In the case of Mary Gauthier, four words are worth a thousand pictures. Between Daylight and Dark, her new Lost Highway album, finds her aiming her compass at the sky and searching for home. It is from this longing for home that this group of songs has emerged, and they fill Gauthier’s new album with both hope and anguish, with faith as well as fear. Mary Gauthier knows these places well, having traveled through a night that had stretched into years, from a turbulent Louisiana childhood through odd juxtapositions of accomplishment and devastation. The result is reflected in the music, starting as a trickle of songs almost from the moment of her sobriety and swelling into the stream that fed her earlier albums (Dixie Kitchen, Drag Queens in Limousines, Filth and Fire), and the stunning Mercy Now. Mary last appeared at The Cedar in a brilliant sold out show with Eliza Gilkyson; this time she introduces to Cedar audiences a bright new talent, Diana Jones (winner of the 2006 Kerrville New Folk Contest, and fresh from sharing the bill on multiple nights with Richard Thompson). Gauthier has always been a unique lyricist, with an ability to illuminate even moments of devastation and despair in beautiful hues. That gift is evident throughout Between Daylight and Dark, though her perspective has shifted somewhat. As Mary puts it, “The songs on this record are a little more fragile, a little more tender, and a lot more hopeful.” Diana's music is informed by the themes that have run through hr life…love, loss, and redemption…bringing to mind both Emily Dickinson and Loretta Lynn in the same breath. From the mournful lament of a dance hall girl, to the stomping melodic rant of a young woman's burial instructions, each of Diana's original songs from her latest CD, My Remembrance of You, draws life from the rich cross currents of old timey, country blues and mountain music."Mary Gauthier will break your heart and save your soul. She writes edgy tunes that can cut like a knife one minute, and heal the wound the next. The grit in her throat and ache in her voice resonate with the experience of one who has been there and done that, and knows better now. The songs on her latest record speak compassionately of life’s losers, outcasts, and misfits. Displaced New Orleans refugees, hobos, the incarcerated and their families, and such, populate her verses along with those confused by love and the ties that bind. Gauthier endows her characters with depth and dignity as they struggle to improve their situations. She knows that they all have their stories and their reasons, even when they act badly. She doesn’t judge them. She just makes them real." (Steve Horowitz, Pop Matters)"One of the grimmest songwriters since Townes Van Zandt, Mary Gauthier
taps into our dark psyches on "Between Daylight and Dark," her fifth
and probably best CD. Produced by Joe Henry, it has a strange beauty in
its loneliness. Like Lucinda Williams, Gauthier delivers penetrating
poetry with a dry Louisiana drawl." (Jon Bream, The Big Gigs, Minneapolis Star Tribune 11/09/07)Sponsored by

 
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