Occasionally, terrible suffering will produce great art. This is true of Mary Gauthier, whose backstory reads like a modern-day Southern gothic retelling of Oliver Twist. Abandoned as an infant at St. Vincent’s Women and Infants Asylum in New Orleans, a teenage runaway where she lived with addicts and drag queens and then her years in Boston, where she attended culinary arts school and opened a successful restaurant, The Dixie Kitchen, all while battling an addiction to drugs and alcohol, is quite the story. Gauthier emerged from her addiction following an arrest where she hit rock bottom. Music and songwriting became her lifeline and she penned her first song at 35.

While Mary hangs her hat in Nashville these days, she first honed her songwriting and performing craft in the open mics and coffeehouses of Boston and Cambridge. “I wrote and wrote and wrote,” she recalls, “And I watched other beginners struggle on stage, and I watched what worked for them, and what didn’t.”

What sets Gauthier apart as a performer is the courage and honesty in her songs, which have been described as “deep and dangerous poetry.” In interviews, Gauthier stresses that she cares about “the heart, not the chart” and pays attention to what connects with people. “The human heart is the same everywhere you go,” she says, and “to connect we must show listeners our heart, and in that process we writers will also show them theirs.” Her songs have been recorded by Jimmy Buffet, Tim McGraw, Amy Helm and Bettye Lavette, among others and have been used in TV shows including Nashville on NBC and Masterpiece Theatre’s Case Histories. Probably her most well-known and powerful song, “I Drink,” about a father who passes on his drinking habit to his child, even inspired a character in writer Wally Lamb’s latest novel “We Are Water.”

Teaching is also a big part of Gauthier’s life. She teaches songwriting workshops from Nashville to Italy, working with returned veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan and gay teens who are homeless, rejected by their families and communities and struggling with substance abuse just as she did. Gauthier will perform cuts from her nine stellar releases, including her 2014 disc Trouble and Love, a collection of songs that emerged from an especially dark period, Gauthier acknowledges, but ultimately triumphs as a “transformation record” and, as CMT Edge writes, “one of the wisest testaments of broken-heartedness an American singer-songwriter has ever committed to tape.”

Photo: Jack Spencer

. . .

Opening act Louise Mosrie hails from the mecca of country and Americana music, Nashville, TN. Mosrie taught herself how to play on a borrowed Sears guitar and began writing songs in her early twenties. Eventually she found her voice and her songwriting matured, absorbing the complicated beauty of the South. Her first album, 2008’s Home, is a captivating blend of bluegrass, country and folk with stories about the South that debuted at #1 on the Folk DJ charts and became one of the most played albums that year. Her new album, Lay It Down, has received rave reviews as well. Fans and critics have compared her strong, expressive voice to Patty Griffin and Susan Tedeschi.

Photo: Gregg Roth Photography

• Louisiana-raised Mary Gauthier has become one of Americana music’s most admired artists — across the U.S. and in her regular tours around the world. Wall Street Journal
• Every tune is a rough gem of melody, misery and economy, as Gauthier excavates romantic wreckage like an archaeologist telling the story of a fossilized love.
  Rolling Stone
• . . . [H]er razor-sharp eye for detail and her commitment to unsentimental self-reflection puts her in a class with greats such as Kris Kristofferson, John Prine, and yes, Bob Dylan. Los Angeles Times
• . . .
• Influenced by everyone from 70s folk-rock icon Ricki Lee Jones to 80s pop faves, The Sundays, Louise Mosrie brings a refreshing dose of acoustic pop to the singer-songwriter realm. Listening to her latest album, Separated by Stars, gives you the kind of emotional life that an old Carole King or Maria Muldaur release would have 30 years ago. Dan Armonaitis, Metro Beat, Greensville, SC
• . . [B]asically, she’s William Faulkner with a guitar Rich Warren, WFMT-FM Chicago

• Mary Gauthier’s

• Website | Video

• Louise Mosrie’s

• Website | Video