Mary Gauthier is on tour right now, doing about the most courageous thing I’ve ever seen an artist do. She gets up on stage in front of a roomful of strangers night after night, reaches down deep into her soul and unflinchingly tells her life story: a litany of abandonment, resentment, trouble and pain, ending on notes of hope and redemption.

No words can adequately describe the feeling of watching Gauthier reach down deep into her soul and sing the ten songs that comprise her autobiographical album, The Foundling.

A recent trip to Cleveland reminded me all over again what I liked about the “old” music business, before the Internet and cheap digital technology turned every kid with a guitar and a computer into an instant recording artist.

They were called The Lighthouse and The Whaler, they seem like nice people with nice parents who love them very much, and I feel bad about picking on them. I clapped dutifully after every song, and I would not have minded them at a jam session or open stage or private showcase at Folk Alliance.

But they were opening a show at a fairly big club, in the home of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, for one of the greatest rock & rollers ever to walk the earth, and their being on that stage at the Beachland Ballroom just seemed so WRONG.