Photo by Jeremy Gordon
It was a warm summer day in Los Angeles and Grace Potter was sitting in the grass outside Hollywood Records doing her first major interviews. She and her band, the Nocturnals had just signed with the label and she sounded relaxed, happy and hopeful.
“It’s weird when you turn that corner,” said Potter on that day in 2007. “All the years when the work you are doing doesn’t seem like it will go anywhere.”
That certainly wasn’t due to lack of talent. Potter, who said the first words she ever spoke came out in melody, had been compared to everyone from Janis Joplin to Lucinda Williams even before the band’s recent release This is Somewhere.
After a three-year Tilt-a-Whirl ride of releases, concerts, and kudos, Grace spoke with Jambands.com about her band’s new line-up, its new self-titled album and just why she thinks this might be a year to remember.
As you started thinking about this album, what was your plan for it when you first started to write and record?
I really specifically wanted some up-tempo songs. I wanted something that was going to smack people over the head like we do at a live show.
The truth of the matter is I write a lot of ballads and I love those songs. They’re beautiful. But the truth is when it comes to playing them live; it’s a lot of work. As much as people want to hear those songs, they really only want to hear the first five chords and then they say, ‘Oh wait. We can’t dance to this.’
I think that was the component that changed things for me. Also, co-writing with my band mates and with our producer Mark Batson, who really became our sixth Beatle on this record.
What made you guys click with him?
He just got us. He and I wrote together even before Benny [Yurco, a guitarist] and Cat [Popper, bass player] joined the band, even prior to last summer. We already had a rapport and he knew I was looking for the up-tempo stuff and he knew how to get it because he is a hip-hop guy. So it felt really comfortable and easy to approach this record with that intention.
Of course, that changed. There wound up being a couple ballads on the record because they are important to my songwriting personally. The stuff that I go through in my life does often feel like a cinematic ballad. So I had to have a couple ballads in there. But for the most part when I came to the band and Mark my focus was up-tempo.
It sounds like putting the album together – -at least as far as having enough material – was fairly easy.
I had already written three or four core songs that I knew were going to make the record including ‘Paris’, the ohh la la song, the opening track. ‘Color’ is a really pivotal song for me even though it is a ballad. ‘Goodbye Kiss’ is the first song I really brought to the label before I met Mark or had done anything, so all three songs were already in the can and everything else was going to fall into place.
You know sort of within that spectrum — certainly a wide spectrum. — when you listen to those songs it’s hard to believe they are from the same person. They are really different songs so it gave me an ability to step back from it all and let the professionals come in and say ‘Listen let’s give people the Grace Potter & The Nocturnals that we think people want to hear.’
That surprises me to hear you giving away control like that. I remember when we spoke after you first signed with Hollywood Records, you felt very strongly about keeping everything within the band.
Yeah, I’ve always been really resistant about producers and anyone coming in from the outside of our world – we’re such a tight-knit group.
But our band was very protective over our own reputation and our instincts were usually wrong. I am just saying that when it comes to a group of people making a group decision it doesn’t work.
So I really wanted to build an insular group of people that were trustworthy and passionate and basically full of love. I needed love and a sense of trust and a sense of safety that this was all going to wind up being just fine.
In the midst of all this there was a line-up change, how did that impact the recording?
I tell you, it was an unexpected surprise they were as good as they were. If another recording had gone by and it hadn’t captured my essence I probably would have gone the way of most singers who move to L.A. and hire studio bands and disappear into the ether forever.
I didn’t want to do that but I had a lot of fear and anxiety over how the recording process would work, where it was going to take me. Luckily, the Nocturnals came through with flying colors and showed me the people you know and your family is the ones you should always put your faith in.
You still have the core of the band with you…
Oh, my God, Matt [Burr, the drummer] and Scott [Tournet, guitarist] and I have been together going on eight years as a band. We’ve known from the beginning what we wanted and had that focus and expectation this whole time. That was our “plan.” And certainly there were twists and turns in the road that took us unexpected places but the three of us have always known that our instincts would take us there.
And it was only when we were acting out of fear that the studio experience wasn’t wonderful. So we threw that fear out the window and just went for it.
And that’s always been the core membership.
Absolutely. There’s a core membership of me and Matt and Scott. When there were four of us [Bryan Dondero was formerly the bass player for the band], there was a bit of a disconnect.
I didn’t live in Burlington (Vermont, the band’s home base) with everyone else and I wasn’t in the social scene as much. I was more of a stay at home and be private person when I was home so that disconnect didn’t feel like it was daunting.
But when there are three people it’s not so much of a crowd. It’s more of a brotherhood and sisterhood. So it left me and Matt and Scott who were the original three.
And Bryan?
Bryan joined us after we had met and sort of formed the band in St. Lawrence [University, Canton, N.Y. where they were students]. We had already gone through a couple bass players and it had always been the three of us, three Musketeers, going up to Ottawa (Canada) and buying records and dreaming of the three of us being up on the stage the way that Clapton or Little Feat does.
It was our mission and certainly [when Bryan left] we got back to that mission. We ate spaghetti and drank really bad wine and that was our core and we reaffirmed that connection with our origins. And it was all good and then when Benny and Cat came along we were ready to launch off and here’s where we landed.
It’s interesting because you say the band members are each a huge part of the music, that you’re all partners but you’re Grace Potter so everyone wants to speak to you, hear from you.
I love that you ask the question. You know, I do interviews where I spend 40 minutes talking about them and three minutes talking about me and the [publication] will print the three things I said about me. And that’s it.
And that is my biggest worry that this band that has put so much faith in what we’re doing isn’t going to get the credit they deserve. That’s almost crippling to me at time because I’m so involved and so concerned about the public’s appreciation of my band.
They are the reason I am playing the B3. Scott and Matt took me aside one day and said ‘You shouldn’t be playing this dinky little keyboard. You need to be playing something better. Get up off your ass and don’t keep playing a Wurlitzer. Wurlitzers are cool and everything, from the ’70s, but they are not as loud as a [Hammond] B3. You should be playing that.
If they didn’t say that, I wouldn’t have my weapon of choice. And if it wasn’t for Matt finding me at a java bar at St. Lawrence in the fall of 2002, I probably would still be a solo musicians wandering around the streets playing solo because I didn’t know any other way to do it. I didn’t know that you could have a band and you could get out every night and slam people over the head. It didn’t occur to me that was an option.
I felt like I had to be a traveling solo minstrel until Matt pulled me aside and said this is how it’s going to be. That’s what drives me and that is what keeps me talking about my band because they’ve earned that right, that respect. They have earned the right to the spotlight just as much as I have.
I just happen to have a pair of legs. I always wanted the spotlight, though. I’m not going to lie. Ever since I was 3 years old and wearing tutus to preschool and wearing my mom’s high heels and I’ve always had the death wish of stardom but it doesn’t mean the rest of the band doesn’t deserve their moment in the sun.
I just have the legs.
Tell me about each band member.
Matt, he is the powerhouse that drive us. He is the initiator of all the crazy ideas. He found me.
Scott is the creative lifeblood that comes up with the most unexpected and pivotal pieces of music that make this band special. He is the Jonny Greenwood of Thom Yorke’s Radiohead. He is Mike Campbell to Tom Petty.
Benny was always our fifth Beatle and has been a friend. He’s the bond we didn’t have before. He brought his own elements of energy and love and charisma that we needed to balance us.
Cat is just a powerhouse. Her bass playing is so spectacular, it is beyond words. What it is is instinct. What is funny is if you ask her about it, she doesn’t even know she’s doing it by instinct, that’s how ingrained it is. She will just play a line and will say ‘No, no we have to try this six more times.’ She has the foundation; she is the foundation. That’s what a bass player is meant to be and she certainly captures that.
So what happened with T-Bone Burnett? I understood he was going to produce this album.
I did go with T-Bone actually. That was more of a solo record. That’s why it is on the backburner. The form [of the band] wasn’t totally formed then; Cat & and Benny hadn’t joined the band.
Meanwhile I had been writing with Mark all along during the T-Bone project. A lot of the songs that I wrote were actually written by me and Mark. So Mark and I were already co writing and there was that sense and feeling this is too easy. Why it so easy?
Why was that?
I had never really co-written with anybody before because I considered co-writing a daunting task — painful and probably not that great. I had always been my own songwriter and I loved being a songwriter and I loved creating my own world and I couldn’t imagine letting anyone else into that world.
Mark and I had this symbiotic thing that sort of felt easy and so obviously when the band earned the right to make another record, the T-Bone record was in the can. It’s fantastic, too and it makes me giggle. We had no thought of bulldozing that record to make another one.
It really was just on the merit of the band that the second record became possible. Obviously, too, on the merit of the songs and my voice, and the ability to capture the live experience and say “Hey, America,’ or ‘Hey, world,’ this is not a band that is going to be trifled with. So working with Mark was easy.
It was not a selection process. There was no one else we auditioned or thought about working with. My heart went right to Mark when I heard the label wanted the band to step up and make a record because I knew he was perfect.
And he has got soul. He’s a soul brother. He’s a gangster. It was easy and one of the most remarkable records of my life.
And Cat has made a lot of records and she said that this is her favorite record by far. She’s recorded hundreds of records so her saying that is a testament to what I already knew to be true, that Mark is that rare bird to say the least.
What was it that felt right in the studio, that Mark helped you develop?
I think passion and fearlessness, straight up. Every time we have ever been in the studio, the Nocturnals are very wary of anyone who is going manipulate. That’s why we didn’t sign with a record label for 2 ½ years. We had record labels knocking down the door but we just felt manipulated or like somebody was trying to cram us into a box.
And luckily Hollywood [Records] had faith in us, to let us be ourselves.
We were really fearful about being told how to play in the studio. What I love about Mark is that he never told us how to play. Not one time. He just kept saying ‘Yeah yeah, yeah just do what you do. Yeah, yeah, yeah that was really good. It’s really close. Just do it one more time.’ He never ever was difficult. He never made it feel like we were straining if there was strain in the studio or a moment of tension we would just call it a day. We’d start the next day.
Was there a mood or an attitude you felt he brought to your sound?
I think that certainly one big mood was the building of the beat. I know that’s really technical but playing to the click is a musician’s nightmare. I mean maybe Berklee [College of Music] grads can do handle it, but we felt locked in by the click…The great thing about his beats were they were loose and off the one he would build a beat and have it get slower and faster. He had an essence to him and he understood the soul of it and he gave us a backbone that we never had in the studio before by building as opposed to putting up a click track
The second thing is that a lot of what he was doing was dealing with the psychological journey of the studio musician. Doubting yourself is half the reason that a take doesn’t work. It’s not that you can’t get it, it’s that you doubted yourself and you’re worried or you’re straining or you anticipated that one really hard part in the song is going to go well. He just wiped the fear away with his faith in us.
I can’t give you any specific psychoanalysis of how he did it but he really let us be ourselves. He never made us stop and question what was going on.
The truth is we as a band would have been better in the studio if we’d been allowed that free rein in the past. although that’s hard to say because we were very, very green on our first record and there was a lot of fear and anxiety over whether it was going to work at all. It was really a mad scientist’s experiment the first time we were in the studio.
How do you answer people who say ‘This is a different direction for Grace Potter & The Nocturnals?’
A: God, I hope so! I am really tired of that picture of me with the plaid shirt on. God damn it, will you please stop posting that stupid thing? I have never been that girl.
That was in my era of listening to a lot of other people. I’m done with being the girl in the plaid cowboy shirt.
You know, people say ‘Oh I know the real Grace Potter. I was into her when she didn’t wear make up and she had her hair not dyed and she wore loose fitting jeans.’
God! That was me repressing myself because I didn’t think people would take me seriously if I wore the dresses I really wanted to wear. So I am now wearing the shirt I want to wear and the skirt I want to wear and finally embracing the true joy of the spotlight.
I hope this is a bookmark for us and I hope we’re moving onto a new chapter. I don’t want to forget who I once was, but I want to be allowed to be who I really am.
