Grace Potter is reflective when she discusses the past five years of her personal and professional life, and you don’t have to be psychic to discern the emotional roller coaster she’s ridden in that span. Her 2015 solo album was titled Midnight, and her latest album is diametrically dubbed Daylight.
“I wasn’t trying to be cute; it really is how it feels,” Potter says. “Midnight is a representation of deep, dark times. It was pitch black. I was definitely in a fog of creative and personal turmoil that led to the clarity that Daylight invited in. I really love Midnight and Daylight for embodying in music the exact experiences I was going through, so I have those markers in time for the rest of my life. I’m really grateful for that.”
Rollercoaster doesn’t begin to describe Potter’s last half-decade. Her longtime band, the Nocturnals, disintegrated during the recording of Midnight, leading to the conclusion that she was actually creating a solo album. Her husband and longtime drummer Matt Burr had left the band, signaling trouble in their relationship (which she says actually predated their 2013 marriage). As she was knee deep in planning Midnight‘s support tour, Potter also confronted subconscious feelings for her Midnight producer and co-writer, Eric Valentine.
“There was a recognition of a very new sensation: ‘Am I possibly in love with my record producer? Because that’s weird,’ ” Potter says. “We finished Midnight and were moving into the ‘OK, we’re going on tour, here’s the first few dates with The Rolling Stones,’ and where my life would normally fill up and get really exciting, it started to feel incredibly empty. I was like, ‘I miss that guy a whole lot. I might need to take a step back and ask myself what’s going on there.’ I imagine a lot of people were asking the same thing, because I was changing rapidly and getting more honest and tuning in more to what I needed.”
Potter and Burr had been separated and finally divorced in 2017, and she and Valentine moved in together. Potter also really wanted a break from music, which she was prepared to make permanent to concentrate on her life and well-being; she instructed her managers to tell inquiring labels that she was done. Then her rollercoaster spiked steeply upwards with the realization she was pregnant with her son Sagan, a monumental event that made her rethink walking away from her craft.
“I started thinking about my future and what kind of life I wanted to offer my child and where my heart really lies,” Potter says. “It would be horrible to remove the joy of music entirely from his life, regardless of how I might feel or how many complicated feelings I have about the industry. I didn’t want to act out of fear anymore. Fear causes people to do what they think is playing it safe, but safe is an incredibly empty space. I enjoy the creative process of taking life by the balls, so that’s what I did.”
Potter had started playing music again, and Valentine documented these impromptu sessions on his phone but largely avoided commenting on the work or its ultimate goal. Although she was laying the foundation for Daylight’s songs, she wasn’t following her standard writing format so she was blithely unaware that anything concrete would come from her endeavors.
“I didn’t have an approach to this album because I didn’t think it was an album,” says Potter. “In making Midnight, deciding it was a solo album and emancipating myself musically and creatively, there was a real sense of loss and hurt. I lost my friends, I ended up on the wrong end of a lot of anger and the legal stuff. It made me feel like I’d lost the innocent joy of music, so I had no idea I was constructing Daylight. My creative brain goes down a lot of rabbit holes when I’m writing with the intention of releasing. I think Eric thought it would be a major mistake to encourage or do anything to put pressure on where this music was going to go. He was just happy I was playing, but it needed to be from a place of joy, where I was inviting music back in, not because I had to but because I wanted to.”
Eventually, Potter sent her management some demos that they shared with labels that had been calling during her “retirement,” and she finally signed with Concord Music for the release of Daylight. One of the album’s most distinctive features is Potter’s broad stylistic spectrum, although it’s hardly a surprise, given her diverse catalog with the Nocturnals and her collaborations with everyone from Kenny Chesney to The Flaming Lips.
“I’m definitely trying to confuse my audience, 100 percent,” says Potter. “Even artists that stick to one formula have an instinct to take it somewhere else. Unfortunately, it’s often met with disgust, confusion and alienation. Weezer is a good example; (some of) their fans hate everything that’s happened since ‘The Blue Album.’ I feel lucky that I’ve had patience from my fans and I think people approach me with a bit of trepidation and curiosity as to where I’m going next. That’s fun for me and the fans because it’s a conversation and not just a stamp I put out that looks the same every time.
It’s already been established that Potter would be performing select Nocturnals songs on her Daylight tour, and she’s adamant that it’s the right thing to do, since she’s interpreting them from a new viewpoint.
“When you play those songs from this perspective, there’s this common understanding like, ‘Wow, this is a totally reframed experience,’ ” says Potter. “I am Grace Potter that wrote the songs for the Nocturnals and I’m still Grace Potter singing and writing new songs. I’m still that person, and I’m processing life and my emotions the same way I did then, I just have a different perspective.
“You know, they say, ‘The truth isn’t what you’re looking at, it’s where you’re looking from.’ If those songs resonate for people — and they certainly resonate for me — then absolutely they’re going to get played and absolutely I want to pay tribute to the years and songs that formed me into the artist I am and invite in whatever new perspectives might come from that, for me and for the audience.”
Grace Potter performs at the Taft Theatre on Wednesday, Jan. 22. Tickets/more show info: tafttheatre.org.
This article appears in Jan 8-21, 2020.
