The most powerful story of all — recalling the heartbreaks and triumphs of Mary Gauthier’s own life — will be recounted by the Louisiana singer/songwriter this week in Red Deer.
Gauthier, an acclaimed roots musician who will perform Sunday at The Hideout in Gasoline Alley, south of Red Deer, released a concept album last year called The Foundling, which ended up on many music critics’ year-end Top-10 lists.
The album has been described as a song cycle that encompasses issues of abandonment, adoption, identity, blame, forgiveness, and love.
For on it, Gauthier, who was left in 1962 at the St. Vincent’s Infants Home in New Orleans by her birth mother, recounts her journey towards finding self-identity.
Although the singer was eventually adopted by an Italian Catholic couple and raised in Baton Rouge, it was not a happy childhood.
“I felt like I was dying,” said Gauthier, who felt alienated from her cookie-cutter neighbourhood, from other kids at school, and from her adoptive parents. “My father was an alcoholic. My mother cried all the time. Both of them were suicidal,” recalled Gauthier on her website.
“There was chaos and pandemonium in the family.”
The only saving grace was her music — but it wasn’t enough.
At age 15, Gauthier stole her parents’ car and hit the road. This started years of alcohol and drug abuse, time spent in detox, halfway houses and jail.
Eventually, with the help of friends, Gauthier got sober, went back to school, and opened a successful Cajun restaurant near Boston.
Over time, Gauthier picked up the guitar again and began performing at open mic nights on Boston’s coffeehouse circuit. Her first album, Dixie Kitchen, won her a Best New Contemporary Folk Artist nomination at the Boston Music Awards.
Her second 1999 CD, Drag Queens in Limousines, with the signature song I Drink, drew a four-star rating from Rolling Stone magazine, blowing open the gates on her musical success.
Over the next decade, Gauthier was signed to a prestigious record label. She got to work with famous musicians and producers, and was named New/Emerging Artist of the Year at the Americana Music Association Awards.
The Foundling, produced in Toronto by Michael Timmins of the Cowboy Junkies, is her sixth album. It tells the story of a kid who was abandoned at birth, adopted from an orphanage, ran away from home, got into show business, searched for her birth mother and was rejected, “and still came through on the other side believing in love.”
Gauthier, who is managing to keep her demons at bay while settled in Nashville, has concluded “we are all wanderers . . . looking for meaning in lives that contain no guarantees.”
She now believes her adopted parents loved her the best they could. “I am grateful for their sacrifices. I do have a good life . . . These days, I find myself at peace, grateful for each borrowed day.”
Gauthier will perform at 6:30 p.m. at The Hideout with Tania Elizabeth, a multi-award-winning fiddle player. For more information, please call 403-348-5309.