The ambience is perfect in Schuba’s, the small Chicago venue that’s home to more alternative and less commercial music of all types. Daniel Lanois, noted producer of U2, Peter Gabriel, The Neville Bros and Bob Dylan, among many others, played a one-off gig here one night with his band, doing his own original material. Schuba’s is just one of those small low-key places that features, for the most part, local decent bands, but every so often, busts loose with, to quote the title of a favourite tune of mine, ‘A Night to Remember’ ( by The Men They Couldn’t Hang). Mary Gauthier’s set here at Schuba’s on a quiet Monday will turn out to be one of these nights.

The mention of Dylan, in this case is especially appropriate – singer/songwriter, Mary Gauthier reminds me at moments, of Bob Dylan. It’s only meant as the barest of comparisons with regard to certain imagery in her lyrics and her spoken singing style but Mary Gauthier is no one’s clone and her songs are stories of and tributes to a cast of characters that not many others take the time to write about, much less experience.

‘Falling out of Love’, which opens her set, is also the first track on her new cd, ‘Mercy Now’. It begins, as on the cd, with a dirge-like rhythm. The room is dark and the small stage is awash with light from a couple of blue and red spots. Her acompanist, a guitar player, fills her her steady vamp with atmospheric chords and notes from an electric guitar, at times using a slide to chilling effect. Hearing the song on cd, it sometimes sounds grimmer, like someone crying out from purgatory but here, live, it was sometimes whispered with more of a poetic edge, her face expressive behind it. It was not so much anguished as wistful but no less heavy, as the last couple of lines remind:

“Falling out of love is a tedious thing – with its jailhouse smirk and its chaingang swing.”

She drifts next, into the slow steady fingerpicking of her ode to alcohol and genetics, ‘I Drink’. The non-judgmental lyrics are resigned but strong, accepting. Recognizing the way it is. In a way, it’s like Hank Williams, the way she sings it – hard to put a finger on but there’s that plaintive sound that just seems to be Hank’s.

She intersperses her songs with a folk form that I don’t see too often any more – a talking bit while picking guitar repetitively in the background, like Woody Guthrie or Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. She goes into a story about opening for Ramblin’ Jack, trying to get back to Boston after the gig and having to check into a seedy motel, and the desire to use the words cigarette and kitchenette in a song. Somehow this all coalesced for her into a fine song called ‘The Camelot Motel’, which features a cast of down-on-their-luck folk who all happen to end up here. It’s at turns funny and poignant, and her delivery makes it come alive.

She does one written by Harlan Howard, 'Rhymer’, which could be almost a personal theme song describing the life of a restless nomadic singer/songwriter on the road and then a tune describing Thanksgiving in prison. Still in ‘ramblin’ mode, she does a more personal one called ‘Goodbye’ where she sings, ‘Goodbye could be my family name’. A quiet version of ‘Mercy Now’, also the title of her new cd, follows, with a beautiful acoustic guitar solo in the middle. Her accompanist, Thomm Jutz, is a German musician currently living in Nashville, and plays some of the most beautiful and tasteful guitar that I’ve heard in a long time live. He shines equally on electric and acoustic guitar, playing slide at times when the music calls for it. His playing is atmospheric, most reminiscent of Daniel Lanois, and he is the perfect complement to Gauthier’s material. She launches into the stirring ‘Prayer Without Words’. Next, a tune that seemed inspired by John Prine, ‘Drop in a Bucket’ and then a poignant song called, ‘Christmas in Paradise,’ which I will now feature, alongside my favorite Christmas song by the Pogues, ‘Fairytale of New York’ which has the same bittersweet sentiment.

A couple more songs and then she begins a story about a good friend and songwriting mentor who has died recently, Dave Carter. She talks of being seized with the necessity of having to write a song for him and can’t get it together until a voice tells her to “go to New Orleans.” She obeys this command and because of her Louisiana roots and her acceptance in New Orleans when she was a young runaway, the song begins to reveal itself to her. She first thinks of the jazz funeral send-off of African-Americans in New Orleans -- people in the streets parading with the mourners and brass bands in what’s known as a “second lines and she speaks further of the concept of “cutting the body loose” in the process. This has a kind of end-of-set build-up feel and she ends her set with another from her new cd, ‘Mercy Now,’ called ‘Wheel Inside the Wheel’, a stream of exotic images of New Orleans’ French Quarter. Images like, “Mardi Gras Indians, French Quarter queens, Marie Laveau, flambeau dancers and absinthe,” all flow together in a love song to Gauthier’s New Orleans.

After a standing ovation in that small but filled room, she comes back for two more – ‘Goddamn HIV’, from her very first cd, ‘Dixie Kitchen’, and a more personal tribute to friends in New Orleans who took her in and accepted her as a teenager, ‘Drag Queens in Limousines,’ from her second, of the same name.

Mary Gauthier needs to be heard more – there were moments during the Schuba’s gig when I experienced a sense of what it might have been like when people first started checking out Dylan in small Greenwich Village clubs – a feeling of someone whose honesty and talent for imagery and metaphor is on the verge of greatness, be it artistic, commercial or just plain personal and you, listener, are bearing witness. Ironically, she played a gig two nights before this, also in Chicago, at a huge venue opening for the great John Prine which, I was unable to make. In retrospect, I’m grateful that I was at this one instead – while she played, she owned that room and it was one of those rare nights that was as close as I come to a religious experience.

Marc Goldin currently lives in Chicago, with three cats, each one more long-haired than the last. Interests have ranged from medieval monasticism to discontinued stations on the London Underground – literary likes too diverse (some would say schizo) to list here although the last several years have been witness to an intimacy with Scottish and Irish literature. American Southern and Beat era lit also account for some of the ‘missing years’. Music tastes run the gamut from Cuban Danzon to Ska (all three waves but having a specific attachment to the second, two-tone period) to the Tuvan throat singers. Has written book reviews for a now defunct Irish literature site and has several short stories in various stages of development. Mad for black and white photography and aspires to someday have a complete collection of photos documenting every close in Edinburgh's Royal Mile. Works in the IT dept. of a French company in the current political climate. In football, supports Chelsea, Hibs, and for the sake of employment security, Marseille. To read more of Marc’s writing on the showcase section of this site, click here

© 2005 Laura Hird All rights reserved.