Mary Gauthier (Photo by Laura Partain)
Nashville singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier, winner of Americana Music Association UK’s International Artist of the Year Award and the International Folk Music Awards’ Album of the Year for Rifles & Rosary Beads, performs at City Winery DC on Sunday, March 24.
Uniquely, all of the songs on Rifles & Rosary Beads, Mary’s 10th album, were co-written as part of Songwriting With Soldiers, a nonprofit program that pairs professional songwriters with wounded and active duty military to craft songs about their military experiences.
Rifles & Rosary Beads has earned tremendous accolades, including garnering a Grammy nomination in the Best Folk Album category and being named the LA Times’ 2018 “Singer/Songwriter Album of the Year.” Wrote Rolling Stone Country, the album “is not only one of the most arresting American singer-songwriter records in recent years, but one of the most vital pieces of art to come out of those two wars.”
Watch the Mary Gauthier perform “Rifles & Rosary Beads” live on YouTube:
“The album’s honesty and insight into an often overlooked aspect of American democracy — the on-the-ground experiences of soldiers and especially the aftermath of their time in combat — is a gift in a contemporary moment full of chatter and political rhetoric,” wrote NPR World Café.
Rifles & Rosary Beads is “nothing short of a folk music mission statement,” Noisey added.
Said Mary to NPR about collaborating with the charity Songwriting With Soldiers, “Well, I was invited to do a retreat about four and a half years ago with Songwriting With Soldiers, and as I sat and listened to the stories I was told, it just moved me to the core. Something clicked in my heart and in my brain, and I knew [I had] stepped into something incredibly beautiful.”
Mary Gauthier
w/ Jaimee Harris
City Winery DC
Sunday, March 24
Doors @ 6pm
$22-$25
All ages