Grace Potter

about each other. That's the best way I feel I can deduce whether it's worth going deeper in on an ex laoratory level. And it was. So I just did a plane burger. But because they were doing they had cheddar as an option. I did it with cheddar, which was just delicious.

Thank you? So you do the animal style with a doctor pepper and a fry, and there's like this flavor that it creates in your mouth that apparently is very similar to like butterscotch. It gives you like a weird you know after it's like a flavored you know, somalie a type thing. Anyways, I tried that. It did not taste like butter scotch in my mouth, but it was delicious.

to me by the person who slaughtered the cow. So it's a little different where I come from and Vermont.

forever and have a reason. So he became a sign maker and he does all the signs or for instance, the American Ski Company, but also many other privately owned mountains and ski areas. So that's that was his passion. He followed it, and my mom was an editor, a

photographer and artists. It just lived lived the dream artist, you know, hippie life here in Vermont and and really brought a huge amount of the hippie glory that you would imagine like the hill people in Vermont had they were living that that exact dream.

it's not worth it. So for purposes of like my greater purpose in the world is music, I'm not gonna I don't want to be that guy that has to tell the story about how I crashed skiing and that's why I can't play guitar anymore. You know, it's not worth it.

that not everybody gets to grow up like that. And the second that I realized that my passion and my purpose was something else other than winning, Because the only reason I really wanted to be a GS skier was because the grand slalom suits are really tight and they reminded me of Ziggy star Dust and I'm not even kidding that. I was like, if I get to dress like Zaggy start Us and go super fast down a mountain,

then count me in. But beyond that, beyond the fancy outfits and the going fast, I think I've managed to figure out a career where I can do both of those things.

was financial reasons for that. I thought it was just because we were going to go on a nice family road trip, but actually we genuinely needed to, you know, to step away from the expensive ski culture for a hot minute there. And I think it was good. It was character building.

your graduation. Just give me a fake degree. I'll hang them on the wall, and you got to call me doctor from now on.

ended up in Virginia Beach at curating this museum. And my brother Lee is he has epilepsy and nonverbal learning disorder and also has gone through the mental health program here in Vermont in every capacity he's been through the Ringer, but has found that therapeutic expressive arts like poetry and drawing has been kind of the main resource in his life. Just like all of us artists that grew up in Potterville, we all kind of got fed the potion at an

early age. And it's it's super inspiring to be around him because the thing that I do that comes so naturally doesn't come naturally necessarily to him, but it heals him from the inside in such an amazing way. And I'm happy because I'm home and I get to actually see it because it's been kind of at a distance for the last ten years. So we have our Hemingway and Fitzgerald moments on the porch where we smoke cigarettes and he reads me poetry, and it's been a new

realm of connection with me and him. But my sister and I were always thick as thieves, you know, getting into all kinds of trouble in the early days.

bolt type people. But when you're working with community based care where these people need to like know where the person is at all times and or have a driver for him or take him to work, we are like, yeah, but there's a bonfire over in the field and we're gonna go jam. You should totally calmly and like, you know, it just it's impossible. We are impossible. We are very difficult people to work with.

and they called me Gertrude Stein. I guess I apparently just sat and sort of Whether it was judgmental critical thinking going on or just flatlining, I'm not exactly sure, but whatever was happening in my brain developmentally, I think I felt it was safer to sort of be in word with myself and just turn inward and hold on tight to my own self soothing, And yeah, I was a thumbsucker till I was like twelve. It got weird.

I mean, what are the chances? And it wasn't just any movie theater. This guy had this opulent vision. I think he was sort of a Gordon Gecko mountain man guy who wanted to bring a little bit of New York City to Vermont. And he built this place and he called it Edison Studios. And it looked like an Art Deco kind of Hollywood bowl looking place, A beautiful right, right, I fall down the hill and land there so that was my first job. I also worked at the video store.

If there had been a record store in town, you know, I would have worked there. But I grew up hoping that my parents would let me watch TV and movies a little more than they did. But once it became my job, it was easier to convince them to let me be absorbed in that world. A bit.

it was still me. So I think I played around with disguise because in my mind, I mean, I saw something completely different when I took my glasses off, and the world was kind of bright and sparkly, and unfamiliar, like there was confetti falling, you know, in the color of the general objects that I was seeing, but that it wasn't It didn't matter what it was, as long as I knew there was something in front of me.

So I've always had really good depth perception, but I just cannot cannot really sustain any level of focus on anything. I cannot read far away or close up words. I could probably tell you the color of somebody's eyes if they got close enough to me, but I am far sighted in a way that makes it extremely dangerous for me to drive without my glasses on.

My mom would make the soundtrack and splice it all together and do the edits while my dad was, you know, manically trying to get this thing done, and they would put it together into a slideshow and project it onto the streets around these sporting events, almost like the precursor

to MTV. They would play music along to it and create kind of a narrative of the day, and they would pick sort of stars and local faces and characters that they thought the townsfolk would enjoy and be like, oh, that's crazy Randy again, all the naked ski guy, you did, the polar Bear plunge, whatever it was. So they we created a culture around the bar, you know, the bar and the party and the after party life. The app pray Ski and brought this kind of multimedia mixed media

adventure to it. So their record collection, and of course this is I don't really know whether they were paying. I don't think they were paying for any of the song usages. But there was a lot of really great music that they were applying to these very specific visuals from an early time. I believe seventy They started that whole thing in about seventy two, and through from seventy two to eighty four they were doing dreamount productions. So the record collection was thick. It was a sturdy and

interestingly organized and categorized record collection. And then of course the kids were born and we kind of got our grubby myths on it and changed changed our worlds in a good way. But I think it changed their record collection in a pretty bad way.

way of discovering them. It was on some weird compilation that my mom had put together on a tape about having kids, and it was all the songs that the Beatles had written about children, but also a bunch of other people and John Prine and you know, Bruce Coburn lived in the lived and dated a woman in the Madver Valley for a brief time. So there was a lot of that, which I call dad rock. There's a lot of dad rock, Rod Stewart, Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits,

The Who. Loved Loved the Who because it felt like it was very modern to me, and it sounded just like any cool kid rock that I might hear on the radio. Then I got really into like the Pointer sisters and Patti LaBelle and Oh the Staples singers. I mean, that's the record that changed my life. That song on

My Way to Heaven was the first. It was the first time I heard music where I knew it wasn't from where I was from and I needed to go to where that music was being made because it just cut me open wide and I was never the same again.

tried the Vanah School of Art and Design. I applied to like thirteen schools, and the fact that I got into Saint Lawrence is a bit It's not too mythical, actually, it's just it's just, you know, the appropriation of my parents' you know, amazing illustrious careers and lives there. Not to say that they were giving a huge amount of money, but I think they had big personalities and they were remembered and loved and appreciated up up on campus, and

they had a great love story. My uncles and aunts all went there, my cousins had gone there, So it felt like the natural course of the salmon going back upstream.

music that never made me feel shy. I was never shy. And then, of course, going through adolescence, I remember, like the notebook, the first notebook full of songs, so probably eleven, twelve, thirteen, somewhere in there where all those big feelings go, they go into the notebook, and a lot of those notes were actually songs. So it must have been really early on that I was writing do You Take Piano Lessons? My mom, among the many, the Jacqueline of all trades

that she is, was also a piano teacher. And so I would get off the school of bus, and so would eleven other kids, and we'd all walk up the mile long driveway to our house on the hill, past the Crazy Movie Theater and Alan Lumber and the Valley rental, and everybody would eat my snacks, eat me out of house and home they would. But I would listen to the kids taking lessons and my mom patiently teaching them how to read music and try for these more complicated pieces.

She was always encouraging people to try something a little bit more complicated than what they think they can handle. And then at the end of the day, I'd be like, all right, I want to learn that song. So whatever the song was that hit me the most, that felt the most intriguing, But I never learned how to read music. She just would sit with me and I'd watch her fingers and I'd listen, and she just had an elegance to her and the way that she played that I

never quite could conjure. I had to sort of create my own style. So by ear, I would block out the chords and try and recreate them as best I could.

to Panga is a place. I mean, it's where I gave birth to my son, you know, I had him at home in the bathtub and really set up a life that I believed was my anchor point. It was going to be the roots I planted for myself in the same way that my parents were like, sorry Connecticut, Sorry New Jersey, sorry parents, sorry American dream, We're going to go back to the land and build our life.

I was. I was sort of in the midst of that process when COVID hit, and I think fear crept in, you know, and I've really was worried about my parents and my brother. I wanted to be where the people were that I loved the most, and I wanted to just see them and hold them and know that, like it wasn't a robot on the computer screen pretending to be my mom and dad. I had to touch them

in the flesh. And you know, I'm sure we all remember that that was a complicated thing to do in the midst of lock down and post lockdown, the uh you know, the two weeks of sitting alone wherever you traveled and just you know, uh, the quarantining and went through all of that, and it just felt like the process of revisiting and being a part of my parents' life and my childhood. It definitely triggered something very big in me on a on a songwriting level, but also

on a personal level. It was just a something akin to a slow car crash.

sure what it is. It's just my demeanor. I've always wanted to go somewhere where there's a city nearby and an ocean nearby, but I always wanted to be sort of causeted by the mountains and to Panga is that

I mean to Panga Canyon. I cannot over express just exactly how much it is like the mad River Valley where I grew up, with the exception of the ocean, which is beautiful, you know, and I think being in that world and experiencing that blissed out feeling that I got, which I think you can hear on the album Daylight, this feeling of just like this is my happily ever after this is the end of the Rainbow, we're here.

I really did feel like there was like a rip in my reality and a transition and a transformation in my brain that forced me to get real and be honest with myself and with my family, with the love of my life and the kid that we made together, and come to see why. There were things about coming back to Vermont that just made a whole lot of sense. But once I got here, it was it was a hard,

hard winter. It was a really uncomfortable thing for me to come back here, and it was pulling up all these old feelings where when I was visiting it was just like, oh my god, just crazy blowing through town and wow, my life is just on this rock and roller coaster and here we go again. I love you all, I'll see you later. And it was always on my terms, you know, but coming back this time was a not on my terms. It was, you know, based around this

circumstance of COVID. It was also based out of fear, which I never liked. I don't like doing anything out of fear. But I also felt like logic was starting to take over, and I don't like logic. I'm not spuck, I'm Kirk, you know. So it was hard for me to wrap my head around the reality of being home. But it was also amazing to reconnect and remember the life that I had here before before all of the madness.

happened as soon. I always planned on coming back when when my parents needed me, you know, and really being there for them and being able to provide for them and have the extremities of my life being tour buses and crazy all nighters and TV in the morning and flying from Japan and you know, borrowing borrowing Bob Weir's plane to go fly from one place, you know, like all these stories that you hear that are like the

crazy rock star life. I absolutely had that, and I knew that that didn't That was not a sustainable way to live. But I wanted to ease out of it. And this was not easing out of it. This was the opposite of that. And in buying a property and making that sort of staking that claim, it definitely sealed my fate in a way that I think I was not at peace with and that's why I went on all those road trips looking for where I really belong.

on tour. We've been doing primary pieces of winter in California, coming back in the spring and spending spring, summer and fall in Vermont. Where's your husband from Palo Alto California?

his tongue. I'm not actually kidding that that happened many a time this last winter and watching him in joy Vermont has also been one of those processes of falling back in love with Vermont through the eyes of the person that I love. And he's definitely been my cheerleader and the biggest believer in in this process of moving back and forth and bouncing back and forth between the two places.

terrifying reality of where we are now. And I also think that the move to Vermont was based a bit on that, because we underwent a pretty traumatic fire, the Woolsey Fire a few years back, where a huge amount of our friend's houses were one day there were there, next day they were just gone. And some of some of those friends actually lived with us through some of that.

So we evacuated to Panga with a group of people and all of their dogs and goats and snakes and wolves, because that's so to Panga.

a jacqueline of all trades myself. But I see it differently now because I'm in a different I'm in a different financial state than I was. I am now kind of one of those hoity toity people that I used to make fun of when I was a waitress, you know.

And that might be the weirdest offset for me about coming back to Vermont is that there's a perception of who I am, and I am a real Vermonter, and I'm native and born and raised and you know, grew up in the mud, you know, bail and hay at a dairy farm and try in every every single corner of the world. And having traveled to every single corner of the world, I can tell you that that that idyllic life that I had is still totally happening here. I mean, there are really kids, my son age still

doing exactly that. And it does feel like that foothold isn't going to go away anytime soon, because it's something that is treasured. It's a lifestyle, and it's a an ethos of hard work and humility and being aware of your surroundings and being conscious of what you're bringing into the world and feeling your way through your purpose with a very practical outlook on life. And that to me is fundamentally still a real thing. But who I am

in that setting is very different. And I mean something as simple as the fact that I still have my LA phone number and when I call places, they won't pick up unless it's an eight to two number. So I'm like the stranger, danger rich lady with an LA phone number calling in asking about concrete molds and can I get you know, this tint for my concrete floor polish for my barn that we're refurbishing. You know, it just sounds like I want to punch me in the face.

I was able to sort of nurture into being, maybe not by having an endless well of money available to me, but more by the trust and the I think the constitution of who I was becoming, and the potential within my musical career and the hard work that I had shown, and the enduring kind of like I'm not going anywhere people. I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm not going anywhere. That feeling was a pretty leveling force for me financially. I also have a great business manager who's always made

sure that that I'm not overdrafting, overdrawing, overdrafting. That's the way it could be both either way. I don't do that anymore. I used to do it all the time, and paycheck to paycheck has has moved into a place of much more security. But it was, you know, it was stretching it very thin to buy this farm and to make it all come together. It's one hundred and

twenty acre farm, and that's a lot of land. And there's a lot of other costs that you have to consider when you're buying a farm, one of which is also just the social responsibility of it. You know, do you want to be a gentleman farmer general lady farmer and have nothing happened here? Or do we want to have an ecosystem that we're reintroducing with dairy cows or goats or you know, hops or weed or whatever it

could be. And every single one of those endeavors comes with a cost, and so there's a reality check to it. But then there's a paycheck when I play my gigs, and so I think I've subsidized as best I could the passion projects that I've had with the reality that I think music really is if I put the work in and if I pound in the pavement, and I'm out there on tour in a sustainable way with keeping my overheads as low as I can, I can do pretty well every year, you know, so.

that during COVID you couldn't rent a car. I mean, I'm not sure if you experienced that, but for anybody who was trying to rent a vehicle at a certain point in the summer of I think twenty twenty one, you could like make a reservation and pay a bunch of money for that reservation, and then you'd get to the front counter and they'd just be like, yeah, yeah, I know, thanks for your money, but we're out of cars.

Don't know what to tell you. So after that happened literally four times in a row, I started to kind of panic because I do feel like I need a fire escape for my life and for the feelings of being trapped and the feelings of sort of strangulation, including the financial stuff. Was starting to come into a place of like, I don't want to have to pay for

a rental car. We have a perfectly good, brand new car that we bought at twenty twenty Volkswagen Atlas, sitting there in California, just waiting, just toasting in the sun. So I got on a plane and masked up and you know, armed myself with some notepads and went out and picked up the car and drove it back. That was the first trip.

And then the second time, I actually didn't know that I had it, except that when I patted my head, my scalp hurt in the exact same way that I remembered it hurting when I had COVID the first time. That like pain to the touch, almost like you can't bear to have the weight of your hair touching your head kind of feeling.

always there for his kid. And I think it really does show through and shine through in Sagan and his personality, because you know, we have a different dynamic than a lot of families and homes American or otherwise. Yet that I am out there on the road continuing my work and finding ways through that battle between the sort of mom shame and missing my family, but also knowing that there is something worth chasing there that actually will It

is not an impermeable membrane of inspiration. It is something that is ready to be harvested, and then I can bring that harvest back to my family and be a happier person for it.

But I was specifically aware of a type of music that I knew growing up in Vermont as malrock because it was only ever played in the malls in the movies with malls in them, because there are no malls in Vermont, so there's one. It's a very sad story. Anyways, there's probably nothing less attractive to me than being told what producer I should work with, and I hate it.

I really don't like it. So of course I avoided Eric and meeting with Eric for a long time, but he just kept coming up over and over again for ten years. His name would come up, and finally we met and it was like instant I didn't know it was love. I actually just was like, what took me so long? I'm gonna make music babies with this guy forever. In fact, I use that exact sentence with my bandmates after meeting with him, I said, music babies forever. This

is a lifer, this guy is. He's just he ticks all the boxes of nerdiness and caring about audio in a way that makes it fun for someone like me, who who kind of I defy anyone to keep me in a recording studio for any more minutes than I absolutely have to be there. It makes my skin crawl.

If it's like brain surgery, I have completely changed my tune because there's this person who is this well spring of knowledge, and not just knowledge, but the way he untethers himself from his ego when explaining it and describing what he's doing. And never in a condescending way did he ever share an opinion. It was always with this thread of what can make this better? What are the

opportunities we've missed? This curiosity within him that just felt like the thing that was missing in my music, you know, all long, because I feel like that old soul in me, that precocious songwriter. As a young person coming up in the music industry, I always kind of had this like old hat approach of like it's got to be old school, it's got to be this, it's got to be that. I know what's best, I know what music is tasteful.

I know what tasteful is. I had made all these rules and I finally get to be in a studio with somebody who made it fun to play by the rules and also even more delicious when you break them.

The album was finished, mixed, mastered, and I was working on the album packaging, and I just felt this emptiness in my heart that was like throbbing, longing drive by the exit for the studio and just feel my whole body want to jump out of the car and go down off the exit ramp. And I didn't understand what that was for for a few months after the production of it was done, and it was when I got I got tapped to do the theme song for Grace

and Frankie. You know that show of course. Yeah, so that show and its creator had a budget and an idea for what they wanted to do, and they just they had figured like, it's Grace Potter's voice. We just we know it's this song, this Steeler's Wheel song and

Grace Potter, and I was like, this is perfect. Oh my god, I get to go back to the studio and lo and behold, the studio wasn't available so yet again just just like, oh, I don't have a reason to be there anymore, and I kept finding myself making up reasons to want to go back into the studio, and it was obviously to see Eric and just be around that energy. But ultimately we recorded right down the road from it, and because I was the producer, I

knew where I wanted to have it mixed. If I couldn't record it at Barefoot, we recorded at Vox Studios in Larchmont and then ultimately went back to Barefoot to mix it and do a few overdubs. So I got to go back in the studio and that's where it started to click in for me, and this is yeah, this is May June twenty fifteen. Realizing like, okay.

the Nocturnals uh dissolving. He was he was really supportive of my choice to to dissolve the Nocturnals and was ultimately like, whatever you're doing, I'm sticking on the tour. You know you're not going to play radio City Music Hall without me, girl. It was. It was definitely a really difficult time and a really uncomfortable set of reluctant people on all sides, and it got kind of interests. Actually it was pretty scary and violent, like I had to get a restraining order and don't get into the

details of it. But I'm fine and they're fine. Everybody's fine. But we weren't fine. It could have been really bad. It could people could have died. Love love does crazy things to people, and it was by far the most dramatic experience of my life, and one in which if I if I had any minuscule doubt about who and what was going on and who I loved and what exactly love felt like, I would have run away and

never looked back. But it was too late. I was so in love and there was absolutely nothing I could do. So sharing that feeling with Eric was also really confusing for him. In fact, I think he said something like, this is really confusing. You should go and escorted me out of the studio when I first told him what I was feeling. And it was because you know, these these relationships that we were in that had been long unraveling,

where also the thing that defined us. They were the stories we had been telling ourselves for a very long time. And it's always extremely uncomfortable to tear yourself out of one reality and imagine a new reality until it's happening to you.

But it really was that it was this like movie moment, this aha, because I wasn't sure what I was going to do, and I love There's a taco place down there that I love, so I wanted to get one more taco in California on my way out of town.

do like pickled pink everything. It's fucking perfect anyways. So I wanted one of those, and I wandered down the pier just to catch the sunset and be a romantic fool feeling all that big, confused, welling up feelings of I don't want to leave California. I don't really know why I'm driving east now, you know, back to a place that was creating some conflicting sensations in my soul. So I was there and that's where I picked up

this guide. It was easy sixty six. It was a ringbinder book that was done and edited and re edited, and many many renditions of this book exist out in the world, but I think his name is Jim McLoughlin, and he's sort of a proper connoisseur of the road to flight, the mother roads. So I took that book with me, and armed with that book, I laid out a course of action, starting in Panoramic City at the super racist inappropriately titled and inappropriately branded Wigwa Hotel and Motel.

I just I had to see it for myself to understand what the hell anyone was thinking. And I kind of got it. It's like being in It's like being in the Yogi Bear Jellystone Park cartoon. It's bizarre. But I stayed there the first night and then just rode the trail all the way. I highlighted all the pages of sort of the maybe I'll go here, maybe I'll go there, lots of little side roots and notes about like don't go this way. The bridge is washed out, there is no road there where there used to be

a road. I just so sexy to me. That is like the beckoning, yes, get me down that road with the bridge that's broken. I want that, and I did. I went and found it.

like nothing listen to. I did listen to some John Steinbeck audio books, Travels with Charlie and Grapes of wrath obviously, but I also I really just needed some quiet too. And I love the sound of the wind. And one of the things that that Atlas does it has this lovely moon roof that opens into this sort of amazing gauge where you can control how much wind do you want to hear, how much sunlight you want to have come in, you can have the shade going with the wind.

Guests just very cool. It's a cool sound. So so yeah, that road trip was just maybe a little over a week.

to come out and then I'll do my thing. And you know, I wrote, Yeah, I wasn't writing songs as much as I was writing a story about regret and redemption and trying to wrap my head around the choices I had made and whether any of it was, whether I was ever going to be able to square it all with the person I thought I would be and the person that I was seeing in the mirror every day.

of I was in. I was in lockdown with a couple of gen Z younger younger gen Z people who had a very specific propensity toward doom scrolling and deeply political conversations. So I was having a lot of big thoughts and big more big questions than conclusions than I've

ever had before. I think a proper midlife crisis was underfoot, and I didn't really know that obviously, but like you know, a man will go out and buy a top down sexy car or motorcycle, and for me, it was like, go get that mom car and open up the moon roof. That's all I need, you know. But the transformation and the storytelling that can come with transformation needed to be outside of my body because my body was also pretty shut down at that point. I had a miscarriage and

it was really serious. It was it was life threatening situation where I hadn't miscarried completely, I guess, and it had continued to grow. And there was sort of a collection of internal bleeding over the course of a really long and dangerous amount of time that I didn't know why I was in so much pain, but it was

just getting worse and worse. And so those hormonal things are going on, and things that I just couldn't quantify where and how my soul and my purpose and all of these things that were happening that felt like they were happening to me, sort of that victim feeling that I had never had before where that was coming from.

So I needed to get out of my own story and start telling a story, any story, anything, And I took a visit back to my childhood self, like my bravest version of me at the age of nine, and decided to start there where I had run away from home and this is real life now. I ran away from home when I was nine to my neighbor's house, Caitlin Welter, and her parents answered the door, and of course I took off my glasses, you know, and said, Hi, my name is Lelana Mata Vesquez and I'm from Ecuador.

I'm an orphan and the orphanage next door. They're very mean there. I hate it. Can you please let me stay with you? And can I please have a pop tart? And they played along with me? And what was really interesting about it was I think I lost track of if I was lying, or if I was using my imagination, if I was creating something like a new life for myself, or if I was dooming myself to a new life with a new name and a very sad backstory. But

it didn't matter. It was too late. I had already made this choice, and it kind of became the seed pod for understanding my own redemption and my own choices and how much I didn't actually choose. I was lying, but I wasn't lying. I was nine. I didn't even know what lying was. I just kind of wanted to

be out of myself and into a story. And that deep dive at the age of nine led me to invent this character, Lady Vagabond, who was sort of my superhero chaperone, where I already had a plan where if anybody asked me why I was alone on the side of the road, I'd say, oh, I'm not. Lady Vagabond is making a fire right there in the woods. I'm just waiting here by the side of the road because we have a man bringing us water soon, so I'm going to pick up the water and then bring it

back down to our camp. You know, I had like I never had to use the excuse, of course, but I had this vision of who I could be as a strong, independent nine year old kid out on the road in a bathing suit and Red Sockny's in March. So long story short, I revisited that story and all the characters I had sort of created and imagined myself meeting in some kind of a Nancy Drew novel version of my life. And that's where the songs started coming from.

the whole time. That's nice, Okay.

profound creativity. But it wasn't done being built yet. So we carved out some time while Eric was doing pre production with Nickel Creek for their record that they put out this past March, and they were going to be doing pre production, so I figured I'll do some pre production too. I'll go down to Nashville, check in with my songwriter buddies and and and just sit in a room.

I'll rent a place with a so my only sort of caveat in my searching for a house was that it had to have a piano, and it doesn't matter if it was tuned. I could get somebody to fix it up and make it sound good, or tune it myself. So I sat down and it just fucking fell out, all of it, and it was fast, like ten days

of writing. Some of it was collaborative. I had some really really wonderful and luscious reconnections with people who I'd written with, like Hillary Lindsay, who'd had co writing sessions with a decade or more before, which had never amounted to any recordings, and so it was amazing to tap back into her her valve and the way she opens

her valve up. But she also had this brilliant idea to bring in a young young woman, Meg McCree, and that was really interesting because it sort of spanned you know, Meg is in her twenties, I'm in my thirties. Hillary is at her forties, and it felt like it was some kind of a time and dimension hopping space to be in. So two of the songs that we wrote together are on Mother Road, Rose Colored Rear View, and All My Ghosts. But also the mut I didn't need to co write. I just kind of wanted to. I

wanted to. I had a lot there, like there was a propensity to overshare and talk and ask questions and listen and hear their ideas and then cross hatch things together. But I had already kind of formed the vision of the Memory Castle and Lola, you know, this little girl from the dust Bowl that I claimed to be and what her life pans out to be. And that album

was already cooking in the furnace of my soul. So anybody that was writing with me kind of either had to jump on that bandwagon or just those songs that we wrote we're going to have to be put to the side for now. So yeah, I think I had twenty songs in ten days. It was so fast and so furious. And then we had eight days in the studio at Dave Cobb's place studio. A.

So there was two more solo trips across the country, one all the way back with myself and our trailer which was empty and was there to be packed up and loaded and moved. So we were gonna move essentially all of Eric's studio gear to Vermont, as well as a few of our sort of key pieces of furniture and all of Sagan's like his baby.

names their van Vana White. It's like we thought of this crazy name that nobody else would ever think of. Everybody thinks of it. Everybody's van was called Van of White. I had a Van of White myself. But then you go, you know, up, and you get maybe a sprinter van, and then you get the Tour of Us. And so through all that process, I've always been watching and paying attention to the engine and the tires and the traction and the brakes and what exactly goes into making a

vehicle operate at its optimum efficiency. And yeah, so I've always been obsessed with that shit. And I'm not exactly mechanically minded, but I'm also not afraid to like just try and learn, just get into it.

And then there's this tent that pops up on the roof so we could just sleep on our stuff, you know.

on a visual level. I wasn't like seeing myself, but I was talking to my imaginary friends and probably going a little mad. But I was lonely, and I was working through things that I think no therapist could have contextualized, as well as my my other people, my higher self, my lower self, my evil self, my good self, my little self, you know, my elder sage self. And so it gave me the privacy to have some pretty potent conversations with the Royal.

at the desk. And I just tore that poster off the wall and I brought it up to the checkout desk and was like, who, how, what do I do? What do I call? And which is also a really difficult thing being Grace Potter in the state of Vermont. That was also kind of uncomfortable, and it put me in a vulnerable place of asking for help kind of not publicly, because doctor's offices are a wonderfully private place, but something really terrifying had happened to me, and I

just was a person. I was just a broken body needing help, and my mind was trying to catch up with the things that my body had already decided for me. So that's really what brought me into the entire process of making this record. And you know, my therapist is still I talk to her once every two weeks to this day.

world figure out were not the thing. I think physiologically, he'd be a much different person. But also just mentally, I think it did some real damage. So I've always been extremely sensitive about pills and powders on the road. And you know, medications are wonderful. Some people really do benefit from them. But I think the journey for me, with the exception of some psychedelics every once in a while,

was about trying to be okay, not being okay. You know, I've heard so many people say that now it's kind of mundane, but there was so much to be worried about and be afraid of that I think if I had medicated it away, it wouldn't have made the problem go way. It would have prolonged the fear. And I'm not afraid anymore, you know.

a producer should be doing with us. I think we all, in our own rights, were producers of our own lives, and there's sort of I'm leading the way, I'm leading the charge that that feeling never went away, and especially was magnified and made even more keenly uncomfortable in the studio because there was somebody at the end of the day who was dropping their foot down and saying, this is how it's going to be, which was a lot of fun with some producers like Mark who just was

just delightful, delicious process of making a record with him and the Nocturnals, because he was such an unabridged, selfless musician who was really truly not there to dominate anyone in the same way that I found Eric to be. But in making these records, uh Daylight and now Mother Road and having the bandwidth to understand that I really I am somebody who could just kind of call anybody

and ask them to play with me. And there's maybe a fifty to fifty chance they'll say yes or that they won't be available, but that I can do that. I can a people know who I am enough to take my call, but be that I could like pay somebody to play with me. And it touches on the way I write songs, because I always wrote songs for the Nocturnals with them in mind. You know, I write for the player, just like some people writing a script for a film will write for a particular actor that

they have in mind for that part. And that changed, and it broke down in the writing of Daylight, and broke down further in the production and writing of Mother Road. And it was so fun because I really did just get to sort of throw the names of all the people I've ever wanted to work with out on the floor, just spread them out and go like, okay, what goes together?

And my first instinct was to tap people who I knew probably wouldn't be able to tour with, but that I've been wanting to play with forever so and people who I missed, so Matt Musty, my drummer from the Midnight Tour, also the godfather to my child. I wanted Tim Doe, the bass player from the Midnight Tour, and he had gone on to play with the Kings of Leon and is still touring with them to this day. Matt Musty took a gig with Train, so he's been out with

them consistently. And then Nick Bockrath with Cage the Elephant, who I had never played with, but he was opening with Raylan Baxter who's playing with Rayland just on some time when Cage the Elephant was off and just playing in the band, and I just liked him as a fucking human being. I was like, that's the vibe, that's the guy I want. Just I don't even know. I

know I love Cage the Elephant. I know that the guitar is a prominent presence and that there is a real craft and some really wonderful voodoo going on in there. Wasn't sure if it was gonna be a definitive yes or no, but felt like, let's do this, and that's

really it was. It was that simple. But Ben Mont obviously Ben mont Tench had played on Daylight and is obviously someone who has always brought me a huge amount of joy his organ playing is he's the only organ player other than me that I'll let play my records.

much intrinsic to what my process is with Daylight. I just I didn't know that Eric was sort of recording half the time, like I was just going through it, and I was going through the emotions and the waves of feelings, you know, making a baby, having a baby, buying a house, building a life, falling in love. All those things were happening. But it was hard and it was a danger Like I said, it was some dangerous times involved, stressful times involved. Last thing I wanted was

for the world to hear that record. To this day, I'm kind of like, I can't fucking believe I put that record out. It's just very it's like showing everybody you're dirty undies. But but Mother Road I really did. It wasn't that I had the audience out of my mind. It was that I was in a cultivating time in the studio where I was experimenting, I was like, maybe I do country. Maybe Oh my god, what if I

chicken fry the whole record? Or you know what if this is a this is an original motion picture soundtrack and so then oh but shit, then I would have to make a movie. Oh fuck, Okay, Well what if I just do both? And that's really what set me in mind. I was thinking about my audience for the film, and the film is the album, but the album it's I call it the original motion picture soundtrack to an invisible movie.

and I really hate that, I really do. So I really needed this record to both be glass half full but also acknowledge the empty cup I was walking around with, and that feeling is I think intrinsically part of what drove me to make this sounds at RCA instead of in my home, which felt way too close. It's like I got to be a character, imagine myself as Dolly Parton or Waylon Jennings. In fact, the ghost of Waylen Jennings is one hundred percent all. He was all up

on my business at the studio. He was he was whisper and lyrics in my ear. I feel like, you know that, in the same kind kind of cosmic way that I feel my way through the audience and the stage experience. This was the first time in the studio where I really felt like I was conjuring some some energy and some narratives that were actually beyond myself in an incredibly comforting way. It wasn't spooky, it wasn't scary.

It was just surreal and really it was transformative for me in the studio and yeah, okay, kind of crass.

Now to what degree? I'm sure when you make something you want everybody to hear it, which is a near impossibility in today's world, irrelevant of what the record is. So the question become let me put it a different way. There are all these articles about the Taylor Swift tour, and she and Morganwall one of the biggest acts in the United States today. If we went and talked to people and said name to Taylor Swift records, we went through Waitsfield, many people would not even be able to

do it, never mind seeing them. And that's Taylor Swift. So you have less ubiquity than she has. To what degree is this challenging? To what degree does this affect your outlook?

Whatever that is, it's a bug. It's something that gets in you as a cosmic bug that just like crawls up your ass and never goes away. That it's not wagging the dog. It's not confidence coming from within necessarily, it's confidence coming through and that I just don't give a damn how many people are in the audience or how many reds I sell, and I don't care if I'm not killing it. I don't like seeing a sad, empty room. But if the three people in there are elated,

that is the same key. That's the golden ticket. That's it. That's all I've ever wanted. And I think on a realistic level, obviously, there are things to cultivate within that thought process. For example, it's good to know that your ticket sales are either growing or declining, that your record sales are doing well, or that your streams or this or that I just take that hat and I hand it to somebody else who's really good at that. Because the second that I start thinking about it is where

I lose my honesty. It's where I lose my connection to the purpose that exists inside me, which is specifically to make the music as pure as possible. I can't be thinking, I can't be watching the hearts and the likes coming up through the screen. You know. One of my least favorite things to do is those like live things where there's a Q and A and I have to like watch people's comments go by, because they're just feelings and thoughts. They're just exactly like balloons floating through

the air. Or when if you meditate, it's you know, your thoughts are, you know, unhelpful little leaves on the river, but if you just sit by the river long enough.

So my creative process is to tap into the river as much as I can, to know that it's flowing through me, that it doesn't belong to me, that my ego is a complete construct, that the stories that I tell myself are both important for the reasons that they lead to songwriting, but also completely meaningless, and that the sooner I'm able to break those down, the less attached, I will get to this white knuckling through life sensation

that I had had for all that time. And so to answer your question, I wanted world domination and I'm going for it.

just reality. It is a billboard from the most obnoxious commercial time in the nineteen nineties, when everybody was in competition with the most shocking, you know images, and I thought, Okay, I'll just put my cameltoe on my record cover. That can skip all the apologetic bullshit and get right to the point so that people really know that they need to be strapped in for this one.

aid off and go pick a new career. If it's not fun for me, If this feels like the blister on my heel because I picked cowboy boots instead of beach sandals, then fuck, I'm going to the beach. You know.

I really don't think and I was lucky to fall into that moment in the music industry where I have this name that is somehow like there it's not there like Taylor Swift, and it's not there in the way that it used to be, but it's it's there the way that the artists that I love were there for me when I was growing up, And to be a presence in that way already feels like I've accomplished so much.

You know, after singing Get Me Shelter on stage with the Rolling Stones, I could have just dropped the mic and said, bye, I'm going to go make a million babies and live in Switzerland and bury my money and bye, you know, And there's times where I kind of want to. But in the meantime, I think it's so fun that we get to do this for a living, and I think that it's so hilarious that I'm still getting away with it and that people are actually willing to be there help me do it, and you.

advice and love and respect and joy and inspiration. Kenny is such a true gift because it really was this like it felt like a joke when I got the phone call and was invited to sing on that song. It's turned into the catalyst for a lot of the other successes I've had, and the reason why probably a lot of the things I can do to this day are so so possible. But yet I think the hunger that I see in him, and the work ethic and the drive and the Nashville approach to things that machine

terrifies me. I think it's something that I wouldn't want in my life. I can't believe the strength that is required to maintain that agenda and those expectations, and so in a way, I think when I when you mentioned Taylor, you know, touring with Tim McGraw and meeting Faith Hill and her amazing daughters, and the families that come along for this ride, Derek and Susan, you know, Warren Haynes, and these characters that have come into my life over and over again, from a Kenny Chesney to a a

Wayne Coyn. I have found that it is the not belonging that keeps me in the balance and in the presence of people's minds, as the like what the fuck character, you know, And I love being the what the fuck character? You know. I'm like Francis mcdormant. I just show up in all the cool movies and you're like, oh man, it's her again. Yeah, I love her, but you're like, what the fuck is she? Okay? Now, this is good. This is good.

something to do. There's a fundraiser, or there's you know, just on Saturday, it was with Bernie Sanders all day raising awareness for the arts and trying to create culture, bring back the bread and circus, so that we have something to defend here, something bigger than ourselves. And art and music is that bigger thing that conscious humans are capable of creating. And it's getting cut. The budgets are

getting cut. And so I'm sitting here in this situation of again being the weird person that's kind of flowing through my life with what I believe is my purpose. Vanity rarely plays to it as much as optics of like where this might go someday, what my kid might see, you know, like me breastfeeding the stranger at the In and Out Burger that we discussed at the beginning of the interview, Like I'm glad there was no video of that. But I looked so good that night, Okay I did.

I looked fucking hot and my tit's were leaking milk and it was the kind of milk that gets you drunk. So anyways, back to what you were asking, the answer is no, I really don't. I mean I don't get noticed that much. I'm not that kind of famous, okay that way.

finally settled. I've discussed it to a point where I'm also just I've aged out of that being such a

hot pressure point for people. And now it's just like it goes without saying that when you signed with Disney, your image changed, and now everybody knows that that was me doing that, because suddenly somebody wanted to play dress up with me, like for the first time ever in my life, people were paying attention and helping me to play, you know, to play dress up and explore the visual stimulation that is a woman in a male dominated business. I think it served me in a few different ways.

Where it failed me, it was character building because I don't have victim energy, you know, I don't come into a situation with a huge amount of fear that I'm going to be dominated. I'm surprisingly shy, but I do kind of clock the room, read the room first, and figure out what feels on multiple levels, like the right approach visually. And so when I'm dressing for a show and I'm thinking about that, when there's a context for everything. And I love fashion, it's just like I love storytelling.

It's just like I love filmmaking, and it's how I love painting. There is a different tone to every situation you find yourself in, and I have definitely leaned on my legs and my physical appearance because it's a medium, just like the guitar or a tambourine or a ham

and be three organ or fucking bagpipes. Every single texture and tone that is called for in any one room, there is a medium for that, and Oftentimes in my life with the music business, or at an award show or at a radio convention, people have thrown me those curveballs and those unexpectedly inappropriate Just what the fuck are you talking about? Questions or just propositions or inappropriate statements.

But no motherfucker has ever tried to touch me, because I just come at them with I think an energy that already is a little bit creepier than they are. You know, I mean, that's really what it is. I an aggressor.

Eric Valentine. I think the solitude that I seek is usually because I have a roundabout way of getting to my gut feelings. There's always the initial gut of like, hey you, you know, there's two offers have come in. One is would get you to Red Rocks, So you

could do two nights at Red Rocks. Looks like we're probably gonna be able to headline this year, but you'd have to have a strong support and it would be a double bill versus one night at Red Rocks with just you, gut instinct, just me, smart me, two days totally, let's do the double bill with a strong support or

whatever you want to call it. Like I know that that time required is really just my own ritual of coming to terms with reality because the fantasy that I live inside, like I said, it's this lightning bolt way of approaching life is and can be extremely chaotic. But if there's stillness in the midst of that, if I can find those places to center myself and find the places where I can understand that the thoughts I'm having

are just thoughts. Then I don't need to be defined by my former impressions of myself and just make a choice that I think is going to bring as much of what I really want to share with the world out into the world in the best way possible. That goes for being a mom and a family member. And it's why we moved to Vermont. It's all the things that we've been talking about today, but more than anything,

because we are talking about the music industry. I think I need more time sometimes by myself than most people, which is why I rent a car a lot, because I don't like driving in the car with passengers. I've got enough of them right here.

and brought them together onto this gorgeous tasting menu. And it was sort of a wonderful, elbow rubbing opportunity for me to go meet a bunch of local farmers and reintegrate into the world of Vermont in a way that I think is important for the development that I'm trying

to do. And it involved a huge amount of logistics after we had already figured out that we did and have childcare, and Eric was like, but I already bought the tickets, and then I found out it's not kid friendly, So there was that moment of like, oh shit, but the tickets were really expensive and I wanted to, you know, go, So we actually called up a friend and orchestrated the complicated logistics that you just mentioned. The picnic the next day,

the childcare, the overnight. Oh in this somebody else's family is going to be there, so is there parking for the extra car? And we did all of it and it actually worked, but I almost missed a couple of interviews because of it today, because there's not reception between Shelburne Farms and our home here in Waitesfield. So I said, as long as I get back for Bob's interview, will be good. And that was that.

and I don't really know what I'm talking about. But and so I rarely go into politics to the point where like me and Bernie, this is the first time we've done this collaboration, and it's because it's touching on a point that is extremely important to me. Separate of supporting any one person and siding with or saddling up to anybody. I'm friends with many politicians on both sides of the fence, both in Vermont and everywhere in the States. But I also feel like it's more and more dangerous

to tread in those waters. The cancel culture has gone in one direction, and the woke culture has also pulled me into many things that I think, Yeah, the spiral goes both ways, and there's been fear, and there's been vindication, and there's been sea I'm right, and the justification the conversation that goes on within myself because I'm a Gemini battles with all of the same content that we all are battling with, and nobody wants to get canceled. But

because that would that would be devastating. I genuinely would hate to have let the world down by not being able to have my music be taken with love and feel like suddenly, not only did I say one thing that changes, or did I side with the wrong side or be on the wrong side of history or whatever. It would be so sad to lose an opportunity to continue creating in a way that I feel is intrinsically there for people just showing up and being there. So I do try to tread really lightly in the way

that many Nashville folks do. I think I was trained under the feet of many brilliant performers who have sided with the things they're really really passionate about and spoken out when it's time to and paid the price for it. And also I've seen that respect and that flow. I've been around long enough to see where maybe it was a scary thing to talk about ten years ago, but now it's a little bit more in the collective consciousness.

So when I don't know what I'm talking about, I think is the place where I need the I need the bottleneck. I need that like handle or that person who wears that hat we were talking about before, somebody else with the hat to come and uh and and put a lid on me. Because if I don't feel passionate about it, I'm probably just pontificating and maybe even forming a song in my head something that starts to

feel like I can make sense of it. You know, Metaphors are a very dangerous tool, and language is powerful, and it's a it's a process to follow down the yellow brick road of exactly where we're going with all this stuff. I'm very uncomfortable with it, to be totally honest.

just a gossip mill. It's about the accountability being the positive side of it as well, not just the sad, bad, puritanical judgment that you get from people, but also the like do they need help? Does this family? Is this family struggling because usually a kid is acting out in school because X, Y or Z must be going wrong and they're trying to convey their their problems in school or whatever it is that's never happened. I really hope

my kid doesn't ever spit in someone's eye. But but there have been so many moments back home where that accountability is both a relief and like a very nurturing, like almost a hug from a mother feeling, but also can be kind of crushing and isolating if you feel like your belief system or the things that you want for your family, or the culture that you're hungry for that doesn't exist in a small town is not only inappropriate but actually just kind of rude and uppity and crass.

And you know. So it's been hard for me talking about this record in Vermont because I have this duality of the feeling of coming home being such a beautiful place and somewhere that I want to foster good things for and help elevate and escalate into a place of exactly what I remember about loving it, but also even more but also pining for that society and that culture and that sunshine and that you know, California dream and Joni Mitchell happy ending that I that I always thought

I was going to live out. So it's been a really interesting thing, the small town conversation, and that you bring it up exactly now, because I, you know, I'm proud to be from a small town. I'm proud to know all the ins and outs. I kind of like the gossip by dirt and just the other day Kevin Streeter, who poured the foundation for our concrete here at the barn one at thunder Road, and he's like kicking ass

race car driving guide. I'm like, whoa see now, that's like some magical small town stuff that made me proud to be from my town, Little Kevin Streeter from Waitsfield, Vermont. I was like, yeah, you know, it's just it's cool when when you can exist in both worlds and have seen things from both sides, it does change the way that you look at things.

You could be whoever you want to be because they don't care. Yeah.

the comedic series. I think you should leave. I think it's some of the most soulful comedy in the world. And the performances, they're wonderful, Umbrella Academy, love God, there's so many I've really dived deep. I just finished The Righteous Gemstones. And of course Danny McBride is someone I got the lovely chance to bump into many many times, but most prominently when I was opening for the Rolling Stones. So I'm pretty sure he thinks I'm a cool guy.

I can't remember exactly what I said to him, but it could have been dorky. It didn't matter. I was in like a silver flapper dress and I was singing on stage with mc jagger, so it really didn't matter.

for other people, so they have this associative thing. But the pinch me moment that I think means the most to me is my music festival. You know, like being up on stage watching other bands and knowing that I created something that not only has an enduring spirit beyond just that day, but that these bands that are here playing wouldn't have come to Vermont or come to the waterfront.

Grandpoint North is the festival I'm talking about the festival that I developed with Matt Burr, my partner in Crime on the Road and Beyond, and my first husband and

Alex Cruthers from Higher Ground. That whole experience of really dreaming up and envisioning what it could be and then watching it come to life was Yeah, the best feeling I've ever had, other than giving birth to my son, you know, just knowing that I was able to force something that seemed completely impossible into being and that it was going to be celebrating its tenth anniversary this year.