Battle with booze leads to a late start for Mary Gauthier

MARY GAUTHIER has been described by The Wall Street Journal as “one of Americana music’s most admired artists — across the U.S. and...around the world.” The 53-year-old, Louisiana-born singer and songwriter will play five shows in Ireland in May.

Her current album, her eighth, is titled Trouble & Love. What is remarkable about Gauthier is that she didn’t begin to write songs until she was in her 40s.

“I wasn’t ready, I wasn’t mature enough,” she says. “I had a drug and alcohol problem that I needed to deal with. I had to grow up. I had to get certain things sorted in my life.”

Born in New Orleans to a mother she never knew, the singer was raised in an orphanage, before being adopted by a couple in Thibodaux, Louisiana.

Gauthier ran away from home at 15 and spent several years in half-way houses and drug rehabilitation, before turning her life around.

Over the last decade or so, she has steadily recorded and toured, plus a roster of great artists has covered her songs.

“Many great writers are drunks,” says Gauthier.

“Alcohol is such a huge part of their lifestyle. But, for me, I couldn’t write a thing when I was drinking. So, I had to clean that off the table. Once I got my life sorted and started to get healthy, then I was able to focus on writing. I think, because of the kind of writer I am, I can’t do it half-way. I can’t do it without dedicating my entire life to it. I have to give it a hundred per cent. So the reason I started late is because I didn’t get sober until I was over 30.”

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When Trouble & Love was released last year, many commentators called it a break-up album. “It sure is,” says Gauthier. It’s a re-start button.

“It’s trying to make sense of something that was a difficult thing to let go of. It’s the way that I write — I tend to make sense of the world around me in my songs. You know what Ernest Hemingway said. He said, ‘I just want to write one true sentence’. When I sit down to write, that’s how I go about it.”

Despite her troubled past, music and song have always been vital to Gauthier.

“Songs have always been important to me,” she says.

“Especially the lyrics — I’ve always listened to the lyrics. The words mean a lot. It has to be one hell of a melody, and one hell of a singer, for me not to listen to the words. You know, music has always been how I’ve found my way. Songs have been my greatest teachers and continue to be really important in my life.”

For over a decade, Gauthier has been a regular visitor to Ireland, gigging all over the country.

”I can’t wait to get back to Ireland,” she says, in her endearing Southern drawl.

“I can’t really understand why, but I have a special fondness for Ireland. Maybe it’s because people really listen to the words.

“People in Ireland take in the whole song. After a long history of great singers and song-writers and poets, they are able to consume the entire song — not just the external, they go inside.

“For a song-writer like me, I’m just so grateful there’s a place where, night after night, that this is possible and Ireland is such an amazing country for the arts. I’m so grateful that I get invited there and that I get to keep coming back.”

Tour dates: May 10, Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival, Belfast; May 11, Flowerfield Arts Centre, Portstewart; May 13, Coughlan’s Live, Cork; May 14, Button Factory, Dublin; May 15, Cultural Centre, Letterkenny.

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