Music & Concerts
Mary Gauthier on songwriting, book writing and her weekend D.C. show
Grammy-nominated singer says one’s sexual orientation should be incidental
Mary Gauthier with Jamiee Harris
City Winery
1350 Okie St., N.E.
Sunday, March 24
7:30 p.m.
$22
Mary Gauthier is an expert on penning pain to paper but it took her longer to embark on her songwriting dreams than most musicians.
Gauthier was adopted by her parents, who lived in Louisiana, when she was one year old. She struggled with being adopted and in her younger years used alcohol and drugs to cope. In 1990, Gauthier opened Dixie Kitchen, a Cajun restaurant in Boston. On opening night she was arrested for drunk driving which marked the beginning of her long-term sobriety. After getting clean, she used her past issues with adoption trauma and alcohol and drug addiction to fuel her songwriting. Gauthier is now an accomplished singer/songwriter with 10 albums under her belt and a memoir/songwriting book on the way.
The singer, whose last album was nominated for a Grammy, spoke with the Washington Blade from Nashville on March 11, her 57th birthday, which she admits “is not a big day for me.” She gave some songwriting 101 tips, teased her upcoming book and gave her thoughts on celebrities’ coming-out announcements.
WASHINGTON BLADE: You got into songwriting much later on in life which isn’t typical for most artists. What drove you to write your first song?
MARY GAUTHIER: I got sober in 1990. After I got sober, I looked up and saw myself parked right next to the Berklee College of Music. I owned a restaurant next door. My employees were all musicians and songwriters. I really got swept up into it. I had a lot of time on my hands after I got clean. I just got carried away with it and it became the thing I wanted to do more than anything. After awhile, I really started taking songwriting seriously and that remains true.
BLADE: Do you have a particular method to your songwriting? Do you do music or lyrics first?
GAUTHIER: It depends. I’m writing a book. It’s so interesting in the middle of a process you don’t know what you’re doing. Years go by and you can reflect on the process and see, “Oh that was a pivotal moment.” But when you’re standing in the middle of a pivotal moment you don’t know it’s a pivotal moment. So in retrospect I can see that I developed a process over time that works for me but it wasn’t something that I did consciously. I developed a relationship with the truth that has served me well in my songs. I’m not quite sure how I did that. But that’s what I do. I tend to migrate towards the emotional truth and solve that in my writing so that the songs resonate with listeners in a way that is hopefully meaningful to them.
BLADE: You’re writing a book about songwriting?
GAUTHIER: Yeah, it’s a combination memoir/book on my songwriting process.
BLADE: When will that be released?
GAUTHIER: We’re looking at 2020.
BLADE: What’s the best piece of songwriting advice you have for someone just starting out?
GAUTHIER: Tell the truth.
BLADE: That’s definitely what you do in your songs. You’re very open about your struggles with adoption trauma and alcohol and drugs. I’m sure writing about it is cathartic but do you find some songs are too much to perform consistently?
GAUTHIER: Yeah, some songs I don’t bring out to an audience. Some songs I bring out a couple of times and some songs I only bring out once. I think there’s a fine line between enough and too much. That actually can change over time. I think that the challenge for me is to get myself in a place where I’m looking at a song to understand what the song wants to be and try to deliver it. Then I’ll make those decisions after the song is written as to whether this one is for me or for the public or for a record. A lot of the songs from “The Foundling,” where I worked through quite a bit of adoption trauma, I don’t play them anymore because I don’t want to relive that. I needed to write it and it was important to capture it. But I don’t need to constantly talk about it. I’m past it in many ways. So the best thing for me to do with those songs is leave them where they are and let them find their audience without my help. They are doing their work without me having to do much. People find it when they need it.
BLADE: You’ve been out your whole career. Lately, a lot of actors and musicians make big, public coming out declarations to their fans. Do you think that’s something you would have done if you weren’t out?
GAUTHIER: It’s hard to know how to come out if you’ve never been in. I don’t know. I think the more people that are open about it in life, the general public will understand that being gay is kinda like the color of your freaking hair or eyes. It’s something incidental. It’s not defining of who we are. It normalizes it if people know gay people in their real life. “Oh, you guys are just like us except you’re stumbling into the walls in same-sex relationships instead of heterosexual relationships.” So, I think having people out is a good thing. However you come out is good I think and however you want to handle it. I’ve never been one to tell people to come out if they’re not ready to come out. There was a time when people were outing people. I always thought that was something I wasn’t comfortable with. I think we have the right to make that decision ourselves and based on the circumstances of our life.
BLADE: You’re writing a book on songwriting and you used to own a restaurant. Any plans to write a cookbook?
GAUTHIER: Probably not. I’ve kinda moved on from food. I’m not real passionate about it anymore. The work it would take to do that is probably not time well spent for me. I’m trying real hard to write this other book and, let me tell you, I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s hard work. Writing a book is incredibly challenging. And I know for a cookbook you have to test everything over and over again and make sure you got the portions right and the timing right. You never know, but probably not.
BLADE: Your last album “Rifles and Rosary Beads” was a collaboration with veterans telling their stories. Where did that concept come from?
GAUTHEIR: I’ve been working with an organization that’s a non-profit that pairs veterans with songwriters and I just collected songs over a six year period and the collection of songs grew to the point where I realized this is a body of work and I decided I should put a record of these songs. I feel like the songs are significant. They tell the story of so much of what the veterans in this country are going through right now. It was wonderful for me to be out there with a record that wasn’t about me.
BLADE: How did the songwriting work on that?
GAUTHIER: The vets aren’t songwriters so we just listened to their songs and captured what they say and put it in a song. The veterans had the authority to say, “Hey, that’s not what I said” or “Can we change it a little different?” So they sign off on it but the songwriter does the writing. But it’s their story. It’s their life story.
BLADE: Do you have any upcoming music projects?
GAUTHIER: I’m always on the road. I’m always working. I travel the highways and bi-ways of the world. I love my job. I’m excited to play the City Winery in Washington. I’ve never played there before. I’ve played quite a few spots in the general vicinity but I’ve never played City Winery so I’m excited to come in and try a new venue.
BLADE: What can people expect from your show?
GAUTHIER: I’m gonna play the songs people are familiar with from my back catalogue and play some brand new songs and some songs off of “Rifles and Rosary Beads.” It’s 90 minutes of story and song.
Music & Concerts
Underdog glorious: a personal remembrance of Jill Sobule
Talented singer, songwriter died in house fire on May 1
I’ve always prided myself on being the kind of music consumer who purchased music on impulse. When I stumbled across “Things Here Are Different,” Jill Sobule’s 1990 MCA Records debut album on vinyl in a favorite Chicago record store, I bought it without knowing anything about her. This was at a time when we didn’t have our phones in our pockets to search for information about the artist on the internet. The LP stayed in my collection until, as vinyl was falling out of fashion, I replaced it with a CD a few years later.
Early in my career as an entertainment journalist, I received a promo copy of Jill’s eponymous 1995 Atlantic Records album. That year, Atlantic Records was one of the labels at the forefront of signing and heavily promoting queer artists, including Melissa Ferrick and Extra Fancy, and its roster included the self-titled album by Jill. It was a smart move, as the single “I Kissed A Girl” became a hit on radio and its accompanying video (featuring Fabio!) was in heavy rotation on MTV (when they still played videos).
Unfortunately for Jill, she was a victim of record label missteps. When 1997’s wonderful “Happy Town” failed to repeat the success, Atlantic dumped her. That was Atlantic’s loss, because her next album, the superb “Pink Pearl” contained “Heroes” and “Mexican Wrestler,” two of her most beloved songs. Sadly, Beyond Music, the label that released that album ceased to exist after just a few years. To her credit, the savvy Jill had also started independently releasing music (2004’s “The Folk Years”). That was a smart move because her next major-label release, the brilliant “Underdog Victorious” on Artemis Records, met a similar fate when that label folded.
With her 2009 album “California Years,” Jill launched her own indie label, Pinko Records, on which she would release two more outstanding full-length discs, 2014’s “Dottie’s Charms” (on which she collaborated with some of her favorite writers, including David Hadju, Rick Moody, Mary Jo Salter, and Jonathan Lethem), and 2018’s stunning “Nostalgia Kills.” Jill’s cover of the late Warren Zevon’s “Don’t Let Us Get Sick” on “Nostalgia Kills” was particularly poignant as she had toured with him as an opening act.
Jill was a road warrior, constantly on tour, and her live shows were something to behold. My first interview with Jill took place at the Double Door in Chicago in early August of 1995, when she was the opening act for legendary punk band X. She had thrown her back out the previous day and was diagnosed with a herniated disc. To be comfortable, she was lying down on a fabulous-‘50s sofa. “I feel like I’m at my shrink’s,” she said to me, “Do you want me to talk about my mother?”
That sense of humor, which permeated and enriched her music, was one of many reasons to love Jill. I was privileged to interview her for seven of her albums. Everything you would want to know about her was right there in her honest lyrics, in which she balanced her distinctive brand of humor with serious subject matter. Drawing on her life experiences in songs such as “Bitter,” “Underachiever,” “One of These Days,” “Freshman,” “Jetpack,” “Nothing To Prove,” “Forbidden Thoughts of Youth,” “Island of Lost Things,” “Where Do I Begin,” “Almost Great,” and “Big Shoes,” made her songs as personal as they were universal, elicited genuine affection and concern from her devoted fans.
While she was a consummate songwriter, Jill also felt equally comfortable covering songs made famous by others, including “Just A Little Lovin’” (on the 2000 Dusty Springfield tribute album “Forever Dusty”) and “Stoned Soul Picnic” (from the 1997 Laura Nyro tribute album “Time and Love”). Jill also didn’t shy away from political subject matter in her music with “Resistance Song,” “Soldiers of Christ,” “Attic,” “Heroes,” “Under the Disco Ball,” and the incredible “America Back” as prime examples.
Here’s something else worth mentioning about Jill. She was known for collaboration skills. As a songwriter, she maintained a multi-year creative partnership with Robin Eaton (“I Kissed A Girl” and many others), as well as Richard Barone, the gay frontman of the renowned band The Bongos. Jill’s history with Barone includes performing together at a queer Octoberfest event in Chicago in 1996. Writer and comedian Julie Sweeney, of “SNL” and “Work in Progress” fame was another Chicago collaborator with Sobule (Sweeney lives in a Chicago suburb), where they frequently performed their delightful “The Jill and Julia Show.” John Doe, of the aforementioned band X, also collaborated with Jill in the studio (“Tomorrow Is Breaking” from “Nostalgia Kills”), as well as in live performances.
On a very personal note, in 2019, when I was in the process of arranging a reading at the fabulous NYC gay bookstore Bureau of General Services – Queer Division, I reached out to Jill and asked her if she would like to be on the bill with me. We alternated performing; I would read a couple of poems, and Jill would sing a couple of songs. She even set one of my poems to music, on the spot.
Jill had an abundance of talent, and when she turned her attention to musical theater, it paid off in a big way. Her stage musical “F*ck 7th Grade,” a theatrical piece that seemed like the next logical step in her career, had its premiere at Pittsburgh’s City Theatre in the fall of 2020, during the height of the pandemic. The unique staging (an outdoor drive-in stage at which audience members watched from their cars) was truly inspired. “F*ck 7th Grade” went on to become a New York Times Critic’s pick, as well as earning a Drama Desk nomination.
In honor of the 30th anniversary of Jill’s eponymous 1995 album, reissue label Rhino Records is re-releasing it on red vinyl. Jill and I had been emailing each other to arrange a time for an interview. We even had a date on the books for the third week of May.
When she died in a house fire in Minnesota on May 1 at age 66, Jill received mentions on network and cable news shows. She was showered with attention from major news outlets, including obits in the New York Times and Rolling Stone (but not Pitchfork, who couldn’t be bothered to review her music when she was alive). Is it wrong to think that if she’d gotten this much attention when she was alive she could have been as big as Taylor Swift? I don’t think so.
Music & Concerts
Tom Goss returns with ‘Bear Friends Furever Tour’
Out singer/songwriter to perform at Red Bear Brewing Co.
Singer Tom Goss will bring his “Bear Friends Furever Tour” to D.C. on Sunday, June 8 at 8 p.m. at Red Bear Brewing Co.
Among the songs he will perform will be “Bear Soup,” the fourth installment in his beloved bear song anthology series. Following fan favorites like “Bears,” “Round in All the Right Places,” and “Nerdy Bear,” this high-energy, bass-thumping banger celebrates body positivity, joyful indulgence, and the vibrant spirit of the bear subculture.
For more details, visit Tom Goss’s website.
Aussie pop icon Kylie Minogue brings her acclaimed “Tension” world tour to D.C. next Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Capital One Arena. Tickets are still available at Ticketmaster.
The show features songs spanning her long career, from 1987 debut single, “The Loco-Motion,” to “Padam, Padam” from her album, “Tension.”
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