Two favorite songwriters return

Slaid Cleaves and Mary Gauthier have won over Sisters audiences with multiple appearances in town in recent years. Each is returning this month for separate shows at The Belfry.

Slaid Cleaves will play on Thursday, November 14.

The Texas-based singer-songwriter spins stories with a novelist's eye and a poet's heart. Twenty years into his career, the celebrated songwriter's "Still Fighting the War" spotlights an artist in peak form. Cleaves' new collection delivers vivid snapshots as wildly cinematic as they are carefully

chiseled.

"Slaid's a craftsman," says Terri Hendrix, who sings harmony on "Texas Love Song." "He goes about his songs like a woodworker."

Tickets are on sale at Bendticket.com, $18 in advance. Doors open at 6 p.m.; show starts at 7 p.m.

Mary Gauthier plays Saturday, November 16, with Brad Tisdel opening.

In conversation and in public, Mary Gauthier comes off as a practical, no-nonsense woman. Stoic, even. Which wouldn't seem unusual, except for the fact that her songs carry so much emotional punch, they can leave you staggering. She has a way of burrowing into that hole so many of us carry inside our souls, and emerging with universal truths that show we aren't so alone after all.

Gauthier knows where our exposed nerve-endings lie because she's probed her own so deeply, finally learning to unlock the fear and loneliness that controlled her escape-seeking trajectory for so long before songwriting - and the sobriety that drew it forth at age 35 - gave her a steadier flight path.

Tickets are on sale at Bendticket.com, $15 in advance. Doors open at 6 p.m.; show starts at 7 p.m.