New album from Mary Gauthier, 'Trouble and Love'
Album release: Trouble and Love by Mary Gauthier
Label: Proper Records
Release date: June 9
Listen on: official Mary Gauthier website
“With songwriting as powerful as hers, there’s no need to go looking for qualifiers…She’s a unique, intrinsically valuable musical voice. And there’s never a surplus of those.” — Randy Lewis, Los Angeles Times
A Louisiana-native turned Nashville-resident, Mary Gauthier (it’s French - pronounced Go-SHAY) has had an extraordinary life. A teenage runaway who found her first shelter among addicts and drag queens, struggled with drug addiction and became a chef/owner of three restaurants in Boston before selling them in 2001 to become a full time songwriter.
She has subsequently received countless accolades for her six studio albums. The New York Times music writer John Pareles picked 2001’s Filth and Fire as the #1 indie release of the year, 2005’s Mercy Now earned her the Americana Music Association’s New/Emerging Artist of the Year title and 2011’s The Foundling was named as one of the Records of the Year by the LA Times.
Mary’s songs have been praised by both Bob Dylan and Tom Waits and recorded by Jimmy Buffett, Blake Shelton, Boy George, Tim McGraw, Candi Staton amongst others.
After years of measured success in the world of record deals and major labels, Gauthier has now taken the reins to her business. “I am now happily and successfully working with my own team outside of the major label model,” she says, “Taking back and claiming my power is the underlying theme of this project, and of my life.”
Trouble and Love, her first studio CD since 2010, was co-produced by Mary with Patrick Granado (whose credits include Grammys for a Delbert McClinton record he produced and a tribute CD to Stephen Foster), recorded in Ricky Skaggs studio outside Nashville and features the support of Darrell Scott, Beth Nielsen Chapman and Ashley Cleveland.
One track from Trouble and Love, “How You Learn To Live Alone”, co-written with Gretchen Peters, was chosen for Season II of the hit TV show Nashville. On the record, the legendary Duane Eddy plays guitar on this song.