Mary Gauthier
Live at Blue Rock
In the Black Records
Mary Gauthier’s songs, like the artist herself, require
your attention before their brilliance becomes apparent. This is music that
involves and captivates, not background music that slides underneath whatever
else you have going on. In the same way Bob Dylan’s early lyrics held meaning
and weight, her songs are carefully crafted, whittled and polished until what
remains is gleaming, straight and perfect.
Gauthier, Louisiana-born but now living in Nashville, has a lyrical
preoccupation with outcasts and outsiders and her songs are imbued with a sense
of her real life, a hard life, and so are the three covers she chose for Live at Blue Rock, all from another
fine songwriter, Fred Eaglesmith. A teenaged runaway and recovering addict,
Gauthier sings about what she knows, or as another cinematic songwriter, Guy
Clark, put it in his song Homeless, “the
bums, the whores and the abused.”
The eleven tracks here were recorded in an intimate
setting outside of Austin, Texas, with Mary on vocals and acoustic guitar, Mike
Meadows on percussion and the wonderful Tania Elizabeth on fiddle and vocals.
Tania’s fiddle perfectly accentuates the songs and is an essential element,
while the percussion is solid throughout.
On some tunes, not a syllable is wasted, not a line thrown away and on
others the words tumble out like coins from a Biloxi jackpot, especially on Wheel Inside the Wheel (a track covered
by Jimmy Buffett, she sometimes jokes that his cut of this tune allows her to
drive a nice car). It’s a Mardi Gras tune of a surreal sort (“Sipping wormwood concoctions/drinking absinthe and talking trash/it’s
a red carpet, black tie all night celestial bash.”) that
caps the record, rolling to a driving, joyous conclusion.
Her sixth record overall and her first live recording, Live at Blue Rock may not be an easy
record to like, but it’s an incredibly easy record to love.
Curtis Lynch
February 2012
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