Prologue

INVITATION


Where do songs come from? I’m not sure, really. I learned how to write songs by writing them. I quit high school and college, I didn’t go to music school, and I don’t like following directions. It’s my nature to challenge authority, do things my own way. I call my stubbornness “entrepreneurial.” But I’m willing to listen when I’m given a choice. Deb, my beloved therapist of many years, found a workaround for me: When offering me a suggestion, she says, “Mary, I would like to invite you to consider…” It works.

So this book is a collection of stories, observations, and ideas I’m inviting you to consider. It’s also a behind-the-curtain glimpse into my life and my songwriting process. It’s not a rule book. Even if I was interested in rules, I don’t know of a single songwriting rule that can be universally applied. There are no absolutes in songwriting, and no one holds a monopoly on how it should be done.

My friend and fellow songwriter Lori McKenna says writing a song can be like chasing a wounded bird down a road. It never goes in the direction you expect. It leads you more than you realize, but then it may suddenly take off. The song becomes bigger than you imagined and rewards you with its strength. The challenge is learning how to catch a wounded bird without damaging it.

Over the years, I’ve had hundreds of hair-raising moments when the bird I was chasing took flight. Understanding what happens in those moments, how songwriting actually works, well, that occurs in retrospect, if at all. I start at the beginning every single time. Even after thirty years, the art of song remains mysterious to me.

Writing songs helps me sort out confusion, untangle powerful emotions, and ward off desperation. It helps me navigate the powerful emotional weather systems of life. When the storms come, as they always do, they provide genuine songwriting motivation. After the wind dies down and the water recedes, I’m driven to try and make sense of what happened, try to make meaning out of what at first glance appears to be chaos. I write songs because I am called to. Songwriting gives me a reason to get up in the morning. It is a godsend.

I try to return that gift by teaching. I’ve worked with a couple of teachers myself (my friend Ralph Murphy comes to mind), all of them committed to passing knowledge from one generation to the next. That said, I’m not sure songwriting can be “taught” in a classic sense. As my friend and fellow teacher Verlon Thompson says, “I’m not a songwriting teacher. I’m a song encourager.” Yeah, me too. My hope is to encourage courage.

I started encouraging other songwriters when I was asked to at a folk festival in Colorado, then again at another music festival in Canada. Word got around I was a “teacher” and I became one. I work with songwriters who make a living with their songs, others who hope to, and many who simply want to be better writers. I’ve worked with thousands of people, and I’ve yet to meet a single one called to songwriting by mistake. The calling knows what it is doing when it taps someone on the shoulder and whispers, “Write.” There’s divine wisdom in the beckoning. A song waiting to be born has something to teach the songwriter, something we didn’t know before we wrote it.

Novelist and essayist James Baldwin once remarked that the act of writing is “finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out.” This is true for me. I write in the dark of unknowing, searching for the light of understanding. If I find the switch and the light comes on, my song could serve to illuminate something for myself and, perhaps, for others. Like meditation and prayer, songwriting can be a spiritual practice. Either way, illumination is a positive force, a win.

Beyond reason and conscious thought, past my own story, behind firewalls of self-protection and fear, sits a mysterious power that turns a good song into a great one. I’ve sat for hours trying to figure out a song, hopelessly stuck. My best writing happens in a kind of trance, an exercise in faith. I only know I’ve gotten “there” in retrospect, when the words and melody do more than I imagined possible when I put them together.

I am not in charge of the flow. All I can do is show up, direct focused effort, and hope the mystery will assist. The process is often about emptying my mind until I can access the state of consciousness where I’m not writing but feeling and listening. Sometimes that state of consciousness eludes me completely, leaving me frustrated.

So, I’ll walk away.

Let it rest.

Try again tomorrow.

This is what it’s like to be a songwriter.

Honestly, it can be an ordeal.

As the great country songwriter Harlan Howard used to say, “He writes the songs. I hold the pen.”

People ask me if I believe songs can change the world. My answer is yes, absolutely. Here’s how: A song can change a heart by creating empathy. A changed heart has the power to change a mind. And when a mind changes, a person changes. When people change, the world changes. One song, one heart, one mind, one person at a time. Songs can bring us a deeper understanding of each other and ourselves and open the heart to love.

There are many wonderful books on song craft and hit writing, but this book takes its aim at what makes a song matter. Analysis of technique and structure aside, I believe songs that heal come from a higher place. They help us with the struggle of being human by letting us know we are not alone. This is the greatest gift a song can give a songwriter and a songwriter can give the world.

Bruce Springsteen said, “Music is a repair shop. I’m basically a repair man.” I love that. Songs have the power to repair hearts and heal souls.

Saved by a song.


One

I DRINK: REDUCTION


I Drink

He’d get home at 5:30, fix his drink

And sit down in his chair

Pick a fight with mama,

Complain about us kids getting in his hair

At night he’d sit alone and smoke

I’d see his frown behind his lighter’s flame

Now that same frown’s in my mirror

I got my daddy’s blood inside my veins

Fish swim birds fly

Daddies yell mamas cry

Old men sit and think

I drink

Chicken TV dinner

Six minutes on defrost three on high

A beer to wash it down with

Then another, a little whiskey on the side

It’s not so bad alone here

It don’t bother me that every night’s the same

I don’t need another lover

Hanging round, trying to make me change

Fish swim birds fly

Daddies yell mamas cry

Old men sit and think

I drink

I know what I am

But I don’t give a damn

Fish swim birds fly

Daddies yell mamas cry

Old men sit and think

I drink

—Mary Gauthier and Crit Harmon

There was a loud burst of a police siren, flashing blue lights in my rearview.

It was dark, late.

Bars had closed.

The streets were quiet.

I was drunk.

I pulled over, rolled down the window. Waited.

A cop beamed his flashlight directly into my eyes.


Copyright © 2021 by Mary Gauthier