By K.D. Norris
ken@wktv.org
When it comes to supporting America’s military veterans, sometimes all you can do is listen to their stories. When you are as talented a singer/songwriter as Mary Gauthier, you can go one step further — listening and then retelling those stories in powerful and moving ways.
Acclaimed singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier will perform at Grand Rapids’ The Listening Room on Dec.13 in support of Rifles & Rosary Beads, an 11-song collection of songs co-written with U.S. veterans and their families that “reveal the untold stories and struggles that veterans and their spouses deal with abroad and after returning home.”
(A fairly new venue in town, The Listening Room is located at Studio Park, 123 Iona Ave. SW. Tickets are still available.)
“My job as a songwriter is to find that thing a soul needs to say,” Gauthier said in supplied material about her interactions with veterans through meetings of SongwritingWith:Soldiers. “Each retreat brings together a dozen or so soldiers and four songwriters, three songs each in two days. We don’t have a choice. We have to stay focused, listen carefully, and make sure every veteran gets their own song. And we always do.
“None of the veterans are artists. They don’t write songs, they don’t know that songs can be used to move trauma. Their understanding of song doesn’t include that. For me it’s been the whole damn deal. Songwriting saved me. It’s what I think the best songs do, help articulate the ineffable, make the invisible visible, creating resonance, so that people, (including the songwriter) don’t feel alone.”
SongwritingWith:Soldiers is a non-profit program that facilitates retreats bringing professional songwriters together with wounded veterans and active duty military.
Each song on Rifles & Rosary Beads is “deceptively simple and emotionally complex”. From the opening “Soldiering On”, with the line “What saves you in the battle/Can kill you at home”; to “Bullet Holes in the Sky” — “They thank me for my service/And wave their little flags/They genuflect on Sundays/And yes, they’d send us back”. And it is not just male veterans who have told her their story: the song “Iraq” depicts the “helpless horror of a female military mechanic being dehumanized and sexually harassed by fellow soldiers.”
With now 10 albums in her catalogue, Gauthier is no stranger to musical audiences, especially country music audiences — her classic track “Mercy Now” was included in Rolling Stone’s “Saddest Country Songs of all Time”. In her official biography, she states that “no stranger to pain or demons herself, Gauthier has used songwriting to work through addiction and childhood abandonment as an orphan, but this is the first album where she has focused solely on experiences other than her own.”
Mary Gauthier, with special guest Jaimee Harris, is Dec. 13 at 7:30 p.m.. Tickets are $27. For more information on this show and the venue, visit listeningroomGR.com.
