Mary Gauthier

I was born to an unwed mother in 1962 and subsequently surrendered to St. Vincent’s Women and Infants Asylum on Magazine Street in New Orleans, where I spent my first year. I was adopted shortly thereafter but left my adopted family at fifteen. I wandered for years looking for, but never quite finding a place that felt like home. I searched for, found, and was denied a meeting with my birth mother when I was 45 years old. She couldn’t afford to re-open the wound she’d carried her whole life, the wound of surrendering a baby. The Foundling is my story. - Mary Gauthier, January 2010

Since her debut in 1997, critics have consistently heralded Mary Gauthier. Her breakthrough album, Mercy Now (2005) was continuously “discovered” and lauded for the two years following its release, earning mentions on a score of year-end “best of” lists in ‘05, including the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and No Depression. Her most recent release, Between Daylight and Dark (2007) has been called “…a triumph that should catapult her to the forefront of Americana singer/songwriters,” by Paste Magazine, while the New York Daily News declared, “If she keeps this up, one day she may assume the mantle of Johnny Cash…”