But she's definitely aiming high--at more than being just some exotic kicker guitar chick or a Springsteen clone. "What I want to do is take country music's moral intensity, the lyric complexity--that and the guitar playing--and mix it with rock 'n' roll. If there's not a place for it, maybe we can make one," she says, warming to the subject. "I think people have a need to connect and a need for narrative--an oral tradition that makes a certain kind of sense."
She trusts her longtime fans, like the crowd at Naomi's. "The people there are great, and I don't think they're that doctrinaire about their country. I've done my new stuff, and they're right there up with it. When we did songs like 'The Man That He's Become' or 'Johnson Motel,' like we did a few weeks ago in Nashville, what you end up with is basically a rock band playing these really intense songs that sound like the person who wrote them listens to a lot of country, and that's exactly where I want to be now." She pauses. "I probably shouldn't over-intellectualize things," she says, laughing, "although that is my forte."
All the new attention can be disorienting. "Sometimes I'm all but overwhelmed by it," she confesses. "It's really amazing--people are jumping up and down wanting to talk to me, take me to dinner, and it's freaking me out."
Even though it seems that stars and even artists are getting younger and younger, that provides little relief for the feelings of isolation and disorientation at the center of the hype. "Merel [Bregante] is the closest person that I can talk to who's been through something like this, with Loggins and Messina. He's telling me about the nature of the moment and what this requires. All I want out of this--whatever it turns into in the next few weeks--is the opportunity to see just how big a connection I can make. I mean, why not? It feels good to make a small connection, and every larger connection I've made has felt better, so it follows that I should try to make the biggest connection I can and see how cool that would be."
Bregante is glad to be of service. "From the moment I saw her, I knew she was going to be a star," he says. "It's like Steve Popavich [record company honcho who was with CBS and later president of Polygram] once told me--'If you bring me the best thing I've ever heard, I'll sign it right away; if you bring me the worst thing I've ever heard, I'll sign that right away; the only thing I'm not interested in is what's in the middle.' Mary's like that, she doesn't dwell in the gray."
Bregante has been the source of many little tips about life in the biz. "Just before she went on the road with Jimmie Dale, she called me and asked if I had any advice. I told her to get on the bus first and grab the lower left rear bunk. The torque of the engine seems to hold you in--you fall out of bed a lot less often--and once you get used to the road noise, it'll drown out any other sound like snoring. The fact that you're down low minimizes sway, and you'll be a lot more comfortable. She called me when she got to New York, and was like 'You're right!'"
There's more to making a living at music than knowing what bunk to pick, though, and the road can be a place where your Black Marias aren't occasional visitors but steady companions. "I see for Mary an incredibly rewarding and difficult time," Bregante says. "When she walks away from that first year, she's gonna be really tired. I hope the rigors of the road don't wear her down, because she's quite sensitive, and I don't think she knows how unique she really is."
"I'm just trying to stay focused and have the faith that I've had all along," Cutrufello says. "That if you do your thing, the only way you can fuck it up is to let it fuck you up. Right now I'm just having a great time with it, and I'm damn happy to be here. It's a beautiful thing, it's fun, and sometimes I just find myself bursting into spontaneous laughter."
Then, not surprisingly, she laughs.
