Mary Gauthier Interview
MARY GAUTHIER - AMERICANA SINGER-SONGWRITER AND A WOMAN WHO, THOUGH STARTING THE MUSIC BUSINESS LATER THAN MOST SHE HAS QUICKLY MADE UP FOR LOST TIME.
Born in New Orleans but raised in Baton Rouge, Mary Gauthier has done things the hard way, starting out late. Earning a recording deal with Lost Highway (her first major release), where her latest and fourth album Mercy Nowı gains a release. This coming after she took till she was 35 to write her first song, over coming drug and drink addictions, survived a childhood where she tried to keep her adopted parents afloat. Her life had been a mixed up mess from an early age, for she was adopted at around a year old and found life quite a long hard road from then on.
Music being her saviour, it is now seven years since she took off the apron she wore while
running her own restaurant Dixie Kitchen (and title of her debut album) where in 1997, at
the time of her release of Drag Queens In Limousines (Munich) she sold her share in the
catering business and took to the road. Not as she had done as a young, wild and reckless 17
year-old but as a determined woman with a mission. That of becoming an accomplished
songwriter, performer and recording artist of the old school, where lyrics are spare,
economical and tell a real life story. Often vying towards the blues, just like her heroes
Guy Clark, who she has been favourably compared - and another Texan to whom everything was
the blues, the late Townes Van Zandt.
Appearing at this yearıs Cambridge BBC2 Folk Festival the plucky Gauthier took on the crowd on both stages and won. Impressing one and all with her songs telling of social issues, how we all could do with a little mercy, drinking, environmental issues (Sugar Cane) and staying in cheap motels (Camelot Motel).
"Mary, things seem to be going better now."
It is going in the right direction, it is coming together.
"Thanks largely to Gurf Morlix,who rates you most highly."
Yes, he is an amazing producer (and musician - playing a multitude of instruments of a number of albums, Gauthierıs included) isnıt he. I trust him which is the great thing you could do for a recording artist. As a writer you can tend to go where your heart and gut leads you and can sometimes a little unconventional in your writing - in writing the likes of Christmas In Paradise and on Mercy Now there is the song Wheel Inside The Wheel where it focuses on a New Orleans funeral march.
"It seems like a lot of your songs have been percolating for a good long while and slow in evolving."
Yeah, I donıt know where they come from. Waiting, that is my job, hanging in there till it
all falls into place. I donıt rush it, because you know a forced song when you hear one. I
donıt want to write that kind of song, she adds.
"Guy Clark to whom you have been compared with regards style of writing, he never rushes it."
Guy and I have a lot in common, we are craftsmen, craftswomen but not to a fault. If the craft takes dominance over the art, you end in Nashville, she laughs. You end up with these crafty, little clever things that donıt have a soul. Mercy Now finds you pleading for people to listen more, have more tolerance and a time to reflect of what is happening around them. You know what, the simple songs can be so complicated. I remember an interview with Johnny Cash and great songwriters who are so often asked what is your advice and he said, write simple. It is the most complicated thing to write simple. It is so simple (the song) and I thought I meant one thing when I wrote it, and then people had their own idea of what it was about.
Then, I handed it over to a film maker who made a video out of it and when I saw what she thought it meant I started to think about in other terms. It is one of those songs where my thoughts on what it meant keeps changing, a couple of months from now it might mean something else to me.
I thought when I wrote it I was asking for mercy from the sky above, God, whatever. Show us a little mercy here and then on contemplation I realised that mercy doesnıt come from without but, within. It is a very interesting thing, mercy itself. I am sure philosophers themselves have spent many years trying to understand what the hell it is.There is a lot of forgiveness, an element of realising that we are all terribly flawed, and for one to hold that flaw against them is arrogance.