MANCHESTER, NH – Mary Gauthier has a musical resume spanning 30 years. The New Orleans native has garnered a ton of acclaim and awards not only for her own performances but because her music has been covered by countless contemporaries, which is the greatest testament to her talent.
Gauthier is going to be performing some of her material at the Rex Theatre in Manchester on September 27. Nashville singer-songwriter Jaimee Harris will be opening up the show starting at 7 p.m.
Gauthier and I had a talk ahead of her performance about her love of both music and food, her connection to the New England region, a special project she got a lot of positive attention for and her plans for the rest of 2024.
Rob Duguay: Before you started your music career, you were involved in the restaurant business and even at one point running your own Cajun restaurant called “Dixie Kitchen” in Boston’s Back Bay. Has both music and cooking been two major constants in your life? What made you want to transition from one to the other?
Mary Gauthier: I think that what had to happen for me was that I got into recovery in July of 1990 after I was arrested for drunk driving on the opening night of my big restaurant on the Back Bay, which was Dixie Kitchen. After I got into recovery, I started going to open mics at Club Passim in Harvard Square and I began writing songs. I guess around 2000, I realized that I just wanted to be a songwriter and I didn’t want to be in the kitchen anymore. It was a 10-year process and it was more of a process than an event where I became a songwriter because I got sober. During my recovery, music and song have been such an important part of my healing and it directed me to working with wounded veterans.
That was also a process in itself when I was invited to work with wounded veterans, using music and song to help them deal with PTSD in their recovery. I don’t think I would have ever been a songwriter if I didn’t get sober and I don’t think I would be alive if I didn’t get sober, but I found that I could do the restaurant business pretty well when I wasn’t sober because it’s a crazy business anyway. I was getting worse by the day and I needed to get sober, so I guess that’s a long answer to a good question. I love music and food, those are my two big passions so it figures that I’ve spent my life doing both of them.
RD: Congratulations on your sobriety, that’s awesome.
MG: Thank you.
RD: No problem. Going along with what you just mentioned about working with military veterans, which resulted in the album “Rifles & Rosary Beads” you released in 2018 that was also nominated for a Grammy. How did the initial idea for this record come about and what was the experience like making it?
MG: I work with a nonprofit called Songwriting With Soldiers and it’s been a big part of my life for the past 15 years. What we do is that we pair up professional songwriters with wounded veterans and we use music and song to help them articulate some of the hard stuff they’re going through. I found that over the years the songs started really piling up and they’re really good songs, so what ended up happening was that I asked the nonprofit permission to record those songs. I put some of them onto a record, released it and it received a huge amount of press and like you said, it ended up with a Grammy nomination. I think the stories of our veterans on that record are really important and singing them helps people to hear them.
It’s a beautiful and powerful thing to put music and words to some of these stories and Songwriting With Soldiers is all about that, that’s what we do.
RD: I think it’s amazing. You’ve had your music covered by an array of musicians including Tim McGraw, Boy George, Jimmy Buffett, Bettye Lavette and Amy Helm among many others. What are your thoughts when it comes to your songs being done by someone else? Do you always feel honored when it happens?
MG: It’s always an honor to have someone singing one of the songs that I wrote. I don’t sing other people’s songs unless I really, really love the song, but I do sing other people’s songs sometimes. I don’t think people would record a song if they didn’t love it, so for people to love my songs, it’s a big deal for me and it makes me super happy. I’m always honored to find out someone else has done a recording of something I wrote, it’s just a privilege to be a songwriter and it also helps me to stay in business when other people record my songs. There’s a whole lot of copyright law and publishing around all that, so it’s a great income stream as well.
RD: What are your thoughts on coming up to New Hampshire to perform at The Rex Theatre? Do you perform in New Hampshire often due to your connections right over the border in Boston?
MG: I was in Boston for quite a while. I think I was there from 1988 to 2001, which was 13 years, so I have a long, strong relationship with the Northeast and I really love New Hampshire. One of my favorite songwriters, Bill Morrissey, is from New Hampshire, and he was also someone that I tried to model as I became a folk singer. I went to see him play a whole lot when I lived in New England before he passed away. I really love coming up to New Hampshire, especially this time of year, it’s just the best and I can’t wait to get back.
RD: It should be great and like you said, fall in this area really is the best. After the show, what are your plans going into next year? Can we expect a new album from you? Do you have any other projects in the works?
MG: I’m always writing songs and when I get some time I always find myself going back to another manuscript I’m working on. I’m sure I have another book in me and I’m going to be working on it when I’m not on the road. There’s always something stewin’ and brewin’ and I got a full month in Europe happening in November so I’m going to be touring a lot throughout the rest of this year. Then it’ll be time to really buckle in and do some writing. I toggle back and forth between touring and writing, but it’s a pretty haphazard thing.
I go as long as I can go and when it just slows down, I’ll write.
