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Grace Potter and the Nocturnals have learned about the importance of having everyone contribute but with ?one resounding voice that can have the final say,? Potter says. ?And I?m comfortable in that role.?
Photograph by: Laruen Dukoff , Universal Music
Opening for Kenny Chesney on a stadium tour last year, Grace Potter wasn?t entirely certain she and the Nocturnals, her band of straight-up rockers, would be welcomed with open arms by the country superstar?s fans ? even though she had sung with Chesney on his platinum hit You and Tequila.
Au contraire, as Potter remembered during a recent telephone interview.
?I was expecting the Blues Brothers treatment, with beer bottles getting thrown at us,? she said. ?So anything more than that was already very good for us.
The singer said the euphoria of playing to 60,000 people was unforgettable. ?We have been road tested in every other possible way,? she said. ?But the one thing that had eluded us ? that we had never quite conquered ? was the stadium. And Kenny allowed us to learn how to become a band that can play a stadium.?
For now, Potter and band play their straight-ahead, four-on-the-floor rock at more intimate venues, to the delight of their fans. It?s the kind of music that would make fans of Heart and Bad Company feel at home, although a shot of new wave, a trace of power balladeering or a dash of country has been known to surface.
All this big beat had its genesis in repeated childhood viewings of the 1984 comedy Ghostbusters, Potter said. ?We didn?t have cable at home, so it was just videos? said the native of Vermont?s Mad River Valley, where she still lives. ?Ghostbusters was the movie that did it for me. I became obsessed with the fact that music can change the entire scope of a storyline. The music mattered so much to me and I didn?t understand quite why.?
Potter?s parents exposed her to Steeleye Span, the Pentangle, the Band, the Animals and Bob Dylan, she said. A Johnny Cash poster ? the well-known shot in which the country legend is raising his middle finger ? was on her wall, although she covered the offending digit with a photo of a baby or a flower when her grandmother visited. ?I didn?t want her to think I was a bad kid,? she said, laughing.
When she played her first paid gig ? a local fundraiser to fight ovarian cancer, held at a barn in Vermont ? she was 17, and still tuned into the singer-songwriters she had grown up hearing in the house. She was playing originals, Joni Mitchell covers and traditional folk songs. Traditional music was a passion that had led her to take bagpipe lessons as a young girl, she said.
While studying film at St. Lawrence University, she met future bandmates Matt Burr and Scott Tournet on campus. Burr had heard her sing and wanted her to start a band with him. After saying no three or four times, Potter said, she relented.
The turning point, she said, was a viewing of the 1978 concert film The Last Waltz, featuring the Band, with all-star guests, playing their 1976 farewell show. She watched the movie at Burr?s house.
?The Band blew my mind,? Potter said. ?I thought if this is what Matt meant when he said ?Let?s start a rock ?n? roll band,? ... that was the kind of rock ?n? roll band I could believe in.? Her covers started leaning more on the Band, Van Morrison, Stevie Wonder and Talking Heads and less on traditional ballads.
Before long, the core members of the nascent Nocturnals found themselves in a rehearsal space one night at 3 a.m. ? the only time that was free. That first wee-hours practice in 2003 gave the group its name, Potter said.
And that was it for the filmmaking plan. ?I ran away and joined the circus,? she said, laughing.
The first Grace Potter and the Nocturnals album, released independently in 2005, was Nothing But the Water. This Is Somewhere (2007) and a self-titled third disc (2010) followed.
Along the way, Potter tried to find her way as a bandleader. ?I?m a very driven person. I know what I want,? she said. ?There was an era where we were much more democratic and I opened it up to everyone and let everybody contribute. And that was a nightmare. I tightened the reins back in and gained a little more control, and there were a couple of years where I was very tight-fisted about songwriting and sharing any kind of plans with the band. That wasn?t really the right way to go, either. So now, after 10 years of being together, I think we?ve finally hit that common ground, where we all contribute in our own way. But at the end of the day, I think it?s good to have one resounding voice that can have the final say. And I?m comfortable in that role.?
Last year?s The Lion The Beast The Beat, with Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys co-writing three tracks and producing one, increased the critical buzz.
The disc almost never made it to the finish line: Potter unexpectedly called a halt to the recording sessions at producer Jim Scott?s Santa Clarita studio near the end of 2011.
?Well, the poor guys!,? she said. ?They had dropped their lives to come out to California to make a record, and everybody was exerting a massive amount of energy on the project at that point. But it was like I had postpartum depression or something. I was so disconnected from the music. I hated everything I was hearing. It just felt like all the steps were being taken so carefully and so calculatedly. I knew we were a band that could break through that.?
Potter disappeared on a road trip in the California wilderness and then flew home to Vermont, emerging with some new songs and a thematic unity to the album. The entire album was then re-recorded in two weeks, she said. ?Taking a sojourn and wandering off and making it count was what I needed to love the record again. It paid off ? but it was a scary moment.?
Touring in support of the album, Potter said she still comes across fans who react negatively to the sexy image she has slowly cultivated over her career, jettisoning the jeans and T-shirts as she went. ?If I was a guy, nobody would have given a s---,? she said. ?People talk about Hillary Clinton?s haircut or hair colour, more than her policies. I think there are bigger problems in the world than the fact that I might be wearing a miniskirt that?s a little too short. So I laugh it off. I just don?t like wearing pants! They?re just not comfortable,? she said, laughing.
With a tour schedule averaging between 200 and 250 shows a year, Potter said she tries to make her home wherever she is, bringing a good stereo system, a yoga mat and candles with her. ?We have never played less than 180 shows a year,? she said. ?That?s how we make our money. We?re not a hit record band. We?re not Maroon 5 ? thank God! And at the heart of it, we love playing live.?
While she?s on the road, Potter is trying to increase the size of the audience for her own construction based on the classic-rock blueprint. But rock ?n? roll is not the easy sell it once was, she acknowledged.
?It used to be at the centre of the universe, and now pop music and teeny bopper music are certainly more in the forefront of people?s awareness,? Potter said. ?But I think it?s a good thing that rock ?n? roll not be this dominant creature that controls everything. There were years where it was just excessive and overrated and not great. I think rock n? roll earned its way down the ladder by becoming a joke.
?And now, the goal for any musician, and certainly for me and the Nocturnals, is to re-establish our own brand of rock ?n? roll that is not just a throwback to the sounds of the ?60s and ?70s, but is a continuation of that conversation and an evolution, from what rock ?n? roll used to be to what it can be again ? maybe better than what it was.?
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals perform Feb. 7 at 8?p.m. at the Corona Virgin Mobile Theatre, with support act the Zack duPont Band. Tickets cost $24. Phone 514-790-2525 or go to evenko.ca.
? Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette
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