Takin A Walk Nashville with the Inspirational Story of Resilience of Singer Songwriter Mary Gauthier

00:00:01
Speaker 1: Taking a Walk Nashville.

00:00:02
Speaker 2: Hi, this is Sarah Harrelson, your host of Taking a Walk Nashville, and I want to give a special shout out to Sennheiser today. I am using their profile USB podcast Mike, and I'm loving how versatile it is, how it's sounding, and how it is on the go. So thank you Senheiser. Today with me, I have a very special guest, Mary go Shay. She is a Grammy nominated American folk singer, songwriter and author. Her songs have been covered by performers such as Tim McGraw, Blake Shelton, Kathy Mattea Boy, George, Jimmy Buffett, Betty Levette, Candy Stayton, and Amy Helm to name a few. Her Grammy nominated twenty eighteen album Rifles and Rosary Beats was co written with military veterans in their families. Join me as we dive into her story today.

00:01:08
Speaker 1: Welcome to Taking a Walk Nashville with your hosts singer songwriter Sarah Harrelson.

00:01:13
Speaker 2: Mary, thank you so much for being on Taking a Walk Nashville today. So your roots run from Louisiana to Boston, and you attended culinary school in Boston. Were you already writing music at this time when you were in culinary school or was Dixie Kitchen the name of the restaurant, and also your first album, Was that kind of the turning point for you to start your career in music.

00:01:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know. I have a really unusual story in terms of music business. Anyway, I was in the restaurant business in Boston. I'm from Louisiana, and I made a decision to go to chef school in the Boston area to to get trained. I'd always worked in restaurants, but I didn't have the culinary expertise I needed to be a chef. I was more of a manager. So I went to chef school and the lead chef and the chef school told me that what I had to do was follow my heart. And what I had in my heart, he said, was Louisiana. So we found investors and ended up with a Cajun style restaurant in Boston. And that was nineteen ninety and so the Cajun style restaurant we called Dixie Kitchen after the Little Feet song Dixie Chicken. Loel George was a hero of mine and I loved the Little Feet and that song came on when I was trying to name the restaurant, and it's like, oh, Dixie Chicken, Dixie Kitchen, And so we had a ten year run with the Dixie Kitchen. After I graduated chef school, well somewhere in there, I got sober. And after I got sober, I started writing songs, and so I had the restaurant before I ever became a songwriter. Uh. And in the process of running and cooking at the restaurant, I started going to open mics. I had a lot of time on my hands having gotten sober, and I fell passionately in love with music and songwriting. And I mean I already was, but until I got sober, I wasn't capable of writing songs. Writing songs for me takes a quite a bit of focus, attention, and commitment, and I was just a I could run a restaurant, but I couldn't write a song. It's a if you ever watched Anthony Bourdain, you could see how drunks and addicts can run restaurants, but men, look, it's harder to focus for long periods of time on on on mental work like restaurants become physical work pretty quickly. Anyway, long story, short, I became more in love with music and song than then Jambalai and gumbo U. And so in two thousand and one, I came to Nashville and I decided to take a leap. I was forty years old, and that's what makes my story unusual. Who starts at forty in music? Well, I did, and you know what, I'm sixty four now. I've been in Nashville since two thousand and one. I've made a living making music since the day I got here. I continue to and it's just been a real good decision for me to commit full time, full on to being a songwriter.

00:04:30
Speaker 2: Well, and it takes so much time to run a restaurant that it would be hard to focus on music at the same time. I do still do a lot of cooking today, or is it just something you do for fun?

00:04:43
Speaker 3: Nope, I don't really mess with it. I sort of put it down and left it down. I mean, I can do a dinner party, I can do basic stuff around that kitchen, but I don't really have the passion for it like I once did. And so I'm a competent cook. I'm able to pull something together successfully, but I don't really love it. And so I have my favorite places I go to around town. We go out to eat all the time, like we're spoiled in that way.

00:05:16
Speaker 2: What are your favorite restaurants in Nashville?

00:05:19
Speaker 3: Well, I, first of all like not to have to fight parking, So let's start with Nashville has become a major metropolitan area, and parking has become a major headache like every other major metropolitan area. If the parking costs more than the dinner, what are we doing? So I like places that it's on the outskirts able to park that tend to be I fancy restaurants that are owner operated, where there's someone in the kitchen or in the dining room that has their eyes on all things that owns the place, and that those places tend to obviously not be corporate, and they have something that I am drawn to as a a former restaurant tour which is someone who really loves their attachment to what they their hands and their heart and the work is reflected in the restaurant. So the places I tend to go to are like that. My favorite of favorites is Margo's on the East Side. There's a Gilly wasn't Dave Rowlins on a studio right next to Margo's, a woodland studio, and in the studio parking lot you spend like eight ten bucks and you can get a parking spot easily. Just walk to Margos, have a long, full meal. And she's always been an extraordinary chef, and she's announced her retirement this summer. I don't know. I don't know what's Nashville about Margo's for me, I'm not sure.

00:06:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so many good restaurants and Nashtau including that one. A lot of good casiun style restaurants here too. There's voodoo gumbo I love over here in Belleville. But going back to music, you know, you've received many awards for your own music, have had many other artists cut your songs. But did you ever think your music would take you down this path or was music for you merely saving you on your journey with sobriety.

00:07:17
Speaker 3: Well it's interesting because I started later. I had no idea if I could pull this off, when this would be one one hell of a hat trick, If I could start at forty, come to Nashville openly gay back then was not exactly a career move in Nashville. When I came here, they called this town the buckle of the Bible Belt, and so I knew I had some obstacles age and and and also being openly gay my whole life. There was no closet big enough for this, So I had to I had to overcome what I think were obstacles, which which which turned out to not be such a big deal. What I learned quickly about Nashville. Nashville, if you have the songs, they let you in. So unfortunately, I had some songs that opened doors and that allowed me an opportunity to be invited in. And once I got in, I was able to make the most of the connections I made. And I think that's because of my age and business experience that worked to my advant My age worked to my advantage. And I think my sexuality has very little or nothing to do with my music. You know, I don't make music about sex. I make music about the human heart, and it jumps over all those things that we think divide us, they actually are false constructs. Nobody has ever, I think, blocked me because of who I am in Nashville. I think I've been given opportunities based on my work and that that feels fair to me. And so yeah, I came here with some songs that that that helped me get in.

00:09:03
Speaker 2: Well, I'm sure it's been so healing too, just being able to write about your experiences with getting sober, being openly gay, even just being maybe a female in the music industry.

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Speaker 3: I always tell people that if I were pressed to ask the real mountain to climb, it's not being gay, it's being a woman. It's a very male oriented business, and it's a very male dominated business, especially in Nashville. But for me, music and song, as you have referenced a couple of times now, have been more about healing, about truth and beauty, about creating art over hits and commerce. And because I'm focused on the art of song, I have a different career than what you would think of as a Nashville type career. I'm a troubadour. I traveled the world with a guitar, a spotlight, and a bottle of water, and I have stories and I tell them and people connect to those stories, not in large numbers, but in numbers large enough for me to not have to do anything but that I've I've found music and song to be very healing from me personally. But then when you put it in the world with that as your mission statement, it does things that other people appreciate other than just entertainment. And so that's been my mission and it's I think it's been a great source of my success is that I'm not aiming for a marketplace that's hit strict, that's hit driven. I'm a storyteller, and if you can write and tell a good story, people love stories. You know. We're just in the desert in West Texas, in a old silver mining town and it's just a bunch of cowboys and you know, mice and rattlesnakes and we saw it tarantula and a lot of dust, and you know, this is a remote, remote place to Linguo, Texas. And I'm in this old theater that used to not have a roof, called the Starlight Theater. It's half restaurant, half bar. We're playing in the bar, and I watch these cowboys like tough guys, these guys living out in the elements. Once the stories I start telling the stories, you can just see people almost become children listening to stories. Stories captivate people. A story well, toad acrosses all boundaries and I just know and believe in the magic of good stories.

00:11:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, I definitely agree with that, and I think that's the key is to write songs that are not only about your own experiences, but ones that other people can relate to. And you definitely do that with blending genres like country, Americana and folk.

00:11:51
Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more of the Taking a Walk Nashville Podcast. Welcome back to Take in a Walk Nashville.

00:12:02
Speaker 2: Your twenty eighteen Grammy nominated album Rifles and Rosary Beads that was co written with US veterans and their families, arising out of your involvement with the organization Songwriting with Soldiers, And you noted that every day, on average, twenty two veterans commits suicide and a portion from this album benefits this wonderful organization and how to be healing for the veterans to be able to put their experiences and their trauma into music. So how did you get involved with Songwriting with Soldiers.

00:12:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's a nonprofit that was started by a dear friend of mine named Darden Smith. He stumbled on this opportunity to co write a song with someone who was in the military, and he realized, Wow, there's something here that feels powerful, these things that we find each other connecting on. He thought he had nothing in common with the soldier, with someone in the military, and he found he had everything in common. And so that was an illuminating moment for the songwriter. And so the songs that we write with the veterans help us as much as them. Really, we just find each other there. And yeah, the the process is one of really truly listening and connecting. And I would like to just sort of put a fine point on the word healing. It gets tossed around a lot, to the point of almost meaninglessness. So I try not to say healing because it sounds slippery, and I think of the process more as alchemy. A song can take your darkest moment, the hardest thing you've ever gone through, and turn it into something beautiful and useful in the world. And that type of transformation is magic. I mean, everybody knows that when you listen to the blues, you feel better. That is a paradox. Why listening into sad, slow songs about misery, why would that make me feel better? Well, let's start with one. You know you're not alone. Two, there is something about being seen, heard, and known in a song that is a relief. So alchemy is a magic that the arts can bring to people who are dealing with heavy loads and trauma. And I love the alchemy of songwriting. I teach a lot of songwriting now, and what I find is that if we write about personal stuff, we're only gonna have so far over reach. If we write about deeply personal stuff, we hit what is I think of the human experience that transcends the personal, and this is where we find each other in the stuff that's deeply personal that we tend to keep a lid on because we don't know if it's something we should even talk about. It's awkward, it's not something you bring up at a dinner party or a barroom conversation. But in a song, this is the appropriate place to do it. And it transcends the self. It hits the human condition, and that's where we meet and find each other, and that's where we start to alchemize things and transformation is possible.

00:15:39
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I love that you bring that up. And you know, when you're co writing with professional songwriters, you get into a habit of opening up to each other. But when you're co writing with veterans who maybe have never written a song before, maybe it's hard with their past experience to deeply open up. So did you find that maybe it was hard to dig deep with them? And what was your experience like putting their story into lyrics and music.

00:16:10
Speaker 3: It wasn't hard at all. And here's here's why the songwriter in that scenario shows up as a midwife. We're there to bear witness and and to patiently sit and listen. And if you've ever really been listened to, I mean people pay therapist two hundred dollars an hour to listen intensely, if you've ever really truly deeply been listened to by someone who's in non judgment of whatever they say is okay. There there is no morality clause in songwriting. We're there to listen, bear witness, and take what we hear and turn it into melody and poetry and song. So so they open up because the song opens them up. We play start to play back what we hear them saying. It's a mirror and the songwriter's job is to not insert self. We know nothing, absolutely nothing about them or about military service. So We're not gonna apply our own experience to that. We're gonna take their experience and just ask gentle questions so that we can better understand them and write a better song. When you're truly witnessed and heard and you know you're not judged, you'll talk maybe not about feelings, but about experience, and the feelings will come from the story of the experience. We don't need to talk about feelings. We need to show and tell the story. The feelings are a result of this story.

00:17:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure so beautiful being for them to be able to hear their story come into life and something they can listen to and have forever.

00:17:57
Speaker 3: And it absolutely and it is a universal experience. That's where the alchemy comes when they realize that their story is not just theirs, it is a universal experience of human beings who have been through what they've been through. This is what happens, and this is how people feel in that situation. That it de personalizes it, it universalizes it. And they realize really quickly that telling their story in their song helps other veterans, which is huge for them, because our veterans here in this country are volunteers, they're not drafted, and these people are fundamentally and intrinsically built to serve. They want to serve, and if telling their story is serving other veterans, they become much more willing to do so. And it is serving other veterans. They see themselves in these songs, and they know they're not alone. This is the power of music and song.

00:18:54
Speaker 2: Absolutely, that's so beautiful and such an important cause. In addition to being an artist and songwriter, you are also an author publishing your book Saved by a Song the art and healing power of songwriting. I think this book is for anyone who loves music or maybe they're going through recovery themselves. So was it cathartic for you to write about your story and book form and share it with the world.

00:19:22
Speaker 3: Maybe? I think more it was an organizing principle. After teaching for decades and working with veterans for for ten twelve years, I had a lot of experiences that taught me things. So I learned a lot and maintaining sobriety and recovery now for many, many decades, I've learned a lot. And so the book is an organ you organize your your understandings when you write a book, and so it allowed me to to sort of go, oh, I see this happened, led to this, led to this, which is how I ended up here, which is where I wanted to be all along. But I wouldn't have gotten here without this and this. Writing your story helps you understand your story, and I think it helps you to make sense of who you are. So Catharsis is not exactly the experience. Catharsis is more more from songs. I think a book is an organizing principle in him, and I think it's also an ambassador. My book is an ambassador for me. It comes in before me, introduces me to people, so they feel they already know me if they've read the book, because they know what I know about me, and also my understanding. The book is really about my understanding of art ands and particularly song is a transformative medium that's wonderful.

00:20:50
Speaker 2: Where can people find this book?

00:20:52
Speaker 3: Everywhere? You can get it anywhere you just Google saved by a song. I have them on my way site there Amazon, It's on Audible. Uh. The the book I think is included if you have a Spotify account, you can listen to it through Audible. These uh, you know there there is a hundred ways to get the book, or there are one hundred ways to get the book if you just google it. It's everywhere.

00:21:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I hope people will go check it out. And this year you have a busy tour schedule with your partner Jamie Harris, who is also going to be on Taking a Walk Nashville. Are you excited to keep performing together this year?

00:21:35
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I can't wait to get it going again. We've taken about five weeks off over the holidays. I'm ready to. I'm ready to. We played in the Desert, but that was one of I'm ready to be on the road again. I like. I like my job a lot. I like having Jamie with me. We we play and sing together, and she'd also starts the shows with with her own songs. It's it's a real privilege and blessing to have a partner to travel with. UH. And we do great out there, and we have a lot of fun. We meet a lot of people and we see the world. It's it's a it's such a I don't know, it's a it's a dream come true. And and I couldn't have imagined how good. Uh, this this would be. You know, when I started all those years ago, I was just hoping against hope that I could could pull this off in a way that I didn't have to get another job. I didn't I didn't have big, huge, massive dreams of of of giant you know, success, and and and it's gotten much bigger than I ever imagined it could. And and I'm just deeply grateful that we get to keep going.

00:22:49
Speaker 2: That's wonderful. Yeah, people can find all of your upcoming show and tour dates on your website to see if they're if you're playing in their area. Mary. My last question I always love to ask my guests this, since we're on taking a walk Nashville, do you have a favorite place that you love to take a walk in Nashville.

00:23:11
Speaker 3: Well, I tend to go to Warner Park. That is a series of parks that were donated to the city a century ago, I guess. And there's a Red Trail which is four and a half miles deep into the woods, quite hilly, always hard, and never an easy hike, but wow, after you do it, you've done some aerobic hiking in the deep woods. And it's twenty minutes from my house. Maybe less with traffic, maybe fifteen with no traffic, I mean. And then there's the White Trail at Warner Park that you can get at the end of Bellemead Boulevard. You just go on down. You see a flag pole of American Flag Park and that's the White Trail. And the White Trail is two and a half miles much less challenging, but it's also hilly and uh, you know, might even go there today. Uh, it's a beautiful walk in the woods and it's very removed from development. So there's owls and I'm stepping over snakes and there's just beautiful. Every single day the forest changes and so there's there's a nature that is untouched very close to the city. We're very lucky to have Warner part that's my favorite hikes.

00:24:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, those are absolutely two of my favorite trails. And like you said, when the seasons changed, the trail even looks different even if you've done it a few times. But yeah, that that Red Trail. Once you get to the end, you're tired of the hill. So it's great exercise, it's.

00:24:42
Speaker 3: A real hike, and and it's got it it's got such changing scenery as you go it's anything but boring. I love it, but you do have to watch out, especially in the spring. There are timber rattlesnakes out there.

00:24:56
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:24:56
Speaker 3: I've come up on one once, what that was rattling. And I've come up on one that was on the trail as well, So you've got to keep it's smart not to wear earbuds because the snake's when they rattle, say hey, I don't want to hurt you, right the hell away from me. You've got to be able to hear them, especially in the spring as they're coming out of their sleep. But you know, if you're aware, it's a beautiful, beautiful place.

00:25:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. You always one of my favorites and the popular answer here on the podcast. Well, Mary, thank you so much for being on Taking a Walk Nashville today. I hope everyone will check out your music and books, and I've appreciated having you on today.

00:25:40
Speaker 3: It's nice speaking with you, Sarah, but thanks for having me.

00:25:44
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Taking a Walk Nashville with Sarah Harrelson. Please check out our other shows produced by Buzznight Media Productions, Comedy Save Me and Music Saved Me hosted by Lynn Hoffman, and Take it a Walk hosted by you Truly Buzznight. All shows are available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and are part of the iHeart podcast network