Modeled after Willie Nelson’s The Redheaded Stranger, New Orleans singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier delves more fully into her autobiographical narrative on The Foundling, a concept album dealing with the pain of being abandoned as a baby, her struggle to find an identity, and her search for her birth mother. Gauthier’s winding road to Nashville took sharp turns, running away from home as a teenager by stealing her adopted parents’ car, battling drug and alcohol addiction in and out of rehab, halfway houses and jail, before settling down to study philosophy, open a restaurant and change direction yet again in her thirties, when she became a singer-songwriter on the folk/country circuit in Boston. Gauthier’s Southern Gothic songcraft still has a raw, gutsy edge, but with the fine production sensibilities of Michael Timmins (Cowboy Junkies), The Foundling strikes a nuanced coexistence of gravely vocals and acoustic guitar with accordion, fiddle, keyboards and slide guitar. – Written by JFelton
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