Dixie Kitchen

Mary Gauthier

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 23, 1997)
• Original Release Date: March 23, 1997
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Groove House
• ASIN: B000056ODQ
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #128,725 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Review
3 stars out of 5 - ""...Country-tinged folk with Southern stylings....Quietly insidious...with a ring of truth about it... --Mojo

Product Description
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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Down Home As Country's Gonna Get, July 5, 2002

By	Lee Armstrong (Winterville, NC United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

The Fred Eaglesmith discussion list was abuzz with news of Mary Gauthier; so I decided to pick up her disc & see what all the fuss was about. Dixie Kitchen is about the most down home that country's likely to get. Mary didn't go to opera class to learn how to sing country; she doesn't pull any punches; she lays it on the line; and lays it down clean. "When you're 10 years old, it's cute to be a tomboy, but in a couple of years you gotta deal with the ways of the world," she sings on the opener, shouting out, "Sorry, Mom," as her live wire acoustic guitar sails through the song. The breakup song "I Don't Know Nothin' About Love" is a track that went past me the first few times with this CD, but now is one of my favorite tunes. "The Other Side of Free" with its slow mandolin is pretty good. In a most unlikely country setting, Gauthier does a real good job on the anti-AIDS ballad "Goddamn HIV." "I've been a queer since the day I was born," she sings from a gay man's point of view recounting the ravages of that brutal disease. "Old Love Never Dies" is a soft song that she as much moans as sings. "You're All I Wanna Do" is a lustful country tune with a bouncy guitar line, "Sexual satisfaction turned into a chicken fight." Matt Leavenworth's gorgeous fiddle enhances the simple melody of "Ever Easy," "I don't want to leave you; and I don't want to stay; I don't want to keep going on this way." "Skeleton Town" is a peppy little tune about terminal illnesses. In "Rock & Roll Lies" Gauthier references Jack Kerouac, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Elvis Presley & Jim Morrison with a vocal holler straight from Hank Williams, "What's left when the glory consumes you & you can't tell the truth from the lies, while the one thing you still believe in, you must sell to whoever will buy." She nails the contradictions of popularity and commercialism. The CD concludes with country hoedown "Mama Louisiana." Mary Gauthier's music is rustic, rough edged, not perfect pitched -- she won't be doing duets with Celine Dion. But on Dixie Kitchen, she sings with honesty; her music is about something; and the musicianship is first rate. U snooze U lose!

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Incredible first album, December 19, 2002

By	Hugues Orsetti (MANOSQUE France) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This first album is incredible. Because it's wild, true and spontaneous. You know, Bob Dylan doesn't write songs like "Hattie Carroll" anymore. Mary does. We feel the raw rebel thing: she's herself from the marginal people, and she sings for them - though it's not conscious: there's not any commercialism here (what's worse than the commercialism of the rebel thing?).
Actually, with many other singer-songwriters not very well known, Mary incarnates what's so human, real and exciting about what we call the "americana" today, a musical world which stands wild and true because the artists are performers on the road who make music by love of music, whatever they sell records much or not. They don't mind of reaching a wide young audience, they don't care of the rock'n'roll circus ("Rock & Roll Lies").
If you love John Prine, Fred Eaglesmith, Slaid Cleaves, Greg Brown... you'll love Mary Gauthier. You're in the same world. I'm not sure this is the one of Ryan Adams.
Let's speak more about this first album: you hear a voice - a provocative, defiant voice (this is how sounded the 60's Dylan); you hear a sound, an immediate feeling - punchy on upbeat songs, with excellent players; the slow ballads are scotching: how can a person sound so right to your heart? "Goddamn HIV" is pure and straight, it's unbelievable. Now just tell me here's not a great singer-songwriter: only the best ones can make that. And how about the music? As a french I can just be moved by the melody of "Ever Easy", without paying attention to the lyrics (though they're excellent). Her tender singing must be for something as well.
There is also light and humorous stuff with "You're All I Wanna Do" ("the way you leave the bathroom gives me a heart attack"...).
That makes of "Dixie Kitchen" an album as unpretentious as involuntarily important, because it keeps the music alive, as long as the music will be done that way.