Well-traveled musician has ties to the South Shore. Where to catch her upcoming area shows
We were talking about the first time we met, at the Boston Music Awards at the House of Blues in Boston, probably 2005 when she’d been nominated for a couple of awards, including Best New Local Artist. I was chatting in the audience with two other music writers, the Boston Globe’s Steve Morse, and Sarah Rodman, then with the Boston Herald. Between various awards, local bands would play, and, as our little trio schmoozed, one of them began its set. Within about 30 seconds, all three of us alerted to the sound, something remarkable and pulse-quickening, and abruptly turned around to the stage, all blurting out some version of “Who the (heck) is that?”
“Haha, yes!” said Grace Potter. “I’m in the business of turning heads! That’s my goal every night, I want people to turn away from their conversation, or their phones, and key in to my music. I love to look out into the crowd and watch it happen – there, I’ve got another one!”
Potter and her band will be performing at the South Shore Music Circus in Cohasset on July 31, and then at Indian Ranch in Webster on Aug. 4, followed by a show at the Cape Cod Melody Tent in Hyannis on Aug. 6. (The South Shore Music Circus is at 130 Sohier St. in Cohasset, and the show begins at 8 p.m. Tickets range from $39.50-$99.50 and can be purchased at the box office or by going to the website, themusiccircus.org. Call 781-383-9850 for more information.)
Later that night, leaving the club, I glanced to my right and there was Potter and her band then, the Nocturnals, also leaving. I introduced myself and told her their performance had been several degrees beyond incredible. Her career since then has certainly lived up to that early promise.
How Grace Potter 'emancipated' herself
And a conversation today with Potter is still a kick, open and unfiltered, and frequently very funny. Consider how she describes – in the midst of another anecdote – leaving the Nocturnals to go solo in 2015: “When I emancipated myself from the dude ranch.”
Potter’s music has always been a real amalgam of rock 'n' roll, with heavy soul influences, some country flavors, some pop star flamboyance and a gritty – often stunningly honest – songwriting style. She released four albums with the Nocturnals, the band she’d formed with other students at St. Lawrence University in New York in the early 2000s. The Nocturnals were a formidable band, an Americana band with contemporary edge. They’d achieved an almost immediate level of success after 2005, scoring opening slots on national tours with Gov’t Mule, the Dave Matthews Band and The Black Crowes, and appearing on all the late-night TV shows.
In 2010 a single off their third album, “Paris (Ooh la la)" was a minor hit, seemingly encapsulating Potter’s Janis Joplin/Tina Turner/Pat Benatar persona perfectly. A year later, her duet with Kenny Chesney, “You and Tequila,” hit No. 3 on the country charts and the band was opening Chesney’s stadium tour. Potter had married Nocturnals drummer Matt Burr in 2013, and shortly after their divorce in 2015, she decided to go solo. Potter has now released five albums as a solo act, and in 2017 married Los Angeles record producer Eric Valentine, who’s produced her last three albums. Their son Sagan is now 6 years old, and tours with his mom.
Cross-country drive inspired latest album
Last August, Potter released her latest album, “Mother Road,” which was inspired by the more or less two-year solo road trip she took after the pandemic. Having returned from California to her family farm in Vermont when COVID-19 hit, Potter was soon going stir-crazy with no shows to perform. Then in 2021, she had a miscarriage, which turned out to have been twins. Frustrated and depressed, she decided to retrieve her car from L.A., and embarked on a cross-country sojourn along the iconic Route 66. Not only did she feel revitalized, but she also realized it was a superb source of songwriting inspiration, so even when the pandemic abated, she kept finding time to do more road trips, usually solo.
“Mother Road” is the result, perhaps even the theme song, of those drives. It is engaging, electrifying, dynamic and of course uniquely Potter in all of her wild, invigorating glory. Unlike the countless artists who decry the touring life of a musician, Potter embraces the constant movement as a key component in who she is and what she creates, a way to sate her endless curiosity and find an endless source of inspiration from the new people and places.
Check out some of the marvelous videos for those songs, like “Good Time,” which suggests what you might get if Tina Turner ever fronted The Band. Or the amiably ramshackle flow of “Mother Road,” with its stunning evocation of road life (“a million miles, a million lives ...”), some serious "Thelma and Louise" vibes, but also the acknowledgment that there are limits and it may all be a dream. Revel in the Dylanesque characters driving the rowdy rocker “Ready Set Go,” or the rebellious theme behind “Lady Vagabond” (“You can’t call me ... I won’t come ...”).
And for real insight into what creates such a rock 'n' roll force of nature, “Masterpiece” recalls and salutes the teenage outcast Potter was, which was integral to the woman she became. All of these tunes, by the way, come with colorful, lavishly filmed videos – another creative outlet she’s embraced.
“I came around to an understanding of myself on the road,” Potter said. “It was important to acknowledge my personality was very different, and that was part of how I came into my creative energy. People like Warren Haynes, Robert Plant, Tom Petty and Mavis Staples inspired me and influenced me, and each of them had a different vision of how to do it, how to make this kind of life work, how to make a life on the road. I had a long conversation with myself about motherhood on the road – the mother I needed to be and the mother I became, and how to carry that through to the rest of my life.”
Potter excited about upcoming Massachusetts shows
We’d been chatting about the way Potter hit almost instantly back around 2005. She’d almost immediately found herself playing venues the size of the House of Blues, and bigger ones. Although they’d been working the bars and colleges circuit in Vermont, Potter and the Nocturnals had never gone much beyond the state borders, and then were suddenly headlining arenas all over the country. There are a bevy of mid-size venues she’s never played, and her hectic tour schedule over the past year shows her making up for lost time. Potter is enthused about playing the two Massachusetts tents, and has connections to both areas.
“My son is very excited about the Music Circus, and the stage that moves,” she laughed. “I think I have played on one or two revolving stages before – a crazy place in Arizona, I want to say it was The Variety Playhouse, or maybe the Varsity Playhouse. But it looks like a Disney installation. I also love the name Music Circus, which says everything that music should be, and that is inspiring. I like the idea of a revolving stage, great sound from all angles, and it’s like a different version of ‘Mother Road’ where every few seconds you see different people.”
“I actually adopted a dog from the South Shore in 2006,” Potter added. “He was a Portuguese water spaniel, and I’d decided that was what I wanted. I had just been with Emmylou Harris, who had turned her tour bus into a rolling rescue ranch for dogs and thought a dog on the road would be fun. That turned out to be a bad idea, but he ended up living on my family farm and was very happy there.”
Fond memories of Cape Cod
And Potter has some cool Cape Cod memories too, from her teenage years.
“We used to go down there in the winters and paint houses,” she noted. “I have some nice memories of doing that on Nantucket and in Chatham. So, I love the Cape and that show will be fun.”
Potter’s schedule over the summer is packed. The Cohasset show comes just three days after her two-day Grand Point North Music Festival in Vermont (an event she founded in 2011), and the Indian Ranch daytime show comes right after she’ll have opened three shows for Chris Stapleton in New Hampshire. Recently, she played the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, including a set saluting Turner. (“I love connecting with new fans,” she said, “and sometimes doing a song they love is the way to do it.”)
Raising money for Vermont flood relief
Grand Point North has become a flood relief effort this year, as Vermont battles the aftermath of a stormy spring and summer.
“I think the three days between Grand Point and Cohasset will be spent shoveling mud out of my family’s driveway,” said Potter. “The river came right up our driveway. We’re making Saturday night of Grand Point an all-requests show, so that could go in absolutely any direction. We may have to do some woodshedding on my older songs before that. Some nights I get a very nostalgic feeling, seeing fans have a moment with an old song that means something special to them. I don’t see it as sad or anything, and I do want to give people what they want. I try to read the crowd every night, and my band is so good we can change setlists night-by-night. It can be a hootenanny, or all sad songs, wherever the audience wants to go. I love making that connection.”
When we talked to Potter during the first summer of the pandemic, she was preparing to play an outdoor show at a Yarmouth drive-in. Amid all the upheaval and her personal travails during that time, her love of music and performing was only enhanced.
“I remember that Yarmouth show, when we were using Snoop Dogg’s rig,” said Potter. “He’d been on the Cape when everything went dark, so he’d parked his touring rig there. We rented it out for that show, his whole production package. The COVID-19 time forced us all to re-purpose and re-imagine our music, and we really had to work at it. But it felt important to show up and be a part of something bigger, bringing people together and giving them something.
“I’m fully aware of the efforts people make to come to a show, from hiring a babysitter, to parking, to travel, ticket prices and service charges,” Potter added. “How much people are willing to put up with to hear music is amazing, but I think it shows that people realize what music can do for your soul. You can lose yourself in a song, right next to someone of totally different beliefs. Music and songs can bring so much more, a deeper, cooler feeling of community. We don’t always get there, but when you can convey a feeling, get that deep response, and take someone out of their daily grind, that makes it worthwhile. I appreciate music fans, and I love doing that, making that connection.”
Osborne thrills at Narrows Center in Fall River
Last Saturday night, Joan Osborne and her trio delighted about 400 fans at the Narrows Center in Fall River with a 90-minute show that leaned heavily on her recent work, but also included some vivid re-arrangements of her vintage 1990s hits. The trio included Osborne on vocals and guitar, with longtime cohort Jack Petruzzelli on guitar and Will Bryant on keyboards, and it is no doubt a powerful threesome.
The guitar and keyboards provided many delectable musical moments all night, and Bryant’s extended piano introduction to “One of Us” was magnificent. Osborne’s biggest hit got perhaps the most extreme reworking, morphing from the 1995 hit’s soulful, midtempo rock to a more thoughtful, piano-based ballad.
“Saint Teresa” also got a bit of a shift, but into a more rhythmic, exotic potboiler that had the singer shimmying behind her microphone. A cover of Bob Dylan’s “Gotta Serve Somebody” was a sizzling highlight, bringing Osborne’s gospel influence to the fore, and including some impressive vocal sustains. Tunes from her latest album, “Nobody Owns You,” also scored well with the crowd, including the title cut, the popular “Women’s Work,” and the effervescent “I Should’ve Danced More.” Petruzzelli’s vibrant guitar lines fired up the last encore, “Take It Any Way I Can Get It,” and the night ended in a prolonged standing ovation.
This article originally appeared on The Patriot Ledger: Grace Potter's son excited about his mom's show at the Music Circus
