PLAIN FOLK
by Les Pearson
Folk Family...Meet My Mary (Gauthier, that is)!
I know what you're thinking. I'm an old, happily married, man who should know better. No, it wasn't a festival fling. I'm in love with Mary Gauthier, my forty-something fallen angel. It wasn't her guitar picking or even that sultry, slurring, voice. Maybe it was tale-telling. I'm a sucker for stories. Frankly, the attraction was her truth-telling confessional honesty. Watching this singer is as soul searing and conscience cleansing as a first AA meeting.
Mary is that dangerous gal I was afraid to take home to mother. I still love her. And I want my family to love her too.
I can make a short sleeve long by hanging my heart on one. Mary, on the other hand, is stoic as unbroken sod. Reviewer Lloyd Sachs got it right when he wrote, "She knows who she is and doesn't care if you do, too." Her life story is not a Barbie cartoon or even a grim fairy tale. It is a journal of years lost. The story of those years is an integral part of her stage presentation. Mary's narrative enhances her drinkin', hurtin', cheatin' songs.
Mary Gauthier was the first interview that I scored at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. She is also the first folksinger, ever, to make me cry. Before her workshop show, I had never heard of Mary "Go-shay." Here, briefly, is her biography.
Mary was adopted by an Italian Catholic family in Louisiana. That explains the trace of blues and spirituality that lace her ballads. At 15 she dropped out of school, stole the family car and ran away. At 16 she was in a Baton Rouge detox and by 18 in a Kansas City jail. Her parents brought her home only to watch her steal the car again and vanish. This time she did not return. These are her "lost years."
Mary has been sober now for nearly half her life. She has pursued creativity, knowledge and grace with the same passion as an addict pursues self-destruction. These "found" years include a protracted study of philosophy at Louisiana State, courses at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, ownership of an award-winning restaurant (Dixie Kitchen) in Boston, and now a four year, full-time, career as a touring musician. This is all on her web site.
She wrote her first song at 35 and has recorded three CD's. The fourth, produced by Gurf Morlix in Austin, Texas, will be out next Spring.
Perhaps her best-known song--the one that gets the most CKUA play time--is I Drink. It is a classic of its kind and appears on her 1999 CD, "Drag Queens in Limousines." Listen to the flat, almost fatalistic, acceptance of an alcoholic's very human condition in these words: "fish swim, birds fly,/Lovers leave, by and by/ old men sit and think/ I drink."
I'm old. And what I think is that you need to hear about Mary in her own words. Watch for our interview next week.