Guys, you probably would agree: Hot women are hot, cool women are cool, but when you find a hot woman who's cool, she's one of the more memorable women you ever meet. So meet Grace Potter.
She's the lead singer of Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. They've been around long enough to record seven albums (5 studio, 2 live) and tour pretty much nonstop. You may have heard of them, you may even be a fan, but they haven't yet hit that magical tipping point that propels them into ubiquity. That may change this summer. They're opening in football stadiums nationwide for the Kenny Chesney-Tim McGraw tour (two MH guys, by the way) and have a brand-new album out this week called The Lion, The Beast, The Beat.
As part of this interview, I was invited to the taping of the band's VH1 Storytellers show (airing on VH1 at 11 pm ET on June 15), which is an interesting experience. The band is on its A-game, obviously, and y ou even get to hear some songs twice since they're allowed to do different takes. Meanwhile, this lead singer, a knockout blonde who is a mad combination of Tina Turner, Stevie Nicks, and Janis Joplin (with a dose of Grace Slick for kicks), weaves these hilarious and heartfelt stories about how the band got to where they are. Somehow VH1 whittled 3 hours down to one, but if you've never experienced this band, this show would be the perfect primer.
As you'll read, I met Grace once before, and with the debut of the band's new album and tour, I thought this would be a good time to reconnect via phone. The verdict still stands: This is one cool woman.
Men's Health: Where might you be?
Grace Potter: You got me in Orlando, Florida. I'm sitting in my hotel room looking out the window at the Tower of Terror right now. I can literally see the windows opening and I can imagine what the screams sound like. I'm not at the park. We're playing a private party today at the Waldorf, so we have a pretty amazing view of the park, which is something I love, love, love.
MH: I want to start this interview off right, so you need to know that we met once. Back in 2008, you signed my chest.
GP: [bursts out laughing] Oh my God, are you kidding me? That's fucking awesome! Where were we?
MH: Penn's Peak. You were opening for the Black Crowes, July of 2008.
GP: Oh my God! I do remember that! That's great. I was at the merch table.
MH: Exactly.
GP: I remember that because Breaking Benjamin was there and a couple of guys from Breaking Benjamin live in th at area. So I very, very well remember that Penn's Peak show. Wow.
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MH: I'd had a couple beers, but I have friends that help me generate strange ideas. The thinking was that a woman would ask Steven Tyler or Robert Plant to sign her boobs. So a guy should ask a female lead singer for a boob signing.
GP: [laughs] We're helpless. We can't say no. We have to do it. I feel that way about the chest-signing scenario.
MH: Well, hey, I was at the VH1 Storytellers taping and you talked about a lot of things, but one thing in particular really jumped out for obvious reasons: Sex. Your band puts out a lot of sexual vibes--lyrically in the music, and just via stage presence. Not saying a conce rt is a sexual experience, but it's definitely there. It's not imaginary.
GP: Absolutely, and it's something I want to approach head-on. I wanted to clear the air early on in that show. There was this line in the sand for a lot of our fans when we put out the self-titled album, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, and we visually amped up [the sexuality]. Some fans defended it and some were really upset about it. And I really want that discussion to continue because I think it's fascinating that with a woman, that's something that everyone notices. But if Mick Jagger, Steven Tyler, Robert Plant, or Rod Stewart decide to amp up their look for the night, it's not like they'll get an inbox full of complaints.
I wanted to clear that air because regardless of how you choose to move onstage, regardless of lyrically what you choose to sing, the importance of sexuality can't be understated. Music and sex are one thing; they go together. One is not there w ithout the other, because most songs I write are about love and relationships and that FIRE. And what happens when that fire goes out. So you need both, you need great music, and you need, in my case, sexuality. And being comfortable in my body, being comfortable with the rest of the guys in the band, being sexually and physically aware of each other. That's a huge part of who we are. Even on the bus, out of the public eye, we're still like that. [chuckles] I'm grabbing everyone's asses and that's just how it is.
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Some background: One of the songs in question was the lead cut from that self-titled album, "Paris (Oo La La)," a flat-out rocker th at has Grace wailing the lyrics, "You got me down on the floor / What you got me down here for? / If I was a man I'd make my move / If I was a blade I'd shave you smooth." At the VH1 taping, she referred to the lyrics as "silly," but they undeniably (along with the rest of the album) struck a deep chord with her listeners.
Onstage, Grace is a lot of things--sexy, brash, overt--but in the end the best word is playful. She has a hell of a lot of fun, and so does the band.
MH: Do you think the static you got came from fans who had seen their band evolve into something they weren't accustomed to?
GP: Totally. And that happens in every band. In our case, we come from a state like Vermont where people are unbelievably supportive and you never want to betray that. So a band's responsibility is to respect that fanbase and acknowledge that you wouldn't be where you are without those people who we re believers at the very beginning. So that sense of betrayal was misperceived because the music didn't change that much. The lyrics and subjects may have been altered but that's what I love about that self-titled album. It was brassy, it was humorous, it was soulful, it was helpless, it was powerful.
But onstage, it's not serious. There might be a few people there who might like to think that I mean it. You give me the right amount of money and I'm going to go home with you. Pretty sure there's at least one person like that in the crowd every night [laughs]. But there's a tongue in cheek quality to the brazen sexuality. You heard some of my comments at the VH1 taping. The blowjob comment.
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MH: I was just going to br ing that up, so to speak. You won't see that on the broadcast.
Set the scene: A VH1 studio space, rapt crowd, lots of cameras. Grace and the band are rolling through some key songs while Grace tells the backstory between tunes. At one point, while sitting at the piano, Grace is drinking tea and getting her voice to transition from speaking to singing. There was some coughing. A lot of throat-clearing. More tea. Until she finally mutters into the microphone, "No more blowjobs before a show." The crowd loses it. The show doesn't resume for about 10 minutes. A classic moment.
GP: [laughs] You know what they did? VH1 made a fake promo reel for the show with that line and sent it to the head of my record company. So he gets this promo for the show that's me saying, "That's what I get for giving blowjobs before the show," or whatever it was, and the n the announcer's voice, "Watch Grace Potter and the Nocturnals on VH1 Storytellers!"
MH: That's hilarious. That line brought down the house.
GP: That kind of sums me up.
MH: With this new record, you've said you reached a point where you had to stop recording because it wasn't feeling right. You basically shut it down and headed out into the world to find what was missing. That takes some guts when you have people depending on you.
GP: Yeah, I looked at it as a major failure. A big letdown I was putting the band through. Everyone had planned their lives and entire winter out according to a record that I just wasn't ready to make. It was a combination of things but it all pivoted around the music. Creatively, I wasn't fully satisfied with the sound. I thought it sounded like a lot of other music I was hearing. If you listen to too much pop music, it permeates and gets int o you. Something happens sonically that takes you in a direction you didn't mean to go.
MH: Sort of like listening to everything and everyone else instead of yourself?
GP: Yeah. And that can happen to anyone doing anything. Trends suck you in, anywhere in the world, patterns you don't even see. It's so easy. Look at Wall Street, look at any sports team in the world, there are trends. Look at exercising. Nothing but patterns and trends and that's what I started to see. Like a flock of birds all flying in one direction.
I work in bunches of two or three years. If you listen to music from a decade ago, it definitely sounds like it came from another time. So I wanted to make something that felt timeless. The songs we had were great, some sounded like hits, but I don't think they were timeless. They felt like songs I should be pitching to someone else, a pop singer or someone who doesn't have an 8-year history with a band.
So I stopped it. I took a month and disappeared into the wilderness, and it was really rewarding for me. But definitely scary. Definitely weird. But the results were great, so I'm glad I did it.
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MH:
GP: [laughs] This is definitely a roadtrip record. We made it across the country. We recorded in Vermont, Los Angeles, Santa Clarita, Nashville. I did vocals in hotel rooms. And we ended up with this completely different thing than we thought it would be. We thought it would be a follow-up to the last record. We expected a certain type of fireworks and got a totally different type. And I'm glad we did.
MH: At the VH1 taping, before singing "The Divide," you mentioned a little psychedelic episode on a road trip.
GP: [giggles] Yeah.
MH: Just making sure you were being literal. Or were you talking about a mindset?
GP: No, I took a lotta mushrooms. [laughs] Yeah. Basically. Looking back, I do try to be a positive example for people and I sometimes wond er if I shouldn't tell that part of the story. But it happened. It was a big part of that song, especially the line in the song "the road turns to fire," and like I said, what I saw in front of me on the landscape was true fiery Evel Knievel kind of shit. That's why I pulled over. [laughs]
MH: I had a similar experience a long time ago and it kicked something open in my brain. A creative game-changer for me. But seriously, all chemicals aside, people forget that they have a lot of locked-up creative potential.
GP: Your mind is what you allow it to be. Some people need a key to unlock this unbelievable piece of themselves. With my childhood and growing up in a very free place where my parents were artists and always encouraging me to explore, you wouldn't think I was locked up in my own mind, but I was.
Sometimes all it takes is a little jolt, just jog your memory to get you back to childhood. That's why I love Disneyworld. I love going back there and remembering what it felt like to smell churros for the first time. Sometimes you just need those little triggers. It's not like I'm dropping sheets of acid every day [laughs]. But these excursions do happen and they tend to be more meaningful than recreational.
MH: It's as if, creatively, you've been playing within a set of rules that you didn't even know you were putting on yourself. Then something comes along and reminds you that essentially, "Oh, man, I've been asleep this whole time."
GP: That's a really good point and most people don't get to that point. They just ramble on. They never stop in their tracks and rethink what things can be. That's kind of what happened when I worked with Kenny [Chesney].
More background: Kenny Chesney and Grace Potter did a duet c alled "You and Tequila" for Chesney's 2010 album, Hemingway's Whiskey. The song became a runaway hit.
We came together at a time when I was closed off to those kinds of collaborations. And I don't think he thought that the record we made would feel as good as it did, that there would be a chemistry. Or that the song would resonate with so many people. It was a reset button for both of us in a lot of ways. Also about how responsive fans could be to a complete genre-bend.
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MH: On the stadium tour, do you come out to do the song with him during his set?
GP: Yeah. And it's really cool because he's doing something he hasn't done in years, which is coming out in the middle of the stage, just me and Kenny and our guitars, no band. The response has been killer. "You and Tequila" is now one of those songs that people wait for in the set.
MH: This is the perfect time of year for guys to assemble their summer playlist. So far we've got your new record, "You and Tequila", and I'll add Dr. John's new album, Locked Down, which I picked up on your recommendation, by the way. It's funky as hell.
Some more background: While recording The Lion, The Beast, The Beat, Grace and the Nocturnals hooked up with Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys in his Nashville studio. Upon arrival, Grace saw an old '80s-style Casio keyboard and immediately started messing with it. Auerbach joined her, programming some beats. He basically said, "Don't stop," and literally carried the keyboard with Grace still playing it into the booth and plugged it in to record. The band joined the jam and within 45 minutes they'd written the first single from the album, "Never Go Back." Which all leads to the Dr. John connection. Auerbach produced that album...
GP: Oh, [Dr. John's album] is so epic. Dan got these super-funky cats to play on this album and you think they're all from New Orleans, but they're from places like Belgium and Germany. When I first went to Dan's studio they were setting up for the Dr. John sessions. When we came back a few weeks later, they had just finished. It's surreal that we sort of bookended that recording. It's timeless. That album just seems like it's always been. I love that record.
MH: What would you add to a great summer playlist?
GP: The Delta Spirit has a song called "California" that's really amazing. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes' new single sounds great. There are so many good songs. I'm listening to a band you might appreciate, Os Mutantes, a Brazilian band from the late Sixties, early Seventies, completely weird psych-su rf Brazilian traditional music. That's fun sunshine psychedelic music. Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers, she's really good. Dr. Dog is good summer music. They're all terrific.
MH: That's plenty. Thanks for this, Grace. It was a lot of fun--and good luck on the tour.
GP: Thanks. I hope we can meet again. I'll sign your chest again.
MH: Deal!
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