Music Scene: Grace Potter set to rock Cape drive-in – The Patriot Ledger

Powerhouse rocker, and local favorite, Grace Potter, will perform a drive-in concert on the Cape Aug. 21.

There are not a lot of pandemic songs, and the ongoing tragedy is certainly nothing to celebrate. But if there is one song that captured the dizzying mix of frustration, fear, confusion, and re-ordering of priorities that enveloped most of us during the quarantine, it is Grace Potter’s “Eachother.” Feeling like a majestic gospel hymn, the song is warm and uplifting, full of empathy and compassion, and yet hopeful, life-affirming, and best of all, unifying.

Potter performed the song, which she wrote in the first few weeks of lockdown, in early June on the Stephen Colbert late Show, trading verses with Marcus King and Jackson Browne, as the vocal duo Lucius provided vocal harmonies. The chorus is simple yet profound, a perfect snapshot of a nation stuck at home: “I don’t know where we’re going, But if the going gets rough, We’ve got each other, And for now that’s enough.”

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Browne’s third verse is especially apt, “Each day in the lockdown, Seems a little less strange, When it’s finally all over I just wonder, How much this world will have changed.”

Grace Potter’s solo tour will arrive at the Yarmouth Drive In, in West Yarmouth on Friday, Aug. 21, part of the nine-date mini tour of outdoor venues the singer has done this month. On Saturday the tour concludes at The Lawn at South Farms, in Morris, Conn.

We caught up with the Waitsfield, Vermont, native last week after she’d kicked off the tour in Burlington, Vermont, with a couple of shows. Potter explained how “Eachother” came to be performed “live.”

“To coordinate something like that live is difficult, even with Zoom and Facetime,” said Potter. “There’s a kind of noise crackling you have to figure into the creative process, and then add in a 16 mili-second delay. I love what Jackson Browne did, when he came in much more laid back than we had been. I just love his delivery — he’s Jackson Browne, and there’s very few people in the world whose voice is so recognizable. Marcus King was just blowing my mind with his voice and guitar. And I think Stephen Colbert did a good job of expressing that feeling of how music can be a healing force, without having to be on a soapbox or political. It just all seemed like the right place for the song.”

Many artists had their 2020 schedules upended, but it was particularly unfortunate for Potter, who’d released her first album in four years, “Daylight,” last October. She and her band had been on tour in Vancouver when everything shut down, and she returned initially to her Los Angeles area home, before coming back in mid-June, with her husband and two-year old son Sagan, to her family’s home in Vermont.

The new album is a watershed moment for her career, not least because it comes after a period of inactivity, but also because it marks a new chapter in her life. In 2017, after a long separation, she had divorced Matt Burr, who’d she’d been with almost from the time they’d both founded The Nocturnals in 2002, while both were attending St. Lawrence University. Potter had left her longtime band in 2015, shortly after drummer Burr had departed, and her 2015 album “Midnight” had a contemporary pop flavor that marked a clear dividing line from the Nocturnals’ rockin’ Americana sound.

Potter had suffered a miscarriage several years ago, and that, combined with her leaving the Nocturnals, and things falling apart with Burr, resulted in a time of personal re-assessment.

Potter met and fell in love with producer Eric Valentine, who produced the new album, and by the end of 2017 they were married. While it can be facile to just call the new work ‘the divorce album,” that doesn’t convey its depth or emotional resonance. Much like John Hiatt’s landmark 1988 “Bring the Family” album, “Daylight” is a stunning document of an artist coming to terms with her past, casting off emotional baggage that held her back, and finding redemption in a new love, a new purpose, and a new passion for life.

“I like to face life, and take it way into the deepest part of the woods,” Potter said of the “Daylight” album. “From moving four times in one year, I had to know it was all for the right reasons, that these things that had crept into my life, made the life I have now possible. For the sake of my own sanity, I had to be very clear on those choices, that they were right. Which I might not have been when they were happening, because it was totally crazy.”

Is it easy to now sing those songs, and re-visit those emotions on stage?

“I’ll be looking out at the people, anything to take my mind off what is going on,” Potter said with a soft laugh. “I think we all have a new perspective now, the way we see things pre-COVID and post-COVID is quite different. But these songs and feelings still resonate. The ‘Daylight’ songs can be taking on completely new meanings. When it does get emotional, I check myself. The trick is to sing pretty when I feel ugly. I’ll picture Mick Jagger dancing on stage, or maybe picture a rocket ship taking off — I’ll try and think of something completely opposite.

“Singing is how I process my emotions, store it, and propel myself forward,” Potter added. “I try to be as honest (songwriting) as I possibly can. And one day it will all mean something different. But right now, I’m much more at peace.”

The intensity of the “Daylight” album is matched by its musical range, as Potter weaves among all the classic roots of rock ‘n’ roll, and soul. “Back to Me” might be the most brilliant song, classic rhythm and blues in the Memphis style, and “Desire” also works that Stax-Volt gritty soul sound to terrific effect.

“Eric loves Willie Mitchell, who produced all those great records for Al Green and Ann Peebles,” Potter explained. “That’s the sound he wanted for ‘Back To Me,’ and he got it. I could tell right away how that track was the coolest. When Eric is looking for a sound he likes, he chases it down to make it sound just the way he wants, and it was a fun thing to be singing that song with that band.”

“Shout It Out” might be the most riveting tune, a raw chronicle of a broken relationship, but that kind of catharsis leads to the other side too, such as the joyful “Every Heartbeat,” inspired by Sagan’s birth, and the torch song “Repossession,” which evokes Patsy Cline’s best with its classic country vibe.

“I love Patsy Cline and Carl Perkins,” said Potter. “For my birthday, Eric took me on a drive through the Southwest, and we just tuned into AM radio and listened to country music the whole way, so that’s where that song got its sound.”

As society slowly gets back towards normal, outdoor shows at places like drive-ins have become popular, with proper social distancing. Potter was eager to get back out on stage, but she’ll be doing it in her own bubble. With just a pickup truck towing a RV-trailer, which she and Valentine and Sagan will be living in, the emphasis will be on everyone staying safe and having a good time.

“In these days, who you are a fan of really matters,” said Potter. “We appreciate that, and if someone left one of our shows and got sick, I’d be devastated. You can’t control what other people do, but I would like to think I’m not someone who’d encourage people to rub against one another. While I’m on this tour, my whole crew is just four people, and we’ll be incredibly locked down. We will literally eat and sleep in the same small space in our bubble. But hopefully we’ll be putting positive energy into the universe with our music. Playing solo is what I did first and foremost. There will be rock ‘n’ roll elements, but stripped down, with no set list, just me freewheeling it.”

During the lockdown, Potter has been doing weekly “Monday Night Twilight” livestreams, showing a more intimate, at home version of herself than fans might expect. There was even one theme night devoted to Star Trek, from the admitted “space nerd.” Potter has used those online shows to delve into all aspects of her career, and also do intriguing covers.

But one of her own tunes from those shows seemed especially poignant, as “Big White Gate” is an old Nocturnals tune depicting an old blues singer’s arrival in heaven, and her look back on her life. If it was a neat character sketch when first written, Potter, at 37 now, has lived through her own travails and come out the other side, and so the song takes on a personal tinge.

“Yes, I was acting, playing a character when I wrote that song,” Potter said. “Now it seems very real. Especially in the sense that I lost people, some who guided my career are suddenly not here. I can’t help but think about them and myself, and what we’ve been through. Now I’m twenty years closer to being that woman, so the song means more.”

And Potter sees that link to Hiatt’s classic album of renewal.

“I love John Hiatt. I think the choices he made, the changes in his life back then, brought a clarity, and with that clarity comes a new creativity.”