Last year might have been a crap-on-burnt-toast one for most of us, but it couldn’t have gone better for Grace Potter & the Nocturnals. The buzz on Potter’s Black Crowes-backing-Bonnie Raitt mash-up of Classic Rock, Soul and Blues has been building since the release of Potter and the Nocturnals’ 2007 sophomore breakthrough, This is Somewhere (real fans were hip to the band’s obvious charms from their largely unheralded debut, 2005’s Nothing But the Water; Potter released a solo album, Original Soul, in 2004). The Nocturnals’ songs were showing up on episodes of televisions biggest hits, including Grey’s Anatomy and Brothers & Sisters, and its tour stops were drawing huge crowds and rave reviews. But while the Burlington, Vt., outfit was clearly hitting on all cylinders with its eponymous fourth album in 2010, its road to success as one of the top albums of the year was not without a few potholes.
Things were looking great when Potter hit the studio in 2009 with producer/alchemist T Bone Burnett for what was initially described as a solo project, but the sessions for the tentatively titled Medicine were ultimately shelved. Just prior to this, Potter’s longtime bassist Bryan Dondero left the quartet. The band’s fortunes took a turn for the better with the arrival of former Ryan Adams bassist Catherine Popper and rhythm guitarist Benny Yurco, transforming the Nocturnals into a show-stopping quintet.
It was this lineup that took to the studio with Mark Batson to create the astonishing Rock/Soul/Reggae diversity of their self-titled fourth album, released last June to fairly unanimous acclaim on its way to figuring into a good many best-of-2010 lists.
How big are the Nocturnals at this point? A Vermont chocolatier has created Grace Under Fire, a dark chocolate bar with pistachios, red pepper and cinnamon. Sweet and hot, just like its namesake.
This article appears in Jan 5-11, 2011.