Songwriters....Start the New Year with Mary Gauthier and Darrell Scotts/ Songwriters Intensive week in Costa Rica!

Mary Gauthier and Darrell Scott are offering a week long song writing intensive at Puravida Wellness Retreat and Spa in Costa Rica from December 27^th thru January 3^rd.

It will be a wonderful way to focus on your writing, with two teachers whose talent and commitment to their own work has landed them multiple awards and award nominations as well as the respect of songwriters everywhere.

Follow this link for all of the information

There will be:

- daily classes, discussions with Darrell and Mary leading the intensives
- one on one time with both of them to work on your songs
- a nightly open mic to share songs with each other
- a community we've created to share songs, get feedback & support from each other
- a retreat space that, we swear, encourages creative energy flow
- options for yoga classes twice per day (all levels)
- options for the best body/energy work i have ever had (the spa is on-site)
- 3 incredible wholesome & healthy meals per day
- options, on Wednesday, for varied trips (whitewater rafting, volcano visits, beach day, canopy adventures)
- a final evening concert that we put on for the entire retreat community (Friday)

There will also be an option to have master drum classes with Kenny Malone – the guru of groove. This may be a once in a lifetime opportunity to do all this. I know that it is a first in a lifetime.

Get intense & give this gift to yourself----if you are not a songwriter, pass this along to someone you know who is...or who might be interested in this class.

» www.puravidaspa.com

As improbable as it might seem, the 30-something woman toiling over an open flame in the kitchen of your favorite restaurant may be able to quote Kant and could very well turn out to be a songwriter who receives a benediction from none other than Bob Dylan.

Take Mary Gauthier (pronounced Go-shay—she’s from Baton Rouge): Although her pre-songwriting days were mired in misadventure, drugs, and alcohol, the first act of Gauthier’s story nevertheless includes remarkable accomplishments, including five years studying philosophy at LSU and subsequently starting the successful Boston eatery Dixie Kitchen.

No songs, however, until sobriety at 35. But once pen hit paper, the rubber hit the road, and Gauthier has been traveling and writing songs ever since. Her clear-eyed focus of her passions has produced five acclaimed CDs of razor-sharp, intense, and sometimes funny material, not to mention a shout-out from His Bob-ness.

The endless ribbon of highway has brought her to the Rosendale Cafe before. Owner Mark Morganstern, an early supporter, says, "Sometimes a songwriter splits open your chest and does something memorable to your heart—that’s Mary Gauthier."

I caught up with Gauthier recently to talk about songs, God, and food. In support of Between Daylight and Dark, her latest effort, she returns to the Rosendale Cafe with Diana Jones on June 6, at 8pm. On June 14 at 9pm, Gauthier performs solo at Club Helsinki in Great Barrington. www.rosendalecafe.com; www.clubhelsinkiweb.com.

Your song "Mercy Now" made a real tough-nut friend of mine who’d just become a dad pull off to the side of the road and cry.
That’s my job.

There’s a real spiritual yearning in your material. Do you feel like the venue of the singer/songwriter in a secular culture is to find language to address spiritual concerns?
Yeah, but I don’t think of it in those big terms. I think of it as: My job is to help people see God. That’s the job of every artist, whatever the medium.

Your new song "Can’t Find The Way" sounds like an acceptance that we all are lost in some way. Do you think that we’re all perpetually looking for something and we need to find a way to bear questions rather than settle on answers?
That particular song is coming from the Carter Family tradition of "This World Is Not My Home" and Woody Guthrie’s "I Ain’t Got No Home in This World Anymore." I think this is the third song of that trilogy, if I may be so bold. That’s what I’m aiming for: to be the voice of that sentiment for our time. We’re all just passing through.

There’s a lot of recitation in your songs. Has that always been a part of what you do?
Yeah, and I don’t know where that comes from. Maybe the Hank Williams/Luke The Drifter records from back when I was a kid in Baton Rouge. Some songs were meant to be sung and some were meant to be told.

Loss plays a big role in your material. Do you think as a culture we’re in need of more ways to express loss?

I’m never comfortable making big statements like that, because I don’t really honestly know. My job is to move really fast through time and space. I’m movin’, movin’, movin’ and writing, writing, writing. I don’t watch TV and I don’t spend a lot of time plugged into the culture. I’m more working at a folksinger level on the ground. So I don’t know the big answers. I don’t even see the big picture. I’m more likely to know what’s goin’ on at the airport.

I know personally when I write about loss it strikes a nerve in people and it resonates. They need it. They need someone to give them the words.

Singer-songwriter-producer Joe Henry [Solomon Burke, Ani DiFranco, Aimee Mann] produced Between Daylight and Dark and, in contrast to your last release, it’s mostly live in the studio. Was that his idea?
Yes. I just came in with the songs. It’s how he gets his best records—get the best band possible and just sing with the band. I like it a lot. It goes fast.

You did it in a week, right?
Yeah. I don’t like spending a month in the studio. It’s a false environment. I get real antsy. I wanna get goin’. I don’t like sittin’ in there trying to get everything perfect. I don’t care if it’s perfect. I just wanna get it down, have it be real, and Joe’s real good at that.

Do you ever miss being a restaurateur?
Not for one second, ever. [Laughs.]

How is creating a song akin to creating a dish? Are there similarities?
Very much so. The most important ingredient in both of `em is love.

» www.chronogram.com

Louisiana native Mary Gauthier says she struggled to write an album of songs about the devastation of New Orleans.

Mary Gauthier didn't begin writing songs until she was 35. In the 13 years since, she has become one of the masters of the craft. Peers regularly praise her work. Most recently, Bob Dylan lovingly recited the lyrics to her song "I Drink" on his radio show before playing Gauthier's recording for his audience.

But Gauthier (pronounced Go-Shay) says writing songs has never been easy for her.

"I feel like it's always I'm working in the dark and trying to find some spark somewhere," says Gauthier in a call from her home in Nashville. "It's always extremely effort-full for me. I know all these songwriters and songs just drop into their guitars out of the sky. I wish I could have just one of those songs!"

It's a surprising statement considering Gauthier creates songs that seems to flow so naturally. Some seem like journal entries. Others, including a Thanksgiving tale of a family visiting a loved one in prison, sound so personal and detailed that you can't help but believe Gauthier is recounting her own life. One of the most powerful works on Gauthier's new album, "Between Daylight and Dark," is "Can't Find the Way," a song about a person wandering the ruins of Hurricane Katrina.

"I had to write five songs to get to that one," says Gauthier.

She says she had originally intended to write an album's worth of songs about the collapse of New Orleans. However, she could never quite get it right until "Can't Find a Way" came out. She says she was inspired by a man she read about in a newspaper report.

"He was interviewed and said 'Isn't it sad when you want to go home and can't find the way?' This old boy was just walking around in circles. I thought that was just so powerful, and I just elaborated on his sentiment."

She says it's a technique she learned from listening to Woody Guthrie's songs.

"Just tell the story first-person - from one man or woman's experience," says Gauthier. "You can't tell the whole story. You don't know the whole story."

Gauthier's own story begins in Thibodaux, La. Throughout her teenage years, Gauthier was in trouble. She spent her 18th birthday in jail and was a regular resident in drug rehab programs. Later, she moved to Boston and attended the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts before opening a restaurant called the Dixie Kitchen. While she won local praise for her culinary skills, her talent for songwriting began to take hold. In 1997, she released her first album, "Dixie Kitchen," and followed two years later with "Drag Queens and Limousines," which earned her a national following. Each subsequent release has gained Gauthier more fans and greater fame.

Gauthier says there are two types of songwriters, and she knows which camp she wants to fall into.

"They're not writing 'Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off.' There's mystery. There's God in there, too. There's that universal truth where everybody goes, 'Yeah, me, too.' It's different from throwing a softball at a bar full of people who are drinking. There are some writers who write to try to have themselves and other people see God. And there are people who write to push a decimal point to the right. It's two different gigs."

Gauthier says she never knows if she's been successful with a song until she looks into the eyes of her audiences. What she has noticed is that no matter if she's playing in Dublin, Berlin, Rome or Austin, Texas, people respond the same to a good song.

"We're sold a bill of goods that people are different," says Gauthier. "People everywhere are alike."

» www.knoxnews.com

"Without perspiration," says singer/songwriter Mary Gauthier, "you just end up with goo."

Gauthier (pronounced "go-shay") is talking about writing lyrics, a process she has been known to agonize over. The Louisiana native, who is now based in Nashville, rewrites songs almost compulsively, reworking them as many times as she has to until she feels that every word is set into the verses exactly right. Gauthier will typically rewrite a song 50 times, but in certain cases has written more than 300 versions until deciding that it’s finished.

"Inspiration," she offers, "is 10 percent. Perspiration is 90 percent." She says she feels "like a boat without a rudder" and "doesn’t know what she’s doing" when she is first receiving inspiration. The rest is all blood and sweat.

"Inspiration doesn’t write a song; it’s work that writes a song," she insists bluntly, before laughing. "There are other people who write exactly the opposite—and I hate ‘em! Songs don’t shoot down from the sky and they’re done. For me, it’s really effortful."

And that means that Gauthier will, on occasion, literally curl up clenched in a fetal position.

"When you know that there’s a way of saying something that’s perfect and you can’t get it. But you just know that it’s there. I just starting begging," she says. "Whimpering! Like a dog for a bone. Just ‘Please, please!’ I really, really struggle with getting it exactly right. And I think that’s why I have a career. I don’t have a career because of my looks or my singing—or certainly not my guitar chops."

Even throughout a tumultuous (and well-documented) personal history that includes several stints in jail and detox centers recovering from drug and alcohol abuse, Gauthier has always had an achievement-oriented and impressive work ethic. Naturally suited for multitasking, she says that alcoholism didn’t interfere with her ability to function as chef and restaurateur.

Music, however, which Gauthier hadn’t even ventured to try until her 40s, is a different story entirely. And, in spite of her ease with grueling work, the simultaneous struggle of maintaining sobriety while opening up to her creative muse (three years after getting sober) challenged her in ways she’d never experienced.

"With writing," she explains, "I needed to come from a different place, a channel that was closed to me. My channel was closed when I was drinking. I didn’t have enough self-confidence or self-worth or discipline. The restaurant came easy to me. I could do that in my sleep. To do this well, it takes everything I have sober."

Coming to town with her fifth album in tow, the Joe Henry-produced Between Daylight and Dark (Lost Highway, 2007), Gauthier continues to mine her past for narratives that fall in that irresistibly haunted landscape verging on country, Americana, roots and folk all at once—not unlike, say, a fresh take on Lucinda Williams’ now-classic Car Wheels on a Gravel Road. Gauthier considers herself a folk artist more than anything else, and listeners may be surprised to find that, unlike her lyric writing, she takes a spontaneous approach to recording. She rehearses her backing musicians on the spot in the studio and keeps the number of takes to a minimum, which gives the music a crackling, raw edge.

And, as one might expect, solitude and heartbreak permeate the material.

"If you could sustain relationships, you wouldn’t be doing this job," Gauthier says with a chuckle. "People who live like this have a difficulty in that department—just ask Willie!"

But don’t get the wrong idea. Though Gauthier says she’s hardly home enough to cling to the concept of domesticity—"I don’t even have a cactus, much less a dog"—she says her work doesn’t stem from unhappiness in her personal life.

"My music isn’t necessarily sad," she asserts. "It’s real. I think we have a misunderstanding in our way of talking about songs. When someone gives you something real, automatically people use the word ‘sad.’ Sad is when everybody dies and there was never a reason to live. I don’t do that. I just try to present the real feel, which is my experience. It’s always ambivalence. There’s good and there’s bad and it’s always coming at us at the same time."

[Saby Reyes-Kulkarni is a freelance writer based in Rochester, N.Y.]

who: Mary Gauthier, opening for Over The Rhine
what: Heartbreak-fueled folk
where: Orange Peel
when: Friday, May 30. 8 p.m. ($17. http://www.theorangepeel.net or 225-5851)

» www.mountainx.com

» www.shakeitrecords.com

» www.latimes.com