Mary Gauthier Queen's Hall Edinburgh19th October 2025 Review
Mary Gauthier was at the Queen’s Hall Edinburgh tonight, taking this audience with her on a musical journey with a lot of honesty, humour and personal life reflection along the way in a set that lasted roughly 90 minutes. The songs in tonight’s set reflected that journey too with the opening “The Meadow” coming from Mary’s last album “Dark Enough To See The Stars” (2022) to one of the closing songs, “Mercy Now”, the title track of her first album from 2005. In between these two songs, some new ones, obvious audience favourites, and some co-writes with many well-known singer/songwriters.
Whatever the song may have been tonight, one thing was obvious throughout the evening, and that is that Mary Gauthier is a very special songwriter, someone who observes people, tells their stories and has the ability to tell stories and paint pictures and create little videos in your mind’s eye with words. Often these songs come from Mary’s own life experiences and are done so with an honesty that is rare to find in any songwriter.
As Mary with honesty told us all tonight, her earlier life’s addiction problems are well-documented, but she is happy to be saying that she has been clean and free from them for 35 years now. Here was someone on-stage tonight who truly believed, from her own experiences, in the transformative, life-changing, and sometimes even life-saving power of music. This can be something as simple as finding a song that soothes you, gives you peace and maybe a little clarity, or perhaps says the words that for some reason you cannot find in yourself to say at the time. For Mary Gauthier, writing songs and those words is also part of an ongoing healing process. Mary also read a small part from her book “Saved by the Song”, a few lines that said so much.
Like so many songwriters before her, Woody Guthrie and Willie Nelson immediately coming into my mind, Mary Gauthier finds railroads to be a rich source of inspiration. In the UK we have no real concept of just how vast the USA is. Railroads are connections between not only places but also people over vast distances and before the days of mass air transport and huge inter-state road systems, they were the only way of making this possible. The stories that people have to tell on their journey, in places that the trains stop at, particularly those at the end of lines, are obviously rich sources of inspiration for Mary Gauthier and this was reflected in songs tonight, songs that included “I Thought I Heard A Train”, “Last of the Hobo Kings” and “Some Times”. Of course that concept of being on a journey to or from somewhere can also be a metaphor for so many things in life and relationships too.
If I was to pick one song from tonight as a favourite though, it would be the Mary Gauthier/Gretchen Peters co-written “How You Learn to Live Alone”; simply a great example of two fine songwriters who obviously share much in common when they write together.
Listening to all of these songs tonight it is easy to see why Mary Gauthier has won so many different awards and a Grammy nomination for her songs over a distinguished songwriting career.
Opening this evening’s show was Jaimee Harris, a songwriter who also is openly honest about many of the difficulties and addictions of her younger years. Jaimee also credits the therapeutic role that music can play in someone’s life as being a major part of celebrating being clean from her addictions for over 10 years.
I have seen a lot of opening acts over the years, but I have seen no one do what Jaimee Harris did tonight, and that was turn the opening song into a song itself, simply called “Opening Act”. Together Jaimee Harris and Mary Gauthier have been on their own journey together for some time now and this became clearer later in the evening when the two were on stage together for the whole of Mary’s set. Jaimee Harris instinctively understands what is needed and when it is needed to support Mary Gauthier with her guitar playing and vocals on stage. There is also an honesty to the songs of Jaimee Harris and she is clearly someone who is growing as a songwriter in her own right.
This evening also gave Jaimee the opportunity to do a cover version of her favourite song – Blackhawk by Emmylou Harris.
Review by Tom King © 2025
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com.
Whatever the song may have been tonight, one thing was obvious throughout the evening, and that is that Mary Gauthier is a very special songwriter, someone who observes people, tells their stories and has the ability to tell stories and paint pictures and create little videos in your mind’s eye with words. Often these songs come from Mary’s own life experiences and are done so with an honesty that is rare to find in any songwriter.
As Mary with honesty told us all tonight, her earlier life’s addiction problems are well-documented, but she is happy to be saying that she has been clean and free from them for 35 years now. Here was someone on-stage tonight who truly believed, from her own experiences, in the transformative, life-changing, and sometimes even life-saving power of music. This can be something as simple as finding a song that soothes you, gives you peace and maybe a little clarity, or perhaps says the words that for some reason you cannot find in yourself to say at the time. For Mary Gauthier, writing songs and those words is also part of an ongoing healing process. Mary also read a small part from her book “Saved by the Song”, a few lines that said so much.
Like so many songwriters before her, Woody Guthrie and Willie Nelson immediately coming into my mind, Mary Gauthier finds railroads to be a rich source of inspiration. In the UK we have no real concept of just how vast the USA is. Railroads are connections between not only places but also people over vast distances and before the days of mass air transport and huge inter-state road systems, they were the only way of making this possible. The stories that people have to tell on their journey, in places that the trains stop at, particularly those at the end of lines, are obviously rich sources of inspiration for Mary Gauthier and this was reflected in songs tonight, songs that included “I Thought I Heard A Train”, “Last of the Hobo Kings” and “Some Times”. Of course that concept of being on a journey to or from somewhere can also be a metaphor for so many things in life and relationships too.
If I was to pick one song from tonight as a favourite though, it would be the Mary Gauthier/Gretchen Peters co-written “How You Learn to Live Alone”; simply a great example of two fine songwriters who obviously share much in common when they write together.
Listening to all of these songs tonight it is easy to see why Mary Gauthier has won so many different awards and a Grammy nomination for her songs over a distinguished songwriting career.
Opening this evening’s show was Jaimee Harris, a songwriter who also is openly honest about many of the difficulties and addictions of her younger years. Jaimee also credits the therapeutic role that music can play in someone’s life as being a major part of celebrating being clean from her addictions for over 10 years.
I have seen a lot of opening acts over the years, but I have seen no one do what Jaimee Harris did tonight, and that was turn the opening song into a song itself, simply called “Opening Act”. Together Jaimee Harris and Mary Gauthier have been on their own journey together for some time now and this became clearer later in the evening when the two were on stage together for the whole of Mary’s set. Jaimee Harris instinctively understands what is needed and when it is needed to support Mary Gauthier with her guitar playing and vocals on stage. There is also an honesty to the songs of Jaimee Harris and she is clearly someone who is growing as a songwriter in her own right.
This evening also gave Jaimee the opportunity to do a cover version of her favourite song – Blackhawk by Emmylou Harris.
Review by Tom King © 2025
www.artsreviewsedinburgh.com.
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