Amazing find today via Googel Alerts! I have “adoption, birhtmother and adoptee” loaded up and get daily alerts which i *try* to go through and share links that seem worthy of interest ( usually on Twitter or Facebook).
Anyway today I got this one and followed the link, quite unsure of how adoption plays into it:

Mary Gauthier’s New Album;Experiences as an Adopted Child

Celebrated singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier’s album promises to be the most personal of the lot. The Foundling, due May 18 from Razor and Tie, was written and recorded over the last two years, and produced by Cowboy Junkies Michael Timmins. It’s an album-long narrative that tells of Gauthier’s experiences as an adopted child.

“I was born to an unwed mother in 1962 and adopted shortly thereafter,” explains Gauthier. “When I was 45 years old, I searched for, found and was denied a meeting with my birth mother. 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.”

“I envisioned writing a song cycle about relinquishment and adoption, but for years the songs I was trying to write didn’t have an emotional center. When I found my mother, I found the emotional center of the album, as well as the explanation for the ‘orphan feeling’ I’d lived with since I was a child.”

The Foundling is the followup to 2007’s critically-acclaimed Between Daylight and Dark. Gauthier will launch a national tour in May. Check out the dates below:

Super Excited Now: 4/21 is in Rosendale!

Mary Gauthier Upcoming Concert Dates

• March 4 Nashville, TN Bluebird Café
• April 16 Northampton, MA Iron Horse Music Hall
• April 18 Somerville, MA Somerville Theater*
• April 20 Larchmont, NY Watercolor Café
• April 21 Rosendale, NY Rosendale Café

And it’s SUPER Small!!!

• April 22 New York, NY The Concert Hall*
• April 23 Fall River, MA Narrows Center for the Arts
• April 25 Indio, CA Stagecoach
• May 6 Minneapolis, MN Cedar Cultural Center†
• May 7 Cedar Rapids, IA CSPS†
• May 8 Chicago, IL Old Town School of Folk Music†
• June 13 Bellows Falls, VT Rockingham Meeting House

*Special Guest to Cowboy Junkies ( LOVE the Cowboy Junkies!!)

Here’s More from her Webiste

On The Foundling, Mary explains via her website (www.marygauthier.com), “the songs tell the story of a kid abandoned at birth who spent a year in an orphanage and was adopted, who ran way from the adopted home and ended up in show business, who searched for birth parents late in life and found one and was rejected, and who came through the other side of all of this still believing in love.” Mary’s “compass” was Willie Nelson’s Red Headed Stranger, his classic concept album of 1975 (with “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain”).

Written and recorded over the course of two years, The Foundling was produced in Toronto by Michael Timmins of Cowboy Junkies, using local musicians and his sister Margo Timmins on vocal harmonies. “Margo added another layer of emotional punch in the right places,” says Mary. She praises Mike’s ability “to capture my story and create moods around it, a dream soundscape. The musicians breathed their hearts and souls into my songs, and they brought them to life. I am pleased beyond my wildest dreams at how the record came out.”

Those familiar with the bones of Mary Gauthier’s life may find it difficult to choke back the emotion of the album, from the Gypsy-flavored opening of “The Foundling” (“a baby unwanted, unloved, and unblessed/ Left on a doorstep, an unbidden guest”), to the upbeat bluegrass groove on the bittersweet “Good Bye” (“I hit the wall then I hit the highway/ I’ve got the curse of a gypsy on my soul”); from the crushing phone conversation with the mother who refuses to meet her, “March 11, 1962” (“You say that I’m a secret, nobody knows/ And you can’t talk about it now, and you really gotta go,” co-written with Liz Rose), to the final epilogue of “Another Day Borrowed” (“I shook my fist at my father’s rage, I cursed my mother’s sadness/ But every home I tried to call my own, washed into a river of madness,” co-written with Darrell Scott).

I am so there!!! Who wants to go with?? Let’s have an adoption concert party!!