May 7, 2025 • 19 mins
Join Lynn Hoffman for this very special classic replay with singer, songwriter, author and inspirational speaker Mary Gauthier. She is one of the most talented and giving artists who always is trying to lend her voice to those in need. As we observe #mentalhealthawarenessmonth Mary Gauthier is living proof of the healing power of music.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Music Saved Me. We're dealing with alchemy here. Alchemy is
an ancient form of magic, but it can be explained
in some ways. I would say maybe turning cole into
a diamond is alchemy. There is a thing that happens
in music and song that is hard to explain. Why
does a sad song make you feel happy? That is
(00:25):
taking darkness and turning it into light. That's alchemy.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
This podcast is called Music Saved Me and on each
episode we'll look at a musician, will delve into their
story their deep connection to music, will talk with their
fans everyday, people with their own story to tell about
how music has saved them in challenging times. Today, we
have the privilege of talking with a remarkable artist and author.
(00:53):
Mary Goche is best known for her soul stirring songs
that have touched the hearts of so many. Not only
a talented singer songwriter, but also the author of the
captivating book Saved by a Song and how perfect for
her to join us today. In this episode, we'll explore
the incredible journey of this acclaimed musician, her profound connection
(01:15):
to songwriting, and the powerful tales of redemption and transformation
that have shaped her artistry. Mary, Welcome to Music Saved Me.
It's so great to have you here.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Oh, I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
In your book, Saved by a Song, you talk about
the profound impact that music has had on your life.
Can you share with us a specific moment when you
realized that music saved you?
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Well, honestly, I think it's been more of a process
than an event. But there came a point as a
songwriter as I took it more and more seriously and
decided to really dedicate my life to it as a
as a person who came to it later in life.
(02:03):
It wasn't my first career, it's my It wasn't even
I didn't take it in as a career. Actually, it
was something I did on the side after I got
sober and I began to take it more and more seriously.
So it's my second career. And uh, I guess there
(02:26):
was a point a couple of records in where I realized,
my goodness, this is this is more than more than
what it looks like on the surface. For me, it
became purpose. It became a way of processing the world
in my life, became a way of connecting and building empathy,
(02:50):
building bridges. I'm all about bridges, not walls. I think
that my awareness of the power of song is continuing.
The magnitude of the power of song is amazing to
(03:12):
me what he can do. I was just at a
thing I'd never done before. It was a storytelling festival,
and somebody was wearing a shirt and said, the shortest
distance between two strangers is a story well told. Beautiful.
I think as a songwriter, I would would certainly agree,
(03:34):
and I might say the shortest distance between two strangers
is a story song well told.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Absolutely absolutely. You were just speaking of the power of music,
how tremendous it is. I have to ask you, it
sounds a little weird, but I don't think so. Do
you feel that music has supernatural healing powers?
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Will yes. I would characterize it like this, we're dealing
with alchemy here. Alchemy is an ancient form of magic,
but it can be explained in some ways. I would say,
maybe turning coal into a diamond is alchemy. It can
(04:20):
be looked at scientifically. The pressure, the pressure of the
pressure of the pressure transforms coal into diamonds. There is
a thing that happens in music and song that it's
hard to explain. Why does a sad song make you
feel happy? What is it that this art form brings
(04:43):
that allows some of the worst things that ever happened
to a songwriter to be sung and in that interaction
or in that action, turned into some than beautiful that
other people will thank us for singing. That is taking
(05:08):
darkness and turning it into light. That's alchemy. And if you
want to take it to another level of discussion and
call it supernatural, I'm not going to say no to it.
It's transformative.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
There's songs deal with deeply personal and emotional themes. How
do you navigate that? It's a fine line between sharing
your own personal experiences and also making your music and
songs relatable to a wide audience.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Good point. Here's what I teach, and here's what I understand.
The personal is pretty boring. It's just my little life,
my little diary, my little comings and goings and interactions
with people that went well or poorly. Nobody cares about
my personal I mean, I'm I mean, we care about
(05:59):
celebrities personal just as gawkers. But here's where I can
get people interested is if I go two or three
flights down from the personal and enter the deeply personal.
I think this is where we all meet. We all
meet at what it means to be human, and that
(06:20):
deeply personal reality is not something we talk about at
cocktail parties. Sometimes we never even talk about it with
our family. And the deeply personal is where we intersect
in this life. And I think great artists articulate that,
and people find each other there. That is what's interesting.
(06:41):
I always say to my students that songs are great
places to tell your secrets. Not personal secrets, not who
kiss who or who cheated on who, but what you
truly genuinely feel about what's transportediring in your life and
in the world, and your confusion and your alarm, and
(07:09):
your empathy and and and your your own day to
day experiences of life. In a way, it's where we
It's where we go in and take our guard down.
You know.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
It requires vulnerability, it does and sharing with people, even
if it's not your specific story, it makes them feel
that they're not the only one that's it.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
That's the job, the job. The job as a songwriter
is to get the listener to go Mary, play my
song and take ownership of the story because it is
their story, My One of my songwriting heroes and a
man I traveled with for a bit was a songwriter
from Texas named Guy Clark, and he used to say, Look,
we're all live in the same life. We just hit
(08:01):
the marks at different times, at different points. What it
means to be human is true for all humans. We
share the human condition.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
So true. Many people, obviously, as we're talking about this,
turn to music during difficult times in their life. I
have everyone I know has at some point in time.
Can you tell us I think you just did a
song or a particular artist that has been a saving
grace for you in your life.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Oh God, there's a hundred. Yeah, there's us at different
times in my life. There's so many. And you wouldn't expect,
like I would say, iggy pop and the Carpenters interesting,
you wouldn't expect that from folks like me. There's a
(08:48):
time Green on red iggy pop, the violent films lou Reed.
I'm listening to that and holding on for dear life.
There's a time caring. Carpenter's vocals resonated so deeply. Something
in her voice I felt her. I think her tragedy
was in her voice, and it resonated her her strength
(09:12):
and and and her situation. Uh. She was a woman
trapped in a time that was very very hard to
be a woman, much less of a woman drummer. You know,
she she broke a lot of stereotypes. Uh. And uh,
I think that the pain was in her voice. It
(09:33):
resonated for me. So so I went through a lot
with the Carpenters and and those early early punk bands. Uh.
You know, the clash, the anger of some of the
iggy stuff in the early days. And I always always
always turned to John Prime as well, his his sense
(09:55):
of humor, his ability to see the light inside the darkness.
So many Leonard Cohen songs, Bob Dylan songs, Bruce Springsteen
really has been an important artist for me. And then
people in my own genre, you know, listen to William
Steve Earle, Emmy Lou Harris. The younger ones that are
(10:18):
coming up now speak to me too, Tyler Childers, Stergel Simpson.
They're a lot younger than me, but they're really resonating.
The list is endless. It goes on and on and on,
and we hold on. I hold on to these songwriters
in their songs with dear life. Sometimes for dear life sometimes.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
And still to this day, you'll tap back into that
one needed for yourself.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yeah, Toby Keith got a song I can't stop listening to,
Don't Let the Old Man In.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
That's the best. I love him, Oh my.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Goodness, as he battles stomach cancer and fights for his
health and his life. This is a saying that he
he picked up on that he wrote a song about.
And it's a Clint Eastwood like, hey man, you're ninety
one years old. How the hell do you still make movies?
And Clint said, I don't let the old man in.
(11:13):
And it's resonant for me. You know, I'm sixty one
years old. But sometimes the old man or the old
woman's comes knocking and you got to answer the door
and go, we're not doing this today. Yeah that song
I'm I'm repeat, repeat, repeat, How old would you be
if you didn't know the day you were born? What
(11:34):
a line?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Power?
Speaker 1 (11:36):
What a line? What a song? It's not just a song,
it's life instruction.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
And one other little bit of advice is just taking
down all the mirrors in the house. Tell me Mary
describe songwriting. Why is it a therapeutic process?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
I like that distinction. You know, a lot of folks say, well,
you're doing therapy, Like, no, I'm not doing therapy, not
with songwriting. I do therapy with my therapist. But songwriting
is therapeutic in that it helps process. There's a processing
that happens when I write a song that helps bring
(12:15):
some clarity, but it doesn't free me from having the
need for therapeutic help. And when I do have that need,
and I've had it for many, many, many years, I'll
speed die my therapist and get back in there. I
don't do it as often as I did, but she's
(12:36):
there and I know her number. But the process of
writing a song is trying, for me, trying to find clarity,
and I think maybe that's what therapy is as well,
is looking for clarity for persanity and reality and making
decisions based on solid perception. You know. It's the misperception
(13:03):
of the world and the misperception of what's happening that
creates dysfunction and sometimes mental illness. And so the clarifying
process of songwriting for me is very about therapeutic. Now,
not everybody writes that way, and they don't see this
art form as a way of doing that. You know,
(13:26):
there's so many different approaches, and everybody's welcome and you
can do it your own way. I'm not endorsing or
saying this is how it should be done. I'm just
saying this is how I do it.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Your song Mercy now is resonated with countless listeners. Tell
us about the inspiration behind the powerful song and why
you think it is connected with so many people on
such a deep level.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
You know that continues to amaze me. A song that
I wrote in two thousand and two. People come up
to me every night when I'll play with tears in
their eyes and say that song, that song, it keeps
reinventing itself. That song, it keeps reactivating itself. I wrote
it in such a way that it didn't intrinsically get
(14:13):
caught in political events of the year two thousand and two.
I think it's a good example of getting past the
personal into the deeply personal so that it doesn't It
didn't attach it to itself to the specific going ons
of that time, But what inspired it was was the
(14:35):
specific going ons of that time. I knew enough about
songwriting at that point to know that I wanted this
to be a bigger song than what was what it
would be if I said exactly what I was referencing.
It was inspired by the US response to nine to eleven.
(14:58):
It was inspired by the Spotlight Report reports on the
rampant child sexual abuse in the parishes of Boston, the
horrific number of priests in handcuffs being arrested for child abuse.
(15:19):
I lived in Boston at that time. It was mortifying.
At the time, the current dictator of North Korea's father
was testing nuclear weapons. It was inspired by that, but
I didn't reference that. That was what was happening if
you opened the newspaper. But what I tried to write about,
and I think I successfully did, was what was going
on inside of me as a response to that.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Yeah, just to let you know, I'm from Boston as well,
and I was there during that time. So that was
amazing music and song and just a wonderful thing to
put out there in terms of being able to help
people figure out how to deal with all of this stuff.
It's just it was out of It was an unbelievable time.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
It was an unbelievable time. And what I was doing
and I didn't know I was doing, and it was
trying to help me deal with it.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Yeah, yeah, but don't they always say a lot of
times when you try to figure stuff out for yourself,
you don't even realize that it's going to resonate with
so many people, Which leads me to my next question.
You had mentioned about mercy now and people still come
to you and with tears in their eyes. It has
such a unique ability music to bring people together. How
(16:33):
does it make you feel when you see that impact
on your audience while you're performing, or even after when
they come to you after. How does that make you feel?
Speaker 1 (16:43):
I feel grateful. I feel deeply connected to purpose. I
feel as though I'm one of the lucky ones that
figured out. It took a while. I didn't figure it
out first first off, right out of the shoot, but
I figured out what to do with my life that
I was put here to do and I'm doing it.
(17:03):
And it's a real gift to know what to do
with your life and how to do it and then
to do it. That really makes me feel, I guess grateful. Overall.
The over arching experience of my songs resonating with listeners
in me is gratitude because it took a lot of
(17:25):
courage to walk away from my restaurants at forty years
old and become a songwriter. It took a lot of
courage for me to say, you know what, I did that,
and now I'm going to do this and it may
or may not work, but I'm going to try, and
I've got to try. I don't want to be on
my deathbed going I wish I'd tried. So I gave
(17:46):
it my all and somehow I crossed the threshold somewhere
over the first you know, four or five six records
that gave me this sense that I get to do
this as long as I want to, that they're not
going to take it away from me. That it's working.
And the goal was not to be a star, but
the goal is to be able to support and sustain
(18:10):
myself by writing songs, and that has worked out to
be true. I manifested that and I don't need more.
I have enough. I'm grateful for that too. I'm not
always grabbing for more. I'm really really happy with where
it's taken me and what I do well.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
We are so happy for you and grateful that you
joined us today to share your story about music and
how it's impacted your life, and thank you for your
selflessness of sharing your music with the world and helping
them during their time as well. You don't mention it enough,
(18:49):
but you do make a big difference for a lot
of people, and you're very humble about it. And thank
you so much for coming on. Music saved me, Mary,
and good luck with everything you're doing in the future,
and I hope our paths cross again.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Hi, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Musicians on Call is a charity that is perfectly aligned
with the mission of this podcast, delivering the healing power
of music since nineteen ninety nine. Why not become a
volunteer or a supporter by going to musicianson Call dot org.
Music Saved Me. We're dealing with alchemy here. Alchemy is
an ancient form of magic, but it can be explained
in some ways. I would say maybe turning cole into
a diamond is alchemy. There is a thing that happens
in music and song that is hard to explain. Why
does a sad song make you feel happy? That is
(00:25):
taking darkness and turning it into light. That's alchemy.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
This podcast is called Music Saved Me and on each
episode we'll look at a musician, will delve into their
story their deep connection to music, will talk with their
fans everyday, people with their own story to tell about
how music has saved them in challenging times. Today, we
have the privilege of talking with a remarkable artist and author.
(00:53):
Mary Goche is best known for her soul stirring songs
that have touched the hearts of so many. Not only
a talented singer songwriter, but also the author of the
captivating book Saved by a Song and how perfect for
her to join us today. In this episode, we'll explore
the incredible journey of this acclaimed musician, her profound connection
(01:15):
to songwriting, and the powerful tales of redemption and transformation
that have shaped her artistry. Mary, Welcome to Music Saved Me.
It's so great to have you here.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Oh, I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
In your book, Saved by a Song, you talk about
the profound impact that music has had on your life.
Can you share with us a specific moment when you
realized that music saved you?
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Well, honestly, I think it's been more of a process
than an event. But there came a point as a
songwriter as I took it more and more seriously and
decided to really dedicate my life to it as a
as a person who came to it later in life.
(02:03):
It wasn't my first career, it's my It wasn't even
I didn't take it in as a career. Actually, it
was something I did on the side after I got
sober and I began to take it more and more seriously.
So it's my second career. And uh, I guess there
(02:26):
was a point a couple of records in where I realized,
my goodness, this is this is more than more than
what it looks like on the surface. For me, it
became purpose. It became a way of processing the world
in my life, became a way of connecting and building empathy,
(02:50):
building bridges. I'm all about bridges, not walls. I think
that my awareness of the power of song is continuing.
The magnitude of the power of song is amazing to
(03:12):
me what he can do. I was just at a
thing I'd never done before. It was a storytelling festival,
and somebody was wearing a shirt and said, the shortest
distance between two strangers is a story well told. Beautiful.
I think as a songwriter, I would would certainly agree,
(03:34):
and I might say the shortest distance between two strangers
is a story song well told.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Absolutely absolutely. You were just speaking of the power of music,
how tremendous it is. I have to ask you, it
sounds a little weird, but I don't think so. Do
you feel that music has supernatural healing powers?
Speaker 1 (03:56):
Will yes. I would characterize it like this, we're dealing
with alchemy here. Alchemy is an ancient form of magic,
but it can be explained in some ways. I would say,
maybe turning coal into a diamond is alchemy. It can
(04:20):
be looked at scientifically. The pressure, the pressure of the
pressure of the pressure transforms coal into diamonds. There is
a thing that happens in music and song that it's
hard to explain. Why does a sad song make you
feel happy? What is it that this art form brings
(04:43):
that allows some of the worst things that ever happened
to a songwriter to be sung and in that interaction
or in that action, turned into some than beautiful that
other people will thank us for singing. That is taking
(05:08):
darkness and turning it into light. That's alchemy. And if you
want to take it to another level of discussion and
call it supernatural, I'm not going to say no to it.
It's transformative.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
There's songs deal with deeply personal and emotional themes. How
do you navigate that? It's a fine line between sharing
your own personal experiences and also making your music and
songs relatable to a wide audience.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Good point. Here's what I teach, and here's what I understand.
The personal is pretty boring. It's just my little life,
my little diary, my little comings and goings and interactions
with people that went well or poorly. Nobody cares about
my personal I mean, I'm I mean, we care about
(05:59):
celebrities personal just as gawkers. But here's where I can
get people interested is if I go two or three
flights down from the personal and enter the deeply personal.
I think this is where we all meet. We all
meet at what it means to be human, and that
(06:20):
deeply personal reality is not something we talk about at
cocktail parties. Sometimes we never even talk about it with
our family. And the deeply personal is where we intersect
in this life. And I think great artists articulate that,
and people find each other there. That is what's interesting.
(06:41):
I always say to my students that songs are great
places to tell your secrets. Not personal secrets, not who
kiss who or who cheated on who, but what you
truly genuinely feel about what's transportediring in your life and
in the world, and your confusion and your alarm, and
(07:09):
your empathy and and and your your own day to
day experiences of life. In a way, it's where we
It's where we go in and take our guard down.
You know.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
It requires vulnerability, it does and sharing with people, even
if it's not your specific story, it makes them feel
that they're not the only one that's it.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
That's the job, the job. The job as a songwriter
is to get the listener to go Mary, play my
song and take ownership of the story because it is
their story, My One of my songwriting heroes and a
man I traveled with for a bit was a songwriter
from Texas named Guy Clark, and he used to say, Look,
we're all live in the same life. We just hit
(08:01):
the marks at different times, at different points. What it
means to be human is true for all humans. We
share the human condition.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
So true. Many people, obviously, as we're talking about this,
turn to music during difficult times in their life. I
have everyone I know has at some point in time.
Can you tell us I think you just did a
song or a particular artist that has been a saving
grace for you in your life.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Oh God, there's a hundred. Yeah, there's us at different
times in my life. There's so many. And you wouldn't expect,
like I would say, iggy pop and the Carpenters interesting,
you wouldn't expect that from folks like me. There's a
(08:48):
time Green on red iggy pop, the violent films lou Reed.
I'm listening to that and holding on for dear life.
There's a time caring. Carpenter's vocals resonated so deeply. Something
in her voice I felt her. I think her tragedy
was in her voice, and it resonated her her strength
(09:12):
and and and her situation. Uh. She was a woman
trapped in a time that was very very hard to
be a woman, much less of a woman drummer. You know,
she she broke a lot of stereotypes. Uh. And uh,
I think that the pain was in her voice. It
(09:33):
resonated for me. So so I went through a lot
with the Carpenters and and those early early punk bands. Uh.
You know, the clash, the anger of some of the
iggy stuff in the early days. And I always always
always turned to John Prime as well, his his sense
(09:55):
of humor, his ability to see the light inside the darkness.
So many Leonard Cohen songs, Bob Dylan songs, Bruce Springsteen
really has been an important artist for me. And then
people in my own genre, you know, listen to William
Steve Earle, Emmy Lou Harris. The younger ones that are
(10:18):
coming up now speak to me too, Tyler Childers, Stergel Simpson.
They're a lot younger than me, but they're really resonating.
The list is endless. It goes on and on and on,
and we hold on. I hold on to these songwriters
in their songs with dear life. Sometimes for dear life sometimes.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
And still to this day, you'll tap back into that
one needed for yourself.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yeah, Toby Keith got a song I can't stop listening to,
Don't Let the Old Man In.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
That's the best. I love him, Oh my.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
Goodness, as he battles stomach cancer and fights for his
health and his life. This is a saying that he
he picked up on that he wrote a song about.
And it's a Clint Eastwood like, hey man, you're ninety
one years old. How the hell do you still make movies?
And Clint said, I don't let the old man in.
(11:13):
And it's resonant for me. You know, I'm sixty one
years old. But sometimes the old man or the old
woman's comes knocking and you got to answer the door
and go, we're not doing this today. Yeah that song
I'm I'm repeat, repeat, repeat, How old would you be
if you didn't know the day you were born? What
(11:34):
a line?
Speaker 2 (11:36):
Power?
Speaker 1 (11:36):
What a line? What a song? It's not just a song,
it's life instruction.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
And one other little bit of advice is just taking
down all the mirrors in the house. Tell me Mary
describe songwriting. Why is it a therapeutic process?
Speaker 1 (11:55):
I like that distinction. You know, a lot of folks say, well,
you're doing therapy, Like, no, I'm not doing therapy, not
with songwriting. I do therapy with my therapist. But songwriting
is therapeutic in that it helps process. There's a processing
that happens when I write a song that helps bring
(12:15):
some clarity, but it doesn't free me from having the
need for therapeutic help. And when I do have that need,
and I've had it for many, many, many years, I'll
speed die my therapist and get back in there. I
don't do it as often as I did, but she's
(12:36):
there and I know her number. But the process of
writing a song is trying, for me, trying to find clarity,
and I think maybe that's what therapy is as well,
is looking for clarity for persanity and reality and making
decisions based on solid perception. You know. It's the misperception
(13:03):
of the world and the misperception of what's happening that
creates dysfunction and sometimes mental illness. And so the clarifying
process of songwriting for me is very about therapeutic. Now,
not everybody writes that way, and they don't see this
art form as a way of doing that. You know,
(13:26):
there's so many different approaches, and everybody's welcome and you
can do it your own way. I'm not endorsing or
saying this is how it should be done. I'm just
saying this is how I do it.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Your song Mercy now is resonated with countless listeners. Tell
us about the inspiration behind the powerful song and why
you think it is connected with so many people on
such a deep level.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
You know that continues to amaze me. A song that
I wrote in two thousand and two. People come up
to me every night when I'll play with tears in
their eyes and say that song, that song, it keeps
reinventing itself. That song, it keeps reactivating itself. I wrote
it in such a way that it didn't intrinsically get
(14:13):
caught in political events of the year two thousand and two.
I think it's a good example of getting past the
personal into the deeply personal so that it doesn't It
didn't attach it to itself to the specific going ons
of that time, But what inspired it was was the
(14:35):
specific going ons of that time. I knew enough about
songwriting at that point to know that I wanted this
to be a bigger song than what was what it
would be if I said exactly what I was referencing.
It was inspired by the US response to nine to eleven.
(14:58):
It was inspired by the Spotlight Report reports on the
rampant child sexual abuse in the parishes of Boston, the
horrific number of priests in handcuffs being arrested for child abuse.
(15:19):
I lived in Boston at that time. It was mortifying.
At the time, the current dictator of North Korea's father
was testing nuclear weapons. It was inspired by that, but
I didn't reference that. That was what was happening if
you opened the newspaper. But what I tried to write about,
and I think I successfully did, was what was going
on inside of me as a response to that.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Yeah, just to let you know, I'm from Boston as well,
and I was there during that time. So that was
amazing music and song and just a wonderful thing to
put out there in terms of being able to help
people figure out how to deal with all of this stuff.
It's just it was out of It was an unbelievable time.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
It was an unbelievable time. And what I was doing
and I didn't know I was doing, and it was
trying to help me deal with it.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
Yeah, yeah, but don't they always say a lot of
times when you try to figure stuff out for yourself,
you don't even realize that it's going to resonate with
so many people, Which leads me to my next question.
You had mentioned about mercy now and people still come
to you and with tears in their eyes. It has
such a unique ability music to bring people together. How
(16:33):
does it make you feel when you see that impact
on your audience while you're performing, or even after when
they come to you after. How does that make you feel?
Speaker 1 (16:43):
I feel grateful. I feel deeply connected to purpose. I
feel as though I'm one of the lucky ones that
figured out. It took a while. I didn't figure it
out first first off, right out of the shoot, but
I figured out what to do with my life that
I was put here to do and I'm doing it.
(17:03):
And it's a real gift to know what to do
with your life and how to do it and then
to do it. That really makes me feel, I guess grateful. Overall.
The over arching experience of my songs resonating with listeners
in me is gratitude because it took a lot of
(17:25):
courage to walk away from my restaurants at forty years
old and become a songwriter. It took a lot of
courage for me to say, you know what, I did that,
and now I'm going to do this and it may
or may not work, but I'm going to try, and
I've got to try. I don't want to be on
my deathbed going I wish I'd tried. So I gave
(17:46):
it my all and somehow I crossed the threshold somewhere
over the first you know, four or five six records
that gave me this sense that I get to do
this as long as I want to, that they're not
going to take it away from me. That it's working.
And the goal was not to be a star, but
the goal is to be able to support and sustain
(18:10):
myself by writing songs, and that has worked out to
be true. I manifested that and I don't need more.
I have enough. I'm grateful for that too. I'm not
always grabbing for more. I'm really really happy with where
it's taken me and what I do well.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
We are so happy for you and grateful that you
joined us today to share your story about music and
how it's impacted your life, and thank you for your
selflessness of sharing your music with the world and helping
them during their time as well. You don't mention it enough,
(18:49):
but you do make a big difference for a lot
of people, and you're very humble about it. And thank
you so much for coming on. Music saved me, Mary,
and good luck with everything you're doing in the future,
and I hope our paths cross again.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
Hi, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Musicians on Call is a charity that is perfectly aligned
with the mission of this podcast, delivering the healing power
of music since nineteen ninety nine. Why not become a
volunteer or a supporter by going to musicianson Call dot org.
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