Mary Gauthier wrenches everything from a song. From a New Orleans orphanage to the writing circles of Nashville, Gauthier has spent the 60-plus years and eight albums exercising her natural talent to become one of the most distinguished songwriters currently walking around today. It’s been addiction and heartbreak, small triumphs against the odds as well as simply the wear and tear of living that’s made her so formidable, and with the uncanny ability to inhabit another’s story as snugly as her own, Gauthier has become a conduit for many who also, as she long ago discovered, understand the healing properties of songwriting.
Some of the material on her current album, “Dark Enough To See The Stars,” sprang from the well of Gauthier’s previous project, 2018’s “Rifles & Rosary Beads,” a reckoning of an album pairing Gauthier with combat veterans and their families, as well as her navigation of the pandemic and the exploration of a healthy relationship with muse, partner and kindred songwriter Jaimee Harris. Gauthier will perform with Harris at the Rex Theatre in Manchester on Friday, Sept. 27 (palacetheatre.
org/venues/rex-theatre). “I had some of these songs during that time of writing with the veterans, and I just didn’t have a way to put them into the world yet. A lot of these songs came as a result of the pandemic and also, as I got deeper into the relationship with my partner, and we started to really make a commitment to it,” she said in a recent inter.