There is nothing trivial about Mary Gauthier’s tenth album, Rifles and Rosary Beads (Thirty Tigers – release date Jan. 28th). All eleven songs were co-written with and for wounded veterans. Eleven of the nearly four hundred songs that highly accomplished songwriters have co-written as part of Darden Smith’s five-year-old SongwritingWith:Soldiers program.

None of the soldiers who have participated in the program have taken their own lives, and there’s nothing trivial about that. Something about writing that song – telling that story – is healing. What Smith calls post-traumatic-growth.

Award-winning songwriter of “Mercy Now,” Gauthier’s first nine albums presented extraordinary confessional songs, deeply personal, profoundly emotional pieces ranging from “I Drink,” a blunt accounting of addiction, to “March 11, 1962,” the day she was born – and relinquished to an orphanage – to “Worthy,” in which the singer finally understands she is deserving of love. Maybe that’s where the confessional song cycle ends, for she has midwifed these eleven new songs in careful collaboration with other souls whose struggle is urgent, immediate, and palpable. And none are about her.

SHOW WILL BEGIN WITH SHORT FILM: RIFLES AND ROSARY BEADS

Rifles & Rosary Beads is a short film about the power and beauty of turning trauma into art. It tells the story of one professional songwriters experience co-writing with Veterans and their families through the Songwriting;WithSoldiers program. Each song is a glimpse inside the heart and soul of a Veteran (or their spouse). The service members words bring listeners deep into the harrowing effects of war. Written honestly from a vulnerable place, songs like these can change wounded persons life by making beauty out of the beast. The process of co-writing them is deeply therapeutic for both the Veteran and the songwriter, but it’s not therapy. It is the making of art.

Sponsored by Jackson National Life

Presented by Franklin Theatre Live