Behind The Song: Drag Queens In Limousines

Drag Queens in Limousines (by Mary Gauthier and Crit Harmon)

I hated high school and prayed it would end
The jocks and their girls, it was their world, I didn't fit in
Mama said, "Baby, it's the best school that money can buy
Hold your head up, be strong, c'mon Mary, try."

I stole mama's car on a Sunday and left home for good
Moved in with my friends in the city, in a bad neighborhood
Charles was a dancer he loved the ballet
Kimmy sold pot and read Kerouac and Hemingway.

Drag Queens in Limousines
Nuns in blue jeans
Dreamers with big dreams
All took me in

Charlie and I flipped burgers to cover the rent
And Bourbons at Happy hour for 35 cents
One day before work we got drunk and danced in the rain
They fired us both, They said, "Don't ya'll come back here again."

Drag Queens in Limousines
Nuns in blue jeans
Dreamers with big dreams
All took me in

My dad went to college, and he worked for the state
He never quit nothing and he wanted me to graduate
My brother and sister both play in the marching band
They tell me they miss me, but I know they don't understand.

Sometimes you got do, what you gotta do
And pray that the people you love will catch up with you

Drag Queens in Limousines
Nuns in blue jeans
Dreamers with big dreams
Poets and AWOL marines
Actors and Bar Flies
Writers with Dark Eyes
Drunks that Philosophize
These are my friends

This song came out of half-baked gig in NYC, a gig that ended before it began because nobody came except the two friends whose apartment I was staying at in Manhattan. Yes, it sucked, but my two friends offered to take me out to a New York diner to cheer me up-the night was ours to do with as we wished. They decided to take me to their favorite late night eatery The Midtown Diner, right outside Times Square.

As we approached the diner, I noticed the parking lot that horseshoed around the front of the restaurant was filled with limo’s and black cars. It looked impressive—all those fancy cars lined up and parked there. The chauffeurs were inside, engines running, drinking coffee, some of them eating out of takeout boxes, waiting for their next job. My friends told me they park there because there are not may places to park in NYC, and the restaurant lets them hang out between their fares if they buy something to eat.

We made our way past all the limousines, walked in, sat down, got our menus and ordered coffees. I sank into a bit of a funk, feeling sorry for myself, wondering if or when the tide would turn for me in NYC, if I would ever find an audience in the big city. As I sat there brooding, a door swung open in the back and two drag queens in full makeup, high heels, sparkly dresses and big, big hair strutted in, ordered coffee to go, and stood at the counter, talking loudly and laughing in that loud drag queen “look-at-me” tone. They got their coffee, loaded them with sugar and milk, and walked back through the swinging door, styrofoam cup in hand. All that was left of them when the doors swung shut was their perfume.

No one except me even turned their head to look at them. Turns out the staff and customers were used to drag queens runway-walking through the restaurant, but I wasn’t, and I looked at my friends in amazement. They were New Yorkers, they did not react, and I was beginning to feel pretty small town, sitting there in that booth with my mouth open. I laughed and said, “C’mon guys, isn’t this a little surreal? Don’t you think this is just a little amazing?”

My friends smiled, nodded and said, “This place is great. We love it here—its always Drag Queens and Limousines.”

BINGO! The whole trip to NYC was worth it, just for that moment, hearing those words rang out loud and true to me as a song title. Getting humiliated for a single night in Manhattan was turning into a blessing. The next day I drove back home to Boston where I was living at the time, and started the song.

As I worked on it, “Drag Queens in Limousines” became an autobiographical story song about coming of age as a gay kid in the South. It’s more or less my story, but over the years it’s become an outsider’s anthem. The song speaks to the outsider in all of us, though when I wrote it I had no idea that people of all persuasions from all over the world would relate to feeling like an outsider. Often times when I am singing it I look out into the audience and I see folks who look a whole lot like insiders wholeheartedly relating to the outsider in this song, singing every word. I’ve learned that insiders feel like outsiders sometimes, and high school was hard for an awful lot of people, not just the gay kids.

Songs I write often become my teachers. When I am in Texas, I look out in the audience and I see heterosexual he-man cowboys singing along to this tune. In Scotland I’ve seen middle-aged lorry drivers pump their fists to this tune. In Norway, the Vikings love it. All over the world, over and over again, this song has shown me that I have no idea what’s going on inside a person’s heart, that judging people by how they look is a really bad idea. We all feel outside of something sometimes, and sooner or later we all have to make decisions that are scary, knowing someone we love is not going to see it our way. We all need a group to fit into, a tribe, and no one wants to be alone.

For me, I found acceptance as a young person among those who, like me, did not fit into socially acceptable roles. The artists, gays, rebels, geeks—these were the people with whom I found refuge. They took me in when my family tossed me out, and became my patchwork family early on.

I haven’t changed all that much. Today I am still drawn to the people who break rules, who dare to stand out in a crowd. The people who create something out of nothing, take risks and stand bravely outside the group because they have to, who do it their own way because they have integrity.

This song won me my very first music award—Best Country Song/Best Country Artist GLAMA Award, 1999. I think the Gay and Lesbian American Music Awards created the category in honor of my little homemade self-released Drag Queens In Limousines record, it was the first year for a Country Category at that particular award show. Today, 16 years later, the idea of a gay country artist is still out there. I mean, C’mon, in Nashville, it just ain’t done. But guess what? I came here in 2001, got a publishing deal in 2002, and a major label record deal in 2003. I also got to play the Grand Ole Opry on live television, then again many, many times at the Gaylord Opry House, the first openly gay artist to do so. No closet, no hiding, no apologizing, no kidding, no problem. Nashville, The Opry, Cowboys, Vikings, these are my friends. Isn’t life interesting?

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P.S.: I made a Video for the It Gets Better Project, using Drag Queens In Limousines as a theme. Find out more about the It Gets Better Project.

Behind the Song: Your Sister Cried

(by Fred Eaglesmith) I stared out of the windshield into the rain so light I turned on my dims and somebody flashed me their brights And I reached over and turned the radio way down low Your sister cried all the way home

Lightening crashed and the road shone like a mirror A dog came out of the ditch then he disappeared I remembered a conversation we once had on the phone Your sister cried all the way home

I’ll never know how you got into such a mess

Why do the bridesmaids all have to wear the same dress? Everybody said you looked real good But I think you looked stoned Your sister cried all the way home

This song floored me this first time I heard it, with its brilliant combination of humor and sadness. The dialogue is fantastic; we don’t know who is speaking, or to whom they are talking, but it works perfectly- against all odds. This song is a true rule breaker. It has so much mystery in it!

Who is saying your sister cried all the way home?  Who is the  “your” in your sister? We can’t know, and it doesn’t matter because we are right there with him/her anyway. It could be anyone, a family member a, friend, insert any two people in that car talking to each other and the dialogue words works beautifully. Amazing. Insert yourself into that story, and watch the genius of the writing become become clear. This seemingly simple song is the work of  a master.

Who just got married? Is the bride in trouble, or is it the groom? For that matter, are there two brides? Two grooms? No way to know from the lyrics, but the songs work brilliantly for every scenario you insert. Doesn’t seem possible to wrote a song like this, but Fred Eaglesmith has a way of pulling rabbits out of his hat. Most of us have been to a wedding where we wondered if it was a such a great idea for the couple to be tying the knot, and this song captures that queasy feeling of "I hope I'm wrong about this, but....."

This is brilliant songwriting- a fantastic song. Fred Eaglesmith is a master songwriter and story teller, and if you've not heard his songs before, I encourage you to check him out. His mastery of the craft in undeniable. He has been a mentor to me for over a decade, and I have recorded more of his songs than anyone else's other than my own.

I love this one!

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Behind the Song: Blood Is Blood

This is a picture of orphaned babies in St. Vincent's from the New Orleans paper, 1962. Such a bizarre thing to call us orphans—our parents were alive and well, just not married to each other, thats all. The truth is that we were not orphans, but we were orphaned. Back then, unmarried women were shamed and often forced by their families into giving their babies away. I am the baby way in the back, the circled baby is my adoptive cousin, adopted at around the same time as me.

Blood Is Blood

(by Mary Gauthier and Crit Harmon)

Clouds are spreading like bruises on the evening sky I walk the streets alone again tonight It starts to rain still I search each passing face Blood is blood and blood don’t wash away Blood is blood and blood don’t wash away

When I was a child they told me she loved me too much She didn’t keep me ‘cause my mama loved me too much She left without a trail she left without a trace But blood is blood and blood don’t wash away Blood is blood and blood don’t wash away

I got a heart that’s ripped I got a soul that’s torn I got a hole in me like I was never born

Blood is thicker than water Blood is bound by God I don’t know who I am I don’t know who I’m not I don’t know my name I can’t find my place

Blood is blood and blood don’t wash away Blood is blood and blood don’t wash away Blood is blood and blood don’t wash away Blood is blood and blood don’t wash away I walk the streets alone again tonight

When I began writing songs I heard a whisper, way in the back of my mind, that someday I’d be called to write a record called The Foundling, and explore in a series of songs what my deepest inner world felt like. Creativity is prescient in that way, it seems to be one step ahead of me at all times, and I’m always just trying to catch up.

My life story was aching to come out of the shadows, and my subconscious was guiding me to it, to begin healing and reconciliation with truth, through my work as a songwriter.

See, I was adopted.

I feared losing my family if I asked my origins. I did not dare ask to ask where I came from. This is not an uncommon fear among adoptees. Many of us decide wait till our adoptive parents are dead to search for our original families, our original identities. The fear of losing our adoptive family, and of appearing ungrateful or disloyal keeps us from searching earlier, from asking hard questions.

But my subconscious was busy trying to help me put the pieces of my fractured past together as best it could. I needed to claim my truth to fully grow up, to be a whole, integrated person, to become truly real—and let go of the weight of not knowing, walk lighter, and be useful to others.

As hard as it is to explain, I deeply believe in this mysterious impulse for the mind to heal itself. Following it has led me down beautifully twisted roads, led me to the songs I sing, and given me this creative life I love so much.

As hard as it is to believe, the truth of own story was not available to me until I wrote the songs on The Foundling. Writing helped me make sense of things that had haunted me from the day I was born.

It took me a decade as a songwriter before I was able to tackle this project. It took me another two years of focused writing to complete the songs. It was by far the hardest work I’ve ever done as an artist—hard emotionally, physically and spiritually. I had to come face to face with some damn scary monsters. I had to make myself sit at my desk for 10 to 12 hours at a time, week after week. I had to research trauma, childhood trauma, and adoption trauma, and come face to face with my own denial of the effects of what had happened. But the inner work I was doing in therapy coincided with the work I was doing as an artist, and The Foundling songs crept up and out, cracking the floorboards of my fear, one at a time. I kept walking, and writing.

The truth of my life and the truth in my work collided.

What I learned was that my relinquishment by my birth mother on the day I was born, my year-long stay at the orphanage on Magazine Street in New Orleans, and my subsequent adoption into a family I never fully attached to were all traumatic events. And trauma needs to be dealt with.

The time was right for me to put the pieces together, as I wrote The Foundling song cycle I began to heal from the inside out—a classic case of art healing the artist. I look back on it now and wonder how I did it, or rather, how it did me. The mystery remains intact, even as I try now to explain.

The song “Blood Is Blood” is the centerpiece of The Founding cycle. It vibrates with the intensity and angst of an adoptee in full-blown identity crisis. Using John Lennon’s Mother as a guide, I let the muse walk me to the edge of my knowing till I faced the abyss, the dropping off place—the place I’d tried to avoid for 46 years.

With the muse guiding me, John Lennon’s courage encouraging me, my work in many years of therapy steering me, and my adoptee friends holding me, I found the strength to face what happened when my mother left me behind forever, on that frightful day, the day I was born.

Seeing it, knowing it, becoming aware of it, owning it—this is where all healing truly starts. And after a while, telling it moves the healing outward.

This song started with a couple of lines and a melody sent to me by my co-writer. Both the title and the repeated riff were in the clip he sent me, and I knew something great was there when I heard it. I just needed to carry it home.

I’d been reading a lot of books on adoption and trauma, and had become saturated in the work of Betty Jean Lifton, who to this day is my favorite writer on the psychology of adoption. BJ was an adoptee herself, a brilliant thinker and writer, and married to Robert J Lifton, Professor of Psychiatry at both Harvard and Yale, and the foremost expert on the psychological effects of war. He is the author of several groundbreaking books on the subject, including The Nazi Doctors.

Robert championed BJ as she did her own groundbreaking work on adoption trauma, and to this day her work on the psychology of adoption remains unsurpassed. She is an adoption reform hero, and I never could have written The Foundling without her. I got to meet her once when she came to a show I played at Joe’s Pub in NYC with the songwriter and fellow adoptee Diana Jones, who was her close friend. It was an honor to hug BJ Lifton—she was a kind, beautiful, brave and brilliant woman.

In addition to her work on adoption, she wrote many other wonderful books, including The King of Children, a biography of Janusz Korzack, the Heroic Polish Jewish Doctor who ran an orphanage during the war, and died with his orphans at the hands of the Nazis at the Treblinka extermination camp.

The song “Blood Is Blood” tells the story of the existential hole left inside of an adoptee after the loss of original family and heritage to the crucible of closed adoption. This loss is traumatic, but it is not yet generally understood. Often times, we adoptees don’t even know the loss/trauma is there because of a split in our psyche’s that shuts us out of entire rooms in our brains. Trauma is fundamental in adoption (especially closed adoptions where adoptees are given no knowledge of their heritage), but we’re just beginning to understand the ramifications of it. Certainly there is a direct link between childhood trauma and addiction as well as a variety of attachment disorders and other struggles, but we are in the infancy of understanding how this all plays out.

“Blood Is Blood” is both my story, and the story of closed adoption, an in-your-face song railing against the pain, secrets and lies of closed adoption. I’d say it’s probably the angriest and most angst-ridden song I’ve ever written.

It amazes me that in America, to this day, adoptees by the millions are denied access to our own original birth certificates. In fact, whenI was writing this song in 2014, only 6 states had opened or partially opened birth records. Think about that! Millions of adopted adults in America are denied access to our own birth certificates. They are sealed documents, locked away from us forever in the name of protecting us from…our identity?

I was told as a child that my mother loved me so much that she gave me away. I was told she “loved me too much to keep me.” A child cannot make sense of this, but even as an adult it makes my head swim. Loved me too much to keep me? I know my parents were trying to tell me that my mother could not care for me for reasons we never got in to, that she was so unselfish and generous that she gave me away so that I might be better cared for. The problem with this (aside from the fact that it’s probably not true) is that it forever equates love with abandonment, and the fear of abandonment has haunted me my entire life.

The antiquated laws that permanently seal birth certificates desperately need to be overturned, but the going is slow and the opposition is well funded. The fight for truth and justice in this arena continues. I hope this song helps, somehow. It sure helped me.

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Behind the Song: The Last of the Hobo Kings

(By Mary Gauthier) Steam Train Maury died last night His wife Wanda by his side He caught the Westbound out of here Hopped the high irons to the by and by They say he jumped ten thousand trains Rode a million miles for free Helped out at VA hospitals and penitentiary’s Dandy Dave, Rusty Nails and Sweet Lady Sugar Cane Dead Eye Kate and the Baloney Kid raise their cups tonight in Steam Train’s name Senators, congressmen, puppets on a string Among the windswept vagabonds Steam Train was the king The last of the hobo kings, the last of the hobo kings

Now bums just drink and wander round Tramps dream and wander too But a hobo was a pioneer who preferred to work for food He knew how his nation’s doing By the length of a side walk cigarette butt Born with an aching wanderlust Embedded in his gut Hounded, beaten, laughed at, broke Chased out of every town With a walking stick scepter And a shredded coffee can crown The last of the hobo king, the last of the hobo kings

The last free men are hobos Steinbeck said, and he paid cash And the stories that he bought from them Helped him write the Grapes of Wrath But boxcars have been sealed for years And trespassers do time Railroad yards are razor wired And hoboing’s a crime So here’s to you Steam Train Maury Hold that Westbound tight As you ride off into history The last hobo, the last ride The last of the hobo king, the last of the hobo kings

I wrote this song in a hotel room in Amsterdam, in late November of 2006. A long string of shows in Europe had just ended, but I decided  to stay in Europe a little longer to and try get some writing done. I wanted to go home, but I had not written a new song in a long while and I figured the solitude of being in a hotel alone for a while would kick in the old writing process. I'd written two songs at the Schiller Hotel in Amsterdam’s Rembrandt Square on my previous tour, so I decided to linger a while longer and see if I could repeat the process. As homesick as I was, I changed my flight, added a week to my stay, and started reading poems in the old café, filling my head with words written before, during and after the liberation of Holland.

I'm glad I did.

The hotel and café were once owned by a painter by the name of Schiller, whose wife was a cabaret singer who performed in the square on the weekends. Mr. Schillers Cafe was a meeting place filled with lively conversation, after show parties, and a place where artists of all types gathered to share their work and their lives. The Schiller's endured the German occupation of Amsterdam during the war and were indentured to Nazi soldiers in their own hotel for period of time. Mr Schiller's paintings still hang in the hotel.

Captivated by the deco lighting and the timeworn original wooden floorboards that Nazi boots had walked before me, I sat there for hours, reading and daydreaming as tourists shuffled in and out of Smokey Joe’s, a giant marijuana coffee shop next door. It was a wonderful place to sit, ponder, and write.

I was in the café atrium sipping Dutch coffee one morning when I saw a headlined obituary in the International Herald Tribune newspaper for Steam Train Maury Graham, the Grand Patriarch of the Hobo Nation. I’d never heard of him, but I read his obituary and it grabbed me, he grabbed me, and I knew I’d found the thread of the song I should write. My attention fully engaged, I started poking around on my laptop for the more of Steamtrain’s story. The first thing I found was the website for the funeral home where he was being laid to rest. I clicked on his name, landed on a message board and read all the messages posted there from people who loved him, mostly other hobos. I kept poking around, digging up hobo treasures and gathering hobo stories from all over the web.

Maury Graham was a folk hero and legendary figure in his community, thus the headlined obituary in The New York Times, and The International Herald Tribune paper. I traveled deep into the vernacular and history of hobos in America, and time flew by. I learned about the hobo jungles and the hobo gatherings, the annual King and Queen elections, and the hobo lifestyle. It was a wonderful journey into a world I’d never visited and I emerged a few days later with the song in hand. It’s one of my favorite songs I’ve ever written.

P.S.: One of the many oddball things I learned sitting there in that café for a week—Did you know that Billy Bragg and Michelle Shocked ate some of the ashes of Old Joe Hill? Well, yes, they did.

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Behind the Song: Cigarette Machine

(Fred Eaglesmith) Stumbling past your house baby At the break of day I thought I saw your silhouette Dancing cross the shade And I went down to the mission I called and called your name Till an angel with a face like yours Came down and let me in 

Thought I saw your reflection in a cigarette machine In a bottle in the gutter In a window on the street In a storefront in a picture on an old broken TV I swear it was you staring back at me

I heard soldier’s voices by the city gate There were junkies lying on the ground They made me look away I spilled you in a mirror I chopped you into lines Over some old kitchen sing I swore I’d let you die

Thought I saw your reflection in a cigarette machine In a bottle in the gutter In a window on the street In a storefront in a picture on an old broken TV I swear it was you staring back at me 

Old radios and broken mirrors Dogeared things I read Worn out movie stars In faded limousines I stumble through my own charades Coffee cups and clowns I can’t keep up with parades I keep falling down

Thought I saw your reflection in a cigarette machine In a bottle in the gutter In a window on the street In a storefront in a picture on an old broken TV I swear it was you staring back at me

Listen to a clip of the song:

[audio mp3="http://www.marygauthier.com/MG2012/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/04-Cigarette-Machine.mp3"][/audio]

“Cigarette Machine” is the story of a haunted but lovable fellow whose pain I can feel, and whose skin I am comfortable inhabiting on stage. He is haunted by lost love, haunted by sorrow, haunted by failure, haunted by the ghost of his former self, and trying make a life in a world that no longer makes sense to him.

He is an addict.

On the surface, “Cigarette Machine” tells the story of a lost romantic relationship, but underneath, the deeper meaning of the song is an exploration of the horrors of addiction. A major loss can break a person down and be the driver of addiction and mental illness, it can suck the hope out of a human heart.

Fueled by denial and trapped in the hell of powerlessness, the crushing grip of active addiction howls throughout this song. We all know the story, we’ve seen it before … swearing it off and five minutes later, picking it back up … I’ll quit tomorrow, the mantra of the addict.

All of this is implied here, the words beautifully framed by circular chord changes that just go endlessly round and round, like addiction itself—chained to a merry-go-round in hell.

Many of us intimately understand getting caught up in a person or a substance that’s not good for us, and starting to spiral downward from the wrongness of the attraction as we refuse to let go of our pursuit of what we want. Most will let go before the behavior becomes insanity (insanity being defined as doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results). Repeated long enough over time, compulsion can become addiction. The chase then becomes relentless and starts removing things from a life, greater and greater losses will continue to enfold, but the addict is no longer able to control the compulsion and keeps sinking further down into deeper water.

The character’s life in this song has spiraled completely out of his control. He is haunted, troubled and lost, having hit any numbers of bottoms but still descending blindly into the hole he is digging for himself. This is the nature of addiction, falling into the self-dug hole. The hole will get deeper and deeper, (unless and until the addict puts the shovel down and quits digging), but the soul sickness of addiction abhors admitting bottom. It can’t even see that it’s digging a hole—the addict does not know, cannot see, that he/she is sick. Addiction blames, lies, denies, and will eventually kill unless the compulsion is broken. One must hit bottom, and bottom is simply putting down the shovel. Simple, yes, but not at all easy—in fact, many say it takes a supernatural intervention to truly break addiction.

The character in this song is in terrible shape, but he doesn’t know it. Much like the guy in the song I wrote called “I Drink,” this character is delusional but lovable—and we root for him, we feel for him, we want him to find his way back home.

I particularly love the lines: “I can’t keep up with parades, I keep falling down.”

It brought tears to my eyes the first time I heard this—I felt compassion for this guy’s human frailty, and ultimately, compassion for everyone else’s frailty (including my own).

Yes, I’ve been where this guy is. It was a long time ago, but I remember it as though it was yesterday and I don’t ever want to go back there again. Lord willing, I won’t have to.

This is a truly great song. Thank you, Fred. You keep hitting ‘em out of the park.

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