autogenerated transcript

Mark Stinson, host: [00:00:00] Welcome back friends to our podcast, unlocking Your World of Creativity, where we talk to artists of all kinds around the world, about their creative process, how they get inspired, and how they organize those ideas. And most of all, how they gain the confidence and the connections to launch their work out into the world.

And I'm just so pleased today to have Grammy nominated folk, Americana, country singer songwriter Mary Gauthier. Mary, welcome to the program.

Mary Gauthier, singer-songerwriter: Great to be with you today. Thanks for having me on. And

Mark Stinson, host: fellow Louisianan .

Mary Gauthier, singer-songerwriter: That's right. Born in New Orleans. Raised in Baton Rouge.

Mark Stinson, host: I love that. I was born in Shreveport.

Spent a lot of time in Baton Rouge and then moved to Chicago. But good to have those southern roots. Appreciate you coming on. It helps

Mary Gauthier, singer-songerwriter: with the food, doesn't it? We know how. Yeah, it does. It does. We know how to sniff out good

Mark Stinson, host: food, . And when you talk about inspiration, food is certainly

Mary Gauthier, singer-songerwriter: up there, isn.

Man, I love food. I love to cook and eat and find great places on the [00:01:00] road. And I'm pretty good at walking into a place and knowing whether it's something I should sit down and do, or turn around and walk out. I'm pretty good at that. I

Mark Stinson, host: love that. Let's talk about your healing power of songwriting theme that you have.

The songs are so powerful in and of themselves, but I'm also thinking for our listeners about your creative process and how you really see that healing. Power. What is it about writing, especially songwriting that is so good for the.

Mary Gauthier, singer-songerwriter: Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah. That's why I wrote a book.

That's why the book is called Saved by a Song and it is the subtitle of the book that you're referencing, the Healing Power of Music in song. I just think that there's a big discussion around this. And it's hard to pin it down into one simple, quick answer, but I think there's people who understand that music and song can be far more than just entertainment, although it can be just entertainment and there ain't nothing wrong with that.

There's. Such [00:02:00] a power in music and song that it can be many different things. And for me it has been a real important part of my healing journey. See, I was born to an un. Unmarried woman in 1962 and put up for adoption at birth. I spent my first year in an orphanage and was adopted.

And and I didn't know, and my adoptive parents didn't know, but a year of being unmothered was very traumatizing. And I didn't know what was going on inside of me. I just knew that as a teenager, all hell broke loose. And I got into real trouble with drugs and alcohol. And I had a huge number of monkeys on my back that I didn't have names for and I couldn't make sense of.

And I was able to get sober when I was 27. Music started coming to me then, not before I got sober, but after. And that's the story for me. I've used songwriting, music, and song to try to make sense of all the things that my [00:03:00] life is made of, including the things I didn't understand. And that's what I still do. And I think the healing. Is being able to name and claim things that that I didn't have words for until I started writing. And melody is such a powerful way to express emotion and to get, melody will get into places that words can't reach.

Exactly. So music's a strong power. And It has properties that reach into the deepest levels of human consciousness. And I'm sure you and your listeners have seen snippets of people in LED stage Alzheimer's. Yes. Who are sung a song from their youth and they know, they don't know the name of their wife or husband of 50 years, but they know the words to love me tender.

. And the melody, why does that stick so deep? What is this thing that we call music and song? What is it really? Why is it so primal and deep inside of us, even [00:04:00] when everything else has left us or is leaving us this power stays inside of us. What is going on? And that's a deep conversation.

It's certainly worthy of a podcast. It certainly.

Mark Stinson, host: Discuss it and you think about how the songs punctuate our life, and one reviewer called, talked about your music and said, you really made that emotional story of non-fiction. It is our life. These are the events that took place, but yet this songwriting, like you said, the meloy brings a different kind of emotion to it, doesn't it?

Mary Gauthier, singer-songerwriter: Yeah. Yeah. I and I, I think that it connects us when a song is really firing on all cylinders. It connects people and it brings us to an understanding of each other. , as a songwriter, the best thing you can say is, Hey, Mary, play my song. It's yay. They're claiming it because they feel as though it sees them.

And that's, I think my job is to go deepen up inside of me to, to the point where I hit you. . And I think that's what art is all about is getting [00:05:00] our hands in something that's a universal experience that we don't talk about in everyday life. Yes. .

Mark Stinson, host: And how did that experience of songwriting extend into book writing?

In other words, you were telling your story in a different medium, but you also wanted to share the stories not only behind the songs, but behind the process and your work with veterans. How did it your songwriting style or process extend to authoring?

Mary Gauthier, singer-songerwriter: I learned real quick after I got the book deal that writing a book and writing a song is two very different things.

Book writing is a lot, much longer process. And it's a much more challenging process for me because it's challenging in different ways and I had to learn how to write a book while writing a book. For me the challenge of a book is figuring out the framework. How is it going to be framed out?

How do I, where do I put all these stories in a way that is order? And cumulative. It makes great sense in the end. And the way that I ended up doing it was [00:06:00] not intuitive to me. I just had to do it a lot of different ways and find my way. But what I ended up with is each chapter is a song. Each song points to an aspect of songwriting that I want to talk about, and each song is also reflective of a part of my own personal story.

And the cumulative effect of each song adding up over time is the story of my recovery and my healing. So in the beginning, the songs were making sense of my addiction and struggle. And and towards the end of the book, it's me working with veterans using music and song to help them with their P T S D.

So it's the deepening of my understanding of songwriting and the deepening of my ability to use it as a way of helping others heal. And it, the discussion gets bigger and bigger as the book goes on. , it becomes not just my personal trauma, but the trauma that the world inflicts on all of us.

And particularly the wounds of. . Yeah it was not something that came easy. It took six years to write it. [00:07:00] And it's, it's a multilayered book. It's about songwriting, it's about my life, and it's about using. art, particularly music and song to, to bring forth healing.

Yes.

Mark Stinson, host: And you mentioned the work with veterans. They were obviously not maybe experienced or schooled in songwriting. How did that process help them through a healing

Mary Gauthier, singer-songerwriter: journey? Yeah, that's a good question. No, the vets that I've worked with are not songwriters. They just carry story. And so when I sit down and write with the veteran, I ask them how they're doing and when did they serve?

Where did they serve? What branch of the military, what was it like? I asked 'em if there's anything on their heart that they wanna talk about. And I find the song inside 'em and what happens is they start to confide in me or the other. Songwriters that are at a retreat. I work with a program called Songwriting with Soldiers, and we build trust, we build confidence and their [00:08:00] story starts to come alive in the song.

It's a profound experience to hear your story sung back to you. It takes it out of a deeply personal experience and puts it into the context of a group, and suddenly you are not you're observing. Instead of living the story, you become the observer of the story. And that little bit of distance is where the healing can start.

What happens is you start to, to see that, that instead of. It being something that you're powerless over as the storyteller. You start to have agency and power being given. The microphone, the pen is an act of courage and power.

Mark Stinson, host: Such a good perspective that power. Yeah. And you mentioned teaching the process of songwriting.

[00:09:00] Obviously you hold classes, you have camps and groups and personal lessons. How do you convey? A lot of people think it's just an eight, eight talent, but it emerged in you, in your adulthood. But can other people learn

Mary Gauthier, singer-songerwriter: It can be taught, absolutely. Yeah. You can't teach talent, but you can teach songwriting.

It's a craft as well as an art. And you can teach courage. You can encourage courage. If you think about popular song really it. It generally conveys a universal truth and emotional experience. And there's really a handful of courts. Rock and roll's built on three chords, yes. So you don't have to be a virtuoso musician. You don't have to be a, even much of a singer to become. A really good songwriter, which what I think is required is a willingness to work hard and dedicate yourself to this craft and art. [00:10:00] And be curious. And I think the most important thing is to be courageous.

Meaning you gotta scare yourself with what you say. You gotta say things that you don't feel comfortable saying, you gotta take down. The protection and get vulnerable, and that's when it starts to get

Mark Stinson, host: good. It's so interesting because you think about people talking about their process and they have folders and files full of napkins and song lyrics and magazine articles.

They've torn out and, half lyrics but not many people say, I need to get vulnerable. I need to drop the curtain of protection and let those stories come.

Mary Gauthier, singer-songerwriter: Who wants to do that? . Who wants to walk around the town square in your underwear? , nobody. But that's the job. E, even if it's a happy love song.

Upbeat, you've gotta show your heart. I remember I was up in Aberdeen, Scotland, and in the [00:11:00] early days of my career, I was always surprised who showed up. I'm a I'm a I'm a gay woman. Always have been. And I figured that's who my audience would be.

But inevitably I am forever and always will drawing draw straight men about my. Who are like me in so many ways, mystified by women, can't make sense of why that marriage didn't work. Don't understand what went wrong there. That's me. They reflect my heart and my songs speak to their heart. And I was up in Aberdeen and I remember it was a truck driver up there, they call the trucks, Loris.

. So he was a Lori driver of an Aberdeen and he. Thickest Scottish, bro. But he shouted. He tilted his head and shouted out, show us your hearts man. He show us your heart, Christ sake. Show us your heart. And what he was saying is, show me my heart. See, this is how it works. You get vulnerable in, what you do is you reveal your listeners to themself.

Of course you're revealing [00:12:00] yourself to yourself, but if you're doing your job right, you're revealing your listeners to themself too. And this is how it becomes a job. They give you money to do that. Yes.

Mark Stinson, host: And you have to work at it's, I i's think about, think it's easy, some of the obstacles you must face.

And in some other interviews you've talked about, you don't always get what you deserve. You keep working at it and you overcome these obstacles. How do you do that on a sort of day-to-day? There's gotta be days where you say, this just isn't working for me. Do you step back from it?

Do you push through it? How do you face it? The

Mary Gauthier, singer-songerwriter: obstacles? In

Mark Stinson, host: songwriting? Yes. Yes. Or in the business of music.

Mary Gauthier, singer-songerwriter: Yeah. Songs come in their own time. And I, I I use the analogy of songwriters being a midwife. So having been in the presence of a midwife I watched her work and what she does is spend a whole lot of time sitting on a little stool at the foot of the bed waiting for the baby to come.

There's [00:13:00] not a whole lot of pulling and pushing and dragging, and it's a whole lot of waiting, but sitting there. Imposition ready, the baby's gonna come. We don't grab it by the hair and pull or grab it by a leg and pull songwriters like that. We're wifeing these things into existence.

And so they come when they come and not every one of 'em needs to be played on stage. Not all my songs will the world hear. I, I. Be the I wanna be the decider as to whether or not the song is worthy of bringing to the public. Not every song I write is that good. I was on the phone this morning with Rodney Corrall, he said, Mary, and probably about, I think my batting average like two outta 10 that's about right.

Two outta 10 songs that I write are good. And the other eight don't need to be recorded or played in front of people, but they need to be written. I can't get to that second good one if there's seven in the [00:14:00] way, so I gotta write 'em to get to the next good one. And I think that gets overlooked a lot.

I think there's a lot of folks who think you're just supposed to play everything you write, and I've never felt that way.

Mark Stinson, host: It's very helpful. Let's switch gears a little bit to the tour and, there's a lot of cliches about life on the road and you are definitely playing some great venues in some great cities.

What part of the creative processes, the touring? Is it just to get the workout and meet the people, do the promotion or do you also gained some inspiration from some of these places and people and cities?

Mary Gauthier, singer-songerwriter: Oh yeah. You get all kind of inspiration going from town to town. And meeting people, seeing new things, being in a different mindset.

There, there is no rut, we are not doing the same thing over and over again. It's different every day. , I think that touring is a part of it for me, but of course I'm in Nashville here and a lot of songwriters have never toured in their life and they don't want to, they don't even wanna get on stage ever.

They just [00:15:00] wanna write 'em. . And that's a beautiful thing too. I like the touring life. I like being out there. I, I enjoy Just the whole challenge of it. It's part of my identity now to be a traveler. I think I'm a troubador by nature. Town to town can be exhausting.

But I like it even as I get older and it gets harder. I try not to whine about it too much, cuz I know I love it. my knees don't love it, . I don't think that that's gonna get any better. But my, my, my heart and soul really resonate well. I'm just, I have this. It's like Willie, on the road again, I just can't wait to get on the road again.

And he ain't gonna stop. He's doing his 90th birthday on the road. Love

Mark Stinson, host: that. But I was thinking about the blender, you're talking about songwriters who just wanna write songs for other people. Plenty of your songs have been recorded by other artists. Are you thinking about that when you write the song and you mentioned every song doesn't need to be performed or recorded, but are you thinking somebody may want to [00:16:00] grab onto this and still, so you still might make the demo or you still might.

Mary Gauthier, singer-songerwriter: No, never have every song I've ever gotten cut. They found it somehow and they decided, they liked it enough to record it. I didn't. I didn't. I never wrote a song thinking about. Who else might wanna record it? That's just unknowable to me. What is in someone else's heart at any given moment?

Hell, my own heart's unknowable to me. Most of the time. I gotta be digging around my own unknowns to get to something good. I can't jump through. The crazy fields of Nashville and figure out what's in, I don't know Kenny Chesney's heart right now. I have no idea. I just try to write the truest, most honest, vulnerable song I can and hope someone else enjoys it or sees themself in it.

But I, I don't do, I can't write for a marketplace cuz I don't know what the marketplace even is.

Mark Stinson, host: No. Makes sense. [00:17:00] guestess is Mary Gauthier. Mary. Mary, as we think about what's ahead for you, you've had these great projects, of course, albums, but the book, working with the veterans, do you have anything in the, for, in the foreground that you're looking forward to any new projects you're working on?

Mary Gauthier, singer-songerwriter: Yeah, no, I put out a record in 2018 with written with veterans, and then I put out a book in 2021, and then I put out a record in 22, and I'm gonna slow down a bit right now and. I think what I need to be doing right now is working with songwriters. I'm coaching songwriters online. I just got off with someone I'm working with in Zurich right now and I'm holding workshops online and workshops in person right now.

My heart's called to working with other songwriters and helping them to manifest their. And be brave and courageous in their work. And yeah, I don't have anything pushing on me right now that I need to do, two records in a handful of years and a book I don't, I think [00:18:00] right now I want to pass on.

The art form to others and help them to reach the highest level of their ability. And then, after a while, probably 24 or something, I'll start looking at, I'm always writing songs. I just don't have anything right now. That looks like a project coming together. I'm teaching a lot and I love that.

I really do. And I'm on the run too, so that's Of course.

Mark Stinson, host: Yeah. And I'll publish the links to your website and to your tour dates and the book and so forth in the show notes so everybody can access those. Mary, as you think about let's imagine there's somebody listening right now who's at that stage where they probably have some talent, but they really need to open that heart that you've been talking about.

What insight or advice from your experience could you give them to really access those emotional tugs?

Mary Gauthier, singer-songerwriter: My experience is you you have to scare yourself. You have to write stuff that scares you cuz that's the good stuff. You have to look at it and go, I don't know if I can say this. [00:19:00] That's how you know it's good.

You, you, there is a reluctance to be vulnerable because we don't wanna be uh, We don't wanna be thrown out of the group or shamed or hung out to dry in the public square or canceled in some way because we said something that was disturbing to people. I feel strongly that that it's the brave songs that connect.

It's when I'm most vulnerable that people see themself in my songs. So I encourage my writers to go deeper and deeper and get to that place where they're shaken. And that's the vein of gold. That's where things get good. Songs are what feelings sound like. So you gotta make me feel, for me to love your song, you gotta make me.

and there's a lot of superhighways to that. That's what I work with when I work with songwriters. But the weird thing is that the least effective way to make me feel is for a, for you to tell me how you feel, or B, tell me [00:20:00] what to feel. So take those off the table and let's get to

Mark Stinson, host: work and let's get to work.

And somehow when you do tell the story, somebody out there in the audience, a listener says, I've been through that too, or that really connects with me. So you're not alone.

Mary Gauthier, singer-songerwriter: That's right. That's how it

Mark Stinson, host: works. Love that. Yeah. Mary, can't thank you enough for sharing your experiences and your.

Mary Gauthier, singer-songerwriter: Mark, it's pleasure talking with you today. Thanks for having me

Mark Stinson, host: on. Yeah, and all the best with the tour and future projects. Thank you, listeners. My guest has been singer songwriter folk Americana, country music writer, and Grammy nominated Mary Gauthier. You can find all the information on the links in the show notes, and we'll share more information as we go.

and listeners come back again. Next time we'll continue our around the world journeys to talk to artists like singer-songwriters, like poets, like storytellers of all kinds, about how they organize their ideas and gets get their work [00:21:00] up and out into the world. Until then, I'm Mark Stinson and we'll be unlocking your world of creativity.

See you next time.