ABOUT Mary Gauthier
What out lesbian moves to Nashville at 40 to start a troubadour career? Who goes from playing open mics to playing the Newport Folk Festival in one year’s time?
It’s been 25 years since Mary Gauthier, now revered songwriter, released her groundbreaking debut album, Drag Queens in Limousines. Eighteen months after the record was released, the response was so incredible that she hung up her chef’s coat, moved to Nashville, and started to make her mark as an exciting new voice in the songwriting world. Drag Queens in Limousines is an anthem for anyone who has ever felt like an outsider. It turns out, that’s all of us.
Mary Gauthier has brought all kinds of folks from all walks of life together with her deeply personal, yet paradoxically universal work. By writing about what matters most to her, having the courage to sing what’s often too hard for us to say, and delivering the work authentically, Mary Gauthier opened the gate and widened the path that many who came after her have traveled.
ABOUT Jaime Harris
Jaimee Harris turned 30 during the pandemic. It’s a milestone that is a rite of passage even during normal times. But for this Texas-born singer-songwriter, it came in the midst of one of the strangest and most tumultuous periods in American history. When the world stopped during lockdown, Harris, like many others, found herself gazing back into the past, ruminating on the nature of her hometown and family origins, and reckoning with their imprint on her.
Harris’s sophomore effort, Boomerang Town marks a bold step forward for this country-folk-leaning singer-songwriter. It is an arresting, ambitious song-cycle that explores the generational arc of family, the stranglehold of addiction, and the fragile ties that bind us together as Americans. And while much of the material on Boomerang Town was inspired by personal experience, the songs on this collection are far from autobiographical xeroxed copies. More than anything, they come from a place of emotional truth.
