Mary Gauthier

Her Grammy nominated 2018 album Rifles & Rosary Beads, co-written with military veterans and their families, has been hailed as a landmark achievement. She has won awards from the Americana Music Association, International Folk Music Awards, the Independent Music Awards, the GLAMA Awards, and the UK Americana Association.

• Name — Mary Gauthier • Born — 11 March 1962 • Birthplace — New Orleans, Louisiana, United States • Instrument — Vocals, guitar • Genre — * Folk • country • Americana • Occupation — Songwriter, musician, writing teacher, restaurateur • Years Active — 1990–present • Label — Lost Highway, In the Black, Signature Sounds, Proper • Website — www.marygauthier.com/

Gauthier was born in 1962 in New Orleans, Louisiana, to a mother who gave her to St Vincent's Women and Infants Asylum, where she spent the first year of her life. In adulthood, Gauthier spoke to her biological mother once by phone, but there was no further contact between them. She was adopted by an Italian Catholic couple from Thibodaux, Louisiana. Her father was an alcoholic. Struggling with a variety of issues, Gauthier left home young and abused drugs and alcohol, as did her brother, who was three years younger and also adopted. He was later jailed for armed robbery. Gauthier says she had drunk herself unconscious on sloe gin by the time she was twelve. When she was fifteen she ran away from home, recalling that "I was a gay kid, and back then, that just didn’t fly. Back then, gay kids were beat up, abused, some ended up taking their own lives. It was horrible, and I just wanted to get away.” She spent the next several years in drug rehabilitation, halfway houses, living with friends, and spent her 18th birthday in a jail cell. These experiences provided fodder for her songwriting later on. Spurred on by friends, she enrolled at Louisiana State University as a philosophy major, dropping out during her senior year. After attending the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, and working in an upmarket restaurant, she got financial backing to open a Cajun restaurant in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood, calling it Dixie Kitchen. On opening night, 12 July 1990, she was arrested for drunk driving and has been sober ever since. "I eventually got sober when I was twenty seven years old... I started writing songs in earnest at around thirty two years of age", she says. After achieving sobriety from "[mainly] alcohol, cocaine and heroin", Gauthier continued to manage, and cook at, the restaurant but was increasingly driven to dedicate herself to songwriting.

Having recorded her debut, Dixie Kitchen, Gauthier sold her share in the restaurant to finance her second album. Drag Queens in Limousines was released in 1998, winning several accolades, and led to appearances at eleven major folk festivals, including Newport. After moving to Nashville in 2001, she secured a publishing deal with Harlan Howard Songs, followed by her third album, Filth and Fire, in 2002. Two years later, she landed a record deal with Lost Highway, a division of Universal Music, and released the first of two albums with them.

Mercy Now won widespread acclaim and propelled Gauthier into the spotlight, making the Top Ten Albums list in many publications. A second album for Lost Highway, Between Daylight and Dark, followed in 2007. Gauthier's next studio record, The Foundling (2010), was released by Razor & Tie Records. She then made the first of several albums for In The Black Records, LIVE at Blue Rock (2013), her first live album which was recorded at a ranch outside of Austin, Texas. Her eighth studio album, Trouble and Love (2014), demonstrated her now familiar "brutal honesty balanced by rough-hewn tenderness" to great effect. The following year, Gauthier featured on Eight 30 Records' Cold and Bitter Tears: The Songs of Ted Hawkins, contributing her take on the late Los Angeles busker's signature song, Sorry You're Sick.

Gauthier's next record, Rifles & Rosary Beads (2018), was co-written with U.S. veterans and their families, arising out of Gauthier's involvement with the Songwriting With Soldiers program. Gauthier noted that "[every] day, on average, twenty-two veterans commit suicide", adding that "[underneath] so much of the problems in the world is trauma, it's the central issue humanity is dealing with. We've found something powerful here, that brings hope to people who are hurting". The album was released to widespread acclaim, and has been described as "music that's just plain important" (The LA Times), and as being "not only the strongest album of her career but, in its own way, a landmark album." It has won several awards, and secured Gauthier her first Grammy Award nomination.