Grace Potter: The Wild Heart Of The Music Scene
Grace Potter gets candid about cinematic obsessions, unrelenting creativity & her perfect day
Known for her powerhouse vocals, genre-defying sound, and unapologetic authenticity, Grace Potter has carved a singular path through the music world. Hook & Barrel caught up with the super-friendly superstar right before her electrifying set at Elevation Beaver Creek.
Hook & Barrel: What's your favorite country music song of all time?
Grace Potter: “That's How I Got to Memphis” by Tom T. Hall. If you love somebody enough, you'll follow wherever they go. That's the one that gets me—like bone chilling.
H&B: What is it about that song that gets you?
GP: As the verses go on, it develops into a thing where you realize that she's probably dead and that he's looking for someone he's never going to find. And, I mean— goosebumps. It’s one of those songs. I also feel like I want someone to follow me to Memphis and find me. Preferably, I’m not dead. Oh, and yeah, it's also a 1960s recording, so that also does it for me.
H&B: If you could duet with any country artist, who would it be?
GP: Chris Stapleton.
H&B: Is it going to happen?
GP: Well, I mean, I toured with him all summer, and he didn't ask me, so I'm just kind of throwing it out to the universe. Chris! But, you know, his wife, Morgan, does such an incredible job with the harmonies that he doesn't really need to be doing that. But also, Kenny (Chesney) and I will probably have a duet album that'll be coming out someday, because we've been working on it since the day we met.
H&B: If you had to go outside the genre of country music, who would you want to collaborate with?
GP: First of all, there's no ‘had to’ about it. I don't live in any genre. I am like a Quentin Tarantino movie. I'm out there. I don't really know how I even got into country music, like other than Kenny, except that I always really resonated with bands that seemed to sort of run around the edges of country—the Flying Burrito Brothers and Emmylou Harris and Townes Van Zandt, Steve Earle. There's a lot there that I connected with—Lucinda Williams, obviously Gillian Welch, and David Rawlings. There’s always been that inspiration, but it's not something I was seeking out. But, to answer the original question… I think gangster rap, probably. Yeah. I've always wanted it.
H&B: You’re a self-proclaimed outdoorsy kind of gal. What do you like to do out there?
GP: I love gardening. You should check out my gardening video. I have these how-to videos that I do that are completely unhelpful. Like there's nothing about them that's going to teach you how to do anything. But the gardening one is— it'll give you a little sense of how much joy I take from patience, because I usually don't have a lot of patience. But a garden really doesn't care what you think.
I also just love a wild forest. We bought a 125-acre farm in my hometown in Vermont, and we are rewilding the field right now. So, in the same way that I love to procure and create spaces that feel groomed and well thought out, I also love the parts of the world where there are no trails and there are no rules, and there are no raised beds, and there are no borders between one thing and the other. And that's how I live life, and that's how I structure my whole music career—just… wild.
H&B: Do you ever do any hunting?
GP: I learned how to use a bow as a young kid. Archery is my favorite way of hunting. It's the way I feel I can most earn whatever I kill. Fishing is my second favorite.
H&B: What is the first concert you ever went to?
GP: Bonnie Raitt and Bruce Hornsby at Sugarbush ski area in my hometown in the Mad River Valley.
H&B: Was there a country scene up there at all?
GP: No. I mean, “Americana” was not a word that was used in the ’90s; no one really knew that word. Maybe “outlaw country” was a little bit there. But Bonnie, to me, was never a country singer. She was always a blues guitarist who could sing. And, for me, I get inspiration from Mavis Staples and Mahalia Jackson's gospel music! I felt like Bonnie was a sister-in-arms as far as wandering into a territory that a red-haired lady from New York City probably felt she needed to fight her way through. And as a young kid watching her on stage, I thought, well, she got here, didn't she? What's stopping me from doing the same thing?
H&B: When you’re on stage, what's your favorite part of performing?
GP: The audience. The non-verbal communication. You know, I've always said that language is hard for people. Language can get in the way of the truth. But music is the universal language. It cuts through all the bullshit and creates this borderless, boundaryless space where all of our hearts can kind of come together. And the confluence at a live concert, as opposed to maybe a recorded album, has always ticked all the boxes for me.
H&B: So, besides a gardener, if you weren't a musician, what would you be doing?
GP: I went to film school to become a filmmaker and left film school to pursue touring. Even my advisor at my college was like, “Look, you can make movies whenever you want. This is a moment. You're having a moment.” There were record company reps flying into Vermont to come see me and my little trio play at this tiny cafe in the middle of nowhere. And it felt like there was an urgency there, but there are regrets there, too. You know, I think the woulda, coulda, shoulda of my life would be not following my filmmaking passion all the way through the journeys I've been on, because there would have been some f*&%ing great movies in there, you know?
H&B: Artistically, what would you say your favorite film is?
GP: The first thing that popped into mind, because I already said Tarantino is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I think it's the most mature Tarantino iteration, but Pulp Fiction grabs at my punk-rock soul, and Jackie Brown grabs at my music supervisor's soul. The Delfonics placement in my experience of watching that movie and watching Pam Grier be Pam Grier, and all these other incredible actors in support of her, really got me. But No Country for Old Men is another favorite. The Shawshank Redemption is another deserted-island choice. I love The Departed. I love Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. And Barbarella!
H&B: What's your guilty pleasure?
GP: Right now, it's the show Kaos. I watched it all the way through, and now I'm watching it again. Jeff Goldblum is my guilty pleasure. He is an impossibly, impossibly wonderful person. Can't explain it. I've gone and seen him play—you know, he's a pianist. So, he goes and plays live, and he's… he's just such a nerd. I love nerds. Oh my.
H&B: What is a talent you have that people don't expect you to have?
GP: I can play—are you ready for this?—the bagpipes!
H&B: How’d you learn to do that?
GP: I took bagpipe lessons for four years. I'm from Vermont, so Canada is right there. The Quebecois tradition and the imprinting of culture from Quebec and Scotland was pretty real. So I took bagpipe lessons for years before traveling up to Cape Breton Island. And then it kind of waned when I found out that basically it's frowned upon for women to bagpipe. We won't get the gig, like, if there's a male bagpiper, they're going to always sign up the male bagpiper.
H&B: What made you want to even try bagpiping?
GP: The AC/DC song—which one is it? “It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll)”—that was it! And “Copperhead Road” by Steve Earle. Like, what the f&*% is a bagpipe doing in Copperhead Road and in an AC/DC song?! That's pure rock and roll adultery. Like that's the bagpipes cheating on bagpiping with rock and roll. And that's what I always thought would be an interesting component. It's very emotional to listen to, you know?
H&B: Describe your perfect day.
GP: My perfect day begins with a cold plunge in the river right beyond my house, through the field. My husband and I go in naked—obviously. Someday, when we have the sauna, it will already be hot, piping hot from a wood stove. Sauna, cold plunge. But since I don't have the sauna, I'll just do the cold plunge and then go straight to the garden, and then eat my breakfast from the garden. Then I sit under a pergola and listen to Brazilian nylon string guitar for about an hour. Next, I pick up my guitar and try to write a song, fail at it, and then start repaving the driveway in a red clay color that I've been dreaming of. But I'll just recap—I won't actually pull up the old pavement and redo it, but I'll plug up the cracks and start throwing some recap down. And then cocktails would start at 3:30, then hike to cool off because the woods is cooler than the hot sun. And my son would come home from school, and we would go fishing and then go home. And I like watching movies—I really wish my kid would like any of the movies I like. Still working on that one. But right now, the only common ground we have is Ghostbusters. So, Ghostbusters a little bit before dinner. Then we sit down to a real dinner. No TV, no phones, no nothing while we eat dinner. And then if he's been really good, he eats the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man’s worth of marshmallows by the fire outside while we finish watching it—because it's going to be projected onto the side of our barn.
And then bedtime. And then I [redacted because H&B is a family-friendly magazine!] until two in the morning.
H&B: And then you go to sleep, or is there more?
GP: I put [my husband] to bed at two. And then I keep working on my movie.
H&B: And you go out and do a little more repaving of the driveway around four?
GP: I can't even tell you how true that is.
Check out Grace Potter's performances below!