Mary Gauthier's search for her birth mother brought something other than closure

Mary Gauthier, singer-songwriter

Mary Gauthier, singer-songwriter

Knoxville-based Americana musician RobinElla

Gary Friedman/Los Angeles Times/MCT

Mary Gauthier performs on the second day of Stagecoach in Indio, California, April 25, 2010.

One of the first things you notice about Mary Gauthier's new publicity photo is that she's smiling. And you can almost hear her smiling across the mobile phone.

"Yeah, man! I've written through the minor chord songs," says Gauthier. "This next time is going to be a completely different thing. I really think I released the demons."

Gauthier, whose serious photos were representative of her very serious songs, recently released "The Foundling," an album in which she recounts her struggle with finding out she was adopted and her unsuccessful attempt to meet her birth mother. It is one of the most accomplished and emotional albums of the year.

She calls the creation of the album "effortful."

"It took a lot of energy to pull each song into its own worthiness," says Gauthier. "I knew I wanted to write the story, but I had to write songs that added up to a story. It took a little over two years sitting down at the desk and polishing it up until it was something I was really ready to record."

The subject matter that Gautheir addressed, though, took a lifetime. As a baby, Gauthier was adopted from an orphanage by a couple from Thibodaux, La. Family dysfunction contributed to Gauthier becoming a juvenile delinquent. At the age of 15, Gautheir stole her parents' car and ran away from home. The following three years included stints in rehab and halfway houses. She spent her 18th birthday in a jail cell in Salinas, Kansas.

Eventually, Gauthier began to straighten her life out and enrolled as a philosophy major at Louisiana State University and, later, enrolled in Cambridge School of Culinary Arts in Boston. That led to Gauthier opening the successful Boston restaurant the Dixie Kitchen - the restaurant's name became the name of Gauthier's 1997 debut album.

Musically, Gautheir was a late bloomer. She didn't begin writing songs until she was in her 30s, and she was 35 when "Dixie Kitchen" was released. Her following disc, 1999's "Drag Queens and Limousines," began a string of releases that earned her international acclaim.

It was a therapist that suggested she attempt to find out who her birth mother was and to try and make contact.

"It wasn't my idea to go looking," says Gauthier. "But I was sort of trapped in a cycle that wasn't working for me and the therapist said this might be what I needed to do to get out of it."

The story did not, as Gauthier says, have a happy ending. When she contacted her birth mother by phone, the woman said that Gauthier was still a secret and she did not want to meet with her. The album, sadly and dramatically, recreates the call, and the album ends without resolution.

"You don't get closure in real life and I didn't want to wrap it up on the album," says Gauthier.

She does, however, think the therapist was correct in her advice.

"I needed a period at the end of that sentence," says Gauthier. "It was just a question mark that got bigger every year."

Now Gauthier feels like she's going to write some songs that reflect happiness.

"I don't know how to write 'em! Now that I've told this story I really have been transformed. I feel a lightness that I've never felt and I'm sure that's going to reflect in my writing. I can't really see what's next. It's a mystery. And I can't wait to see what the muse is going to tell me to do next."

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