If there were no story to tell about this remarkable artist, if there were nothing but the music that haunts every track on Mercy Now, that alone would make the case for Mary Gauthier as one of the most challenging artists to rise up from the underground in a long, long time.

No one was more surprised than Mary when her first CD, Dixie Kitchen (1997), earned her a Boston Music Award nomination for "best new contemporary folk artist" -- a coup for any first-time performer in the city's hyper-competitive market. "That gave me some confidence. I really started writing hard and strong. I spent less and less time at the restaurant, more and more time at my writing desk. I began coming to Nashville to do workshops with the Nashville Songwriters Association. I was passionate about songs, the way I once was about soup," she laughs.

Eventually she sold her share in Dixie Kitchen to finance her second album, Drag Queens in Limousines (1999). With that, she smiles, "all hell broke loose": Rolling Stone gave it a four-star rave, MOJO, Q, Gavin Report, and other publications joined in on the chorus, and she reaped an Independent Music Award, "country artist of the year" honors from GLAMA, and multiple dates throughout the folk festival circuit and Europe. The third release, Filth & Fire (2002), inspired critics in the Freeform American Roots poll to pick her as the top female artist of the year, and won benediction from No Depression as "the best singer/songwriter album of the year."

On fourth album, Mercy Now, Mary reached even higher by dredging deeper through the backwaters of her life. The songs reflect her mastery of image, her determination to find precisely the right word, sometimes through months of labor over a single line or idea, and her ability to bring it all to life through her gifts as a performer.

Her second release on the Lost Highway label Between Daylight and Dark came out in September 2007, followed by 2008’s Genesis, which is comprised of fifteen startling songs that create an un-missable introduction to this artist for whom the Americana genre could have been invented.