GRACE POTTER // KICKING UP THE DUST

GRACE POTTER // KICKING UP THE DUST

During the two years that went into making her new album, “Midnight,” Grace Potter realized a game-changing truth about herself.
“I figured out that I’m here for a reason,” she said in a recent phone interview. “I think people show up for a certain time or space for a reason. And it’s definitely not to make other people happy and just for me to stay in my place and do my bit. I don’t ever want to run what I call, I call it a carnival essentially.
“There are a lot of bands that do this, where the show is the same every night and they’re essentially the dude that pulls the lever on the roller coaster,” Potter explained. “It’s just like you stand there, you push the button and it goes. And the roller coaster always feels the same. And it’s always fun and people always get their yeah yeahs out and they always go home going ‘That was great. Totally worth the money.’ I don’t want it to be about that.”
Instead, Potter was looking for something more substantial, something more rewarding – and something that might well be risky, but also more genuine.
“I want it to be about growth and
change and expression and experi-mentation, and a true artist will take those risks,” she said.
“I guess there was a point in this two-year growth spurt that I had where I realized I hadn’t ever really done that.
“As a grown-ass woman, I realized that I had never really truly dived into the deep end by myself, without a safety net, without a parachute and said this could completely blow up in my face or it could be incredible,” Potter said.
“Midnight” should fulfill that mission statement of taking a risk and challenging fans that are accustomed to the tuneful, potent and decidedly American-sounding guitar rock Potter created with her long-time band, the Nocturnals, over the course of five studio albums.
Some will consider “Midnight” Potter’s sell-out album and her bid for pop stardom. And songs like “Delirious” (a song Potter said she wrote to prove to her label she could write a top 40 hit), “Alive Tonight,” “Hot To The Touch” and “What We’ve Become” with their programmed dance-friendly beats, synthetic instrumentation and hook-heavy choruses certainly fit with the sound of today’s top 40. But a few other tunes seem less tailored to fit today’s pop trends and help diversify the album. “Empty Heart” is a sassy rocker with a little funk. The breakup song, “The Miner,” is a soulful pop ballad with a striking vocal melody. “Let You Go,” the standout closing track, is a stark piano-based ballad with a dramatic vocal melody.
Potter admitted that to a point, “Midnight” indeed seeks to reach a top 40 audience. She said she realized if she was going to ever going to gain a presence in the pop mainstream, she’d better try to catch that bus now before the doors closed on that ride.
“I think if I was going to try to stand up and be counted, I better f***ing do it soon. I’m getting f***ing old,” she said good naturedly before touching on the reality of her situation. “Just that 30 marker was a big one for me because I realized that I still had so much I wanted to do. So the answer is yes and no. I’d like to be relevant, but I don’t really care. If the songs I’m writing aren’t relevant (to mainstream pop), then I don’t really care. If I’m loving them and I’m having fun playing them and I’m out there able to play them on stage in front of an audience that’s still willing to come to the show, I’d rather do that than be on top f***ing 40 radio, because I’ve got my thing and I’ve worked really hard at my thing and it’s definitely not being a pop star. But having said that, I’d like to help peoples’ ears. I’d like to offer an alternative to what people have been listening to, something that’s going to give a bit more girth to what (top 40) music can be.”
Potter said despite her top 40 am-bitions, for awhile she fully intended to make “Midnight “ with the Nocturnals. The band had gained considerable popularity with its two previous albums, a 2010 self-titled effort and the 2012 release, “The Lion the Beast the Beat,” and Potter didn’t want to sidetrack that momentum.
But the signs that she was actually making a solo album were there – liter-ally from the start of the project. After returning to her home in Vermont, Potter, needing time refresh after what had been a pretty much unbroken cycle of recording and touring over the previous dozen years, spent a few months not even thinking about songwriting as the Vermont winter arrived.
“It was about month four of being home that I started feeling ready to write again,” Potter said. “The first thing that I wanted was to write a song that sounded absolutely nothing like anything I’d written before.”
She found a path into creating new types of songs by changing her approach how she traditionally started songs.
“I usually start with a lyric or a melody and then build a song around that,” Potter said. “But with the new music, I thought what’s a great way to sort of turn this inside out? I know, I’ll start with the drums. So this entire album, every single song I wrote started with drums. Luckily I had Matt (Burr), my husband (and drummer in the Nocturnals), there to play the drums right away. So if I had an idea, it was like, ‘Dude, play with me. Let’s get going. Set up a couple of crappy microphones, set up a little recording unit and get the work tapes going, starting with the beat.’ That’s really where the entire album spawned from.”
Eventually, Potter started working with producer Eric Valentine, and as they began to flesh out the songs, they found themselves recording most of the instruments, with Potter, who plays keyboards and guitar in the Nocturnals, doing many of the keyboard parts.
That process of recording cemented the notion that “Midnight” was going to be a solo album.
But Potter also emphasized that “Midnight” does not mark the end of the road for the Nocturnals and she fully intends to make more albums with her band.
“It’s the band that I spent 13 years building,” she said. “I certainly don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water.”
In fact, the band for her tour behind the “Midnight” album includes two long-time members of the Nocturnals, drummer Burr and guitarist Benny Yurco. And Potter promises that in addition to songs from “Midnight,” her set list will include plenty of songs from the albums made with the Nocturnals, including some selections fans won’t expect.
“There are some really cool songs that we haven’t played in a really long time, like some of the really early, 2005, 2006 stuff that literally never saw its way to the stage ever and was only ever on a record,” she said. “We’re bringing some of that up and kicking up the dust. It’s really been a fun experience on a musical level just getting back into some of those older songs.”

Check out photos from her 1/14/ 15 show at Iron City  Bham here.