Mary Gauthier
High Expectations, First Drafts & Rewrites
The best PR bio I ever wrote might be the first one I did for Mary Gauthier. When her publicist tapped me late in 2004 to herald her album, Mercy Now, I’d never heard of her – which wasn’t at all unusual; the correct response to any assignment is: “Wow, I love his/her stuff! By all means, yes, let’s get to work.”
A day or two later, an advance of Mercy Now arrived on CD. I cued it up and got ready to take notes on her music. Probably ten seconds into it, I stopped typing and just listened. The first track, “Falling Out of Love,” was slow, intense. The tempo trudged wearily as Mary whispered, “It’s a cheap hotel. The heat pipes hiss. The bathroom’s down the hall and it smells like piss. It’s another night in another town. And I’m another blues traveler, headed down.”
The title cut had a similar feel: raw and exhausted, but dimly lit by the possibility of release from life’s innumerable miseries: “We all could use a little mercy now. I know we don’t deserve it, but we need it anyhow. We hang in the balance, dangle ‘tween Hell and hallowed ground. Every single one of us could use some mercy now.”
Mary and I met for the Mercy Now interview at Fido’s, a Nashville coffee shop. She was warm, accessible, soft-spoken with a deep Louisiana drawl. I had planned my interview mainly around her lyrics, which she discussed thoughtfully. Heading home, I was eager to get to work. As often happens after an interview, the piece was already taking shape in my head: the lead, the structure, the quotes to highlight, the conclusions to draw.
Writing it was no problem, thanks to the impression Mary made on me. She loved it too, so within days my words were on paper and online, en route to music journalists.
Did I say “my” words? Not really. What made this essay work was that it consisted mostly of fragments of her lyrics. I wasn’t even conscious of this until two years later, when Mary and her team decided that since I’d hit a home run for them in my first at-bat, they should bring me up to the plate again for her next release, Between Daylight and Dark. Once more we convened at a coffee shop – a Starbucks in Bellevue which she described as a songwriter hangout. Just as before, we spent more than an hour in conversation. Back home, I wrote the new bio and sent it in.
This time, though, Mary’s feedback surprised me. Something is missing, she said. We were both so thrilled with what transpired for Mercy Now that each of us had unconsciously expected the same quality for the new bio. It wasn’t bad, we agreed. But what was the problem? At that moment it came to me: Our first bio consisted mainly of her words, while the second one adhered to the more typical format of a writer waxing eloquent on behalf of the artist – in this case, an artist who definitely didn’t need any help to express herself.
So we spoke again, this time by phone, and the results were satisfactory to all concerned parties. Candidly, I still prefer what we – she – came up with for Mercy Now. But the process for Between Daylight and Dark was more complex. She had to admit to her disappointment; I had to listen, accept, understand and try to deliver an improved product. For this reason (and also because I can’t find the transcript for the Mercy Now interview), I submit two transcripts, pre-criticism and post-revision. For me, the moral is: When you’re assigned to write for a client, it’s her final call, not mine, no matter how great I think I am as a wordsmith. And you need to be humble. That said, even we bio writers can use a little mercy now too.
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Take One: Starbucks
What does this album mean to you?
I’m getting better at it, I think. I’ve dedicated my life to being a writer and performer. Now I’m ten years in. This is the fifth record and the tenth year of being in as a writer. I moved here in 2001, my sixth year of being a full-time singer/songwriter, and ten years in being a songwriter. Since I’ve dedicated my life to it, after coming from another career, it’s taken a while. I used to be onstage and have thoughts like, “I can’t wait until I’m as good at this as I was at cooking.” I think I’m there.
You must have been a hell of a cook.
Well, in the restaurant I knew that it was under control, no matter what happened. No matter how many people piled in and no matter how many times the phone rang, I’d been through every possible crisis and survived it, and that gave me confidence. I’ve gone there now in the past ten years as a songwriter. I’m learning what it is that I’m supposed to be writing. In the early years you write all over the place, trying to find your voice. Mercy Now was as close as I’d ever gotten to it, and I think I’ve found it here.
Mercy Now must have changed your life pretty dramatically.
You know, being on a major label has given me an opportunity to reach a lot more people. I’ve been able to perform and write with almost all of my heroes. There’s something incredible when people you really respect treat you as a peer. It gives you confidence that you cannot really give yourself. I think artists need to be told they’re worthy by people who know what they’re talking about.
Did that happen overnight, or did you notice it gradually as you traveled and played gigs?
It wasn’t overnight. Nothing is overnight in Mary World. It was a process. I’m happy with that because I don’t think I have the wherewithal to handle the overnight. I like the process of moving forward a little every day instead of making a quantum leap. I don’t want to be on that rocket ship. I don’t handle that sudden change very well. The gradual process of becoming a respected songwriter has been better.
There’s something to be said, then, for coming into your own as a writer at an older age than average, with your experiences factoring into the process from the start.
It has worked for me. It’s been against all odds. I didn’t start writing until I was 35. At that point I was seven years sober. I don’t know how much we should go into that, just for anonymity reasons, but I’m almost seventeen years sober now. So talking about the process of becoming who I would have been all along, I think I’ve gotten there. I’ve healed the wounds, moved past all that wild-child stuff and grown up. I’ve become, hopefully, a replica of what I should have been all along, if I wasn’t so self-destructive.
Even on Mercy Now you wrote about things you’d done before, in that wild-child phase. The new album is more in the present tense.
That’s absolutely right. It took a long time to write through all the stuff that I had been through. I’d lived it, but there’s something odd about being an artist late in life: Your work has got to catch up with your life. So I had to write through all that stuff that had happened as a process of becoming here now as an artist. I had to do a lot of writing to get there. It started to happen on Mercy Now, but there was still a little bit of a lag. Now my head is where my feet are.
That sounds painful.
It’s crowded [laughs].
“I can’t bullshit in my writing. The truth is what I do.”
The process of writing the recent material must reflect this difference.
One thing that’s different is that I know pretty much what my job is. I know when I’m onto something that I need to say. It’s just become so clear to me that I can’t bullshit in my writing. The truth is what I do. In fact, I’m already in the process of writing … I’m trying to capture … You know, the epitaph reads, “She captured the time she lived in. That’s the best that you can do.” The time I live in is right here, right now, so I’m always trying to find ways to express what I see and filter it through my own experiences and say, “Here’s what I see,” so you can see that too. It’s becoming much less autobiographical and more observational. People say that’s the goal, to become a great observer. You insert yourself but not in an obvious way. You’re there because you’re the observer – the universal observer, if you get good at it.
The Twilight Realm
There’s still sadness and pain on this album, but there’s also hope, like light among the shadows where formerly the shadows had dominated.
That makes great sense. That’s probably why I’m going to call this thing Between Daylight and Dark, because it’s somewhere in between. That’s where I am, personally. My personal journey has brought me to that in-between place. Maybe that’s where we are as a people.
The first track is almost like a painting. It captures a moment, which is described in the title. You don’t need to tell a long story because the moment itself is so compelling. It’s a good introduction to the album.
Thank you. Yeah, it’s a moment. Instead of writing about a month [unintelligible] a song that captures my song about a moment, that’s a bigger challenge.
“The Last of the Hobo Kings” stands out in that it’s the one song on the album where you’re writing about a character from out of history.
I did a tour in Europe and I needed a couple of more songs for the record, so I just stayed over in Amsterdam for another week by myself, writing. There was a story in the paper about this guy, Steam Train Maury; it said “the king of the hoboes died at 76.” I read about him, and to me it just seemed like the end of an era.
It’s not just about this guy; it’s also about a world that’s less tolerant about guys like Maury.
That’s right, I’m writing about one guy and yet I’m writing about how much harder the world has gotten. … That’s a crazy thing to say: It’s harder than in the Depression?
There was something romantic and even dignified about being a hobo in those days. Now, these people are just written off as bums.
That’s right. He was a theatrical hobo. He was well known and legendary. When he passed away, it marked a moment in time that was the end of a phase of American history. It’s over and it’s never coming back. As a writer, I thought that was worth writing about.
When you write that kind of a song, do you project yourself into that era and character?
I try to become that character and put myself in those shoes and also be an observer of the character, so I can move in and out. Hopefully I captured his voice in some of that, and then there’s a commentator, like Edward R. Murrow, in the background, reading the news report as well. It’s going in and out of the character.
That idea of light among the shadows relates clearly to “Before You Leave.” It seems so sad, and yet you also have a line to the effect of, “As you leave the light gets brighter.” This is a perfect example of the focus on this album: Even in sadness there’s hope.
There is. We have to believe in the possibility of redemption. How do we get up in the morning without it? We have to believe in that, even though politically I don’t think that’s where we are as a nation. I don’t think we really do believe that. We believe in execution and violence. But as a person of sobriety over the years, I’ve come to use the opportunity of redemption in other people’s lives and in my life. There’s a reason to have hope. If we don’t allow for that, then how do we not just kill everybody and everything … and ourselves?
Why did you record this in L.A.?
I’m not sure how it all came to be. I wanted to work with a new producer this time. I wanted it to be someone who was able to bring the songs to a place that was unique. I didn’t want a producer that had a firm imprint of their sound. I wanted to find my sound. What does Mary sound like? And I wanted to be with gentle musicians who were mature enough to play less. I got a perfect scenario with Joe Henry and these guys: Greg Leisz, David Pilch, Patrick Warren. They’re very mature musicians who understand their role. They’re very comfortable with who they are. They’re all about bringing the song to life.
Joe is a great song man himself.
He’s a great songwriter. He’s very gentle and capable.
You’ve used the word “gentle” twice, which is interesting because this is a quiet, intimate record. A lot of it sounds like the listener is right in the room with these musicians.
That suits the songs. The songs are gentler, a little more fragile, than what I’d done before.
Greg Leisz is such an empathetic player.
Yeah, he plays the words. That’s it. All these guys played with the lyric sheet in front of them. They play within the meaning of the words. They’re playing to create an environment for the words to enter into the listener’s heart. They understand that the singer/songwriter is more about the songwriter than the singer.
Van Dyke Parks is on one track.
Van Dyke came over and I was so thrilled to meet him. We had him play on what I think is one of the most important songs on the record, “Can’t Find a Way.” On the surface it’s about what happened with Katrina. Under the surface it’s my story: I want to go home and I can’t find my way. It’s a story of being human.
You called him for that track?
Yeah. I’m a huge fan, and Joe mentioned that he had worked with him, and I said, “Man, if you could email Van Dyke and have him come and play, that would be unbelievable to me.” He did a great job.
“I’ve got to work with people who understand the importance of words.”
These guys are more than just great musicians; they’re great writers too.
I’ve got to work with people who understand the importance of the words. I’ve worked really hard on my singing and my guitar playing. Ultimately, though, I’m absolutely about the words. If they listen to the chord changes and not the words, then we’re not communicating. I need to work with people who take the words into their hearts and understand what they mean. That’s been a wonderful thing about this record: Those guys are songwriters.
Did you record live with the band?
That’s another thing. This whole thing was recorded live. We all played together. We played the song two, three, four, five, or six times, until we got it. These are complete takes, with minimal overdubs – maybe Greg playing another instrument or punching one or two parts that were a little wobbly.
Where did everybody stand?
Joe has a wonderful setup in his house in Pasadena. He set up the studio in his basement, so everybody was in the same room. The vocal room is isolated, but there’s some big glass on either side, so I can look at the drummer. He was watching me sing and I was watching him play. I could look and see Greg, Patrick [Warren, keyboardist] and Dave as they were playing too. We were able to have eye contact. It was a performance. And we all knew when we got it! That was really, really awesome. I’d never recorded like this. With Gurf [Morlix, producer on Mercy Now], we built the tracks. Gurf played everything and we just built it up. With this, it was playing together. We’d play it four or five times, and we knew it was it. Joe would go, “Let’s do another one, just in case.” We’d do another one. Then we’d go back to the one before, almost every time, and say, “That’s it.” As a band, you know when you’ve got it because you feel it. You feel it lock in. That was a very educational process for me. I learned a lot by doing it that way. Joe has taught me a lot.
A lot of the drum parts on this album are interesting, including the song where someone is just slapping his thigh.
Jay [Bellerose] is amazing. Jay is T-Bone Burnette’s go-to guy. He just played on that record with Alison Krauss and Robert Plant. He’s an intuitive drummer – a minimalist. I wouldn’t even call him a drummer; he’s so much more.
How did that idea come up of keeping time on his thigh?
I’d play the song, voice and guitar, and say, “Here’s the next one. What do you guys think?” They’d think about it a little while, read the words, and then go to their stations and try different things. I guess he knew right then, when he heard it. I mean, it sounds like the hobo’s feet walking down the street! It’s incredible! And on “Snakebit” he does the rattling … He’s not playing his instrument as much as he’s playing the words.
There’s a lot of space on that track …
There’s a lot of space. These weren’t guys who would jump in and take their leads. We’d go eight measures before somebody would take a lead. You’ll notice in the solo in “Snakebit,” literally eight measures go by before anybody jumps in to play a lead. We were looking at each other to see who it should be. Nobody called it. Joe didn’t say, “Okay, Patrick. Go!” They’d wait until they felt it and the band would know intuitively who it should be.
Each take was really different, then.
It gets better after two or three. By four or five we had it.
“Same Road” has a wonderful message. It’s a cyclical story about how people relate to each other.
It’s my personal experience but it’s also a universal truth. We have to speak the truth to each other. Oftentimes, if we don’t, we get stuck. And if we do, it means we have to leave. And we go between the daylight and the dark again.
Is this the final sequence?
Probably not. I’ve got everybody lobbying for a different sequence.
How long were the sessions?
We had the whole thing in five days.
Do you have any final thoughts?
I’ll never get rid of that last bio that we did. I guess I needed to tell. But I want people to know that I’ve moved way past that wild-child/going-to-jail/crazy-life thing. I’ve been a sober woman for a very long time now. I plan on continuing down this path. Hopefully, as the human being matures, the writing will mature. That’s the message I want to put out.
TAKE TWO: THE PHONER
… the last one was the best one I could do. How am I going to … [laughs].
The assumption is that one continues to grow.
And I think we did it. But it’s hard to quantify and nail down so we can say what happened. This bio has been like a magic carpet ride. With interviews and everywhere I go, people clip the hell out of it. It’s been very, very useful.
You felt that your quotes were not as strong for the second bio …
Right, it’s me!
Actually, the main difference between the two bios is that the first one is mainly your words.
But you got it out of me.
What’s missing from the second one?
Well, we’ve got to give them … You know how journalism works. They just pop it and paste. We’ve got to give them something they can use right off the bio, so they don’t have to think. Quite frankly, we set them up to listen to the whole record – because they’re not going to. Some will. The fans will. But they’re busy! You know the deal.
The new bio has a narrative, set in a specific time and place. Maybe that’s not as easy to cut and paste.
They need to act like they talked to me. My hope for redoing this with you today is that you can help pull some stuff out of me that’s as good as this. I don’t know if I have the clarity. I seem to have had more clarity here. I’m more confused now. I’m not exactly sure why. But it’s hard for me to nail down what this new record is.
If you can imagine being a disinterested third party who hears the new album for the first time, what will grab you about this record?
There’s not as much of me talking about my escapades and romanticizing my rebellious adolescence and all of the events that make my story mine. I’m not doing that as a songwriter anymore. We’re not talking about jail and dope and booze and death. On these songs, I’ve become vulnerable in a different way.
So the singer and songwriter on the new album is accessible to you in a more personal way.
Yeah.
You’re wrestling with the fact that your history actually is compelling. Your story, put down as words on paper or in a song, is worth hearing. Is something kind of lost, then, as you move into this new stage as a writer?
Yeah. I want to think of this Flannery O’Conner quote. She talks about the writer being able to reveal the mystery of personality and being able to do that in a way that’s not tipping all of the past in talking about that. Hopefully, these songs are about vulnerability and emotion in the moment now. There’s more rawness, a deeper rawness, to be in the moment now than to be talking about back then, when I was screwed up.
There’s plenty of raw emotion on Mercy Now …
There is. See, it’s so hard for me to get a perspective on this.
“The Last of the Hobo Kings” has a third-person perspective, as we discussed last time. But “Thanksgiving” is like that too, in the storytelling quality. This suggests a step back from the open wounds and passions of the past to a more mature perspective, in which case the music becomes less about purging yourself and more about finding the poetry in other people’s lives as well as your own. The challenge then is to keep that intensity that you had in your earlier work.
Write that! That sounds really true.
What’s your state of mind today?
Well, I’m sober three years longer than I drank, so my sobriety has superseded the years I was a screwed-up mess. I’m seventeen years sober, so my issues are more … mainstream?
It’s hard to find a word that doesn’t denigrate that state of mind.
Maybe I’m more universal.
And you’re also more perceptive in finding poetry in everyday places. As a listener, you have to work a little harder with this newer music …
It’s not so “in your face.”
… but the rewards are greater because the music becomes more personal. Mercy Now is about you, but this record is about …
It’s about us. I’ve come from being an outsider to not being an insider but being a member of a community. I’m not the lone wolf, fighting everybody all the time.
You don’t have to suffer and pay the dues as you did in the past. Those experiences will feed you through the rest of your creative life, but your creative life is now about living as a full participant in the world.
Right, it’s about putting the crutches down and walking tall.
“I’m leaving the darkness behind me in a lot of ways. I can see light.”
Your feelings about love feel different on the new record. There’s loneliness, more in a wistful than a tragic sense. This is a reality of everyday life. And these pictures you paint on Between the Daylight and the Dark are like a postcard that everyone can recognize from his or her own life.
It’s a step forward as a human being. That’s why I picked that as a title, because I’m leaving the darkness behind me in a lot of ways. I can see light. I may not be there yet, and in many ways I’m not, but I see it. Maybe in Mercy Now I wasn’t even sure if I saw it or if it was an illusion.
If there’s any song on this record that seems close to the spirit of Mercy Now, that would be “Thanksgiving.”
I think so too. It’s the first song I wrote after I finished writing Mercy Now. It’s about finding dignity in a most undignified situation. I fought to have this on this record. My manager didn’t want it and my label didn’t want it, because it sounded like Mercy Now. They thought it was a throwback to what I’d done before. But I feel as though it’s a necessary rung in the ladder to what I’m doing now. I didn’t want to just go from here to there. I wanted to take that rung and show a bit of transition.
And, again, where you were then will always be a part of who you are. It’s just that your picture has grown more complex. So there’s no reason why you can’t go back to that, where it’s appropriate.
That well is always there to draw from, but I don’t live there. It’s more of a recollection.
That idea of living in the present, day by day, makes you a stronger artist because you’re always aware of where you were. We’ve all imagined the kind of scenario outlined in “Snakebit,” where we shoot someone in anger, though few of us have actually done this. In that sense, you can draw that element from your past into a more universal context.
I can take it there in my writing. I don’t have to take it there in my life. When I wrote that song, I didn’t think I was writing about me. Then a few months after that, after an incident, I realized that that song is me. I didn’t know it was me. I have characteristics of that character.
What about the sense of place in your songs? You put yourself in interesting settings, from Karl Marx Avenue in Berlin to Amsterdam. Is that a conscious literary device, or do you just happen to be in these places?
I went through places on that song to create the sense of longing, of constantly going from one romantic place to another alone. It creates this ache. I don’t want to be here alone. I want you to be here. This would be so great if you were here.
Does “Karl Marx Avenue” come from Dylan’s Rue Morgue Avenue?
That’s probably where it came from. They sing so well. Another pivotal song is “The Same Road.” That’s an important song on this record.
The Sound of Truth
That image of “the same road that brought me to you is going to carry me away” kind of inverts the usual romantic image, in that it ends with your lover’s departure rather than arrival. Yet that’s more realistic.
I think so. That’s what interested me. That’s why I wrote it that way. I really love that first … “my silence betrays me.” It’s about coming of age as a woman, perhaps. I’m not sure that men go through this to such a degree, but women tend to hold their tongue and not say their truth. This may be one of the pivotal problems between women and men. Men don’t understand that the problem is she hasn’t told you what she thought for quite some time until she’s over there. And you don’t understand how she got over there because she’s not talking!
The problem with men, of course, is they don’t know what they think.
Yeah, they’re not even thinking about it [laughs]. But they’re certainly aware when she’s over there and they don’t know how she got there. It’s true for women and women as well: Speaking truth in the moment has been one of my big lessons over these past couple of years, as a woman who’s forty-five years old, to learn how to be forthright immediately, instead of second-guessing myself or worrying about confrontation or offending someone.
That applies not just to life but also to writing. Even though the songs of Mercy Now are so deep and painful, you challenge yourself more on the new songs.
They’re more fragile and vulnerable in some way. I can’t put my finger on why.
Why would “Same Road” be more fragile or vulnerable than “Falling Out of Love”? “You know where I’ve been. It’s hard to understand why you take me there again.” That’s a fragile state right there. You’re floating on the winds of fate, where on Mercy Now you’re mired in it. The new album has less weight; it practically floats too.
I guess I’m able to see more. I’m standing in a different place. I’m not mired in it. There’s an ability to stand back and see. There’s an objective viewer looking at me. It’s not just me; it’s that universal part of stepping out of a situation and seeing it more, because the pain isn’t killing me anymore.
“Broken on the inside … I pack my bags, raise a white flag, drive away. I thought that’s what made me strong, but I was young. I was wrong.” I don’t know if you’re saying that it didn’t make you strong or that something else made you strong.
I used to think that leaving was really strong, stomping out the door …
That’s right. Now it would appear that staying is what makes you strong. And with this album, you’re telling the world you’re staying.
I’m staying in touch with me. I’m staying in the present. That’s it. We got it.
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PHOTOS
With vest & guitar, smiling:
in 2023. Photo © Michael Wheatley / Alamy Stock Photo.
Smiling, red glasses, microphone in front of face:
Mary Gauthier performs at Canmore Folk Music Festival, Canmore, Alberta, Canada, August 2017.
Photo © Michael Wheatley / Alamy Stock Photo.
Brownish Jacket: