NPR's 50 Best Albums of 2018
Rifles & Rosary Beads Named One of NPR’s 50 Best Albums of 2018!
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE FULL LIST
“Few singer-songwriters have mined their own autobiographies with a stronger belief in the unifying potential of human affliction than Mary Gauthier, but she arrived at her most compelling expressions of empathy to date by fixating intently on others' stories. Rifles & Rosary Beads, her eighth proper studio album, was the fruit of songwriting retreats with American military veterans and their spouses and partners; with the participants' permission, what began as a therapeutic exercise led to a riveting collection of testimonies, recollections and vignettes. Gauthier is a tough, almost surly singer who makes her emotional commitment to the material felt, and her choice of producers, and multi-instrumentalist Neilson Hubbard, framed it with bristly folk-rock gravity. The greatest source of the 11 songs' power is how they capture contradictions in excruciating, unshakable detail: the feelings of fierce camaraderie beneath heroic displays of stoicism; the mixture of pride and anguish that service leaves in its wake; the trauma that alienates vets and their loved ones even after they're reunited beneath the same roofs. That degree of attentiveness was an especially needed salve during a year when differences in experience and perspective were treated as unbridgeable, hostility-stoking barriers.”
—Jewly Hight
Saved By A Song: TEDxLincolnSquare
"Trauma goes deeper than words. But music can get into those places."
TEDxLincolnSquare has posted my TED Talk "Saved By A Song." I spoke in New York City recently about the process of using songs and songwriting to articulate difficult stories to create resonance and human connection. It was not easy to get it all said in the time allowed, but I think I came pretty close.
A huge thanks to Tricia Brouk for being an amazing TED Director
and Talk Leader!
Click HERE to Watch
Americana Album of the Year Nomination
Wow! What an honor to be nominated for Album of the Year by
The Americana Music Association!
Neilson Hubbard produced Rifles & Rosary Beads beautifully, and brought in the perfect band for these songs. Michele Gazich came in with his violin from Italy and we had an amazing week recording in the little recording studio Neilson built in my house. The tracking came together fast, and I knew right away that the sound he got was right for these songs.
I am deeply grateful to the Americana membership for nominating this project.
MAJOR CONGRATS to all the Veteran co-writers and to the wives.
WE DID THIS TOGETHER!
Thank you to SongwritingWith:Soldiers for letting me be a part of your visionary work with Veterans.
Good luck, love and deep respect to all the Record of the Year nominees:
Brandi Carlile, Margo Price and Jason Isbell.
All Award Winners will be announced September 12th at the Americana Honors & Awards Show at The Ryman Auditorium in Nashville.
Working For The Greater Good = Joy
I was honored to perform on the Grand Ole Opry at The Ryman Saturday, November 28th - the night of the Opry's 90th Birthday.
I brought some friends with me, including Combat Veteran Josh Geartz, who fought in The Iraq War and co-wrote "Still On The Ride" with me, and Singer-Songwriter James House, both of whom I met through Songwriting With Soldiers (SW:S).
Pictured L to R: Iraq War Combat Veteran Rob Spohr, Iraq War Combat Veteran Josh Geartz, Veteran Airlift Command Volunteer Pilot Joe Bartosiak, SW:S Songwriter Mary Gauthier, SW:S Songwriter James House, Violin Player Kate Lee.
I was honored to perform on the Grand Ole Opry at The Ryman Saturday, November 28th - the night of the Opry's 90th Birthday.
I brought some friends with me, including Combat Veteran Josh Geartz, who fought in The Iraq War and co-wrote "Still On The Ride" with me, and Singer-Songwriter James House, both of whom I met through Songwriting With Soldiers (SW:S).
The fiddle player Kate Lee, the Opry Band and the Opry Singers also joined us onstage. It quickly became a night for the ages.
As I sang the first lines of "Still On The Ride" the room became electrically charged. I could feel people emotionally reacting to the words.
Looking back now, who the hell knows Where the soul of a dead soldier goes
Josh sat stage right and began to play harmonica, and as James and Kate and I sang the words of the first chorus, I felt an even deeper energetic tightening.
I shouldn't be here, you shouldn't be gone But it's not up to me who dies and who carries on I sit in my room, and I close my eyes Me and my guardian angel are still on the ride
The sold out Ryman had converged. Audience, musicians, employees and ushers had become one, mesmerized by the power of Josh's story. I glanced down at the front row, and men were fighting back tears.
James and Kate and I finished singing the second chorus and then KABOOM, the drums and bass came crashing in loud for the solo, raising the hair on the back of my neck and nearly lifting the ceiling off the Ryman.
It was glorious music, expressing the will to live, the urgency of our need to believe, uplifting, defiant, hopeful in the face of trauma and loss.
I looked over at Josh, wireless mic in his hands, harmonica between his lips, and he looked over and smiled at me under his hat. It was a moment I will never forget.
As the last note of the song rang out, the audience jumped to their feet, many with tears on their cheeks. They clapped and cheered, the house lights came on and off, and the clapping and cheering got louder. The band looked at Josh, put their instruments down, stood up and started clapping. I did the same.
It was a classic Opry moment, a sustained standing ovation, a deep acknowledgement of a single Veteran's service, a thank you to all Veterans who serve, and a 90th Birthday Celebration of the greatest long-running musical institution America has ever known.
I snuck out to the gift shop after the first show to try and buy a show poster for Josh, and was immediately swarmed by people who'd seen the performance, many of them Vietnam Veterans. They wanted to thank Josh, thank the Opry, thank Songwriting With Soldiers, and hug me.
I mumbled a few words about gift shop and a poster and suddenly a dozen people were handing me their newly purchased show posters, for me to give to Josh. I accepted one, thanked the person who gave it to me, took some pictures with folks, and made my way backstage to prepare for the second show.
It happened again at the second show - ovation, tears and emotional connection! What a night!
A little taste of heaven on earth: a sense of purpose bigger than us all. Josh kept saying how much he felt like his story could help other Veterans and how much he felt a part of something bigger than himself. That's how we all felt.
Teamwork made this event possible. Songwriting With Soldiers brought us together. Veterans Airlift Command provided free air transportation, flying Josh and fellow SW:S Combat Veteran Rob Spohr to Nashville from New York pro bono, and the Opry opened their arms and graciously worked with us to make the night possible.
In a time when almost all the news on TV is bad, when we are on the verge of new wars, new terror attacks and new threats of all kinds of violence, I am grateful for the power of song to open hearts, and for the power of love to bring us together.
In the end, it's simple really. Working with others for the greater good = Joy.
Click HERE to listen to "Still On The Ride," co-written by Mary Gauthier and Josh Geartz.
Learning How To Listen: November 2015
The soldier’s songs have become a part of me. As I sing them from town to town, each of them resonates a powerful truth: Songs change lives.
Last week I spent a morning with Josh Gertz and his service dog Coda at the Songwriting With Soldiers Retreat in Rennselaerville, NY. We wrote a song called “Still On The Ride,” which portrays Joshua’s story of loss, perseverance, courage and survival, and his belief in a guardian angel that saved his life. Over the weekend, I also wrote a song with Kevin Reeder and Rudyard Edik, making for a total of three new songs in a day and a half. A privilege, and thrill, and a sacred trust. A huge thank you to the vets for sharing your stories with us. Click HERE to listen to "Still On The Ride."
The soldier’s songs have become a part of me. As I sing them from town to town, each of them resonates a powerful truth: Songs change lives.
An emotionally honest song has the power to wormhole its way deep into the heart. And then, like water on a seed, the heart changes the mind. Souls are reshaped, enlarged, by a simple song. Something new is born. Connections are made. Bridges are built.
At first glance the work seems simple: sit with a veteran, ask them about themselves, and write a song based on what they say. Use their words as the foundation. Listen for a title, encourage them to keep talking until I can discern the emotional bottom line of their story, play a couple of chords that sound like that emotion, come up with verses and a chorus, and then make it rhyme.
But after doing that, something complex happens, and I don’t fully understand it. Something extraordinary enters the room, something bigger than both of us. The song is born in that hallowed place.
It happens fast, and it happens almost in a trance. I barely remember writing these songs. Writing with a veteran is like walking an emotional labyrinth. An exchange takes place in the entanglement. There is soul-to-soul contact.
As I sit and listen to the stories they carry, my chest swells with love. Bearing witness to someone’s story is profound. Truly listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. Listening compels the real story to come out. There’s nothing else quite like this humbling process. Maybe this is why I love this work so much, because it is teaching me how to truly listen.
Magic at The Cloister of St. Giovanni: June 2015
Michele Gazich recently accompanied me on my two-week tour in Italy and Ireland, playing violin and viola on the songs I have written for soldiers as well as some of my recent songs from Trouble & Love.
Hello Again, and Welcome New Friends! “When I put my violin on my body, through it I feel all the stories, all the pains of the Italians, the Americans, the Gypsies, the Jews and many others, all the people that suffered in wars. The songs of the soldiers are a prayer for peace.”
Michele Gazich recently accompanied me on my two-week tour in Italy and Ireland, playing violin and viola on the songs I have written for soldiers as well as some of my recent songs from Trouble & Love. Michele’s viola and violin connected the stories of the soldiers I’ve co-written songs with to the stories of all the soldiers from all the wars – World War I, World War II, and all of the great conflicts throughout history – something I never could have imagined or planned.
During our show in Brescia, Michele’s hometown, we joyfully stood in front of a packed house of several hundred people that beautiful night in late May at The Cloister of St. Giovanni (built in 1505), with an overflow crowd listening outside in the garden.
The Cloister, still beautifully alive with fantastic acoustics and natural reverb (not bad for a 500 year old lady), was full of excitement, heart energy, and love. We played with our hands on fire, with the spirit moving through us, and another world almost within reach. I sang like I have never sung before, feeling each word deeply, then singing the essence of each word and listening as the natural room reverb held the notes longer than I ever could.
Michele’s viola emphasized phrases, added new layers of meaning to the language of the songs, and brought the audience to their feet with the emotion of his playing.
It was one of those nights I may have dared to imagine in my wildest dreams, years ago, when I allowed myself to be brave in my vision. Manifesting our wildest dreams is not about awards or honors, sales or numbers. Manifesting our dreams is about listening to our heart’s desires that necessarily involve love, community, and connection.
My heart’s desire is to connect people with my songs. On this night, the songs – especially the ones I wrote with the veterans - connected us and reminded us we are one.
We want to especially thank all the folks who came out to support us in Europe. Thank you for selling out our shows, and for experiencing this magic with us. We appreciate you so much.
Rifles & Rosary Beads
I was in a SW:S writing session a few weeks ago when Joe Costello, a young soldier, looked me in the eye and said, “I don’t know how to explain how I feel except to say my soul hurts.” Then he looked down, and there was a long silence.
Hello again! Most of you know I’ve had the great privilege of writing songs with soldiers through the incredible organization Songwriting With Soldiers (SW:S).
I want to share one of these new songs with you.
I was in a SW:S writing session a few weeks ago when Joe Costello, a young soldier, looked me in the eye and said, “I don’t know how to explain how I feel except to say my soul hurts.” Then he looked down, and there was a long silence.
I waited, I hesitated, I let the silence linger. I tried to take in the bigness of what he had just told me. After a few moments, I asked him how he deals with that feeling, how other soldiers deal with that.
He said everyone has their own way of dealing, but in Iraq there were a lot of white knuckles holding rifles tightly, and plenty of other fingers rolling rosary beads in circles, over and over again.
As he spoke, I heard the title “Rifles and Rosary Beads.” So I suggested we write a song with that title. We worked on it for about 2 hours, and I sang the title line and the chorus over and over, adding new words and adjusting words each time. I asked him to tell me when I got the words right, and when I got them wrong. As we worked, his detached posture changed, his demeanor shifted. He became engaged.
His head would nod when I got it right, I’d ask him more questions, he’d supply the answers and I’d work on making them rhyme, and sing them back to him. His head nodded faster as the song developed, his eyes lit up, and his lips (that had been firmly set in a straight line the entire weekend) began to ease into a small, shy smile around the corners of his mouth. When I missed what he was trying to say he’d correct me, and this would open him up to tell me new stories, new feelings. We found a flow and rode it. We reached a point where what he was saying was overwhelming to both of us, and I put down my guitar and broke down. I looked up and he was crying too.
As the emotion moved though us and we regained composure, I wrote down a summary of his words and sang them back to him, and we kept going.
His song had taken shape, and when we were done, I asked him to close his eyes, and I played the whole song to him, softly. Though the song was intense, and the story a difficult one, we both stood up and instinctively high fived after the last note rang out.
We knew we’d nailed it, and we did the touchdown dance together. It was a beautiful, joyful moment. The relief on his face at the end of the writing session was as if time had reversed itself inside his brain. His demeanor had softened. He looked younger and more alive. I asked him how his soul was feeling now.
He had tears in his eyes, and said he wanted to hug me. I closed my computer, put down my guitar, opened my arms and we embraced. He gave me an enormous hug, the kind a child would give. The song had broken though his walls of separation, the song gave him a small ray of hope. The song provided something he could hold on to, a small rung on the ladder to help him pull himself up with.
LISTEN TO SONG – CLICK HERE
Why must anyone “soldier on” when we now know that is a destructive and dangerous route, especially for soldiers themselves? We all need each other, and songs are a wonderful way of creating human connection. Songs can bring us out of isolation and into the beauty and mystery of being alive on a planet full of other living souls.
What I have learned is that the dominant narrative of a wounded person’s life can be rewritten into to a narrative of healing by a song. This happens not by trying to write a healing song, but by simply writing the truth, by singing the emotional truth.
While the experience is cathartic, it’s also transcendent in that the song is a move beyond the self toward others. The song serves as a catalyst for transformation, healing by engaging a re-description of self. It moves the frozen story along, thaws it, and releases some of the infection. It opens up channels of resonance with others who have felt the same way, or who have the ability to relate with empathy and compassion.
Songs have the power to change lives. As it turns out, every soldier’s song is a prayer for peace.
I can’t wait to make a record of these incredible songs!