evening including Ben on support was brilliant -
Frank Z says:
Thanks for a great night in Groningen.
I think you ” Tape one of these live shows!”
This is great stuff, just you and the violinst.
Hope we can meet again.
Fank -
Bert J. says:
Hallo Mary,
It was so good to listen to your music in this theatre in Groningen last night.
2006 I was in Chicago and heard your music.
I bought all your CD,s with your sign.
Thanks and have a nice tour. -
Joy Phillips says:
Hi Mary
Missed your visit to Australia, but heard your cd The Foundling playing in a music store and I was told it was you. I bought the cd and continue to play it as the words and music resonates with me.
I was watching Rock Wiz last Saturday night and you were on it, pity you did not get to sing your own song.
It is difficult to buy your music here, I checked out Amazon in uk is where it is available rather than Us.
Look forward to your return to Australia so I can come to a live show. Enjoy your music
regards
Joy
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HI Mary,Heard you interviewed on BBC and heard you play. Touched me deeply. When you said we are all orphans, and that you didn’t know what pulled you out of addiction – something called ‘grace’, I felt my heart respond. It would have been so easy for you to see your story as a special case justifying bitterness and hatred. When we can see our troubles and our pain as shared by everyone, and linking us to the human race, we are nearer to bringing heaven on earth. We need more like you. Thankyou.
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CathyO says:
Saw the show in Chicago at Old Town School of Folk Music. It was a truly amazing masterpiece. I was pulled into the music and felt like I was living Mary’s life. Thank you for sharing…I hope it is a healing experience.
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No Depression Review of The Foundling
1 May
A review by Douglas Heselgrave
I thought I knew the blues. I haven’t always been careful. My life has been full of reckless and foolish mistakes. Like most people my age, I’ve suffered through my share of loss and pain, but it all pales in the shadow of what Mary Gauthier has been through.
Gauthier’s new CD, “The Foundling” is the product of two years work, and is quite simply the best collection of songs she’s ever recorded. An intensely personal album, “The Foundling” recounts Gauthier’s struggle to find her birth mother after being abandoned by her shortly after her birth in March 1962. In the hands of a less capable artist, a concept album about the search for and ultimate rejection from one’s mother would be doomed to failure. It is an idea that could so easily go awry as to be impossible or embarrassing to listen to. There are so many complex emotions involved that it would be easy to give into the temptation to cheapen them, aim at the lowest common denominator, and go right for the listener’s heartstrings. And, while I would defy anyone to remain dry eyed by the time The Foundling’s thirteen tracks have run their course, Gauthier’s work is too mature and fully formed to settle for being nothing more than a vicarious thrill. The emotions described, explored and eviscerated throughout The Foundling’s tale have obviously ripened over the artist’s lifetime and settled in deeply enough to be explored with precision – if not with detachment.
‘The Foundling’ isn’t easy listening music. It’s often hard to approach as it’s so rare to hear songs that reach as far as these ones do. Time and time again, Mary Gauthier resists every temptation to elevate her suffering and put it into a mythical framework as younger artists so often do when trying to communicate their feelings of loss. These are songs stripped of their filters and protection, and are often so honest as to be artless. Yet, somehow Mary Gauthier’s commitment and fearlessness shine through and she gets away with expressing things that a less mature musician would stumble on. She’s aiming so far left of the top forty that she often ends up in territory that is all but uncharted.
The facts of Mary Gauthier’s life have been well documented on her previous albums. Her struggles with alcohol, drugs and the law have all found their way into her music, but until now the motivations or underlying causes of her actions have been rather hard to understand. The story told by the songs on her new disc put all of her past work into perspective and give it more power.
The songs on ‘The Foundling’ follow an arc of fear, expectation and resignation. The first few tracks “The Foundling”, “Mama Here, Mama Gone” and “Goodbye” explore the grief that Gauthier experienced as she struggled to come to terms with being put in an orphanage shortly after her birth. A resolution was made, and at the age of 45, Gauthier searched for, found and was denied a meeting with her birth mother who had hidden her youthful indiscretion from everyone she knew. The brief telephone call with her that Gauthier describes on “March 11, 1962” must certainly qualify as one of the most heartbreaking songs ever committed to tape. Spare in its lyrics, the pain and unfathomable loss are suggested rather than described as she recounts her mother’s wounded plea of ‘why are you calling me?’ The songs that follow it represent a scramble to come to terms with her mother’s unwillingness to meet. From the absolute despair of Walk in the Water’ that rests on the refrain ‘ I want to walk in the water until my hat floats away’, things pick up a bit as Gauthier tries to put her best foot forward with the muted optimism of ‘Sweet Words’ and ‘The Orphan King’ with its unsure assertion ‘ I still believe in love.’ Unwilling to leave her audience in a lurch as her mother did to her, and as if to assure them that she will continue on in her life without succumbing to her personal demons again, Gauthier finishes the album on a strong note with the resolute and inspiring ‘Another Day Borrowed.’
Over the past several albums, Gauthier has worked with some of the best producers in the roots music business. Gurf Molix and Joe Henry have each had turns with her work, and the results have always been worthwhile. Still, it must be admitted that there has always been something slightly generic or incomplete in their approach to her music. Gauthier’s vocal range is somewhat limited and previous producers have gone out of their way to decorate her work and make it appealing to folk, country and blues fans and as a result missed something essential in her songs. This time out, Gauthier chose to work with Michael Timmins of the Cowboy Junkies, and she has finally found a producer up to the challenge of presenting her music in the best possible light. Gauthier’s voice and trademark rhythm guitar accompaniment are still front and centre, but for the first time she’s been given a sympathetic soundscape that elevates her music and gives room for the emotions she expresses to roam and expand. Resting somewhere between rough and polished, Timmins’ guitar is a background wail, an undercurrent over which Gauthier questions and sings. With Margo Timmins background vocals and a yearning violin as counterpoints, for the first time, Gauthier has achieved a musical context that is as profound and satisfying as the songs she sings.
With ‘The Foundling’, Mary Gauthier has created her first masterpiece. It may not be a record that people want to listen to every day or sit through in its entirety very often, but it is great art that reminds listeners of what the blues could be, but rarely are. Not for the easily frightened, ‘The Foundling’ is the most raw, brave and ultimately satisfying album I’ve heard in a very long time. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
The Foundling will be released on May 18, 2010-04-20.
See Doug’s interviews with Mary about the making of The Foundling below.
8 Responses to “No Depression Review of The Foundling”
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[...] I’ve been hanging onto this interview for a few months, because I wanted something special for the first triple-digit episode of “Songs and Stories”. The first time I heard her song “Drag Queens and Limousines”, I knew that Mary Gauthier (“Go-SHAY”) was here to tell us stories we weren’t going to hear otherwise. And she’s been doing that for six albums. Her latest is “The Foundling”, a more than semi-autobiographical song cycle about an orphan’s search for her mother. Some reviewers have called it her first masterpiece. [...]
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We saw Mary in CederRapids Iowa, and I feel so lucky to have heard her in person. The Venue was intiment as well as her amazing set. It felt like we were witness to something amazing and very special, that night! I was brought to tears many times that evening by her gut wrenching story telling thru her songs. WOW! I just could go on and on. Mary if you read this, I gave you a necklace I made, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the amazing show!! I hope you find all the answers you are seeking.
Love, Lisa -
[...] The implications of such deceit can of course be huge. Without going into further psychological analysis, I strongly recommend the album, which No Depression calls Gauthier’s first masterpiece. [...]
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Mike Starring says:
Wow, this review is so honest and earned. As sad as it is that Mary was denied a meeting with her birth mother, who chose to keep her “secret”, it must be sadder yet for the mother to not be able to proudly claim Mary as her gifted
daughter. Mary “universalized” her personal experiences so others could share the pain and discovery. Well done Mary! Every song in this album, is the mortar that links every previous Gauthier work into a huge panorama of ultimate redemption. -
Patrick says:
Fantastic review for an album I haven’t yet heard but I can already feel the chiils running through me with the anticipation of listening to it.
Come over to the UK as soon as you can Mary.
Many thanks
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Guy says:
Wow, great review…Can’t wait to get my ears on this one and to see her come back to my area!
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Craig says:
Mr. Heselgrave’s review hits the nail on the head.
Mary performed The Foundling in its entirety last night (3/6/2010) at the Cedar Cultural Center in Mpls. It is a truly remarkable and beautiful piece of work. She has raised her craft to a whole new level. I don’t think that I will ever understand how a person can reveal so much personal anguish for the world to see. But exposing herself in this way is, no doubt, exactly what makes The Foundling so exceptional and powerful. Thank you for sharing your story with all us, Mary.
In addition to The Foundling, her entire performance last night was emotional and energetic. Even her between-song chats are poetic. She’s a masterful story-teller and she puts on an awesome show. Go see her! -
Wow, and agreed. Gauthier probably did more for me in the past than she has for u as I believe that she has one masterpiece in the bank already, but I do think you are correct in that this CD takes things up another level to where Mary is now spoken about in the same way Patty is…
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New Song March 11, 1962.. Performed on RockWiz LIVE, Sydney Australia
11 Apr
Here’s a new YouTube video that just went up. It’s a new song from The Foundling called March 11, 1962, performed on the Australian TV quiz show called RockWiz.The house band is amazing, and I loved playing with them, I don’t get to play with a band very often and this was was a real treat. I thought it went fairly well, though the show is about fun and games and lighthearted banter and playing this song made me feel like a joy killer…oh well, they asked me to do it!
6 Responses to “New Song March 11, 1962.. Performed on RockWiz LIVE, Sydney Australia”
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I feel sad that Mary thought her song may have been a “joy killer” at this wonderful performance, because it certainly was not.
Mary was the high emotional point of a lovely evening. Her poetry in song left some of us breathless and others quietly acknowledging Mary’s (and their own) grief.
Australians hit the denial – she’ll be right mate – button very quickly and far too easily. Mary’s night came after two very important formal Apologies in our history, the first to the Stolen Generation of Aboriginal people stolen from their mothers and brought up in institutional ‘care’ and abused, and the second to the Forgotten Generation, child migrants from orphanages and poor houses in Britain brought here to build a young country, but also abused and whose very existence was denied.
So Mary’s vulnerable, aching song was a reminder and a validation of many of our experiences as well. That Mary could stand on stage and sing about her abandonment and aloneness and survival was encouragement for us to continue to work to get beyond our endless pain, isolation and addiction issues.
There will soon be an Apology to children left in ‘care’ or adopted/fostered, and to their relinquishing mothers for actions done by the state that have caused immense damage. These apologies are not just words, but also include counselling, compensation, assistance for family reunions (though often too late), and permission to grieve.
Mary Gauthier stands alone in her ability to articulate the multiplicity of pain associated with not being loved in her family of origin. In speaking of her own experiences, Mary also speaks of ours. We are a planet apart, but our hearts beat as one.
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Jamie says:
Between Daylight & Dark has been one of my seminal albums since I first bought it. At around the same time I discovered Tres Chicas, and the song on their Sweetwater album, “When was The last Time”. Your album, and that song helped to revive a very world weary soul.
Listening to this song, I have the feeling that I am in for a new journey of discovery for that revived soul! That’s what I love about music, that combination of lyrics and notes that can help us to know ourselves better.
Thank you Mary, you’re a Soul reviver!
By the way, next time you visit Australia, please pop across the small Tasman Sea, and visit us in New Zealand as well!
Arohanui (“Much love” in Maori)
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What a beautiful song. It made me weep.
Please don’t forget the Mucky Duck in your tour.
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You will really enjoy the gig in Somerville. I haven’t been there in a while, and the young are certainly different than people around my age. But they have evolved. via twitter, bing, etc. One thing I know though, the folks of Arlington, are Amazing Folk. Enjoy. If you get any time off, make sure you get to the womans bookstore, in Cambridge-at the corner of Cambridge Street and Pleasant Avenue. Inman Square had the best jazz around. 1369 club, and the KanTab lounge. the middle eastern cafe is a great place for new artist to showcase their work-middle eastern family owns the place…but they have showcase punk rock bands—children really….anyway, have a good time.
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Janne A says:
Great stuff! Can´t wait to hear the new album.
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Sydney, Australia March 2010
11 Mar
I just spent my birthday in Sydney, Australia, doing radio shows to promote The Foundling. It’s early Fall here, and the weather couldn’t be better. Ed Romanoff and I are having a wonderful time playing the new songs on the air, shopping, working out, and rehearsing for the shows ahead. The Australian media has been very receptive, and it’s all looking very good for my first real tour down here. Here’s a clip from a radio show I did today on ABC Radio Sydney.
ABC Radio Sydney The Foundling, LIVE
Also, here’s some pictures of me and two of my favorite people in earth, Kasey and Bill Chambers. If you don;t know Kaey’s mushc, check it out, her voice is a classic one, sounds like she comes from the hills of Tennessee, but she Australian thru and thru. We played The Mossville Festival March 13th, down in South Gipsland, Victoria on Saturday. Kasey and the band were amazing, what a great show! The festival took place under huge oak trees, and the weather was perfect, sunny, warm, and dry. Loved it!
13 Responses to “Sydney, Australia March 2010”
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I think there’s a whole nation looking forward to Mary’s return in October 2010. Thanks to Mary and her team for making it possible. October is Spring in Aust., and the birds will be singing and the flowers will be doing whatever flowers do…
The Radio National interview with Mary and Ed Romanoff by Richard Aedy is excellent, recommended.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/stories/2010/2844034.htm
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Annemarie says:
Mary, saw you play at Brass Monkey, Cronulla. Loved the show, love your album havent stopped listening to it. Come back to Australia anytime.
Thanks
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mitch says:
hi mary i saw you at the blues and roots festivals in freo , western australia , i was amazed and dazzed by ur voice it was truly beatiful. Your set was great and i particually like your songs “I drink” “I’m a different kind of gone”. Your a brilliant artist and i hope to see you live again one day
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john says:
Great to have the opportunity to see you at a small venue such as the Palais in Hepburn.It was as I said to you both on the night, a real privilege.Thank you for sharing your stories.
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maria ridge says:
Mary and Ed – thanks for the fantastic show at Bathurst – soooo impressed and hope we get see you guys again soon
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Hi Mary – thanks for chatting with us on CountryHQ (www.countryhq.com.au) prior to your Australian tour. The interview has been live online for the last week and is getting some great feedback. As for the new album – a triumph, both personally and artistically. Can’t wait to see it live in Sydney on Wednesday – make sure we buy you a beer!!
Regards – Adam – adam@countryhq.com.au
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Mary, also was at your show at Brunswick Town Hall on Sunday night and was so affected and still am. Have been listening to The Foundling each night and am inspired by the wisdom and the beauty. Life seems a bit clearer now. Shall move mountains to attend another of your Victorian shows and please when are you coming back?
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Jan says:
Mary,also was at your show at Brunswick Town Hall on Sunday night and agree with previous posts.What honesty and integrity in your playing.Thank you for sharing your story with us Aussies. Come back.
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Mary, saw your wonderful show at Brunswick Town Hall last night – it was one of the most affecting and powerful shows I’ve ever been fortunate to witness.
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JP Goodchild says:
Hi Mary, saw you last night at Brunswick Town Hall. Was truly wonderful to see you in person after listening to your music for a few years. Please come back again soon, you have many friends here now in Melbourne. Probably all over Oz. How about the Brunswick Festival again next year. Yeh
Thanks for visiting us and sharing your music. Fantastic.
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Ray says:
Mary – saw you last night at Mossvale. First time I’d really listened. I was touched by your music and I think the crowd were into it even tho lots were really just waiting for Casey. I will now be looking at buying some of your records. Congratulations on singing honestly about a difficult subject.
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dennis mcnally says:
just wish you could have made it a little further north this trip, mainly northern nsw
try bellingen next time they have a great venue there.
and great audiences
just love your music and songs, stories.
thanks -
Jane Shields says:
Mary – It was a pleasure to have you in the studio with us, and to have you and Ed play this song live, it was very powerful.
I wanted to let everyone know that this song plus your interview with us can be heard nationally on Monday 15th March on ABC Radio National’s Life Matters program between 9 and 10am (AEDT).
(If you are reading this after Monday, visit this link and you’ll be able to listen or download the audio, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/)
Looking forward to seeing your show!
Jane Shields, Life Matters Producer, Radio National
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Mary’s Teaching Songwriting at Jorma’s Ranch in June
22 Feb
June 18-21 I will be teaching songwriting at Jorma Kaukonen’s Fur Peace Ranch, in Pommeroy, Ohio. Tell them you saw it on my web site, and get $100 off the tuition. click here for details
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Top 20 Albums of the Decade: Mercy Now #6
21 Feb
Well, I am proud to announce that the No Depression Community saw fit to vote Mercy Now into their top ten, gently placing the old girl at #6. It’s a thrill for me, and I am proud of my friend Gurf Morlix, who produced three of their top 20 albums of the decade…Mercy Now at #6, Ray Wylie Hubbards Growl at #16, and Slaid Cleaves Everything You Love Will Be Taken Away at #17.
2 Responses to “Top 20 Albums of the Decade: Mercy Now #6”
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Fred says:
congratulations – well deserved. I enjoy your FB reports. you are a wonderful artist. my sons in Switzerland are great fans too. I enjoyed your concert at Joe’s Pub in NYC and I will hear you again soon.
kind regards
Fred
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What GREAT news, Mary. Reflects your talent coupled with perseverance. So deserved. Jayhawk Mary Gauthier
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Check out the music
I have this on DVD and it is how I first MG. I now have all your albums.
I’m a huge fan of both Mary Gauthier and Kate Atkinson, so when I heard Mercy Now while watching Case Histories, I was blown away. Too good to be true!