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!

Here’s an excerpt:

To Read More, Click Here

www.candi-staton.com

Read more here…

Click to read the full review:

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.

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

Mary Gauthier – review
Union Chapel, London
4 stars

Listen

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.

Click on the image to visit the ASCAP media player.  Steven Rosenfeld has outdone himself!

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.

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

The Foundling/US CATHOLIC

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).

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

Mary Gauthier, storyteller in song

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

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

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

cont’d

Review of the Eddie’s Attic Show.

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.

Click Here to listen to Listen to Mary discuss The Foundling on All Things Considered, National Public radio.

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

The Daily Dose

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.

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.

An interview with Mary Gauthier

Part Two of the Interview

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!

Live clip from RockWiz in Sydney, Australia

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!

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

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.

Click Here for the entire List.

Check out the video for “Lovefull” starring the kids from Wallbridge Elementary School in St. Louis!

http://www.youtube.com/v/kSyCUB4e9LI&hl=en_US&fs=1&

A live show review from the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival. LINK

Mary has contributed a short story called At The Holiday Inn, Again to a new anthology of short stories written by songwriters. The book is getting great reviews, and is available on Amazon. Click Here.

Sixteen original short stories by some of the most important songwriters working today.

Amplifed presents sixteen short stories by some of the most compelling songwriters performing today. With original contributions from Mary Gauthier, Chris Smither, Maria McKee, Patty Larkin, Jim White and Rennie Sparks of The Handsome Family, Amplified showcases artists working in the short story format, many for the first time.

Whether it’s Mary Gauthier’s haunting story of a girl caught between her warring parents, Rennie Spark’s reinvention of the fairy tale, a creepy yet beautifully drawn graphic story by Zak Sally or Cam King’s wildly funny apocalyptic Texas tall tale that will make it difficult for the reader to ever think about armadillos the same way again, these stories will break your heart or make you guffaw inappropriately.

David Malachowski of Daily Freeman.com reviews Mary’s album. Check it out here