Postcards From The Edge

If the very best art imitates life, then Mary Gauthier’s gritty songs of hopelessness, despair and living on the margins are the mark of a true artist. The Louisiana native’s third album, Filth & Fire, released earlier this year, is inhabited by the kind of “cheaters, liars, outlaws and fallen angels” she sings about in the song, ‘Camelot Motel’. Writing from the gut much of the time she hits even closer to home when she recalls a time when, “I held a grudge, I held a gun, I held contempt for everyone” (‘The Ledge’).

“It’s the only way I know how to write,” she says. “I wish I could write fictional songs and make them sound real but I can’t make things up. I just tell the story the way it happened more or less. The artist’s job is to give it up, to reveal it, so that the people listening can feel a part of the human race.”
Like many of her songs, Gauthier’s early life reads like a dark tale of gothic southern noir. Dropping out of school at 15, stealing the family car and running away to a life of alcohol, drugs and delinquency, she found herself in detox at 16 and in a Kansas City jail at 18. Eventually putting her life back together, she studied philosophy for five years at Louisiana State University. Later, she went to culinary school and ran a successful restaurant in Boston which she sold after her music career took off with the release of her acclaimed second album Drag Queens In Limousines.
“It amazes me when I think of what I’ve come through,” she muses. “I know now that life’s a gift and when you nearly lose it, you appreciate what you’ve got.”
Though her only vice these days is a strong cup of coffee she concedes that she’s not totally out of the woods yet.
“Whenever things get emotionally difficult there’s always the danger of falling back into the old way of things. I’d love to be able to have a few beers; the trouble is I’ve never, ever had a few beers. I have no restraint. I never did have.”
The unflinching honesty of her songs has been compared to that of legends like John Prine, Townes Van Zandt and Lucinda Williams.
“I love all those writers and people like Guy Clarke, Emmylou, Arlo Guthrie, Steve Earle and Nanci Griffith,” she says. “We can have a band and love it but if we can’t afford it, we just go in there with a body of work and a guitar. That’s the difference between what we do and what Nashville does. They’re not troubadours, they’re not out telling stories and doing things that can hold an audience. It’s the smoke and mirrors and dancing boys and dancing girls and six piece string sections and horns and whistles and bells and all the crap that takes peoples’ minds off the fact that the songs aren’t saying much.”
Which is one thing you can’t say about Mary Gauthier’s work.
“The process of finding those songs amazes me,” she reflects. “There are no first drafts. They shouldn’t even call it writing they should call it re-writing, ’cause that’s what it is, going over and over and over it again trying to go deeper each time to try to reveal the truth.”

Mary Gauthier tours Ireland next month, playing Whelan’s, Dublin on Tuesday November 4