ONE of America's major artists of our time is returning to Selkirk to make her third appearance at the String Jam Club.

Singer-songwriter Mary Gauthier's life reads like a classic heartbreak country song.

As a newborn baby, she was left on the steps of St Vincent's Infants Home in New Orleans and eventually adopted by a family led by an alcoholic father.

At the age of 15, she stole the family car, ran away and spent years drunk or high on heroin in the company of society's outcasts, or as she describes them in her award-winning song '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 who philosophize'.

Mary finally got clean at the age of 29 and wrote her first song aged 35.

After setting up her own successful Cajun restaurant, she finally decided to go for the music full-time, sold her share in the business to fund her first album ‘Dixie Kitchen’ - and the rest is history.

Now one of the most revered songwriters to have emerged from America in the last decade or more, she can count Bob Dylan and Tom Waits amongst her legion of fans.

Mary is a storyteller in gritty Southern Gothic-shaded style.

Her life story and songwriting are inextricably linked - unwaveringly honest and unflinching, digging emotional depths but profoundly resonant with the recurring themes of love, redemption, hope and healing.

Mary Gauthier spends her life almost continuously on the road, touring the world, both gigging and running workshops, and she is currently writing a book on the art of songwriting for Yale University Press.

With nine acclaimed albums to her name, her most recently released ‘Trouble and Love’ is surely the best one yet.

It includes co-writes with fellow Americana songwriting legends Gretchen Peters and Beth Nielson Chapman.

Mary’s live shows are unique, uplifting and very affecting.

Mary has received standing ovations from all three floors of the Grand Ole Opry, the Mecca of Nashville, and she always gets the same in Selkirk. Allie Fox from the String Jam Club told us: "When the New York Times declares that this artist may one day assume the mantle of Johnny Cash, you know you are going to experience something very special, especially live and up close in the intimate setting of String Jam Club.

"This will be unmissable, and tickets are already selling fast."

Mary will be accompanied on stage by Italian violinist and viola player, Michele Gazich.

Tickets for the Thursday, June 1 show are available from the County Hotel by phone 01750-721233.