“Grace Potter & the Nocturnals are a rootsy and soulful rock and roll band who are on the verge of exploding onto the American musical landscape. They’ve already been firmly embraced by the jamband community. They have another new CD due out next month called “This is Somewhere.” And they are in the midst of a huge nationwide tour. They hail from the great state of Vermont and they’re all a bunch of twenty-four year olds having the time of their lives. They are fronted by the smoking hot Grace Potter who’s vocal style has been compared to people like Bonnie Raitt, Bonnie Bramlett, Lucinda Williams, and Janis Joplin. Grace also is a prolific songwriter who plays keyboards and guitar. The rest of the band includes Matt Burr on drums, Bryan Dondero on bass, and Scott Tournet on guitar and vocals.
Grace and the band will be in Connecticut playing a free show at McCook Park in Niantic on Tuesday evening July 24th. This is all part of the wonderful “Cookin’ at McCook’s” summer concert series which is now is it’s 5th year. Grace was down in the D.C. area when I spoke with her by phone on the afternoon of June 4th.
BH – Are you having a good time on this tour Grace?
GP - “Yeah, this has been the best tour yet. I mean we’re just really gelling as a band and everything is just really rolling along like gangbusters. So we’re having a fun time.”
BH - Did you really play Boston on one night and Juneau, Alaska the next night?
GP - “You better believe it! I was really wild, we played our show in Boston and there were a lot of people there. KT Tunstall was there and I got to meet her but then we really had to bust out of there quickly. We ran to the airport and flew through the night and literally got up off the plane and were escorted to our hotels where we slept for about an hour and then got up to play a show. It was quite something but Alaska was great because we had three days there actually. So we got to relax a little. We ended up ice climbing on a glazier that we had to get to via helicopter which was pretty rock star! I loved it.”
BH – It looks like you have lots of exciting things coming up like a tour of Japan, a jam cruise and shows with the Allman Brothers in Newport and the Black Crowes in Maine.
GP - “Things are going to get even crazier too in the time between the Newport experience and jam cruise. We haven’t booked all through the end of the year so I’m really excited to see what happens. I’m really hoping for an exciting co-bill with somebody. We don’t know who or when or how yet but oh my god I would love to tour with some of these bands that are going out on the road right now it would be really fun so we’ll see what happens.”
BH – I wanted you to know that I first saw you last year at the Jammy Awards playing with Joe Satriani and Steve Kimock. I thought you stole the show.
GP - “Oh man well it’s important to be tasteful. I think that at the Jammys there’s a real possibility for the wanking to go overboard especially in a very male dominated musical world I think it’s really easy for everybody to want to show their chops off as best they can and sort of set up to the plate. Unfortunately when there are three hundred musicians trying to step up to the plate, it sounds like a lot of noodling. So when I went in and agreed to do it I said OK I’ll do it but it has to be like the simplest song in the world, simple but emotional. So when I wrote to Steve Kimock and Joe Satriani and all those guys as we were trying to decide what song to do I was allowed to make the call and I said well I’ll do it but it has to be ‘Cortez the Killer.’
BH – That was obviously a good call Grace!
GP - “And I think it was good because the simplicity of the song really allowed for space and breath for players who aren’t used to using space. They’re used to taking up a lot of musical space. And that’s OK too but there’s a time and place. Anyway, I’m glad it went over so well but I haven’t heard much about that show but I understand there’s a DVD out now.
BH - There’s a DVD out but it is highlights of the various Jammys. I have a bootleg CD of your performance. I could make you a copy if you want.
GP - “I heard the tapes and it’s funny because this song is so NOT Joe Satriani, and then you hear this like shredder solo come in it’s like ‘what was that?’ but it’s actually really comical. I have so many different musical experiences that are like that. I had this tv show in New York City that I got booked for which I thought was going to be just me sitting down talking about environmental issues and water conservation and it turned into this bizarre like circus act thing. And now it’s had like 18,000 views on youtube because it’s just me sitting in a room playing ‘Nothing but the Water’ on guitar by myself with this strange dude who’s like clinging to this fuzzy earthball. It was very bizarre. I can’t even describe it. It’s just weird.”
BH - I’ll have to go on youtube and check it out.
GP - “You’ve got to check it out I think its called Good News. And then it got all kind of wrapped into some kind of Christian thing which of course it isn’t. But all these comments came out like it was this Christianity thing and it went off the deep end very quickly.”
BH – Grace what do you think about the whole jamband community and you’re association with it?
GP - “I think it’s a little bit of a double edged sword. The jam scene is an incredible source of inspiration for a lot of live bands because the fans are active and involved and connected and committed to the live performance. And they give you so much energy. So I don’t ever reject categorization but I do think it is a little limiting to be considered only a jam band, that’s all. I think rock and roll is rock and roll and people can call it what they want but what matters to me is that they come to the shows and they engage and they love what’s going on and they give back. I just think the jam scene is a wonderful group of people but it can get a little caught up in itself on occasion.”
BH - Did you ever see the Grateful Dead with Jerry Garcia? Did you go to any of the Highgate, Vermont shows?
GP - “You know I had a ticket to Highgate and I gave it to a friend because I decided I wanted to go to summer camp. I went to a fishing camp instead of going to Highgate. I was twelve and I already had a good deal of Phish concerts at that point and I’d been to a lot of live shows. To me I couldn’t see what the difference was. It’s a strange thing to say I can’t see the difference between Phish and the Grateful Dead. But when you’re eleven or twelve you can’t make those distinctions, you don’t know how important they were to music.”
BH – An eleven year old going to Phish concerts is interesting. What were you listening to as a kid and what are your early musical influences?
GP – “It comes a lot from my parent’s great record collection. They had some unbelievable music. They ran a company called ‘Dream on Productions’ back in the seventies. And what they would do is take photos all day and put them into a slide show that went to music. So it was kind of like a precursor to MTV. And they had an excuse to go out and buy hundreds upon thousands of records. So we have a wall of records in my house. Literally, my dad had to build an entire wall into our living room library. So it’s kind of cool that it panned out the way it did but when I was about eleven I started digging through that record collection and listening to Spooky Tooth and Jethro Tull and The Band and Bob Dylan. It was a real eye opening experience to realize that my parents actually had a whole lot of cool music including an original press White Album, Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, I mean they just went so deep so it was great, it was really fun.”
BH - At that time you must have already been playing the piano and playing the guitar?
GP - “I actually only picked up the guitar two years ago. I love playing guitar though. I’m kind of addicted to it and the band is always trying to get me to get back over to the keyboard. But the piano had originated with my mom because she was a piano teacher. During the recession in the early nineties my parents were artists and are still artists. My dad is a sign maker and my mom is a painter and during the recession there was no money for artists and nobody needed signs. They were living with what they had because it was tough times. So to supplement our lives my mom decided she was going to teach piano lessons. And I was a real competitive little kid so whenever the best student would leave their lesson I would sit down with my mom and go ‘mom, show me what he just learned. I want to do it better!’ But I didn’t read music so I would watch her fingers and see what she was doing based on just watching her fingers and listening and trying to make it sound as much like it as I could. I did it by ear which was a blessing and a curse as well. But it all started when I was seven or eight years old that I started playing the piano. And then I started writing songs when I was about fifteen I’d say.”
BH - Did you have a band in high school?
GP - “I didn’t have a band in high school. I was mainly a choir girl actually. I did a lot of the choir stuff. Yeah there was the all-state competition and the all-New England’s, it was where you’d audition and do all that crazy stuff. I thought I wanted to be an actor or something like that for a while so I thought I’d go into musical theater but then I realized that I fucking hate musical theater!”
BH - I know the band came together when you were in college but what did you major in?
GP - “I was majoring in film. It wasn’t actually an official major at the school and I tried to plow through and make it a major after I gave up on acting. I was actually in London thinking I was going to go to acting school in London and then I got into film because a lot of the students I talked to when I was researching theater schools were saying that if you want to make money don’t try and be an actor, get into the film making side of it. So I started taking screenwriting classes and set design and pretty much the whole deal. I just wanted to be a part of something bigger. And I met Matt and Scott was teaching guitar lessons there and Matt was trying to major in English, he was about to graduate. So it was an easy step forward for me to not go to school anymore because, like I said, the major didn’t even exist. I was a lot more work for me to try to major in something that they didn’t even offer a major for then it was for me to just say ‘hey I spent two years here, I put in my time. This band is showing some incredible success and we’re making a good living so I’ll see you guys later.’”
BH – I read that Justin Goldberg from indie911 advised you that new artists should concentrate on touring instead of looking for record deals. I think that was really good advice. Of course now you have an excellent record deal.
GP - “I think it is all about ‘do it yourself.’ And it’s hard to say that now because we are on a record label but it is a really important thing to know the value of what it takes to be successful before you can be successful. I’m not judging the Artic Monkeys or any of these bands that get these deals immediately and just sort of shoot to the top of the charts. But I think it is important to know how much work really does have to go into this level of success. And you can love it so much more when you know what you had to put into it, like when you see all the phone calls that need to be made or you have to make the phone calls yourself. You have to learn photo shops so you can make your own posters. All that stuff is so important to people’s character you know? And so when we started touring what mattered way more than a record label for us was a booking agency that could get us out on the road and put us in the right kind of spotlights. That’s why Monterey Peninsula was a huge stepping stone for us when we signed with them, it was a really great opportunity and we were beside ourselves when we finally had a real tour to go on. It was really great.
BH – I thought it was a brilliant idea to stick a DVD into the ‘Nothing but the Water’ CD because that really drives home what you’re all about.
GP - “Absolutely, and it’s funny because we’ve changed so much even since then. But I’m still so proud of that time in our lives when we were doing that in our hometown which is where that DVD was made. It was such a big deal. And it is great to have some visual supplementation. But that was all the beginning of us being on a record label and realizing that if we’re going to pull the trigger we got to get serious. We’re being given an incredible opportunity here and let’s not screw it up. So let’s put out a new deluxe release of our CD with a DVD on it. Let’s show people what we’re all about and since then obviously we’ve pushed forward and made this new record. But you got to take what you can get when you can get it and do something good with it.”
BH - You must be looking forward to your new CD’s release date.
GP - “I am I’m getting impatient. I think it’s been a huge project and we’re eternally grateful for being given the opportunity to go and actually do the real studio thing. But it was hard for us. L.A. is not our town. I mean any city really, it just doesn’t vibe with our whole scene very well. But it was an interesting experience to go and live at the Oakwood Apartments and do the whole star maker circuit which to us was just total bullshit. But it was fun to do and the record turned out way better than we expected. A lot more came out of it than we thought would and the songs are what matter most on this record. It’s not about jamming and it’s not about extended solos it’s about showing us in a really concise package and challenging the listener to believe in it.”
BH - How much do currents events, like the war for example, play into your songwriting and creativity?
GP - “I think it contributes. I was not expecting to write an anti-war song. I wasn’t expecting to get this passionate but I do think that there’s no denying it. At this point it’s just reality. There’s no glamour to it, it’s not a trend, it’s not like what the cool kids are doing. It’s just what everyone as an institution and as a country needs to do at this point is call attention to the things that are most important and the things that are going wrong. But I do think that the record has so many sides to it because it’s a very romantic record too. So it’s hard to have such a hard edged attitude on one side and then on the other side being a sort of fragile, almost breaking sort of like the ‘bird at the edge of the branch about to fall off’ kind of vibe. Now we’ve been out there and we’ve seen what’s really going on and we’ve seen racism and we’ve seen ignorance and it’s something that you have to talk about when you do see it. You just have to call people out on it.”
BH – Finally what kind of show can we expect to see at McCook Park in Niantic on July 24th?
GP - “I think we’re really dynamic. We got from everything like Who-like throwing of our guitars if we’re in that kind of mood, to an acoustic set that we now take on the road with us. And we’ve really been building it up because a lot of the record is acoustic. So we’re very dynamic at this point and it really runs the gamut because we have such a broad audience of people. My parents’ age people are the people that come to our shows and love our music just as much as the twenty-three year old hipsters and everyone in between, young children and everybody. So I think you’re going to get a lot of different varieties of us. We love to run around and jump around and have a good time and rock hard. But we also like to take it down and enjoy a beautiful sunset when we have to.”
Grace’s description of her audience sound remarkably similar to the type of crowd that turns out at a “Cookin’ at McCook’s” event. As she looks out at the sloping grassy fields she’ll see plenty of people her parent’s age (my age!) along with kids in their teens and twenties wearing tie-dyes and/or bathing suits. When she looks to her right she’ll see the playscape with dozens of little kids scurrying about. To her left are the train tracks and you can bet that at least one Amtrak will come whizzing by during the show. Looking beyond the crowd she’ll have a spectacular view of the ocean. As for enjoying a beautiful sunset, well that’s something all of us at the show will hopefully get to see. Grace will be facing east and the sun will be setting behind her.