Trouble and Love

Hello Everyone! I’ve officially kicked off the preview tour for my new release on Proper Records UK, and am in Europe right now doing interviews, shows, and teaching a songwriting workshop in Glasgow.

I started off in London, Camden and am now in Scotland where I got to perform in Paisley Abby—what a place to sing! It’s 850 years old, and has somehow survived that many years of human turmoil. I could not stop thinking about the thousands of WWI and WWII widows and children on their knees in that ancient Kirk. And those that came before them. 850 years of spook on top of spook on top of spook. I felt them in the resonance of the echoes at the end of each song. Thanks, Glasgow, for having me and to Paul Brady for letting me share the stage.

Pre-Order The New CD

My new record is called Trouble and Love, and will be in stores June 10. I’m offering signed pre-orders HERE, and they will be mailed in early June, before the record hits the streets. I co-produced this one myself with the brilliant engineer Patrick Granado, and I am very proud of this collection of songs. It's the best work I have done so far, I think.

I’m working with smart folks all over the world to make this record a success, and we’re having fun in the process. I will be posting a Lyric video of each of the 8 songs every Monday, so look for an email with a link each week starting April 21!

The Letter Series

CD Baby asked me to write the first letter for their “Letter Series,” which is based on Rainer Maria Rilke’s brilliant Letters To A Young Poet. I was honored to do so. Here’s what I came up with: Mary Gauthier’s Letter To A Young Songwriter.

April 19 is Record Store Day

I have teamed up with my friend Sam Baker for record store day, and we are splitting a 7-inch single, with very limited pressing. Sam’s song is on one side, mine on the other. My song is called “When A Woman Goes Cold,” and it’s the first cut off my new record.

You can pick one up at your local record store, or at CD Baby.com on April 19.^. But you need a real record player to play it! Visit the Record Store Day website to find a store near you.

Big Shows in L.A. & Zip Code Update

I’ll be performing at The Grammy Museum in Los Angeles on April 21. Hurry up and get tickets on these if you want to go, because it will sell out.

 Songwriting Workshop Update

My first Nashville Performing Songwriter Creative Workshop took place in February.

A huge thank you to the 20 students who came and shared themselves and their songs in my inaugural workshop. We had a jam-packed weekend as Lydia Hutchinson and I tried to balance showing off some of the people and places that make Nashville great, with deep intense song work. We kicked off the workshop with a pre Mardi Gras gathering to break the ice on Thursday Night. I made some Jambalaya and Jalapeno Cornbread, Lydia brought a Kings Cake and Mardi Gras beads, and we all spent a little time together before the workshop got started the following morning.

We started the first day bright and early working on students’ songs. The brilliant Don Henry helped me out in the afternoon, and then we ended the night at The Bluebird watching the great Don Schlitz weave his magic. Day two was spent working on songs and Gretchen Peters joined us as a guest speaker that afternoon before we all headed to dinner at Monell’s, one of my favorite Nashville family-style restaurants.

Sunday we worked even harder on songs and I tried to give the class as many tools for their writing tool kit as I had time to offer. We wrapped it up right before an ice storm with thunder sleet made the roads impassable—so some of our group ended up staying extra days and using it as a writing retreat.

My partnership with Performing Songwriter’s event guru Lydia Hutchinson will continue with another workshop in a couple of weeks. It’s sold out, but be sure to SIGN UP HERE if you want to be the first to know about any new upcoming events.

Check out the photo gallery from our workshop.

Thanks and look forward to seeing you on the road!

—Mary

February 2014 Songwriting Workshop

Photos from the Mary's "Performing Songwriter Creative Workshop" in Nashville — February, 2014.

Trouble and Love Banner Slide

Mary Gauthier on Rock and Roll Stories with host Tom Waldman

Mary Gauthier visits KCLS TV. for a session on Rock and Roll Stories with host Tom Waldman. She talks with Tom about the five songs that most influenced her as a songwriter.

How You Learn To Live Alone will be on the Nashville ABC Season 2 Soundtrack

“How You Learn To Live Alone' by Mary and Gretchen Peters sung by Jonathan Jackson (“Avery” on the ABC-TV show “Nashville”) will appear on the soundtrack for Season 2 of the “Nashville” cast soundtrack. The album was produced by Buddy Miller and will be released on December 10. To read more about The Music of Nashville: Original Soundtrack Season 2, Volume 1 and see the track listing, click here.

Wally Lamb and Louisiana Book Festival

I’m headed to Baton Rouge in two weeks to present a writing workshop on Nov. 1 at The Louisiana Book Festival. On Nov. 2 Wally Lamb will introduce me to the audience and we’ll get to work together for the first time. I am a huge fan of his, and I’m counting the days till this one! My workshop is on Friday Nov. 1 from 9-4, on on Saturday Nov. 2 I perform on the music stage from 11:14-12:00, and my conversation with Wally is 2:15-3:00.

Here are a couple of previews from Deep South Magazine: The New Orleans Songwriter That Inspired Wally Lamb and In The Car With Mary Gauthier

If you're in Baton Rouge on November 1-2, I'd love to see you!

Views, News and The Other Side of Fear

“Our fears are like dragons guarding our most precious treasures.”—Rainer Maria Rilke

VIEWS

The cold woke me up this morning. As in either I turn on the heater, or I need another blanket on this bed kind of cold. Fall is here in Nashville, and the chill in my house was the first of the season. The seasons are changing, and I’m changing too. I’ve taken some big steps into independence, self-reliance, and self-determination. It’s been scary, stepping up into career self management, letting go of the record company I was with, foregoing a producer and going into the studio and co-producing my own new record with an engineer (albeit a brilliant engineer!) —it’s a re-thinking, and re-doing of the way I’ve run my business for the last decade.

On the other side of the fear, as I walk through it, is a re-birth of my passion and love of my work. Can’t help but notice how the things we fear often are the very things we must walk through to grow. So often on the other side of fears sit gifts, unopened. I’m unwrapping some of those gifts days. They are as the poet Rilke described, “most precious treasures.” I have grown stronger in my step, stronger in my voice, stronger in my vision, stronger on stage solo.

NEWS

My new record is almost done. More details on this soon, but I brought in plenty trusted friends to help me, as record producers do! Duane Eddy came in to play this week, and wow, he was fantastic. The man who invented twang, playing one of my songs, it took my breath away. I love him dearly, and admire him deeply.

The Vinyl Version of LIVE at Blue Rock is available on my web site, signed.  It’s a two record set, pressed on super high quality thick vinyl, and it sounds terrific. I also have a few copies left of Mercy Now and Between Daylight and Dark vinyl records from my days as a Lost Highway artist and when those are gone, there will be no more made. So they are collectable now, I guess.

Mercy Now T-Shirts, in black or gray, are available from size small to XXL. Super soft, unisex, and comfortable. 100% Cotton

We got a new design on the Mercy Pick Necklace, and you can order them with some beads or a regular version without any. Here’s what the beaded ones look like:

I’ll be out on the road again soon, this time I’ll be on the West coast of the US. Be sure to check out the Tour Dates and hope to see you out there. As always, endless thanks for your support!

—Mary

"Nashville" and A New Record

Hello from the artist’s lounge in Ricky Skaggs Studio outside of Nashville, where I am in the process of wrapping up a new record. This will be my 7th release of new songs, and we’re doing it differently than I did the other ones. I’m co-producing this time, with the amazing Patrick Granado, and we’ve recorded to tape, with Viktor Krauss, Lynn Williams, and Guthrie Trapp as the core band. No click, cans, charts or ProTools. We’re cutting songs I’ve worked on for the last 18 months directly to tape with microphones from the ’50s. We will be wrapping up this project in a day or two. Then I have to make some business decisions: Do I go to labels with it, or put it out myself? I don’t have that answer just yet. First things first, and I’ll worry about that after we’re done. Either way, a new record is forthcoming.

In the news department, I am thrilled to report that I have placed a song on the ABC TV series Nashville. It will be sung this Wednesday Sept. 25 on the season opener by the wonderful Jonathan Jackson who plays the character Avery on the show. The song is called “How You Learn To Live Alone,” and I wrote it with my dear friend Gretchen Peters. So be sure to tune in! (Here’s me and handsome Jonathan at the Bluebird.)

I’ve come out with a Vinyl Version of LIVE at Blue Rock. It’s a two record set, pressed on the fine thick vinyl, and it sounds terrific. They are available now on my web site, signed. I have a few copies of Mercy Now and Between Daylight and Dark vinyl records from my days at Lost Highway as well, and when those are gone, there will be no more made. So they are collectable now, I guess.

I’m hitting the road again on Wednesday, headed east. Come on out to a show and say hello!

Greetings from Lyons

Greetings from Lyons Colorado, where I am in the middle of a fine week of teaching at the Song School and preparing to play the Rocky Mountain Folks Festival. The sky has offered up plenty color and beautiful Van Gogh swirls this week. Quite the show!

In the news department, I’ve come out with a Vinyl Version of LIVE at Blue Rock. It’s a two record set, pressed on the fine thick vinyl, and it sounds terrific. They are available now on my web site, signed. I have a few copies of Mercy Now and Between Daylight and Dark vinyl records as well, and when those are gone, there will be no more made. So they are collectable now, I guess.

We lost a true great this month, Cowboy Jack Clement. I met Cowboy Jack Clement when I moved to Nashville in 2001—I went looking for him. He invited me into his house, The Cowboy Arms & Recording Spa, and played me the movie that was made about his life, Shakespeare Was a Big George Jones Fan: Cowboy Jack Clement's Home Movies. We stayed up very late watching it, and he laughed out loud at all the funny parts and I couldn't believe I was sitting with him in his office in the middle of the night like we were old friends. It was surreal and as fine a way to start a friendship as I'd ever known. He played me some unreleased Louis Armstrong songs that he'd recorded, and we listened to some old Johnny Cash stuff, from the Sun years. What a welcome to Nashville that was, what a wonderful memory it will always be. Cowboy was the most original, eccentric, hysterical, visionary clown I've ever met. His contributions to the American songbook are immeasurable, and I doubt there'd be an Americana Genre without him. I'll be forever grateful that there ever was a Cowboy Jack … as unlikely a human being as God ever made. We had him for 82 years, and for that we can only say thank you, thank you.

Hope to see a lot of you during my upcoming travels. Be sure to check out the tour schedule, and as always thank you so much for all of your support. I'm forever grateful.

You Don’t Know Me: Rediscovering Eddy Arnold

In Age Of Tributes To Country Badboys, Album Memorializes Smooth Singing Eddy Arnold

Eddy Arnold in the early 1950s. He grew up the son of a West Tennessee sharecropper, helping on the farm and performing at Pinson High School events.  It’s claimed he often arrived for  those gigs by mule with a guitar strapped to his back.

Shannon Pollard hasn’t changed a thing in his grandfather’s office since the death of Eddy Arnold five years ago. Stacks of CDs and Arnold’s lifetime achievement Grammy share the space with blueprints and real estate maps. But along with the physical artifacts come many good memories.

“He would sit here and play his own records,” Pollard says. “I’d sit on the couch, and he’d sit in his chair and a lot of times he might fall asleep actually, which was kind of funny. And then he’d wake up and be like, ‘Oh, that sounded really good!’”

Although Pollard and his grandfather shared a love for music, they didn’t always see eye to eye. As when Pollard was 19, and played some recordings of his first band for his “Daddy Ed.”

“He did listen to the whole thing,” Pollard says, “and listened attentively, and then he looked at me and he said, ‘Y’all need to cut your hair and learn how to play something that somebody wants to listen to.’ That wasn’t what we wanted to hear, but he was right!”

Eddy Arnold in RCA Studio B during the mid-1960s. Many of his hits were recorded in the legendary space, and several songs on the tribute album were, as well.

From Tennessee Plowboy to Countrypolitan Superstar

Beginning his career in the 1940s, Eddy Arnold was the king of the hillbilly crooners, and one of the first country artists to regularly crossover to the pop charts. In a career that stretched across seven decades, he racked up over 140 chart hits. His smooth velvety vocals helped build the Nashville Sound, while his successful real estate dealings built the Music City. By the 1960s, he had marked a trail that many mainstream country artists seeking crossover success still follow today, even if they’ve never heard an Eddy Arnold record.

Many country legends have become heroes in the Americana field where country often mixes with a punk rock attitude – an outlook that has pulled artists like the Louvin Brothers and Wanda Jackson from the dustbins of seeming obscurity. For many of these artists, a hellraising reputation, whether on records or in real life, is what first attracts attention, but in Eddy Arnold’s case, being a successful business and family man is hardly the stuff of outlaw legends.

“I’ve always been intrigued by the fact that his music was a little bit overlooked in the last few years,” Pollard says, “just because of not having that bad boy cache that the Hank Williams or the Johnny Cashes of country music had. But I felt like there was some really great material that was being overlooked.”

Punks with a Mission – Shannon Pollard and Cheetah Chrome at the Opry. Chrome chose to perform ‘What Is Life Without Love,’ which was a number one hit for Arnold in 1946.  Credit: Pete Mroz

That’s How Much I Love You

With a plan in mind, Pollard approached another of his musical heroes, Cheetah Chrome, former guitarist for the seminal 1970s punk rock band The Dead Boys. “One of the first things that became clear to me was how much how much his grandfather meant to him,” Chrome says. “We talked about doing a tribute record and I was like this is a project I could enjoy because we’re talking about some good music here, and it’s a labor of love.”

Although Chrome knew who Arnold was, he wasn’t that familiar with his music. He began a crash course of listening and soon re-discovered his own familial connection to the songs of Eddy Arnold. “The first thing that hit me was like wow, I remember this stuff,” Chrome says. “My mom used to play this stuff. My mom used to sing along to this. I used to hear this on the radio when I was a kid.”

“His voice was just so good,” Chrome says. “The records were just so well recorded, and the players were so good. When you’re a kid you don’t appreciate that.”

Mary Gauthier’s recording of ‘You Don’t Know Me’ is only the latest in a string of covers of the Eddy Arnold hit. Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and Diana Krall all took a turn with it; Ray Charles had a  number one hit with the song. Credit: Anna O’Connor

Eddy’s Songs

Whether the austere hillbilly swing of his early recordings or the lush pop sound of his 1960s hits, the unifying thread of all of Eddy Arnold’s music was a great artist putting his personal stamp on great songs. Using that idea as inspiration, You Don’t Know Me: Rediscovering Eddy Arnold features Americana and indie rock artists putting their personal stamp on classic songs.

Some, like folk singer Mary Gauthier, followed that theme by delivering an intensely personal take, as Gauthier does on her cover of the title track. While others, like nouveau hillbilly musician Chris Scruggs, drew inspiration from Arnold’s originals and mixed in some rock’n’roll as Scruggs does on his driving, but still swinging version of “Just a Little Lovin’ (Will Go a Long Way.” Others took their songs in dramatically different directions from the originals as with southern rockers The Bluefields’ cover of “That’s How Much I Love You” or Bobby Bare, Jr’s take on “Make the World Go Away.”

“Every song grew legs in the studio,” Chrome says in regards to the varied approaches to Arnold’s music on the album. A diversity that Pollard hopes will drive people’s curiosity about the original versions.

“Hopefully, what a successful tribute record,” Pollard says, “or rediscovery, or whatever you want to call it does is you listen to this contemporary version and you go, ‘Oh, I really do want to go back and pick up the original record.’”

As for what his grandfather’s might have thought of the album, Pollard is sure he would have had own opinions and wouldn’t have been shy about expressing them. “There have been a few moments where I thought he would’ve absolutely killed me for some of this,” Pollard says. “But it’s all very respectful and the arrangements are fresh and cool, so given that, yeah, artistically he may have taken me to task, but he would have gotten the whole mission. If it took this direction to get there, then so be it.”

Proof that one can make great records that people want to hear, even without a haircut.

From the Carolinas to Copenhagen

Hello All! I’m writing from my hotel room in Belfast, Northern Ireland, having completed nearly two months of continuous tour dates from Copenhagen to the Carolinas, Stockholm to Shreveport—I’ve been moving fast out here. But my Irish tour is still ahead of me, and I’m off for a few days, sleeping late and moving slow today.

There’s constant motion on these long tours, with a typical day starting 15 minutes before the hotel breakfast ends. We run down and grab a quick bite, head back to the to the room, shower, pack, drag all the gear and suitcases out to the car, drive three or four hours, drag all the stuff out of the car into the next hotel, have about an hour to sit in the room, then get back into the car for soundcheck, toss down a quick dinner, play the show … wake up the next morning and repeat. Whew!

It’s got a rhythm and flow to it, though, and it’s as good a way as any to spend my days. I do love the structure and predictability of the routine even if the travel wears me down. But off days build me back up, and I can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing.

Here are a few highlights of my past month and what I’ve been up to:

Paste Magazine did an interview about my about my recent adventures, called Catching up with Mary Gauthier. Be sure and check it out, and thanks to everyone at Paste for your continued support!

I played live on the air in Austin, at KUTX with Scott and Jo, and my old friend John Aielli conducting the interview. Here’s the stream of us playing Can’t Find the Way from that show.

We kicked off the European tour in Sweden on April 17, playing with the talented Ben Glover. Denmark was next, and here’s a beautiful sunset on the canal in a town called Brons. We played to a sold out house there before heading to Copenhagan for another sold-out show at the Pumpehuset. It was a great way to end the Danish run before heading off to Ireland.

I was asked to carry the Americana Music Association Banner on my 17-city tour of Europe. It is an honor for me to do so, and a joy for me to let audiences know a little more about the genre in which I perform, and to give them an introduction to the Americana Music Association, the non-profit trade group whose mission is to advocate for the authentic voice of American Roots music around the world.  Here’s a shot from the stage in Copenhagen.

I hope everyone is doing well and that I get to see you somewhere along the road. And as always, thank you so much for your support—it means more than I can say.

—Mary