If great art depends on the reflection of the artist’s soul in their work, then the act of songwriting can be a daunting, at times risky and intimate experience. A painter, a poet or a writer can leave such reflections on the canvas or the printed page. However, the songwriter often finds her work’s full realization in performance before a live audience. Once a song is captured in the studio, in the hands of singer-songwriter, Mary Gauthier the art of the song continues to grow.
After a series of consistently engaging albums dating back to 1997, Gauthier has released her first live album titled Live at Blue Rock. The results are electrifying. The songs may be familiar to those who have followed her studio recordings; but, to the uninitiated, Live at Blue Rock is a good place to begin.
This album has been a long time coming. According to Gauthier in a recent phone interview there are complications involved with live records. “They are a hard sale these days. Because of technology, so many people are able to access good live performances.” She said. “But, we did this one at Blue Rock(a studio near Austin, Texas) and everybody said it sounded so good, we should release it.” She added, “We mostly decided to put it out because of the requests from so many people.”
Her sometimes fictional songs are inhabited with characters on their way to redemption as they stagger through the haunting alienation found on the outer edges of society. But the stories and people are reflected through an empathetic lyrical lens that allows us to identify and feel their sorrow and their hope. These are sometimes dark characters lost and alone, told in the first person like “The Last of the Hobo Kings,” which symbolizes the passing of an era gone by in the image of hobos and vagabonds. “Karla Faye Tucker” tells the story of the first woman to be executed by the state of Texas since the Civil War. Songs like these demonstrate Gauthier’s unique ability to get inside the skin of her characters to tell their stories, much like a good novelist. Like most of her work there is a clear-eyed look into the warmth that may be present in the discarded stories and people too often overlooked today.
But according to Gauthier, her characters come from a specific place in her imagination. “They have a southern Gothic sensibility. It’s permeated my work. Not just south of the Mason Dixon Line, but deep south, Gulf south.” She added, “It’s Louisiana. It’s the smell of the Gulf air. Its the dark, heavy Mississippi crazy; it’s that twistedness in the characters that makes for great art.”
The truth inherent in Gauthier’s work resides in the fact that she has also lived the life she sings about. At 15, she ran away from the Louisiana home of her adopted family. She struggled throughout her life with her sexual identity and issues related to her family of origin. The intervening years led her into a maze of substance abuse and a life on the streets that has since colored all of her songs. Through it all she went to college as a philosophy major at Louisiana State University before she ended up at Cambridge School of Culinary Arts. She spent a decade running her own Cajun restaurant in Boston. She found her way to sobriety in 1990. The clarity she found in living a drug and alcohol free life led her to music. She wrote her first song when she was 35 and she hasn’t stopped since. Her first album was named after her Boston restaurant, Dixie Kitchen.
Near the end of Live at Blue Rock, she recalls her beginnings on the song that became the title of her second album, “Drag Queens In Limousines”
“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
And Kimmy sold pot and read Kerouac and Hemingway.”
Moved in with my friends in the city, in a bad neighborhood
Charles was a dancer, he loved the ballet
And Kimmy sold pot and read Kerouac and Hemingway.”
But, it’s her conclusion that rings with the truth of a spiritual quest lined with pain and triumph:
“Sometimes you got do
What you gotta do
And hope that the people you love
Will catch up with you”
What you gotta do
And hope that the people you love
Will catch up with you”
“Drag queens in limousines
Nuns in blue jeans
Dreamers with big dreams
All took me in”
Nuns in blue jeans
Dreamers with big dreams
All took me in”
During the course of our interview it became clear that the fuel which drives her music and her life crystallized in her now classic song, “Mercy Now.” As our conversation turned toward what is probably her best known and most covered song, she took things to a deeper level , “That song just came through me. It has hit a nerve in that it seems like it’s what people have been waiting to hear.” She continued, “We connect through our vulnerability. We connect at our point of weakness not strength. That’s what ‘Mercy Now,’ is about.” She continued, “There’s an ever deepening sense of that. It’s not in successes that we meet each other, but in our failures. It comes from sorrows. There is a real beauty in that.”
“We all could use a little mercy now
I know we don’t deserve it
But we need it anyhow
We hang in the balance
Dangle ‘tween hell and hallowed ground
Every single one of us could use some mercy now”
I know we don’t deserve it
But we need it anyhow
We hang in the balance
Dangle ‘tween hell and hallowed ground
Every single one of us could use some mercy now”
It is a comfort song. It reveals her compassionate core at the heart of her lyrics. “The mercy is that it could be me; the one whose building collapses or that person with cancer. I could have that diagnosis.” She continued, “There’s an empathy that comes from being in recovery.” She said. “I feel like God gave me those lines like ‘between hell and hallowed ground.” I just took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and before I even thought about it, those words came out.” She continued,”They aren’t Mary Gauthier. It’s like the song came through a lightning bolt.”
Although Gauthier’s story is about loss, it’s also about redemption. She found it in the art of songwriting. If home is not always a place but a sense of discovery, then art and the act of songwriting has become her home. “When I started writing, after I got sober, it felt like coming home to me. I had been saturated in alcohol, heroin, Xanax and pain pills, this gumbo mixture of madness.” She said. “I don’t think I’d be able to stay sober if I didn’t write songs.” Then she concluded with an insight that captures the essence of Live at Blue Rock, “Songs are what feelings sound like. It’s a magic connection with feelings and the audience.” This is the best any artist in any medium can offer. Mary Gauthier has reflected that connection throughout her career, but never as clearly as on this new album.
Mary Gauthier will be appearing on November 7th at Pappy & Harriet’s in PioneerTown, on November 8th at AMSD in San Diego and at The Mint in Los Angeles on November 9th. Go to her webpage for more information.
