On the latest episode of Proud Radio with Hunter Kelly, Mary Gauthier discusses her upcoming book, her battle with addiction and finding her voice. Shane McAnally also joins to discuss his career in songwriting, coming out and writing music for himself. Listen to the episode anytime on-demand here.
Shane McAnally on making new music
My soul is about to bust if I don’t [make new music]. I mean, it’s one of those things that’s actually… I’ve put it off for so long out of fear that I’m so commercially-minded and have had so much commercial success that I gauge success on that. And I have to get over that and not worry about the outcome because I have a story to tell and I have songs. There’s a lot of songs that have never been recorded that break my heart that they’ve not been recorded, but now I’m realizing why. And that is because they’re mine, and it is time. And I am in the process of… I mean, it’s funny you would ask about that today because I am literally setting up sessions right now.
Shane on finding his voice
I’m actually having to really dive into the loss of my physical voice and that I’ve had a lot of fear that I just can’t sing. And I know that that’s because I haven’t sang my truth and that’s where my voice has faltered because I’ve been singing other people’s songs for so long that I feel like my voice is actually sort of shutting down and saying, “This is not you. This is not what you’re supposed to be singing.” So I know that sounds really dramatic, but I’ve really been through it.
Shane on coming out
I was in such turmoil internally that I just wanted this dream so badly that I was willing to compromise who I was. When I made that record was around the time that Ty Herndon had sort of been shunned. And that scared me so bad because I was like, “okay, so that’s what it looks like if you…” I mean, he was on a roll, and that pushed me so far in the closet. And I don’t know what would have happened to me. I mean, I’ll be honest with you even talking to you about it, I feel that old tightness in my stomach of just being afraid of “am I standing the right way? Am I speaking the right way? Is someone going to question am I looking at the wrong person?” Do you know what I mean? “Am I connecting with a male that someone might be like…” I couldn’t have any gay friends because that would be too obvious. I feel really bad for that guy. It makes me really sad because I wish that someone had known.
Shane on co-writing Kacey Musgraves’ “Merry Go ‘Round,” the song winning a GRAMMY award and the changes in country music
We were shocked. Kacey was so shocked she had nothing prepared. And I still get chills thinking about what she said, which was, “Do you know what this means for country music?” And that really stuck with me, and I remember that moment backstage and that moment we had where you do feel like loving country music growing up just being obsessed with it like you and I both were and thinking that we could never be on the inside because of who we were. And so that felt like, “Wow, look at us.”
Mary Gauthier on writing veteran stories and representation
What happens when we see ourselves reflected in popular culture is a sense of dignity and worthiness. And I think that’s exactly what happens with our veterans. And the tragedy of it is that they don’t already have that. But trauma removes so much. And when you’re dealing with PTSD, there’s a sense of shame when you have PTSD because you weren’t able to stop the tragic event from happening. And the song, in many ways, can be a bridge that we build from the traumatized heart and soul back into the world, and that’s done by telling the story and then having other veterans come up to the storyteller and say, “Me too. I feel that way too.” It’s the “Me too” that is transformative. It’s knowing you’re not alone.
Mary on the Indigo Girls
The rise of the Indigo Girls marked the beginning of a much larger cultural awareness and the beginning of acceptance of gay and lesbian people in America, that we’ve always been there. But most of the history of our country, we’ve been hiding because people wanted to kill us. This was a new explosive time of celebrating who we are.
Mary on addiction and healing
All we know is that it hurts and that this takes away some of the pain. And then it turns on us and it creates even more pain. The answer becomes the problem. Once you get sober, the underlying causes of addiction start to reveal themselves. And for me, it was using music and song to help me understand the impact of adoption and relinquishment on little baby me, that shaped me, that helped me to heal in many ways from it. Like, I’ll always be a little wounded around this stuff, but I’m not on my knees anymore.
