This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
That call first came to her a long time ago. Her life to that point had led her to extremes, plenty of negatives and a few brilliant bright spots. An adopted child, who became a teenage runaway, she found her first shelter among addicts and Drag Queens. Eventually she achieved renown as a chef even while balancing the running of her restaurant with the demands of addiction to heroin.
Two more successful restaurants, an escalating addiction and a subsequent arrest led her into sobriety. All that was rehearsal for what to follow, when she wrote her first song in her mid-thirties.
From that point, Mary channeled a long line of works, almost all of them eloquent in their insight, burnished by her writing technique. A core of devotees came to await each next release. Mary’s songs have been recorded by other artists including Blake Shelton, Tim McGraw and Jimmy Buffett.
“At the core, we’re all cut from the same cloth – the same dreams, the same brokenness, th
Over the course of her eight studio albums, Mary has become known as a songwriter unafraid to dive into the emotional core of her chosen subject. She’s a truth telling troubadour/author/activist/humanist , whose poignant songs move anyone who listens, in a profound way. As positive a person as she is, her songs are often emotional gut punches, in a good way of course. On Dark Enough To See The Stars, Mary offers up a different side with songs of optimism that celebrate the joy of new love and personal happiness, as you can hear on the tracks “Amsterdam” and “Fall Apart World”,. Mary beautifully mourns the loss of dear friends that include John Prine, Nancy Griffith and David Olney, who were important mentors as well ,on tracks such as the touching title track “Dark Enough To See The Stars”.
Dark Enough To See The Stars is the follow up her powerful 2018 release Rifles & Rosary Beads, which was co-written with U.S. veterans and their families to help them cope with the trauma experienced both abroad and at home. The album received a Grammy nomination for “Best Folk Album” and won “Album Of The Year” at the International Folk Music Awards (Folk Alliance). Already an American Music Award winner in the US, Mary was awarded the Americana Music Association UK “International Artist Of The Year” award in 2019. In 2021 she released her first book, the incredible Saved By A Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting, in which she shared her unbelievable life experiences from addiction, abandonment and loss to compassion, empathy, kindness and ultimately triumph. It’s a truly inspiring work that received critical praise and was included in Rolling Stone’s “Best Music Books of 2021”.