To tell her truth

Mary GAUTHIER never thought she’d sign with a major label.

As a songwriter who considers herself a folk singer, Gauthier knew that acoustic performers are rarely embraced by the top tiers of the record business these days, especially those who sing in a molasses-slow Southern drawl. That she’s a lesbian in her 40s didn’t exactly increase her marketability in a business based on youth and sex appeal.

“I just didn’t think they’d get me,” she says, smiling and shaking her head, her pale blue eyes just as intense as her darkly quiet songs about addicts, abusers and spiritual seekers. “I didn’t really look in that direction because I didn’t think it was possible.”

To Gauthier’s surprise, the record business came looking for her. Lost Highway Records, an artist-oriented subsidiary of Universal Music, invited Gauthier to join the label on the strength of her critically acclaimed 2002 album “Filth & Fire.”

With a roster of younger artists Ryan Adams and Tift Merritt as well as veterans Lucinda Williams, Willie Nelson and Elvis Costello, Lost Highway considered itself a sanctuary for outsiders. Gauthier felt right at home.

“Almost all of the artists I love hardly ever sold any records,” says Gauthier, who uses the Cajun pronunciation “go-SHAY.” “The music I love is mostly considered obscure, with a few exceptions, like Neil Young, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. So I had no reason to suspect I’d ever sell many records, either. That’s not why I write songs.”

Nevertheless, on a recent hot summer night in Nashville, Gauthier stood onstage at the sold-out Belcourt Theatre. It was her first performance as a theater headliner, and she received a standing ovation before she played a note.

To open the show, Gauthier was joined by one of Music City’s highest-profile media figures, TV anchorwoman Demetria Kalodimos, who has read the news for the local NBC affiliate, WSMV-TV, for 21 years. Kalodimos, who’s also an independent filmmaker, directed the video for the title song for Gauthier’s Lost Highway debut, “Mercy Now,” which was shown before the concert.

The anchor and the folk singer provided striking contrasts on the Belcourt stage as they answered questions about the video and the song, which begins by asking for mercy for Gauthier’s father and troubled brother, then offers a prayer for her religion and her country and eventually the entire world, saying “every single one of us could use some mercy now.”

Kalodimos, asked why she prominently features a plate of pomegranates in the video, replied that Picasso had his oranges, and she thought she needed her own fruit. Gauthier, standing next to the director in a light plaid shirt over a ragged T and blue jeans, smiled and pointed a thumb at herself. The crowd exploded with laughter, and Kalodimos shook her head. “That was a poor choice of words,” the newswoman said with a smile.

Gauthier’s success and the crowd reaction are signs of how Nashville, the most conservative of American music capitals, is starting to become more diverse and tolerant.

Earlier this year, Cowboy Troy, a black hip-hop artist from Texas, released a country album; Gauthier, on the strength of “Mercy Now,” was recently nominated by the Nashville-based Americana Music Assn. for album of the year, single of the year and new/emerging artist of the year.

“I don’t think Lost Highway signed Mary expecting her to fit with country radio or what is usually marketed to a mainstream country audience,” says Jeff Green, the AMA’s executive director. “She’s ... more in the mode of a John Prine or uncompromising artists like that. It’s very authentic and cuts right to the core, and that’s what makes her appealing to the Americana genre.”

The song “Mercy Now” has made for some unexpected alliances. Radio talk show host and TV commentator Laura Ingraham, whom Gauthier described as “making Rush Limbaugh sound like a liberal,” recently has been playing “Mercy Now” during her show and lists her as a favorite on her website.

“I purposely wrote the song so that it wasn’t overtly political,” says Gauthier, reflecting on Ingraham’s support. “Still, I have to say, that was a little surprising to me.”

Gauthier’s getting used to surprises. On July 13, the day before her Nashville concert, she celebrated the 15th anniversary of her sobriety. That means she’s been sober just as long as she had been an alcoholic and drug addict. “I figure I’m even now,” she says with a smile.

Gauthier can still remember taking her first drink, at 13. “As soon as I put liquor in my body, I was a changed person,” she says, fingering her coffee cup in a midtown Nashville cafe. “I went from feeling alone, unlovable and alienated to being the life of the party. Who wouldn’t want to do that? It took away that hole inside me. I chased that feeling a long time, until it nearly killed me -- until I hit the point where I had to deal with the hole instead of putting chemicals in it.”

Gauthier had plenty of explanations for where that hole originated. Orphaned at birth in New Orleans, she was put up for adoption and taken in by a fundamentalist Christian couple from Baton Rouge who were alcoholics.

“One of the reasons I’m so drawn to songs that tell the truth is because I grew up in a place that was so broken,” Gauthier says. “In an alcoholic family, you can’t talk about this or that. Everything is hidden and false, not in a malicious way, but that’s just how they deal with it. There was a sickness in the family, and nobody was willing to speak the truth, because the truth was too ugly and painful.”

Gauthier realized she was gay by the time she stole the family car and ran away for the first time at age 15. She returned but took off again in the same car a year later. This time she stayed away, moving in with a houseful of drag queens in Baton Rouge. Her drug and alcohol use increased, and by 17 she’d been in and out of rehab twice. She spent her 18th birthday in jail after stealing pills from a glove box while working in a carwash.

She found strength in music, especially the songs of Prine and Springsteen. “The prototype of everything I do is ‘Sam Stone,’ ” she says, citing the Prine song about a heroin-addicted Vietnam vet. “I used to play ‘Sam Stone’ in the parking lot of a biker bar in Baton Rouge, for these big guys in leather with Harleys, guys with names like Grizzly. I’d play ‘Sam Stone,’ and Grizzly would cry and say ‘Play it again!’ with tears in his voice. That taught me the power of words.”

Gauthier stares unblinkingly when she talks, coming across as focused and self-directed yet warm and empathetic. When she brings up the past, it’s with understanding, not bitterness.

“It’s a weird world where you can’t believe your parents but you can believe the words of a record,” she continues. “But even when you’re young, you know truth when you hear it. I knew music could tell the truth. It just took me a long time to get the confidence to try and write my own truth. But when I did decide to write, I knew what I was aiming for.”

She studied philosophy for five years at Louisiana State University, dropping out her senior year when addictions flared. By the late ‘80s she was working in a Boston cafe, which led to culinary school; she was arrested for DUI on the night she opened Boston’s first Cajun restaurant.

She appeased investors by entering a rehab program in July 1990, and she says she’s been sober since then.

Gauthier didn’t start writing songs until after she straightened out. She began performing at open-mike nights in Boston, where she gained confidence one song at a time. Her first album, 1997’s “Dixie Kitchen,” was an uneven, self-released collection that showed promise.

Her creative breakthrough came with 1999’s “Drag Queens in Limousines,” which she put out with the help of producer Crit Harmon.

For her follow-up, “Filth & Fire,” she collaborated with Austin guitarist Gurf Morlix, who’d produced Lucinda Williams’ albums in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. He toughened up and focused Gauthier’s arrangements, and the album came out on Massachusetts-based indie label Signature Sounds to rave reviews.

But the move to Lost Highway gave “Mercy Now,” also produced by Morlix, a much bigger push, and Gauthier’s reaping the rewards.

“I really never expected to do as well as I’m doing,” she says. “There’s so many more people paying attention, and the shows are so much better attended.... I’m overwhelmed and incredibly grateful. It makes me think the hard work has paid off, and it makes me want to do better. I still feel like I’m just getting started.”