Grace Potter

0:00I remember on Mary, you know, 2007. Oh my God. I love it. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. So let's talk about this record. Cool watch. Oh, that's really cool. It's from, no, it's not from your home state. It's from your home state. Oh, well still close enough. Um, some line that needs to be the song. It's two songs essentially, right? Yes. The first part used to be called steady. Okay. And it was actually two tracks, but when we went to record it, we had a little bit of a Wilco Yankee Hotel Fox Chop moment, where we were like, well, let's just glue the songs together because we're going to do it anyways. Let's just play them and perform them together. Um, and by the time we did do that, it just felt like it was one full piece of music.

0:47It wasn't really two different things, you know, so, um, it was a really fun process to figure out how to produce it, you know. Who's playing the riff? Is that you or is that what you're talking about? That's Scotty. It's funny. I wrote the riff and a lot of the guitar solos on the keyboard, which is funny. If you listen to the record, same with stars. I wrote the guitar solo for stars. I wrote a few of the guitar solos with, um, with the guitar in mind, but tried to kind of create a guitar tone on a weird little cassia keyboard that I got in Spain for like 50 bucks. And I would put on like the really bad cassia tone and just play and sort of imagine. It's gotten Benny, learned the guitar part. I didn't realize it was, it's a hard riff to play on guitar,

1:34just fingering-wise, it's a very strange riff. So, uh, it took a while to get to a point where I almost tried to rewrite the riff so they could play it, but then they look totally their baller and they don't play anything. Do you typically write on guitar? I, no, I just am not that good of a guitar player and I'm a better piano player, so I mean, I can play the chords and I'm a rhythm guitarist, you know what I mean? I love playing guitar, but at the heart of it, I mean, don't ask me to play guitar solo. Don't ask me to play scales, you know what I mean? But for writing it's different, right? We're writing this as chords and abilities and one-don't be, you sit at a piano and do most of that. Yeah, and sometimes I'll sing them. So like for the stars guitar solo, actually sang it first and then learned it on the keyboard and then taught it to the guys who then transferred it into the guitar, but I always knew I wanted it to be a guitar part. Right. You mentioned stars a lot, so let's talk about that tune because it is a country song.

2:22It is? You're pushing yourself into that world and you should accept the money. But it isn't, but it isn't, dude. It's like, it's funny because I think about the Eagles, I think about Jackson Brown, I think about these people that I love. Oh, you're talking 70s. You know, 70s, but that's the thing is I think if anything, that song to me is meant to be, it's not meant to be a country song, it's meant to be an accidental sort of country crossover, because when I wrote it, it sounded like yellow, cold play. It was totally not a country song. I wrote it if you listen to the first demo. It was really what you won't hear exactly, but if you ever were sneaky and got on my computer and heard it, you would hear it's sort of, it's more along the lines of even the Avid brothers have a few songs that really, I wanted it at the core to be an acoustic song and a very,

3:08very simple sentiment that was being sort of passed over. But then Kenny got his hands on it and I don't know if you've heard the Kenny version. I was going to ask you, how did that not be out? You know, I don't want to, I think I don't want to be anybody's protege necessarily, and I think Kenny is dear, dear friend, and the song means a lot to him. It's something that he actually asked if he could record with me. He heard me, he heard the version that we have on the record. That's such a great song. I would love to re-cut it. I would really love to cut it with you guys and try it in Nashville. Just come down because we were already going to be in Nashville during the Willie Nelson. From the bonus cut. Also, not the record. These massive stars, not other records. Well, you know, this is not that kind of record.

3:53I think it wasn't like a star-studded event. It was more of a band coming into their own on their own and getting a little darker and a little more evil than we usually do. Yeah, that tune. Lonely, I wrote a lonely soul. Lonely soul, yeah. That's as weird as tune. Yeah, as a weird song, huh? Kind of sick like bass girl tune, but I don't know what that rhythm is. Boogie. Yeah, spooky. That was one that we did with Dan Hourback. So actually Dan produced that track and we did that one in Nashville with Dan where we were listening to, oh, I mean, the influences on this record are pretty broad. Like, you listen to... There we are for you though. Oh, always. But I wasn't listening to pop music. I was listening to lots of weird kind of Bollywood and some strange... Yeah, okay, here that's it. Yeah, yeah, like, especially on turntable in the Willie Stull, you can hear the Bollywood stuff.

4:41But I also just, I tried not to listen to any pop music, like at all, over the course of the whole record. I didn't really want to, even 60s and 70s rock, I just kind of wanted to get away from it and just let us be our own temple and kind of build our own thing. And it really worked well because you can hear how many different... It spans... Oh yeah, it's an eclectic record. But it still sonically fits on that. Yeah, yeah. Maybe that's a track listing. The track order has a lot to do with that also the fact that we recorded it in so many different places. When I came back together with the producer, Jim Scott and myself, who I co-produced the record, and Dan co-producing, it was like, how do we make all these pieces fit? And there's a little bit of like a tessellation kind of conversation about...

5:28Yeah, but you know, that's what this record is. It's a tessellation of different ideas and shapes that all somehow fit together. So when did you, because I heard that you scrapped it at some point? It did. So, do any of those songs make the cut in a different way? They did. Or do every song just be like the hell of it? We... No, I recut everything. But I mean, I kept a few of the songs, but I had a pile of songs in the fall that felt pretty much like a hit record, you know? But all the songs just sort of didn't feel the same. They didn't feel like they were connected to each other. They got like 13 or 15 songs that were just sort of floating around together. And I didn't feel like they were tied down to anything. It was just sort of a lot of ideas coming in from the outside. I wanted this record to be a soulful record that had a heartbeat at the center of it.

6:18And a lot of those lyrics kept sort of turning up the... And that's why it's called the line, the Beast of the Beat, is because so much of the record sort of comes back to that, like, sort of human instinct. Well, you referenced it too. Don't you want to know something? Debye, I think? Debye, I referenced it in Roulette, I referenced it in TimeKeeper. I referenced it in Runaway. So was it written first and then you decided let's try and tie it together? No, it was the other way. It was actually accidental. It was the other way. I was like the lyric just kept coming back. And I started feeling really unoriginal. I'm like, can I think of a better word? Like, what's my problem, you know? That means it's a hit. That means it got something. Maybe it was just those themes just kept coming back. So what did Scrapping, what did you do? I heard you went to Big Sur, which is like my favorite. I went to Big Sur, I kept actually a continued North up to Carmel and really kind of enjoyed

7:05the idea of just being on a road trip by myself. I haven't just by myself in a long time. What, like a notepad? Notepad and a guitar and some mushrooms. Shrooms, okay. All right. And I wandered off into the, I wasn't on-trooms driving. It was just like I would stop and wander into the woods for like, you know, a half a day or something. Okay, that's right. But I really, I know, of course, I better not. But I tried to get back to what the thing was. I thought we were doing at the beginning of the record, which was I want to make an imp- every record should be important. Every record should feel great and epic and wonderful. And to me it's felt like I had a bunch of songs that could or might be on the radio. They're all kind of B plus A minus kind of pop songs.

7:51And it was like all the things that it was a dream for a record company with any other pop artist that could record them and turn them into whatever they want to be. But that's not what we are. You know, like I don't want to be Katy Perry at all. You know, I don't want to be Adele. I don't. I love, I respect them as artists, but I, that's not what I want. I want to have a career where when I'm, you know, 55, 60, 65, 70, that I'm still singing these songs. And then it's not like a, aw shucks. Like, I don't really want to be doing this, but I'm going to do it anyway. I mean, I don't want those songs. So I scrapped anything I had any questions or doubts about and started over. So what's stuck? Star stuck? Okay. Keepsake stuck.

8:36And then also the idea of the Lion of the Beast of the Beat, which was like you were saying at the beginning of the interview, there were two songs. Sure. I had half of each song. I really have the lyrics quite completed. And I wanted that to be a real opus. You know, I wanted that to tell a pretty broad story and cover a lot of ground. So I wrote and finished that. I also finished Timekeeper, finished Parachute Heart. I scrapped a bunch of other songs, but stole some lyrics from them that I liked and put them into songs like Run Away. And then I also wrote from Scratcher of the Divide. I also wrote a few other songs that I loved, but the whole point of leaving was so that I could come back and be with the band and figure out the band wanted to do.

9:26So I brought 13 new songs to the band in January and played all of them. And we reviewed everything that we had recorded and then all the new ideas that I came back with. And I just wanted to record the ones that the band loved, basically, because that's what it's all about. I mean, we have to tour on this record for a year and a half, two years, better love every single song. And the band has to love them too. So I just went with the songs that we all played well enough together. Talking about the tour in the stadium shows. Could you play Line Bistenabe? Oh yeah, oh my God. Because that's a stadium song. We did it. We opened with it. It's funny, because of course the country audience doesn't know what to do with us. That's a stadium song. It's a stadium song, alright. It's very fun to play live. I mean, it hasn't, you know, the structure of the song.

10:13A lot of times we'll record a song and then when we bring it out live, it changes. Not so with Line Bistenabe. I knew that song was just like, it was written and built for a stadium. You're right. So I really... Cool. That's awesome. I know we haven't seen much time, so I want to go back a little bit. I just want to know about this artist compound you grew up in. So I can start the article with this because obviously that's going to inform who you become. Yeah, yeah. So it's a compound of just painters and sculptures. I guess my dad and my mom, but what happened was that my dad's company, he's a sign maker and he had like 11 or 12 employees, so the whole space was constant. It's like billboards of me. My dad makes some... He does a lot of times for Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Oh, right. And he does a lot of the American ski company stuff. So if you ever go on a ski trip in a state... Oh, you're sure the pressure sounds like that.

10:58Yeah, exactly. Well, that's where I live. Oh, okay. Yeah, I mean, I'm from Mad River Glen, but also out in Utah. He did the Canyon's Resort. He's done a lot of the bigger ski resorts out west, but he's a sign maker and so there were all these people around all the time that were trying to figure out what these kids were doing there. I mean, I thought it was a commune basically, but it was actually just my family with a bunch of employees cruising around all the time. So no one else lived on the compound with us. Okay. It was just that they were there all day, so it felt very communal. There were all these different buildings. One was for the fabrication of the signs, one was for the painting and the vinyl printing, and one was in office for all the business side of it.

11:43And my mom had her own building for her bowl and company. She used to paint hand painted wooden bowls, beautiful wooden bowls from Vermont. You should sell them to the market. I know, right? Her price points a little higher than our CDs. Sure. And they also had a production company in the 70s called Dreamon Productions, which was actually a slideshow multimedia company before MTV was around, or VH1, or any of these sort of music television channels. My parents would cruise around and tour with music and slides and take pictures. They did the 1980 Olympics, they had like plastic, they went on cruises and they'd take pictures all day, they'd develop the film, they'd put it to music and then show it that night in

12:29the bar so people could come to the bar and see themselves. Very cool idea. So Dreamon Productions had this plethora of albums, so that's how I grew up listening to all this different music. Like what? Summer or something? Oh, Spooky Tooth, the Kinks, the band, a lot of Beatles, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Maggie Bell, I grew up with a lot of Jefferson Airplane. Basically all the records with cool record covers, Jethro Tull, King Crimson, The Who, I loved The Who, my dad was like, those guys are on cocaine, grace, that's bad stuff. And I just love, because there was like teenage wasteland when they get faster and faster at the end, I remember my dad being like, that is cocaine, don't do that. It's cocaine and genius. Yeah, exactly.

13:14I'm genius, exactly. But you know, it was just a great way to grow up listening to all that. Classic music and not realizing it was classic, I thought it was pop music, I didn't realize that there was new music out there. Well you grew up, you're my age, so the 80s and not so, there's not so much going on. I mean I knew Michael Jackson and Madonna and that was basically it. Yeah. And it was only two good things that came from it. That's not true, like a talking head. Oh yeah, talking to different people. Backing heads and, yeah, there's a few other good things that happen in the 80s, but not too many. Okay, so five quick questions, one more answer. Okay. Rode or studio? Rode. Lening or McCartney? Lening. When you hear a song usually hits you first, lyrics, melody or rhythm? Rhythm. Song you've written your most pro.

14:05And it's one more answer, that's what I think. In one word, Grace Parker and the nocturnalist go a little bit. Rode. I'll have a little bit of a three sound clove. And I got two Twitter questions from the same chick, but I said I'd ask him anyway. Fine. Well there'd be a video out for stars and we'll give you the video for Elle Servitip. Oh my goodness. Okay, yes there's a video out for stars that's actually coming out on, it's debuting Saturday at 8am on VH1 in the US. I don't know if it'll be in America. So yes, it's actually debuting this weekend, it's a big deal, 8am on the VH1 channel. And Elle Servito Place, I don't know anything about a music video, Kenny hasn't talked to

14:52me about it. Yeah, Elle Servito Place is a new, it's Kenny's next single, but I'm not featured on it, I'm just like a backup singer, you know, on this particular song. So whereas with you and Tequila it's that Kenny Chasney feature in Grace Potter, so because the name isn't actually in print, I'm just, I love being like the ghost in the background. I'm kind of like Joni Mitchell backstage at the, you know, the last walls where she's like behind the curtain, that's me. I love the million. Oh my god, I know, can you say that he's trying to like the 70s airbrush? Yeah, that's kind of a pointy. Like the bad job that they did trying to airbrush it out, oh my god, I know. Well they don't look like, they just around like, keep asking questions, are you cool with us? I'm totally cool with us. Um, T-bone for that. Oh yeah.

15:37Yeah, it's shelved. It's not a hate saying that, but. Because you're really pushing yourself and you said you're not before, but you're kind of delving into the country world more and more. Yeah, and that record actually, I mean it's the farthest thing from country. I mean that record was, it's fucking awesome record. It's a really cool record. But the thing is, it's T-bone with his band, so it's not the nocturnal, which is why it didn't go out. Is this the plant crows band? This is basically all the same guys from the plant crowd era. And it's Dennis Crouch on the bass guitar, Mark Roboe playing guitar. This amazing guy Keith is sort of a madman keyboard player and also Jim Kelter on the drums. It's huge. So I didn't really, I didn't know what the record company was going to do with that record.

16:26I was just so excited to take the opportunity to work with T-bone. Sure. And at that time, the band was in a bit of limbo. And so I just kind of, I'm a very proactive person, so I just went out and made a record. I said well, well, well, we'll figure out what we're doing as a band. I'm going to go do this. Right. It was a bit of a crossroads for the band. And I love that the Rev. Company recognized that, you know, it was not the end of days for Grace Potter and the nocturnal. They saw a couple of our live shows and watched some footage of us at Bonnaroo. And it completely reignited the Rev. Company's belief in fact. One of the

17:20things that I was talking about was the band's band. They just said this is too good to just put out a T-bone-redette record under with all this energy and electric energy going on. So they said just go back to the studio. It's not that we don't love the T-bone record. It's that Grace just, you know, the band deserves a platform here. Sure. It's a pretty cool thing for a record company to do. Yeah. Especially that level. Oh my god. I mean, and with a T-bone, they know that they were looking at like an easy million records because it was a T-bone. You know what I mean? So the fact that they dug their feet in and said, you know, you really need to make sure that this is the right thing and that the nocturnal get properly represented, I thought that was a great. So T-bone-redette record is, as we like to say, it's on the middle burner because it will

18:07see the light of day. It's just a question of what the right platform is for it, you know? Cool. They're all staring at me so I'll let you go. I think we're a second ago. You're getting stared at? Thank you. Well, we're working at you too. You're so investable with everything. I'm very excited for the shiver. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.