January 3, 2025 • 19 mins
Join us for the powerful Music Saved Me Classic Replay with singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier. Mary is a Grammy-nominated artist whose songs have been covered by a variety of performers including Tim McGraw, Blake Shelton, Jimmy Buffett and many others. Mary discusses her passion for music and how music has helped her get thru difficult experiences while "saving her" at the darkest times.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Music Saved Me.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
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 Musicians on Call
dot org.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
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.
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 taking darkness and turning
(00:41):
it into light. That's alchemy.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
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. We'll 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.
(01:08):
Mary Gochea is best known for her soul stirring songs
that have touched the hearts of so many. She's 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
(01:29):
connection 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 (01:41):
Oh, I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
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 (01:55):
Well, honestly, I think it's been more of a sess
than an event. But there came a point as a songwriter,
as as I took it more and more seriously and
decided to really dedicate my life to it, as as
as a as a person who came to it later
(02:17):
in life. 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, uh, and I began to take it more
and more seriously. So it's my second career and Uh,
(02:40):
I guess there 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
(03:02):
connecting and building empathy, 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
(03:25):
song is amazing to 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 he said, the shortest distance between two strangers is
a story well told and beautiful. I think as a songwriter,
(03:46):
I would certainly agree, and I might say the shortest
distance between two strangers is a story song well told.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
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 (04:11):
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
(04:35):
can be looked at scientifically. The pressure, the pressure. The pressure,
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 that allows some
(04:59):
of the worst things, whatever happened to a songwriter to
be sung and in that interaction or in that action,
turned into something beautiful that other people will thank us
for singing. That is taking darkness and turning it into light.
(05:25):
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 (05:35):
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 (05:51):
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
(06:14):
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
(06:35):
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.
(06:56):
I always say to my students that songs are a
great places is to tell your secrets, not personal secrets,
not who kiss who or who cheated on who, but
what what you truly genuinely feel about what's transpiring in
your life and in the world, and your confusion and
(07:21):
your alarm, and your empathy and and and your your own,
uh day to day experiences of life. In a way,
it's where we it's where we go in and take
(07:41):
our guard down. You know, it requires vulnerability.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
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 (07:55):
That's the job, the job. The job as a songwriter
is to get the listeners, go Mary, play my song.
They take ownership of the story because it is their story.
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
living the same life. We just hit the marks at
(08:16):
different times, at different points. What it means to be
human is true for all humans. We share the human condition.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
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 (08:42):
Oh god, there's hundred yeahs at different times in my life.
So many. And you wouldn't expect, like I would say,
Iggy Pop and the Carpenters. Interesting, you wouldn't expect that
from folks saying like me, there's a time green on
(09:04):
Red Iggy popped the violent films, Lou Reid, I'm listening
to that and holding on for dear life. There's a
time carrying 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 and her situation. Uh.
(09:30):
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 resonated for me. So so
(09:50):
I went through a lot with the Carpenters and and
those early early punk bands. Uh, you know, the clash,
the a of some of the iggy stuff in the
early days. And I always always always turned to John
Prime as well, his sense of humor, his ability to
(10:11):
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 coming up now speak to
(10:35):
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 (10:53):
And still to this day, you'll tap back into that
one needed for yourself.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Yeahtoby Keiths got a song I can't stop listening to,
Don't Let the Old Man In.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
That's the best. I love him, Oh my.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Goodness, as he battles stomach cancer and fights for his
health and his life. This is a saying that 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,
(11:28):
and a 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
(11:49):
a line? What a line? What a song. It's not
just a song, it's life instruction.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
And one other little bit of advice is just taking
down all the me errors in the house. Tell me Mary,
describe songwriting. Why is it a therapeutic process?
Speaker 1 (12:10):
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
(12:30):
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
I'll speed down my therapist and get back in there.
I don't do it as often as I did, but
(12:50):
she's 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 perceptions. You know, it's
(13:16):
the misperception 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
(13:37):
art farm as a way of doing that. You know,
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 (13:54):
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 (14:07):
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 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
(14:28):
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
(14:49):
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 was what it would
be if I said exactly what I was referencing. It
was inspired by the US response to nine to eleven.
(15:13):
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.
(15:34):
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 (15:57):
Yeah, I was just to let you know I'm 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. It
(16:18):
was an unbelievable time.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
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. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
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 does
(16:48):
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 (16:57):
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.
(17:18):
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 overarching experience of my songs resonating with listeners in
me is gratitude, because it took a lot of courage
(17:40):
to walk away from my restaurants at forty years old
and become a songwriter. 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 it
(18:01):
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 myself
(18:26):
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 (18:44):
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
during their time as well. You don't mention it enough,
(19:04):
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 (19:18):
Hi, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
Music Saved Me.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
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 Musicians on Call
dot org.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
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.
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 taking darkness and turning
(00:41):
it into light. That's alchemy.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
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. We'll 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.
(01:08):
Mary Gochea is best known for her soul stirring songs
that have touched the hearts of so many. She's 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
(01:29):
connection 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 (01:41):
Oh, I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
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 (01:55):
Well, honestly, I think it's been more of a sess
than an event. But there came a point as a songwriter,
as as I took it more and more seriously and
decided to really dedicate my life to it, as as
as a as a person who came to it later
(02:17):
in life. 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, uh, and I began to take it more
and more seriously. So it's my second career and Uh,
(02:40):
I guess there 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
(03:02):
connecting and building empathy, 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
(03:25):
song is amazing to 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 he said, the shortest distance between two strangers is
a story well told and beautiful. I think as a songwriter,
(03:46):
I would certainly agree, and I might say the shortest
distance between two strangers is a story song well told.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
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 (04:11):
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
(04:35):
can be looked at scientifically. The pressure, the pressure. The pressure,
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 that allows some
(04:59):
of the worst things, whatever happened to a songwriter to
be sung and in that interaction or in that action,
turned into something beautiful that other people will thank us
for singing. That is taking darkness and turning it into light.
(05:25):
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 (05:35):
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 (05:51):
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
(06:14):
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
(06:35):
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.
(06:56):
I always say to my students that songs are a
great places is to tell your secrets, not personal secrets,
not who kiss who or who cheated on who, but
what what you truly genuinely feel about what's transpiring in
your life and in the world, and your confusion and
(07:21):
your alarm, and your empathy and and and your your own,
uh day to day experiences of life. In a way,
it's where we it's where we go in and take
(07:41):
our guard down. You know, it requires vulnerability.
Speaker 2 (07:45):
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 (07:55):
That's the job, the job. The job as a songwriter
is to get the listeners, go Mary, play my song.
They take ownership of the story because it is their story.
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
living the same life. We just hit the marks at
(08:16):
different times, at different points. What it means to be
human is true for all humans. We share the human condition.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
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 (08:42):
Oh god, there's hundred yeahs at different times in my life.
So many. And you wouldn't expect, like I would say,
Iggy Pop and the Carpenters. Interesting, you wouldn't expect that
from folks saying like me, there's a time green on
(09:04):
Red Iggy popped the violent films, Lou Reid, I'm listening
to that and holding on for dear life. There's a
time carrying 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 and her situation. Uh.
(09:30):
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 resonated for me. So so
(09:50):
I went through a lot with the Carpenters and and
those early early punk bands. Uh, you know, the clash,
the a of some of the iggy stuff in the
early days. And I always always always turned to John
Prime as well, his sense of humor, his ability to
(10:11):
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 coming up now speak to
(10:35):
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 (10:53):
And still to this day, you'll tap back into that
one needed for yourself.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Yeahtoby Keiths got a song I can't stop listening to,
Don't Let the Old Man In.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
That's the best. I love him, Oh my.
Speaker 1 (11:07):
Goodness, as he battles stomach cancer and fights for his
health and his life. This is a saying that 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,
(11:28):
and a 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
(11:49):
a line? What a line? What a song. It's not
just a song, it's life instruction.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
And one other little bit of advice is just taking
down all the me errors in the house. Tell me Mary,
describe songwriting. Why is it a therapeutic process?
Speaker 1 (12:10):
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
(12:30):
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
I'll speed down my therapist and get back in there.
I don't do it as often as I did, but
(12:50):
she's 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 perceptions. You know, it's
(13:16):
the misperception 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
(13:37):
art farm as a way of doing that. You know,
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 (13:54):
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 (14:07):
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 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
(14:28):
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
(14:49):
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 was what it would
be if I said exactly what I was referencing. It
was inspired by the US response to nine to eleven.
(15:13):
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.
(15:34):
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 (15:57):
Yeah, I was just to let you know I'm 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. It
(16:18):
was an unbelievable time.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
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. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
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 does
(16:48):
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 (16:57):
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.
(17:18):
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 overarching experience of my songs resonating with listeners in
me is gratitude, because it took a lot of courage
(17:40):
to walk away from my restaurants at forty years old
and become a songwriter. 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 it
(18:01):
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 myself
(18:26):
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 (18:44):
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
during their time as well. You don't mention it enough,
(19:04):
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 (19:18):
Hi, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
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