"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!
Mercy Now Makes Rolling Stone List
I am THRILLED that "Mercy Now" was included on Rolling Stone's list of the 40 Saddest Country Songs Of All Time. I am truly honored. Thank you, Rolling Stone!
You can grab Mercy Now HERE.
Hello from Kansas
Kansas. A state I was once thrown out of! When I was a seventeen-year old kid, I was living in a halfway house in Salina. I got a job driving cars through the carwash in the dead of winter, spraying off ice and salt from the cars, washing them down with a pressure washer, then driving them through the mechanical car wash. I had sticky fingers then, and I grabbed change, 8-track tapes, and in one case, a bottle of pills from a Catholic priest's long, white sedan.
I was arrested for my criminal ways the day before my 18th birthday, and put in the Salina County Jail. I spent my birthday in solitary, my only visitor a sweet little church lady, who came to pray and sing with me. I’ll never forget her kindness. I was so glad to see her it made me cry. Eventually, the police told me that if I left Salina and never came back, they’d let me out and they would drop the charges. That was 35 years ago, and this is my first time back to Salina. I will be performing a benefit for Central Kansas Foundation, “a provider of quality, effective, and innovative substance use disorder prevention and treatment since 1967.” Full circle, right? Glad to make my return for a good cause!
Also in my news, I’ve been playing at The Grand Ole Opry quite a bit lately, and having a great time asking folks to join me on stage. Here’s a video of Another Train at The Opry, with Kathy Mattea, Marty Stuart, and Radney Foster. And, I'll be back at The Opry again on September 13. C'mon by.
I’ll be on the road in the mid-west from September 14-20, sharing the stage with my dear friend Sam Baker. Our tour dates are all on my Tour Page. And for a little taste, you can order the Limited Edition Mary & Sam 7" vinyl with download included! Order it RIGHT HERE. And there are plenty of Europe dates coming up, as I head to the UK, Netherlands, Norway and Italy. Hope to see you out there! Check out my Tour Schedule, I could be headed your way.
Songwriting with Soldiers
I’ve been teaching a lot this year, as well as Songwriting Songs With Soldiers, writing songs with vets returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan. When my friend, SWS founder Darden Smith, asked me to join him, I wondered what would happen if you put 15 soldiers and 4 professional songwriters in a retreat center for 2 1/2 days, and asked them to write songs together, with the sole purpose of getting the veterans to open up and talk about their time in the service, so the songwriters could turn their soldiers stories into songs. Well, I am now a songwriter who has had the great honor of writing with soldiers in that scenario, and what I learned in the process of working with the vets, has helped me to understand what songs are truly for, what songs have the power to do in the world. Working with the soldiers has helped me to understand my job as a songwriter on a much deeper level than any work I’d done in the music business prior.
Here’s what I learned.
Songs build bridges over broken human connections.
They help bring us back in when we are removed, show us that we are not alone. They reassure us that our deepest fears --that no one has ever felt the way I do before, that no one could understand what I am going through, that I am totally and utterly alone -- are not true. We humans are so very much alike on the inside, and songs announce to the world our universal human condition, through their lyrical and melodic expressions of how we feel. They are timeless, weightless, and can’t be seen, but they are the great human connectors, and when you recognize yourself in a song, you know you are not alone.
Songs are what feelings sound like.
I’ve come to see songwriting as the process of a soul trying to heal a heart. It’s that simple, and that mysterious. Songs come from a spiritual place, a place outside of our conscious understanding. They come up from our subconscious, from another world, a beautiful world that artists reach for and point to in all the arts.
Songwriters often speak of songs coming through them, not from them. The great songwriter Harlan Howard (I Fall To Pieces, Busted) used to say, “I don’t write them, I just write them down.” We songwriters are the lightening rods, not the lightening. Sure, we must work hard, and let me tell you, it’s a real job, but in the end, we are students working inside the schoolhouse of a mighty mystery. And what we are doing, our highest contribution, is to help ourselves, and others, heal.
Songwriting is empathy, for self and for others.
Songs are a soul expressing itself. Songs are like white blood cells, coagulants for the heart/soul. They come rushing in when there is a wound. Songs often come to a songwriter to help heal emotional blows so low that their frequencies reverberate in a body and soul for a lifetime.
At their best, Songs are not products for a market place. They are spiritual medicine for a world gone wrong. Humans can get out of sync with each other, out of rhythm. Trauma does this to us in an instant, removes us from our life, and it removes us from each other. Songs can help us return.
Songs make beauty out of the beast.
The soldiers came to the retreat wounded, inside. Removed. Traumatized. I doubt you can live through combat without being traumatized. War is traumatic. Songs are a way past a menacing babble of closed frontiers, into the possibility of mutual comprehension. Deep resonance with each other is possible, when we sing together, and our hearts are one in song. Songs help re-set the balance, in the direction of connection, truth, and freedom.
But by their nature, soldiers don’t like to talk about what they have been through. Silence is a soldier’s code of honor. Soldiers never speak of their world, those who have seen combat do not talk about it. Those who talk about it have not seen combat. The soldiers knew what they signed up for, and coming out the other side of it alive is enough. They don’t want to discuss what they’ve seen, what they’ve done. No need to share the details with civilians. Soldiers don’t want to tell their stories to people who have not been there. Soldiers talk to soldiers, if they talk at all.
So asking a soldier to talk to songwriters is a stretch, but that’s what we were up to at that retreat center, and the goal was to get a song written for every solider there. After the initial hellos and small talk, we got down to business. The first soldiers I spoke to seemed very close, two women vets, who sat close, whispered thoughts into each others ears, held each others arms, gave off the body language of two people who were very committed to their friendship, who had been through a lot together. I asked them if they were battle buddies, and the answer I got became my first song I wrote with soldiers.
“We have each other’s 6.”
“What? What’s that?” I asked.
“You know,” the soldier said, without emotion.
“I got her back. She’s got mine. On the battlefield, 6 o’clock is always behind you, 12 o’clock in front. To have someone’s 6 is to have their back.”
And in wartime, to have someone’s 6 means you’d die for them. When the weight of that hit me, I knew I was entering another world now, a world I knew nothing about. I got my first glimpse into Soldier’s world, a world where people die for each other. This is what soldiers do, it is their duty, commonplace, not astonishing. In order to survive, soldiers must be willing to die for one another. And part of their deep bond is the survivor’s guilt, the aching memories of those they’ve lost, they carry that weight everywhere they go.
Through the healing mystery of song, we were able to tap into their stories, the ones we were told, and the ones we were not told. We managed to get a song written for every soldier, all 15 of them. As we played them their songs, the soldiers faces opened up, their eyes lit up, their hearts opened up. They sang with us, we cried together, we laughed together, we saw each other’s hearts. We connected. And in this connection, with the songs recorded for them to take with them and keep forever, I think we were able, through song, to bring a few soldiers a little closer to home.
[audio m4a="http://www.marygauthier.com/MG2012/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/I-Got-Your-6.m4a"][/audio]
I Got Your 6 by Mary Gauthier, Meghan Counihan, Britney Pfad
6 clock’s always behind you 6 o’clock on the battlefield 6 o’clock is black as gun smoke At 6 o’clock our deal is sealed
No need to talk or testify Just keep your story tucked inside No a savior on a crucifix Look in my eyes I got your 6
6 o’clock the world falls silent 6 o’clock the guilt remains 6 o’clock the breath goes sour At 6 o’clock I’ll hold your pain
No need to talk or testify Just keep your story tucked inside No a savior on a crucifix Look in my eyes I got your 6 At 6 o’clock I will defend you At 6 o’clock just call my name At 6 o’clock I’d die for you And I know you’d do the same
6 o’clock’s always behind you 6 o’clock on a battlefield 6 o’clock is black as gun smoke At 6 o’clock our deal is sealed
@2014 All rights reserved.
I Got your 6
can also be heard
on SoundCloud
Video from The Grand Old Opry, Another Train LIVE
LIVE, from Nashville, Tennessee on a very good night. Here it is, the Grand Old Opry video with Randy Foster, Kathy Mattea, and Marty Stuart, as well as the fantastic Opry Band!
Grand Ole Night at the Grand Ole Opry
I played The Grand Ole Opry. Yes indeed, I sure did. It was a thrill, and honour, and an amazing emotional ride into the stratosphere. I started with "Mercy Now," and the amazing Opry House Band played and sang with me. Then we kicked into "Another Train" from my new record, with Radney Foster, Kathy Mattea and Marty Stuart joining me on stage. We all hit a lick, became one in song, the genie came out of the bottle, and magic happened. The audience felt it, and when the song ended, they stood up out of their seats and went a little nuts. I looked up and out at the standing ovation and all I could do was shake my head, hug my friends, and thank the heavens that I managed to live long enough to see this happen. On a lot of levels, it was dreamlike.Thanks goodness there’s pictures, 'cause it actually feels like a dream. A HUGE thank you to Marty Stuart, whose generosity and kindness made this opportunity possible. Sometimes, life is just a whole lot of fun!
Thanks for the Reviews
Pre-Order Trouble and Love
I'm thrilled to be able to announce the Pre-Order of my new CD, Trouble and Love. ORDER HERE
Mary Gauthier on Rock and Roll Stories with host Tom Waldman
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!
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.
Review by The Morton Report
Mary Gauthier, Live at Blue Rock. If a knockout emotional punch is what you're looking for, start right here. Mary Gauthier, straight out of Louisana, has been decking listeners for a decade with the kind of songs that can sometimes be so strong it takes a heavyweight to go the distance with her. This is her first live album, and it's the kind of stunner that can only come from someone who's absolutely ready to turn on the heat with a sackful of the very best songs from a stellar catalogue. And Gauthier has that in spades. What she really is is a short story writer who can telegraph entire lives in the matter of a few verses and intriguing chords, then deliver them with the kind of voice capable of tearing our insides in two. There is a simple devastation at the woman's core, no doubt charged by a hard childhood that almost took her all the way down. Finding music, after opening a Cajun restaurant in Boston, opened a door to salvation that the singer stepped through and never looked back. Mary Gauthier's background included characters of the highest and lowest order, and most of them walk through songs like "Our Lady of the Shooting Stars," "Your Sister Cried" and "Drag Queens in Limousines" with their heads held high and their eyes down low. These are serious people, and the person who created them is the most serious of all. She may not be a household name—yet—but Ms. Gauthier is well on her way to musical majesty. Hearing how she paints a room in Wimberley, Texas in haunting colors this night is to discover just how majestic she can be. - By Bill Bentley, Columnist See article HERE.
Americana Gazette reviews "Live At Blue Rock"
American Songwriter: 4 out of 5 stars
American Songwriter gives Live At The Blue Rock 4 out of 5 stars...
This may seem like a counter-intuitive thing to say, but it’s good for Mary Gauthier’s audience that she has real limitations as a singer. Her awareness that her vocal instrument isn’t the most supple one in the world has compelled her to cultivate a rich palette of unconventional vocal shadings, textures and tones, which is part of what makes her such a gripping storyteller.
Despite the fact that Live At Blue Rock contains songs that have already appeared on five of Gauthier’s six studio albums, these renditions feel very different than those she laid down in the studio. This time around, the Louisiana-born, Nashville-based singer-songwriter had people right there in the room with her – the venue is an artists’ ranch in Wimberley, Texas – and their presence makes a palpable difference. You can tell they were on the receiving end of a fiercely focused performance.
Gauthier rejects mainstream entertainment values, the showy mastery, perkiness and polish that aim at providing musical diversion and courting mass popularity. Hers is a confrontational art, especially in a live setting. She directs attention to the unsettling side of contemporary American society, not only by making executed murderers, unrepentant alcoholics and troubled teenage adoptees her lead characters, but by telling their stories in such strenuous, committed fashion.
There’s a penetrating potency to Gauthier’s delivery of these songs, as though she’s daring somebody to challenge her on whether or not the people she chooses to sing about are worthy of attention, and whether she’s really telling the truth about the desperation of their outsider existences. Such a visceral style of performance isn’t typically thought of in terms of virtuosity, but that’s a quality her storytelling often possesses all the same.
Gauthier seems the least invested in introspection about romantic relationships – which is many a modern songwriters’ bread and butter – and when she does go there in her writing, it doesn’t tend to pack quite the punch of her other narrative-unfurling and scene-setting. There are also three Fred Eaglesmith covers in this set, but none of those performances top what she does with her own songs.
Gauthier speaks her lyrics just as often as she sings them, and she uses the contrast between those vocalizations to convey a lot. As she picks up steam during the surging, impressionistic number “Blood Is Blood,” she eventually reaches a point where she intones the song’s title – underscoring how taken-for-granted that three-word statement is – before moaning “Blood don’t wash away” with a high, held-out note, a leap that captures the peculiar pain of being cut off from any and all blood relations. She’s marked off where cozy normalcy ends and isolating idiosyncrasy begins, and the latter standpoint is amplified by Tania Elizabeth’s searingly surreal contributions on fiddle. During the waltz-time number “Karle Faye,” Gauthier sings tenderly of the addict-turned-death row inmate and reserves all her bite for the mercilessness of capital punishment. She performs her snapshot of the alcoholic experience, “I Drink,” with filigreed finger-picking, and sets up the most telling line in the bridge with a pause that plays the speaker’s stubbornness to the hilt; after saying “I don’t,” she waits a full six beats before hissing “give a damn.”
Gauthier’s wry sense of humor is most clearly displayed during “Drag Queens In Limousines” a woozy, explicitly autobiographical waltz that pokes fun at her utter inability to fit in growing up. Musically, she gets the most playful during the album’s funky-folkie final track, “Wheel Inside The Wheel.” She spends the verses colorfully cataloging characters in an otherworldly Mardi Gras scene, but at the chorus she turns into a knowing, nimble blueswoman, moaning here, syncopating there and sounding intensely cool throughout.
Gauthier puts on a show, all right, but it’s not the sort of entertainment that casts the audience in a passive role. Of those who show up – and a devoted bunch they are – she demands engagement, and rewards it. - American Songwriter: By Jewly Hight
Ciara
I just got this wonderful photo from an 8-year-old fan named Ciara, sporting her new Mercy Now T-Shirt, Dog Tag and Necklace and "Live From Blue Rock" CD that she got in time for the last night of Hannukah. Thank you, Ciara, for your smile. It circled right back to me.
CD Baby Success Story
Thank you CD Baby! I am a proud client of CD Baby, have been for over 12 years.
They have been great to work with, they treat musicians with respect and they always pay on time. Whats not to love? Thanks for featuring me as one of your success stories.
(the rest of the story is HERE)
Back on The Road, Again
Hey ya'll, I am on the road again, but not before breaking bread in Nashville with some of my favorite people in the world. Beth Nielson Chapman, John Prine, Sara Seskind and Bonnie Raitt. Sure is great living in music city....Inspirational to be sitting with so many great artists in a room.
I am touring in the deep South right now. We played in Knoxville, Birmingham Alabama and Jackson Mississippi this week, and this weekend we will be in New Orleans and Lafayette. I am touring with Scott Nolan and Joanna Miller from Winnipeg, Manitoba, and we're have a great time out here. Joanna is a fantastic drummer, and Scott's playing piano and guitar, it's a rocking little combo and I hope to keep it going for a while. Here's a nice stage shot from Knoxville, at The Square Room.
In other news, we've added digital downloads to my web site, so all of my CD's can be purchased digitally here, LOOK OUT I TUNES! I figured we'd offer it as a convenience, since so many of us listen to music in a digital format it just makes sense for me to put downloads up next to the CD's.
Well, American Thanksgiving is nearly here,I've been asked for the recipe for the garlic bread we used to serve at my old restaurant, The Dixie Kitchen. So when I get off the road on Monday, I will dig it up and post it here. Maybe a couple other ones too, we had a way with certain things that people still ask about. Lemme see what I've got in my files, I'll pop some great ones up soon. I found this shot, online, of the front of the place...Sure has been a long time! I used to live there, 12 hours a day most days. Gotta say, I prefer the musical road I am travelling now. But the Dixie Kitchen was a great run, ten years of cooking full on Cajun Cuisine for the good folks of Boston. Glad to have done it, glad it is done!
UK/Europe Tour Wraps Up
It was a wonderful three weeks out there on the road, I am tired but didn't want to see it end. From the start, it was one for the ages. Kicked it off with my first time in Denmark, and wrapped it up in Haarlem, the beautiful Dutch city that Harlem, NY, was named after.
Standout's on this tour include the two lovely breakfast's in the sweet hotel in Aarhus, Denmark, performing at the maximum security psychiatric hospital's chapel in Trondheim Norway, playing the Townes Van Zandt tribute festival in Figino Sreanza, Italy and of course the FOOD in Italy.
The wonderful spirit of Ben Glover, who accompanied me and made the adventure so much more fun by joining me on the journey, got a little pale at the end.
I am home for two weeks, and then off again, more travel ahead. As always!
Performing at Italy's Townes Van Zandt Tribute
Someone captured my performance with their iphone video on Oct. 21, 2012. I was performing with Fulvio A.T. Renzi & Michele Gazich, playing "Last Of The Hobo Kings" at the Townes Van Zandt Tribute Figino Serenza, in Como Italy. What a night it was.
I am so happy to have this little homemade document of the evening I was blessed to play with these two amazing Italian violinists!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=u6ULnN0YmJg
Here's the video of Townes' song "Nothin'" that we performed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJZB1P0i-3g