Interview with Mary Gauthier

by Marianne Ebertowski

"She just went out, but she's going to be back any minute," the receptionist informs me politely. It's a sunny, but rather chilly Saturday morning in March 2001. I'm standing in the lounge of a hotel in Utrecht, Holland. In the dining room I spot Kristi Rose, Robbie Fulks, and a Cash Brother. It's the day of the second edition of the Blue Highways Festival and the place is taken over by the crème de la crème of Americana music. I have been sent down here by Flemish magazine Rootstown to interview Louisiana-born singer/ songwriter Mary Gauthier. After giving her album Dragqueens In Limousines a rave review and the maximum of five stars, I was considered the right person for the job. I've been looking forward to this interview, though I don't know what to expect. The album has touched me deeply as an exceptionally intense, honest and emotional piece of work by an artist who has seemingly traveled to hell and back and is prepared to make the listener share this experience without holding back. This could be rather heavy. Before I have time to worry about the state of mind of my unknown interviewee I hear the receptionist cry out cheerfully: "There she is!"
I turn around just in time to see a pair of worn-out cowboy boots carrying a rather tough looking woman up the steps who is wearing a very loud shirt and a black leather biker vest. She rushes into the lounge waving a plastic shopping bag in one hand and a Dutch treacle waffle in the other. "What's on that?" she asks after the receptionist has properly introduced us. "Syrup," is my expert analysis. Mary Gauthier gives her waffle an appreciative look, shifts it to her left hand, wipes her right hand on her trousers, and shakes mine.
We sit down in the restaurant and order a cup of coffee. The author of Dragqueens In Limousines turns out to be anything but a gloomy, sad person who sits in the corner and cries. Well, I guess she does that as well. But Mary has a sharp, sometimes relentless sense of humor, a disarming smile, a contagious chuckle and that sort of mischievous twinkle in her almost unreal pale blue eyes that keeps you on your guard. She can work herself into a rather amusing, loud macho stance and then get very quiet and gentle the next moment. It's that combination of strength and vulnerability that endears her to people. And she talks with that heartbreaking deep-Southern drawl Tom Petty wrote his best song about. I could listen to her for hours just reciting the phonebook. Even the Dutch one. But there's no time for that now.
I congratulate her with her album and ask her about the autobiographical character of her songs. "They're more autobiographical than not," she admits. A lot of Mary's biography is revealed in the title song "Dragqueens In Limousines." She grew up in Thibodoux, Louisiana. When I inquire about her Cajun background, she tells me her parents are both from Italian origin and then adds quickly, "By the way, I've been adopted." She makes it sound like an insignificant footnote to her life. It will take her some time to realize that it isn't. I don't realize that she doesn't.

Mary doesn't feel at ease in the strict catholic surrounding of home and school, steals the family car as soon as she's got a driver's license, and hits the road. She hangs out in the gay bars and strip joints of Baton Rouge, gets looked after by bartenders and drag queens, develops serious booze and drug problems, and has to celebrate her seventeenth birthday in detox. The day after she is delivered back home, she does it all over again. This time her escape route leads straight to prison. She's not even eighteen. It takes her quite a while to sort out her life. Mary puts herself through the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts and opens the first Cajun restaurant in Boston. She manages to stay away from drugs and booze and becomes a successful businesswoman. But something's missing in her life. She has always fooled around with a guitar and one of her big dreams as a kid was to play the Newport Folk Festival. In 2001 that dream becomes reality. Mary has put out her first "home made" CD, appropriately named Dixie Kitchen, gotten good reviews from the local press, a nomination for 'Best Boston Folk Act,' and things take off for her. She decides to sell the restaurant and puts her money where her mouth and heart is: she records Dragqueens In Limousines.

Now she's here in Europe where she has been received as a cult hero by the press and in a few hours she will make her European stage debut.

"Its my 39th birthday tomorrow," she announces cheerfully, "and I'm gonna celebrate it on stage. Like Johnny Cash. Someone told me Johnny Cash celebrated his birthday on the same stage." There's a big kid-in-a-candy-store-smile when she points out all the celebrities to me who start crowding the room: "Look, there's Jimmie Dale and over there's Buddy Miller."

Mary Gauthier is only a third-year professional singer-songwriter, but her more experienced colleagues seem to already have taken her in as a respected member of the family. After having been an outsider most of her life, she still seems overwhelmed by the fact that people actually appreciate and like her.

"They're all my friends," she says with a mixture of pride and surprise on her face. It seems as if she's somehow feeling at home for the first time.

A few hours later, Mary Gauthier is on stage accompanied by a trio of musicians that includes Dragqueens In Limousines producer Crit Harmon. Mary's not a terrific singer, let alone guitar player, but her performance is mesmerizing. She catches the audience completely off guard with her sheer personality, spars a few rounds with them, then knocks them out cold with a stunning interpretation of "Goddamn HIV" from Dixie Kitchen. You can hear a pin drop. Even that part of the male audience, which in the beginning looked rather uncomfortable with her "unusual" body language, is won over. I overhear someone saying that this was so much the highlight of the night that he'd prefer to leave because he wouldn't want to have it ruined by anyone else. And Buddy Miller, Robbie Fulks, Slaid Cleaves, and others still haven't appeared. Mary celebrates her 39th birthday backstage, which is a lot more cheerful location than a few places she celebrated earlier ones.

***
"When I arrived in Holland yesterday I suddenly realized that I feel a lot safer here than I feel over there now." 'Over there' is the States. It's three weeks after 9/11. Mary Gauthier is on stage of the Ancienne Belgique Club in Brussels. She looks shaken and exhausted, and this is only the first show of a long tour through Belgium, Holland, the UK, and Scandinavia. It's the first time I heard her play "Good-bye," now the key song on "Filth & Fire." She introduces it with, "I was born in the St.Vincent's Hospital in New Orleans. My mother just left me there. I don't know who she was. I got adopted nine months later. So I figured 'good-bye' could have been my family name." After a few chords she sings, "I'm a bastard child from New Orleans/to a woman I've never seen/ I don't know if she ever held me/ all I know is that she let go of me." It's a brutally honest song. Gauthier struggles through the song like a veteran prize fighter who knows how to take a beating and keep standing and has done so many times. The effect on the audience is devastating. There's a moment where I just want her to stop. I suddenly remember how casually she had mentioned her adoption only half a year ago. Now that casual remark has become a powerful, poignant song.

Gauthier ends the show with Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" as a tribute to the events of September 11. When she walks off stage, she looks pale and shattered. There's not a hint of the big smile I remember so well from Utrecht. Blue Highways suddenly seems ages ago and it is. We talk about September 11 for a bit and what it means for all of us, share our favorite Twin Tower escape stories and the most horrifying memories of that miserable day. Then she has to pack up and leave. I have been filled with a terrible sadness and regret since11th September and this evening hasn't made it any better.

***

In January 2002 Mary Gauthier is back in Brussels supporting Seattle's Walkabouts. It's the big stage of the Ancienne Belgique this time and it's the first time I see her wrestle with a passive and mainly indifferent audience. No matter how she maneuvers, the audience just doesn't fall for her. Then, somehow out of the blue, it happens.

"Highway one to Thibodoux, to Sunshine bridge, spicy gumbo/I dream of the Southern rain and my mama's laughter/ I been gone too long/it's tearing me apart / Mama Louisiana is calling me home." Suddenly Mary looks very small on the huge stage, but her voice has grown infinitely large. She's pleading with the audience, with everything that has kept her down so long, and hearts start to crumble. Finally, the spell is broken. When she does Pop Staples' "Maybe It's The Last Time" as an a cappella encore, her voice has reached such an intensity she probably wouldn't have needed a mic.

"What was that?"

Mary seems to be in a good mood, but still slightly unsettled about the difficult start.

"Were they very young?"

I can't help her there. I've been standing at the entrance throughout her whole show and saw exactly what she saw from the stage: a gray blur. She drops into a seat in her dressing room and opens a diet coke.

"But I got them in the end!"

There's that triumphant smile again and the nod that accompanies a lot of her statements. Mary has a couple of hours to kill during the Walkabouts' show, and we talk a bit about the new album, Filth & Fire. She keeps referring to it as "a hard album" made after a hard year, a year in which a long-term relationship went down the drain and her friendship with former producer and co-writer of many of her songs, Crit Harmon, came to an abrupt end. When I mention that I find "Good-bye" a particularly hard-hitting song, there is no reaction and I don't insist. Mary is tired and decides she wants to go out for a coffee. That turns out to be easier said than done. The place is a labyrinth and somehow we seem to work ourselves deeper and deeper into the basement. When I finally ask in utter despair where all these staircases and doors might lead us, she turns around with a big grin: "The morgue?" I can't think of a nicer person to end up in the morgue with, but am relieved when we finally manage to find the exit and can step out into the streets.

She stops in front of the gay bar next door.

"What's that?"

"Bar for rather sad gay men."
"My kind of bar!"

Before I can tell her there's a really great coffee place just round the corner, she pushes the door open and I follow her in. Everyone in the place seems asleep apart from the bartender whom I know but haven't seen for years. Mary asks whether he does cappuccino and he claims he does. He disappears behind the counter and comes back with the coffee and whipped cream touristy version of what the Italians had in mind when they invented this type of java. I hear a dangerous growl next to me and feel a tug at my sleeve.

"What's that?"

"Uh...they call that cappuccino sometimes over here."

I know that's a crap reason and Mary, who's on a strict diet, is not going to buy it. You shouldn't mess with an ex- bartender, ex-chef and former restaurant owner regarding food and drink issues. A heated argument develops and wakes the punters up who had nodded off in their seats. I try to stay out of it as much as I can, order a coffee for Mary and hang on to the whipped cream brew myself. The bartender comes back with a coffee, still shaking his head. He gives Mary's western shirt a scrutinizing look. Then he looks at me.

"You live in America now?" he asks.

"No. Just her." I point at Mary, who has returned to being her peaceful, collected self and is innocently sipping her coffee.

"Concert's already over?" He waves his hand in the direction of the Ancienne Belgique.

"No. Just the support act and she's sitting right next to me."

The bartender's jaw drops in awe. I don't know whether he's more impressed with the fact that Mary's just been on stage or that I've done an apparent runner with the support act. At least he stops sulking. The show's over and the boys in the bar go back to sleep. We finish our coffee. Then it's back to work for Mary with three weeks Germany ahead and 13 Walkabouts on a bus.

***

It's a beautiful day in May. Filth & Fire was released in Europe a few weeks ago and has been treated mainly to enthusiastic reviews. In spite of the long weeks of touring, Mary looks in great shape. That no-whipped-cream-coffee-diet has worked wonders. She also looks exhausted. Another intense interview is clearly the last thing she needs right now, but she drags herself bravely down the stairs to the basement lounge of the hotel.

"I'm tired!" A rather tall body slumps into a leather seat, ends up in almost horizontal position and doesn't seem to have the slightest intention to move for the next couple of hours. Great! With another journalist already waiting upstairs, there's no time for reanimation or small talk. I just have to drop the big one on Mary immediately.

"I think Filth And Fire is a beautiful and strong album, not only your best, but the best I heard this year and, actually, for quite some time. It also terrified me. The question that entered my mind after listening to it was where do you go from here, as a singer-songwriter and as a human being?"

There's much shoulder shrugging and hand wringing going on in the seat next to me, followed by a chuckle.

"We never know, do we? That's the mystery of it all! Maybe I'll do Simon & Garfunkel cover tunes next."

Right. That's what you get for dumping a perfectly pompous question on a tired artist. I try to throw her my meanest piss-off-look, but catch myself grinning and mumbling, "Sure, 'Bridge Over Troubled Water'" under my breath. I trust Mary's too nice a person to blow up a meticulously prepared interview with tiredness-induced corny jokes, plus she owes me one for carrying her plastic shopping bag through the good city of Utrecht. She doesn't disappoint me. With a lot of effort she works herself into a more vertical position. I try again.

"Many singer/songwriters write 'personal songs', but I don't know anyone who goes as far as you do."

"They're scared!"

"Yeah, but it almost seems as if you've got no mercy on yourself."

"No mercy on myself? No, I think my life is short and I'm not gonna be here for very long. Even if I'm gonna be here for eighty years, that ain't very long. What I leave behind, my body of work, is the most important and I take it very seriously. I'm not having babies. The work I leave behind is my gift. I'm not unmerciful on myself, I'm hard on my heart. That matters. It's not like Ryan Adams would say, 'a joke'. It's not a joke to me. It's my gift. You gotta look after your gifts."

"Writing and recording these songs is one thing, but going up there and performing them every night is something completely different. What does that to you, what do you think it does to an audience?"

"What I try to do is to make them understand my reality, break the glass down and bring them into my world for a little while and let them be a part of it and share with them what I see when I look at the world and then they can go back to their lives and have experienced what that was like. Maybe provide some relief for them for a little while. To have compassion for other people for a little while is a relief on yourself."

"When I saw you play last October, you did "Good-bye." I remember that song and the way you introduced it hit me very hard. There was a moment when I actually thought, 'Why is she doing this to herself?'"

(Silence) "That's just what happened, you know. (Silence) It's ... just what happened. There are people with far worse life stories...far worse...it's just a story that happened...it's not like Shelby Lynne or somebody who's got that incredible traumatic past. To exploit it on stage would be...bizarre...I was just adopted...ended up with a song about leaving...trying to process why do I always leave...so I imagine I traced it all back to the very beginning... I was set in motion immediately, but I think on another level we all are. It's not just adopted people. We're all just dumped into this world without our choosing and we have to deal with it and so we choose to be in motion as the best way to deal with it. That works for me and I'm certainly not the first songwriter to come up with this...I think we all do, Guy, Townes, Steve Earle, everybody. Willie Nelson, it's all the same...Billy Joe Shaver... We deal with life by motion."

"I would say "Good-bye" is the key song of your album, maybe of your life. Would you agree with that?"

(Silence): "Yeah ... yeah ... yeah."

"When we talked for the first time about a year ago, you mentioned the fact that you were adopted only as a side issue. On Dixie Kitchen and Dragqueens In Limousines the circumstances of your birth don't seem to play much of a role. Was that because you weren't aware of the impact it had on your life or didn't you quite feel up to wrestling with that in public?"

"I think I wasn't aware. I also think that my songwriting had to catch up with my life. My first record is really just very derivative of other people who I think are just great. So the first song sounds like this guy and the second like someone else. You know, I 'm doing the best I can without knowing what I sound like yet. I think it's very common for people's first record to be derivative. Even Dylan's first record he was doing Woody. But the second record, I had to catch up with all of these years where I wasn't a writer. I didn't start writing until I was thirty-four, thirty-five, something like that. So I've got all these years and I had to write them really fast. So I ended up with the drag queens song, which is a coming-of-age song that summed up a lot of things for me. And with this record, I feel like the writing is current, I'm not writing about the past any more except the "Good-bye" song, which is the past but which is also connecting the present with the past. So maybe the best thing I could say to answer the question would be that because I got started so late as a writer, it's been a strange journey."

"Would you say that the "Good-bye" song was the hardest song you've written so far?"

"To write? No, it was easy. No, I don't mean it was easy; it took a couple of weeks, but compared to some songs, that's nothing. Oh, you mean emotionally? (Silence) I don't know whether emotionally I have got it yet. It comes in bits and pieces. Sometimes when I sing it, I don't even feel it. Sometimes I do feel it. Sometimes I feel it on different levels. These words that I write take on different meanings on different times of the day and different days of my life. They're not fixed, they're still coming to life for me."

"Let's move on to other songs on Filth And Fire. The introductory song "Walk Through The Fire" immediately sets the rather grim tone of the album. What struck me most about that song were the lines "if there's something missing/or you're hiding from/someone you longed to have known/then you will walk through the fire alone." Do you feel like you're hiding from someone?"

"Yeah!"

"Who from?"

"I don't know. It's a mystery. I think that we all know that there's something or somebody missing. Maybe we don't all know that. Maybe there are people who don't think that way or feel that way, but I do and I don't know who it is or what that is. Is it a lover? Is it my mother? Is it God? What is it? What's missing? I struggled with the words. Is it someone or something? Maybe it should be a different word altogether. But I would think, if it's God, it's still someone, so... For people who know that there's something missing, maybe there is a denial about it because we don't know how to find it or what it is, so you try to pretend that everything is okay, there's nothing missing, but every now and then the curtains open and you can feel it. It's like an existential crisis or something. It just takes you away, and nobody can help you there, that's why you walk through the fire alone. It's a personal journey, no matter how much you are loved. That is terrifying. Maybe that's why it is a terrifying record; it's a terrifying idea."

"The second song on your album, "Sugar Cane," is also a personal song, but in a more general sense. It's about growing up in Louisiana and the harsh living circumstances in that part of the country. You've written another song about Louisiana, "Mama Louisiana" on Dixie Kitchen. Is there still something like an emotional tie to your hometown, home country, to the place and people of your childhood? Is there something like "home" for you in that sense of the word?"

"No, no, there ain't anywhere. That's a story song from personal experience. It's like a protest song. The sugar industry is hurting people. My grandmother died of lung cancer in a hospital overlooking the sugar cane fields. The irony of that isn't lost for me. There's harm being done to people, and sometimes it's the people I love. As a songwriter I feel an obligation to write about things that matter to me. You know, that song's not gonna make me a hero in Louisiana."

"I don't think so."

"No, I don't think so, anymore that the Grapes Of Wrath made Steinbeck a hero in California. The truth is not something people want to look at. It's the hardest thing to tell. That's the difference between an artist and an entertainer. An entertainer wouldn't dare to tell the truth. Not that an artist cannot be an entertainer. Of course we are entertainers. But people whose sole purpose it is to entertain, they don't go to these places. Why would they? It's too risky."

"Have you already performed this song in Louisiana?"

"No, but I will. Hey, if I can play "Carla Faye" in Texas, I can play "Sugar Cane" in Louisiana." (laughs)

'My editor finds it 'mighty strange' that you have a big following in the North and East of the country, but not in the South. I could think of many reasons..."

(Laughs) "Where do we start? ... But I'm getting Texas. I'll be touring Texas with Guy Clark, if that doesn't give me Texas credibility..."

"The third song on Filth & Fire is written from a different narrative perspective, about a third person."

"It's not about an individual person. It's inspired by the death of Eddy Shaver, that and finding this songwriter called Malcolm Holcombe. I opened for him somewhere in Nashville and then I read that Lucinda Williams had him open some dates on her tour. I stumbled upon his record in this record store in some godawful place. His writing is so amazing. He doesn't write linear. It's just image, image, image. He's just an incredibly gifted bum. He hasn't got one of his front teeth. He's drunk all the time. He's got hair to down here. His pants are dirty. He's kind of a mess, but he's talented ... Jesus! I was listening to his record, I think it's "A Hundred Miles." And I thought I wanna write something like that. So I started writing images. In the back of my mind I was still grieving about that Shaver tragedy and it just turned out into this song."

"Camelot Hotel" and "Christmas In Paradise" have been part of your live repertoire for quite a while. Does this mean that the more personal songs on Filth And Fire came later or didn't you feel quite confident to perform them in public?"

"As soon as I get a song, I play it. "Walk Through The Fire" was the last song I wrote for this record in the studio."

"So, you write the introduction as the last thing?"

(laughs) "Isn't it weird? I didn't know it was gonna be one of the most powerful songs on the album. What happened was, when it was produced it just multiplied. It got huge. I thought it was gonna be more like "Lady Of The Shooting Stars," more melodic and folky. But when Ian (MacLagan) came in with that Hammond...it just had to go first. It's...(laughs) it's so somber! I really wanted to start on a higher note, but it was impossible. So, it had to go in first."

"I think it works alright. It puts you in the mood, definitely."

(more laughter)

" In my review for Rockzillaworld I called "After You're Gone" a "touching, desolate description of the apparent asymmetry of feelings in an ending of a relationship" which is a sad, but rather common phenomenon. I also called it a classic country song, which "goes to emotional depths the average country song avoids." Why do you think that is, and why are you prepared to take a song where it really hurts?"

"It's my job. If I don't do it, who will?"

"It's a song with country radio potential, but they won't play it."

"They won't play it. They'll never play it. It's just real. It's what happened. It's not something I made up, it happened. It happens all the time. You know, when I sing that line "As soon as I can't/I want to kiss you," there's never a night that goes by where someone in the audience doesn't go 'yes.' (laughs) You know, it's human condition. It's not unique to me. It's too bad, but I think for the artists who wanna be real you have to accept that there is a price."

"Which is?"

"No major label record deal, no airplay on pop radio, much smaller audiences, less money, more difficult working conditions. I think it's worth it. As I said, every time I write and put a song together, and more and more so, I think about what I leave behind. Mortality is something that I don't forget. So why don't I leave something behind then where I feel that I did the best thing I could. Like what Townes left us. He's gonna have more fans in thirty years time than in his entire life. That's what happens when you choose to write like that. It's not tragic. It's beautiful in a way. We're all gonna die anyway, but look what he left us. Your gift, that's your gift, you can choose to receive it or not, but once you do..."

"The Ledge" is almost as hard-hitting as "Good-Bye." It sounds like a process of catharsis."

"I was playing with words a lot. I was trying to talk about how you come to faith. We're not just sheep. I mean, I don't go to church."

"Right, which is exactly the thing I was going to ask you. You frequently use religious imagery and terminology in your songs, but you don't strike me as a religious person. I know you had your fair share of trouble with a religious upbringing. So what does it mean to you when you refer to ' the Lord' or 'God' or 'pray' or 'heaven' or 'hell'?"

"Well ... (silence) ... it's uh... (silence) I don't know the answer ... I don't know the answer to that." (silence)

"That's why I ask, because I do the same thing."

"There's only so many words to describe certain things. So, it's hard to find another word other than 'heaven' for 'heaven'. What does it mean? I don't know. It's impossible to know. As soon as you wanna talk about it, you gotta go and have faith. It's physical or not physical. It's spiritual or not spiritual. It's here now, which is what I mean when I talk about it. 'Heaven' is here now or 'hell' is here now, because we got it all screwed up. There are so many different sides of this and no answers. In that song, I was trying to show a character having to choose between two hard choices, to jump or to have faith. (silence) It's my job, so I choose to have faith. There's a Bruce Springsteen song that catches it for all times, "Reasons To Believe." I could never write that. So I got "The Ledge." What is it that makes you get up in the morning? What is that reason?"

"Habit?"

"No, no! If you don't believe, you just become dead, not physically, spiritually. There's nothing worse than a spiritually dead songwriter!"

"For Rose" is written by Jonathan Pointer. I had the opportunity to compare your and Jonathan's version and somehow the song seems to fit you a lot better than it fits him."

"Yeah, he wrote it for me!"

"He did? Well, that makes sense then."

"Yeah, he wrote it for me. Everybody raved about it and so he put it on his own record. And I don't blame him, because it's one of the most wonderful songs he's ever written. It's beautiful. The rhyme scheme is incredibly difficult."

"Can you tell me a bit about him?"

"He's very smart. He knows a lot about songwriting. He might know too much about songwriting. He's a great guitarist. He's better than I'll ever be. He's got two records out and he's just starving in New York."

"Finally. "The Sun Fades the Color Of Everything." That's a very poignant and poetic description of a relationship from which passion has faded and the hope that it will return. There's not much of that hope around in the other songs. Still, this is the last song on the album."

"Yeah, but it is the oldest song. I played that song for Gurf (Morlix, the producer) and he really liked it and thought it should go in. So it went in. It probably should have gone in first and then it could have gone downhill from there." (bursts into laughter)

"When we talked about a year ago, you told me your next album would be a coming-of-age album and that there would be some faith on it as well. Has Filth And Fire become your coming of age album and is there a little faith hidden somewhere?"

"Yeah, it's not my personal coming of age album. It's my coming of age as a writer. I won't be doing another Dixie Kitchen any more, that's for sure. I know now who Mary Gauthier the writer is. I've been introduced to her. And, yeah, I think there is faith, there's sweetness, there's also bitterness, you know ... I specialize in bittersweet. You can't go too sweet and I don't wanna be too bitter. The only song without hope is "Merry Go Round" and that's because I wrote it with Eddy Shaver's ghost still hovering over me. The characters run into a lot of difficulties, that's what is interesting for me to write about."

"I also wrote in my review 'where Gauthier's official debut Dragqueens In Limousines revealed only a tip of the iceberg, Filth And Fire shoves the whole ugly, cold thing straight into your face: it is the iceberg, or at least a big chunk of it with, as I fear, a lot worse still hidden.' Are you really prepared to dig even deeper into this pain? Is there a limit to what you are prepared to write about?"

"No, there isn't. I don't ask myself that question. When I sit down and write I'm asking myself, do I believe this? Is it real? Even if it didn't happen to me, is it true? I just go where the muse takes me. You see, I'm not in charge. I don't have it all figured out. I' m just working in the darkness a lot, trying to shed some light. That's why I don't know limits. I don't know what's underneath. That's why I write; I'm turning over rocks and seeing what's underneath. It's a mystery. On my next record maybe I could fall in love and it's all upbeat love songs."

"That would be good news!"

(laughs)"Yeah, wouldn't that be amazing? No more torture, no more..."

"Only who wants to buy a record with upbeat love songs from you?"

"Yeah, well, something tells me that won't happen. And even if I did, even if I do, Bruce Springsteen did that. He fell in love, got married, had kids, and then he went out and wrote Tom Joad. What happens is, your writing becomes less personal and more universal. You become capable of writing about characters that aren't you. You become able to fully understand them and have the empathy for those characters as if they were you. To me that's genius writing. I'm just trying..."

"Its funny you say that. I said a while ago somewhere that whether Mary Gauthier really makes it to the top league of songwriters depends a lot on how much she is able to take a step back from her own life and look at things more from the outside."

"You're exactly right and I know it. There's a song on the new Patti Griffin album. She is so amazing. She's currently my favorite artist. There's this song called "Baking Pies." She's writing from the first person of an old Italian man who bakes pies all day. It just kills me, the way she sings 'well, you can cry or die or just make pies all day.' Wow! I wanna write one of those! She can do it, Bruce does it, Steve Earle does it. Not a lot of people can do it. You gotta be a true writer."

"You can do it. You do it in "Camelot Hotel." That's a very good song."

"I hope I can. That's where I'm heading. I hope...I hope. That's where I wanna go. Maybe "Christmas in Paradise" has some of it."

"Yeah, those are definitely the two songs which go in that direction."

"I haven't even thought about this. I hope that those songs shine a light on ...I don't know what the word is ...my ability to write. I think those are the big songs. I hope they prepare the road for more songs like that. You gotta write love songs and difficulties in love songs. It's important to do this. But the other songs... it's so important for the universe. We need Patti to write about this old Italian guy who's out there slaying dragons by making pies. You know, it's important. It's the function to write. I really hope I can do it. We'll see."

"Last time we talked you had just finished the album. It wasn't out yet. You were very enthusiastic, almost lyrical about Gurf."

"I still am."

"That was the question."

"I love Gurf. He's a very gentle and talented individual. I really liked to work with him and I would like to work with him again."

"The most striking thing is your singing performance. That's the best so far and you're giving him all the credit."

"Well, he did that! He said 'Mary, come on, you can sing.' I said (laughs) 'No, I can't sing. My singing is horrible! I hate it. I'm a writer, not a singer.' He said 'You're not allowed to say that, you can sing!' He brought it out. It wouldn't have happened if he hadn't brought it out. He's given me more confidence than I ever had. You know, he told me stories about Lucinda, what it was like working with her. He's been working with her for a decade. Yeah, she's in a place which is universally recognized as success and he told me how she started, where she came from, and how she got there."

"Is there any news about your American deal?"

"Yeah. We signed a licensing deal with a company called Signature Sounds in Massachusetts and it's coming out in July."

(We're getting flagged down by Mary's record company representative.)

"You know, you really freaked me out with that picture on the album."

"Picture?"

"The one with your guitar and your boots."

"Why?"

"Why? It looks like such a goddamn good-bye picture."

Mary rolls forward in her seat, clutches her head and mumbles, "Oh, damn!" Then she leans back into her chair, laughs, and says with a big reassuring smile: "We'll see. Naw, I don't count on jumping!"

*Information on Mary Gauthier's music can be found on the artist's website: www.marygauthier.com Filth & Fire can be ordered from www.munichrecords.com

Contact Marianne Ebertowski at: ebertowski-at-rockzilla.net

 
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