Mary is a marvel, and for those who are not familiar - read on. A true testament to never giving up and following your dream. One impressive individual. These tunes are from my favorite Mary lp "Between Daylight and Dark"

In case you didn't know, Wiki sez:

Given up at birth by a mother she never knew, Gauthier was adopted by an Italian Catholic couple in Thibodaux, Louisiana. At age 15, she ran away from home and stole her parents' car, and spent the next several years in drug rehabilitation, halfway houses, and living with friends; she spent her 18th birthday in jail. Struggling to deal with being a lesbian, she used drugs and alcohol. These experiences provided fodder for her songwriting later on (particularly her song "Drag Queens in Limousines"). Later on, she enrolled at Louisiana State University as a philosophy major. She opened a Cajun restaurant in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood, Dixie Kitchen (also the eponymous title of her first album). She wrote her first song at age 35. Hey - it's never too late

Truth be told

Mary Gauthier doesn't shy away from her past

By Scott Alarik, Globe Correspondent | October 7, 2005

Mary Gauthier's sad, hard road to country-folk stardom is becoming the stuff of Nashville lore. From the age of 15, the Louisiana-born songwriter battled alcoholism and drug addiction, roaming the streets of strange town after strange town. She was in and out of detox and jail, until she landed in Boston, opened the Cajun-chic Dixie Kitchen restaurant, and finally got sober in 1990.

Music was her lifeline, Gauthier (pronounced Go-SHAY) tells everyone who asks. But there is another savior in her remarkable saga.

''Club Passim helped save my life," she says from Nashville, where she's lived since 2001. ''If it wasn't for that little coffeehouse, I don't know where I would have put myself in the world after I got sober. I absolutely would not have a music career if I hadn't become part of the Passim community."

Gauthier didn't write her first song until she was 35, but since then, she's climbed steadily from clumsy Boston open-miker to major-label songwriting star. Her critically acclaimed Lost Highway debut, ''Mercy Now," earned her this year's Americana Music Association New/Emerging Artist award. Gauthier performs tonight at Passim.

Her spare, hard-bitten songs look at the underside of the American experience with unblinking honesty and uncommon bluntness. In her wincing portrait of the alcoholic she once was, she offers no excuses, no bright sun peeking through the clouds: ''Yes, I know what I am/ But I don't give a damn."

Brad Paul is a producer-host of the Saturday radio program ''Folk on WGBH" (Gauthier performs an on-air concert with him Oct. 29). He's also an executive at Cambridge's Rounder Records, the largest roots label in the country. A past president of the Americana Music Association, he still chairs its radio committee, and says he's not a bit surprised Gauthier has become a darling of Americana radio.

''She writes these raw, bleeding, incredibly intense sketches of hardscrabble characters," he says. ''And she has the twang factor, that kind of rootsy, Southern sound that's the common root of the Americana format. It's the kind of writing that's so real and hits you so hard, like John Prine, Bill Morrissey, or Lucinda Williams. She's not afraid to strip it right down naked to the bone."

Gauthier is certainly capable of artful poetry, when it's called for. ''Falling out of love is a dangerous thing," she sings, ''with its slippery slopes and its weighted wings." But she also tells the obvious truths most songwriters gloss over, or at least gussy up. In the title cut, she suggests the world could use a little ''Mercy Now," but adds, ''I know we don't deserve it."

Her early years gave her the experience to write with such visceral authenticity. They also gave her what she considers the songwriter's most important tool: compassion.

''There needs to be a reason for writing songs that's bigger than just expressing how you feel today," she says. ''Compassion gives your experience significance beyond the individual, and creates a community around it. I think people who are called to songwriting -- the creative, talented ones -- you'll find a common thread of some real, true pain they've worked through, and got to the other side, where they're able to make some sense of it in their songs."

Gauthier finally found the other side in Boston, after ending the happiest night of her life, the grand opening of her own restaurant, with a drunk-driving arrest. ''You know, the handcuffs were a sign that I might've been in trouble," she says with an edgy laugh. ''But I don't know why it took hold that time, after so many times it didn't. Maybe it was just that I had so much more to lose."

She was soon haunting Club Passim's Tuesday open mike, as much for a sober social experience as the music. After a few years as a club regular, and a stint on its board of directors, she began writing songs. In 2001, she sold her share in Dixie Kitchen, and moved to Nashville to pursue her music career.

It was easy to see the drawbacks to beginning a music career at 35, and Gauthier knew the odds were long. But long odds were a way of life for her, and she figured her age gave her some advantages, too.

''I think I had a whole lot more to write about," she says, ''a perspective I didn't have in my 20s. I also had more information on how the world works, which helps me in my business, traveling, the practical things. But most of all, I didn't have that attitude I had when I was young, which was to expect things. I get it now that the world doesn't owe me a damn thing, and that any gift I get is incredible. So I guess what I'm saying is, it's more fun."