Behind The Song: Drag Queens In Limousines

Drag Queens in Limousines (by Mary Gauthier and Crit Harmon)

I hated high school and prayed it would end
The jocks and their girls, it was their world, I didn't fit in
Mama said, "Baby, it's the best school that money can buy
Hold your head up, be strong, c'mon Mary, try."

I stole mama's car on a Sunday and left home for good
Moved in with my friends in the city, in a bad neighborhood
Charles was a dancer he loved the ballet
Kimmy sold pot and read Kerouac and Hemingway.

Drag Queens in Limousines
Nuns in blue jeans
Dreamers with big dreams
All took me in

Charlie and I flipped burgers to cover the rent
And Bourbons at Happy hour for 35 cents
One day before work we got drunk and danced in the rain
They fired us both, They said, "Don't ya'll come back here again."

Drag Queens in Limousines
Nuns in blue jeans
Dreamers with big dreams
All took me in

My dad went to college, and he worked for the state
He never quit nothing and he wanted me to graduate
My brother and sister both play in the marching band
They tell me they miss me, but I know they don't understand.

Sometimes you got do, what you gotta do
And pray that the people you love will catch up with you

Drag Queens in Limousines
Nuns in blue jeans
Dreamers with big dreams
Poets and AWOL marines
Actors and Bar Flies
Writers with Dark Eyes
Drunks that Philosophize
These are my friends

This song came out of half-baked gig in NYC, a gig that ended before it began because nobody came except the two friends whose apartment I was staying at in Manhattan. Yes, it sucked, but my two friends offered to take me out to a New York diner to cheer me up-the night was ours to do with as we wished. They decided to take me to their favorite late night eatery The Midtown Diner, right outside Times Square.

As we approached the diner, I noticed the parking lot that horseshoed around the front of the restaurant was filled with limo’s and black cars. It looked impressive—all those fancy cars lined up and parked there. The chauffeurs were inside, engines running, drinking coffee, some of them eating out of takeout boxes, waiting for their next job. My friends told me they park there because there are not may places to park in NYC, and the restaurant lets them hang out between their fares if they buy something to eat.

We made our way past all the limousines, walked in, sat down, got our menus and ordered coffees. I sank into a bit of a funk, feeling sorry for myself, wondering if or when the tide would turn for me in NYC, if I would ever find an audience in the big city. As I sat there brooding, a door swung open in the back and two drag queens in full makeup, high heels, sparkly dresses and big, big hair strutted in, ordered coffee to go, and stood at the counter, talking loudly and laughing in that loud drag queen “look-at-me” tone. They got their coffee, loaded them with sugar and milk, and walked back through the swinging door, styrofoam cup in hand. All that was left of them when the doors swung shut was their perfume.

No one except me even turned their head to look at them. Turns out the staff and customers were used to drag queens runway-walking through the restaurant, but I wasn’t, and I looked at my friends in amazement. They were New Yorkers, they did not react, and I was beginning to feel pretty small town, sitting there in that booth with my mouth open. I laughed and said, “C’mon guys, isn’t this a little surreal? Don’t you think this is just a little amazing?”

My friends smiled, nodded and said, “This place is great. We love it here—its always Drag Queens and Limousines.”

BINGO! The whole trip to NYC was worth it, just for that moment, hearing those words rang out loud and true to me as a song title. Getting humiliated for a single night in Manhattan was turning into a blessing. The next day I drove back home to Boston where I was living at the time, and started the song.

As I worked on it, “Drag Queens in Limousines” became an autobiographical story song about coming of age as a gay kid in the South. It’s more or less my story, but over the years it’s become an outsider’s anthem. The song speaks to the outsider in all of us, though when I wrote it I had no idea that people of all persuasions from all over the world would relate to feeling like an outsider. Often times when I am singing it I look out into the audience and I see folks who look a whole lot like insiders wholeheartedly relating to the outsider in this song, singing every word. I’ve learned that insiders feel like outsiders sometimes, and high school was hard for an awful lot of people, not just the gay kids.

Songs I write often become my teachers. When I am in Texas, I look out in the audience and I see heterosexual he-man cowboys singing along to this tune. In Scotland I’ve seen middle-aged lorry drivers pump their fists to this tune. In Norway, the Vikings love it. All over the world, over and over again, this song has shown me that I have no idea what’s going on inside a person’s heart, that judging people by how they look is a really bad idea. We all feel outside of something sometimes, and sooner or later we all have to make decisions that are scary, knowing someone we love is not going to see it our way. We all need a group to fit into, a tribe, and no one wants to be alone.

For me, I found acceptance as a young person among those who, like me, did not fit into socially acceptable roles. The artists, gays, rebels, geeks—these were the people with whom I found refuge. They took me in when my family tossed me out, and became my patchwork family early on.

I haven’t changed all that much. Today I am still drawn to the people who break rules, who dare to stand out in a crowd. The people who create something out of nothing, take risks and stand bravely outside the group because they have to, who do it their own way because they have integrity.

This song won me my very first music award—Best Country Song/Best Country Artist GLAMA Award, 1999. I think the Gay and Lesbian American Music Awards created the category in honor of my little homemade self-released Drag Queens In Limousines record, it was the first year for a Country Category at that particular award show. Today, 16 years later, the idea of a gay country artist is still out there. I mean, C’mon, in Nashville, it just ain’t done. But guess what? I came here in 2001, got a publishing deal in 2002, and a major label record deal in 2003. I also got to play the Grand Ole Opry on live television, then again many, many times at the Gaylord Opry House, the first openly gay artist to do so. No closet, no hiding, no apologizing, no kidding, no problem. Nashville, The Opry, Cowboys, Vikings, these are my friends. Isn’t life interesting?

Order a copy of Live at Blue Rock HERE.

P.S.: I made a Video for the It Gets Better Project, using Drag Queens In Limousines as a theme. Find out more about the It Gets Better Project.

Behind the Song: Your Sister Cried

(by Fred Eaglesmith) I stared out of the windshield into the rain so light I turned on my dims and somebody flashed me their brights And I reached over and turned the radio way down low Your sister cried all the way home

Lightening crashed and the road shone like a mirror A dog came out of the ditch then he disappeared I remembered a conversation we once had on the phone Your sister cried all the way home

I’ll never know how you got into such a mess

Why do the bridesmaids all have to wear the same dress? Everybody said you looked real good But I think you looked stoned Your sister cried all the way home

This song floored me this first time I heard it, with its brilliant combination of humor and sadness. The dialogue is fantastic; we don’t know who is speaking, or to whom they are talking, but it works perfectly- against all odds. This song is a true rule breaker. It has so much mystery in it!

Who is saying your sister cried all the way home?  Who is the  “your” in your sister? We can’t know, and it doesn’t matter because we are right there with him/her anyway. It could be anyone, a family member a, friend, insert any two people in that car talking to each other and the dialogue words works beautifully. Amazing. Insert yourself into that story, and watch the genius of the writing become become clear. This seemingly simple song is the work of  a master.

Who just got married? Is the bride in trouble, or is it the groom? For that matter, are there two brides? Two grooms? No way to know from the lyrics, but the songs work brilliantly for every scenario you insert. Doesn’t seem possible to wrote a song like this, but Fred Eaglesmith has a way of pulling rabbits out of his hat. Most of us have been to a wedding where we wondered if it was a such a great idea for the couple to be tying the knot, and this song captures that queasy feeling of "I hope I'm wrong about this, but....."

This is brilliant songwriting- a fantastic song. Fred Eaglesmith is a master songwriter and story teller, and if you've not heard his songs before, I encourage you to check him out. His mastery of the craft in undeniable. He has been a mentor to me for over a decade, and I have recorded more of his songs than anyone else's other than my own.

I love this one!

Order a copy of Live at Blue Rock HERE.

Behind the Song: Blood Is Blood

This is a picture of orphaned babies in St. Vincent's from the New Orleans paper, 1962. Such a bizarre thing to call us orphans—our parents were alive and well, just not married to each other, thats all. The truth is that we were not orphans, but we were orphaned. Back then, unmarried women were shamed and often forced by their families into giving their babies away. I am the baby way in the back, the circled baby is my adoptive cousin, adopted at around the same time as me.

Blood Is Blood

(by Mary Gauthier and Crit Harmon)

Clouds are spreading like bruises on the evening sky I walk the streets alone again tonight It starts to rain still I search each passing face Blood is blood and blood don’t wash away Blood is blood and blood don’t wash away

When I was a child they told me she loved me too much She didn’t keep me ‘cause my mama loved me too much She left without a trail she left without a trace But blood is blood and blood don’t wash away Blood is blood and blood don’t wash away

I got a heart that’s ripped I got a soul that’s torn I got a hole in me like I was never born

Blood is thicker than water Blood is bound by God I don’t know who I am I don’t know who I’m not I don’t know my name I can’t find my place

Blood is blood and blood don’t wash away Blood is blood and blood don’t wash away Blood is blood and blood don’t wash away Blood is blood and blood don’t wash away I walk the streets alone again tonight

When I began writing songs I heard a whisper, way in the back of my mind, that someday I’d be called to write a record called The Foundling, and explore in a series of songs what my deepest inner world felt like. Creativity is prescient in that way, it seems to be one step ahead of me at all times, and I’m always just trying to catch up.

My life story was aching to come out of the shadows, and my subconscious was guiding me to it, to begin healing and reconciliation with truth, through my work as a songwriter.

See, I was adopted.

I feared losing my family if I asked my origins. I did not dare ask to ask where I came from. This is not an uncommon fear among adoptees. Many of us decide wait till our adoptive parents are dead to search for our original families, our original identities. The fear of losing our adoptive family, and of appearing ungrateful or disloyal keeps us from searching earlier, from asking hard questions.

But my subconscious was busy trying to help me put the pieces of my fractured past together as best it could. I needed to claim my truth to fully grow up, to be a whole, integrated person, to become truly real—and let go of the weight of not knowing, walk lighter, and be useful to others.

As hard as it is to explain, I deeply believe in this mysterious impulse for the mind to heal itself. Following it has led me down beautifully twisted roads, led me to the songs I sing, and given me this creative life I love so much.

As hard as it is to believe, the truth of own story was not available to me until I wrote the songs on The Foundling. Writing helped me make sense of things that had haunted me from the day I was born.

It took me a decade as a songwriter before I was able to tackle this project. It took me another two years of focused writing to complete the songs. It was by far the hardest work I’ve ever done as an artist—hard emotionally, physically and spiritually. I had to come face to face with some damn scary monsters. I had to make myself sit at my desk for 10 to 12 hours at a time, week after week. I had to research trauma, childhood trauma, and adoption trauma, and come face to face with my own denial of the effects of what had happened. But the inner work I was doing in therapy coincided with the work I was doing as an artist, and The Foundling songs crept up and out, cracking the floorboards of my fear, one at a time. I kept walking, and writing.

The truth of my life and the truth in my work collided.

What I learned was that my relinquishment by my birth mother on the day I was born, my year-long stay at the orphanage on Magazine Street in New Orleans, and my subsequent adoption into a family I never fully attached to were all traumatic events. And trauma needs to be dealt with.

The time was right for me to put the pieces together, as I wrote The Foundling song cycle I began to heal from the inside out—a classic case of art healing the artist. I look back on it now and wonder how I did it, or rather, how it did me. The mystery remains intact, even as I try now to explain.

The song “Blood Is Blood” is the centerpiece of The Founding cycle. It vibrates with the intensity and angst of an adoptee in full-blown identity crisis. Using John Lennon’s Mother as a guide, I let the muse walk me to the edge of my knowing till I faced the abyss, the dropping off place—the place I’d tried to avoid for 46 years.

With the muse guiding me, John Lennon’s courage encouraging me, my work in many years of therapy steering me, and my adoptee friends holding me, I found the strength to face what happened when my mother left me behind forever, on that frightful day, the day I was born.

Seeing it, knowing it, becoming aware of it, owning it—this is where all healing truly starts. And after a while, telling it moves the healing outward.

This song started with a couple of lines and a melody sent to me by my co-writer. Both the title and the repeated riff were in the clip he sent me, and I knew something great was there when I heard it. I just needed to carry it home.

I’d been reading a lot of books on adoption and trauma, and had become saturated in the work of Betty Jean Lifton, who to this day is my favorite writer on the psychology of adoption. BJ was an adoptee herself, a brilliant thinker and writer, and married to Robert J Lifton, Professor of Psychiatry at both Harvard and Yale, and the foremost expert on the psychological effects of war. He is the author of several groundbreaking books on the subject, including The Nazi Doctors.

Robert championed BJ as she did her own groundbreaking work on adoption trauma, and to this day her work on the psychology of adoption remains unsurpassed. She is an adoption reform hero, and I never could have written The Foundling without her. I got to meet her once when she came to a show I played at Joe’s Pub in NYC with the songwriter and fellow adoptee Diana Jones, who was her close friend. It was an honor to hug BJ Lifton—she was a kind, beautiful, brave and brilliant woman.

In addition to her work on adoption, she wrote many other wonderful books, including The King of Children, a biography of Janusz Korzack, the Heroic Polish Jewish Doctor who ran an orphanage during the war, and died with his orphans at the hands of the Nazis at the Treblinka extermination camp.

The song “Blood Is Blood” tells the story of the existential hole left inside of an adoptee after the loss of original family and heritage to the crucible of closed adoption. This loss is traumatic, but it is not yet generally understood. Often times, we adoptees don’t even know the loss/trauma is there because of a split in our psyche’s that shuts us out of entire rooms in our brains. Trauma is fundamental in adoption (especially closed adoptions where adoptees are given no knowledge of their heritage), but we’re just beginning to understand the ramifications of it. Certainly there is a direct link between childhood trauma and addiction as well as a variety of attachment disorders and other struggles, but we are in the infancy of understanding how this all plays out.

“Blood Is Blood” is both my story, and the story of closed adoption, an in-your-face song railing against the pain, secrets and lies of closed adoption. I’d say it’s probably the angriest and most angst-ridden song I’ve ever written.

It amazes me that in America, to this day, adoptees by the millions are denied access to our own original birth certificates. In fact, whenI was writing this song in 2014, only 6 states had opened or partially opened birth records. Think about that! Millions of adopted adults in America are denied access to our own birth certificates. They are sealed documents, locked away from us forever in the name of protecting us from…our identity?

I was told as a child that my mother loved me so much that she gave me away. I was told she “loved me too much to keep me.” A child cannot make sense of this, but even as an adult it makes my head swim. Loved me too much to keep me? I know my parents were trying to tell me that my mother could not care for me for reasons we never got in to, that she was so unselfish and generous that she gave me away so that I might be better cared for. The problem with this (aside from the fact that it’s probably not true) is that it forever equates love with abandonment, and the fear of abandonment has haunted me my entire life.

The antiquated laws that permanently seal birth certificates desperately need to be overturned, but the going is slow and the opposition is well funded. The fight for truth and justice in this arena continues. I hope this song helps, somehow. It sure helped me.

Order a copy of Live at Blue Rock HERE.

We Are Not Alone: Lessons From 2014

Hello and Happy New Year!

In 2014, I released Trouble and Love. I hand-carried my brand new record to 125 towns, playing my new songs in theatres, cafés, coffee shops, bars and on radio shows around the world. I led 9 songwriting workshops in 3 countries, participated in 4 Songwriting with Soldiers Retreats, and played the Grand Ole Opry 4 times. One of the highlights was sharing the lineup at The Opry with 10-year-old Fiddling Carson Peters, pictured here. What a year!

Now that I have been home resting for a few weeks, lessons from my travels are beginning to crystalize. I guess most of these have been building up inside me for years, but this is the first time I’ve sat down and made a lesson list. I look at them as gifts -- as the building blocks of wisdom.

Here are my Top 10 Lessons From 2014:

1. There is no such thing as an ordinary life.
2. Songs are more than songs--they are the great human connectors of our time.
3. Songs transcend all manner of boundaries. They speak a universal language.
4. Songs heal. They are pieces of the soul reaching through eternity, to heal the heart.
5. Resonance is my/our deepest desire.
6. An emotionally-true song resonates to the core, to the central, innermost, or most essential part of us.
7. Emotional truth is not about the facts. It is about being genuine, authentic, and vulnerable.
8. At our center, we are the same. Songs are conduits for compassion and empathy, a road map into a stranger’s heart, which upon inspection - mirrors our own heart.
9. A three-and-a-half minute song can temporarily bring us us to a place that does not yet exist here on earth, a place where we are safe, connected, and of one heart.
10. At their best, songs breathe life into a precious idea: that we are not alone, that other people have felt and feel the way we do, and that all of humanity is made of the same mysterious, electrical, spirit infused stardust. And songs are the people’s instrument of choice- to express the wonder of it all.

Thank you for joining me on my musical journey and for being a part of this community of song. I’m looking forward to seeing you in 2015!

~ Mary Gauthier

Photo: Mary Gauthier with 10-Year Old Fiddling Carson Peters, Backstage at The Grand Ole Opry, 9/13/14

Pre-Order Bettye LaVette's Worthy

Beth Neilsen-Chapman and I are so proud to have co-written the title track, "Worthy," of Bettye LaVette's new studio album, to be released January 26th! Rightly known as one of the finest R&B/blues vocalists of our time, Bettye takes "Worthy" to a whole new level with her soulful and powerful interpretation, singing from the depths of her legendary voice. Hearing Bettye sing "Worthy" has been a truly gratifying experience. If ever there were a voice exactly right for this song, it's hers. What an honor for us, as songwriters, to have this experience.

Produced by Joe Henry, the album also features tracks written by Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, Bob Dylan, John Lennon & Paul McCartney and more.

The track listing for the album is: 1. Unbelievable 2. When I Was a Young Girl 3. Bless Us All 4. Stop 5. Undamned 6. Complicated 7. Where a Life Goes 8. Just Between You Me and the Wall You're a Fool 9. Wait 10. Step Away 11. Worthy

You can pre-order the album now via the links for both formats below.

Deluxe CD-DVD edition: http://hyperurl.co/7ljeiz CD edition: http://hyperurl.co/0caxh7

"Bettye is a voice from the wilderness." - Pete Townshend

"With every song on 'Worthy," Bettye finds the thread that first will unravel it. Then she stitches it all back together until it fits her taut frame and fierce stride, until it bends to meet her; until each song's story is somehow, miraculously, telling her own." - Joe Henry

Rolling Stone Lists Trouble & Love In Top Albums

"These nine songs are well-crafted signposts along the path of a hard break-up. Trouble & Love winds from the stark goodbye of "When a Woman Goes Cold," to struggles with self-esteem in "Worthy" and finally suffering though the hard reality of "How You Learn to Live Alone." When Gauthier concludes "I'm moving on/Through the pain," the weathered reserve of her voice promises no happy endings. This is a songwriter who knows her titular subjects go together like a horse and carriage, and that the trouble doesn't subside when the love dies." Thank you, Rolling Stone, for including Trouble & Love in the Best 40 Country Albums of 2014!

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE

Trouble & Love Available NOW!

We are pleased to announce that Trouble and Love is available on Vinyl NOW. Check it out at the store, HERE. Thank you!

Why Do Songs Matter?

Most of life’s joy comes from love and connection, and most pain comes from love lost. In this, all of us are alike, and songs are a universal language that connects our hearts. Songs do matter, they’re important, and there’s nothing else nothing quite like them. They are our mother tongue. I was recently asked to write about why songs matter. I immediately think of Woody Guthrie’s guitar, with the saying, “This Machine Kills Fascists” hand-written on it. Woody believed singing truth to power is ultimately more persuasive than violence.

I also think about the soldiers I work with in the songwriting workshops, how writing a song about their war experience lifts a heavy weight off of their hearts. At the deepest level, songs can change lives. They help us heal. We can grab a song and say YES! LOOK! This is how I feel. Songs are human emotion dressed in melody and story. Songs express our hopes and dreams, our concerns, our playfulness, and they help us voice our values, anger, and frustrations.

Songs sing our truths, highlight our shared experiences, and help articulate the full range of human feelings. Songs can give us the hope we need, and the faith we are lacking when we are struggling. Songs see us, and we see ourselves in them. They don’t require an education to understand, they transcend language, race, age, sexual preference, nationality and religion, and they are timeless. When we feel a song deeply, we claim it as our own and can play it hundreds of times.

Songs can also be conduits for compassion and empathy, a road map into a stranger’s heart, which upon inspection - mirrors our own heart. Songs help us know each other and they also can plug us into the spiritual and sacred realm of faith, hope, compassion, mercy, charity, forgiveness and humility. Through the alchemy of song, even sad songs create the feeling of connection because we are reassured that we are not alone. Songs are what feelings sound like.

Why do songs matter to you?

"Without music, life would be a mistake." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Standing Ovations & Cold Sweat

Somewhere along the way of my seven-week, five-country, 33-show tour of Europe, I started taking a picture of the audience after my bow, before I leave the stage, during the ovation. Ovations used to terrify me. When they first started happening in my career, fear crawled up my spine like electricity, cold sweat formed on my skin, and the need to run overtook me. I’d bow quickly, mumble a panicked, “Thanks y’all” and exit the stage as fast as I could.

Believe it or not, it was not easy to let in the applause. It frightened me, I wanted to shoo it away. It felt narcissistic, like too much ME, so self-indulgent it was embarrassing. I felt unworthy of it, I felt like a fraud, a fake.

I worked diligently to write songs that emotionally connected, but when they did their job, it unhinged me.

The third wall (that space separating the audience from the performance, traditionally an imaginary wall completing the enclosure of the stage) comes down in an ovation, and for that joyful moment, we are united, songwriter, musicians, listeners, as one.

An artist’s work is to be a conduit for human connection, and at the end of most nights’ work I can feel this oneness, alive in the room, in our hearts. Songs are bigger than songs; music is more than music.

Our lives all contain experiences we struggle to understand and come to terms with: tender wounds, concealed scars, unresolved longings, jagged fault lines. Songs speak in the mother tongue, the language of the human heart.

We are attracted to stories and songs because they help explain the mystery of why we exist and how we turned out the way we have. A great song is a friend, a travelling companion we take with us when we go.

We want to thank the songwriter for this gift, so we stand, and say Bravo! It’s giving back - a reciprocity.

However, I was not prepared for the audiences’ emotions, or my own. It took years to figure out how to accept the loving energy of an ovation with grace, and return it graciously. It eventually occurred to me that it’s not ME that I stand there for - it’s WE, US, all of us mortal, all of us vulnerable. Somewhere along the way it occurred to me that letting love in is in itself an act of love.

Looking at the ovation pictures later, back at the hotel room, it makes me happy to see the smiling faces of the people standing up, sending love, joy-- beautiful LIFE energy. I can look it in the eyes now, and allow it in, send it back out, and embrace the moment without fear.

To reach for the stars, and not for the hand next to mine, is to miss the point of being an artist.

Thank you all for letting me, the kid who did not know how to be loved, grow up in front of you. It's an amazing journey.

No Depression Interviews Mary Gauthier

I was honored to be interviewed by No Depression's Kim Ruehl this month! Read "Songwriters on Songwriting" HERE.

The Power of Truth

Monday night I played a beautiful listening room called Morris Hall in the medieval town of Shrewsbury, England, the town that Charles Darwin was born in. I’m at the beginning of a seven-week tour of the UK and Europe, where I’ll be enjoying the stages of fine theatres in five different countries. It’s hard to believe that I’m the same person who used to be terrified of the stage, mortified…petrified…. The first time I played music on stage in front of an audience, a cold, clammy sweat formed on my forehead and upper lip, then spread down to my hands and fingers. My legs started shaking, and the trembling spread to my arms and the rest of my body. My saliva evaporated, and the inside of my mouth and throat became so dry I could have spit dust. My heart raced like galloping horses, pounding was all I could hear, and I came close to having a panic attack and bolting.

I was 35 years old and beginning to pursue a dream I’d had since I was a teenager, but it was a dream I’d never spoken out loud. I’d held it inside so deep that I forgot it was there, entombed and silent, covered by years of feeling of unworthy. I ignored it, buried it, and set off to do other things. It was a secret dream so dear to me that I dared not speak it—it would break my heart if it didn’t come true, so not acknowledging it was a way of trying to protect myself from disappointment. My secret? I wanted to be a songwriter.

I got sober at 28 years old, and my long buried truth started rising to the surface, asking to be reconsidered.

I carried my tangled, repressed dream onto the stage with me that first night, and it was too heavy to maneuver delicately. I buckled under the weight of it. I forgot the words, chords, and melody. I fought the impulse to run and survived my less than impressive debut, and became determined to get on stage again and do it better, but the terrors followed me, and stage fright choked me every time I got on stage. I was determined to find a way to overcome it, but over and over, I’d take the stage, plug in my guitar, and completely freak out.

It was a cold New England February night when I encountered a lesson in songwriting that helped me begin the process of breaking free from the stage fright horrors I suffered. I’d been playing songs at open mics for a year or so at this point, working hard to develop thicker skin--practicing the song I was going to play, over and over and over again. But once I left my living room for the stage, the terror always returned.

On this particular night, I was one of almost 100 people signed up to play the open mic at a venue outside of Boston called the Old Vienna Coffeehouse. Each songwriter was allowed to play one song. I drew a late number, real late. About two hours in, still waiting for my turn to play, a farmer type fellow took the stage with his guitar. He was much older than most of us, and quite heavy, in overalls and a ragged red checkered shirt buttoned up to his neck, a dilapidated straw hat with a hole in it, and dirty work boots. He was so big that it made his guitar look tiny.

No one cared when he started to play - we were waiting to play our own songs and get out of there. People tried not to groan as he stood on stage with his eyes closed, banged his guitar into the instrument mic during the first verse of his song, and sang in a shaky voice. The audience started talking loudly, ignoring him. But when he got to the words of his chorus, the entire room went silent. His words sliced through our indifference like a razor blade, we forgot our boredom, our impatience, ourselves. His honesty made us drop our judgment of his appearance and his limited musical ability. His song sucked all that scattered energy out of the room, focused us, and sang us to a sacred place. The Truth. He was singing about the loss of his wife, about how he felt now that she was gone.

“I’m gonna walk in the water 'til my hat floats away.”

All eyes were on him. Many were filled with tears. We believed him. He was telling us his truth in the way that made us feel our own. Our hearts opened, our eyes opened. And I learned…yes, finally, I got it, THIS is what my job is. Honest songs tell us what it means to be human, and it doesn’t matter who sings them, they are beautiful. From then on, to this very day, that’s what I try to do when I get on stage. Quit sweating the small stuff. Tell the truth, don’t worry about what people think about me, just be honest, and it’ll all work out.