Though a Vermont native now living in Los Angeles, Grace Potter has a Southern soul. The Grammy-nominated artist and vocal juggernaut swears that “in a previous life, I must have been some kind of Southern lady.” Dixieland jazz was an early musical influence, thanks to her great uncle, a big-band trombonist who played alongside Louis Armstrong in New Orleans. Hints of gospel and the blues resonate in her stirring delivery (Mavis Staples is Potter’s son’s godmother). “I’ve always felt deeply entrenched in the South, at least musically and spiritually,” she says. “I mean, they have all the good churches, all the good gardens, and all those sprawling, beautiful tree-lined roads with so much moss growing off the trees that it seems impossible.”
Not much has seemed impossible for this wildly versatile singer-songwriter whose five solo albums—plus four with Grace Potter and the Nocturnals—romp across folk, blues, roots, and hard rock genres, and who’s shared billings with the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Kenny Chesney, and the Allman Brothers, among others. Except one thing: For seventeen years, a career-changing album she recorded in 2008 with T Bone Burnett, the legendary Grammy-winning producer behind Raising Sand (Allison Kraus and Robert Plant) and soundtracks for O Brother Where Art Thou, Walk the Line and The Big Lebowski, has languished in a vault. “My label decided to shelve it,” says Potter, forty-one. That changes on May 30, when Hollywood Records will finally release the mesmerizing Medicine.
Fresh off an appearance at the Kentucky Derby, where Potter galloped through a full-tilt National Anthem in two minutes and eight seconds (six seconds longer than Sovereignty’s winning time), she talked with Garden & Gun about what it means to bring her new, old album into the world.
You were twenty-five when you went into the studio with T Bone Burnett—a still-emerging artist paired with this giant of the industry. How did that come about?
I chased him down. I was in my mid-twenties and was ready to do my own thing and explore other realms. So I went in pursuit of someone who could help me helm a vision-quest album without so many hands involved in the mix. And how to do that? I know! I’ll work with one of the most famous producers in the world. Crazy, right?
Once he signed on, what was the dynamic like? Were you intimidated?
I could have been, yeah, if the musicians had been scarier, but there was so much levity in the room. The second I walked in the studio, I felt invited into the gang. No ladder climbing, nobody creating a judgmental atmosphere. That’s what I’d been seeking because the two records I’d made before that had felt like a pressure cooker. This felt like a release valve.
We worked together on the song selection. I played T Bone some demos, then played him a couple of ideas just live in the room. And he was like, “what you’re coming up with right there, you’re conjuring spirits and dreams that I think are worth mining.” So he connected me with David Poe and I continued writing for about a month and did some additional co-writes with Mark Batson. We made sure the lyrics stood on their own and encompassed this feeling, this moodiness, and this cinematic universe that we were creating. T Bone didn’t hem and haw or nitpick. It was just beautiful editorial masterwork.
After the album was shelved, you went on to record several of those songs on your 2010 eponymous album, including “Paris (Ooh La La)” and other fan favorites, minus T Bone’s signature tremolo. Was he whispering in your ear as you revisited those tunes?
I mean, T Bone’s been on my shoulder ever since that project—it was the most influential recording experience I had had up until that point. He showed me that producing records need not feel like a dental exam. I couldn’t make peace with [being in the studio] until I worked with T Bone, and I’ve carried that peace into every other project since. I learned that the lightning-in-a-bottle sensation comes from trusting your instincts, from opening up your valves and moving your juices, then you start to connect to a creative force that’s so much bigger than you.
Now with Medicine out in the world and these different versions existing side by side, how will you perform them live?
The way I always have, which is that I never perform songs the same way twice. Music is an outlet for acknowledging that the universe is a very mysterious place. I make up new lyrics, new verses, I change where the chorus goes. My concert fans understand that the ra-ra-sis-boom-bah comes from your effervescence and your heart, not from singing the right lyrics perfectly.
What does it mean to you artistically to finally release this album?
Putting out this record isn’t about advancing my career or changing people’s perception of my music. I wanted to right a wrong. I genuinely felt my fans who love these songs deserve to hear them in this incredible iteration. T Bone recognized that I’ve got this undeniable core energy and he wanted to capture that. He wanted to subvert my image, my brand, my voice by creating space around me, knowing that the tiger is going to bust out of my cage, that I’m going to have this moment where I can’t contain it anymore.
When I hear this album, I almost don’t recognize my voice. It’s more mysterious; it makes me want to lean into the sound in a very different way from my other records that really smash you over the head and make a very clear statement. Releasing this now feels like an important bookmark that fell out and we picked it up off the floor and put it back in, right in the right place.
Speaking of being uncontained, you were like a thoroughbred at the Derby, your voice just bringing down Churchill Downs. Did you have fun?
It was my first time at the Derby and it was wild. I had no idea. Me in a fascinator felt like cultural appropriation, though I’m pretty good at being a chameleon—people always assume I’m Southern. But here I was like a cat in a Roman bathhouse. And I loved it. I loved this tuning fork of humans who’ve been participating in the Derby for their whole lifetimes—all these traditions and families, the fathers and sons dressing in matching gold lamé suits that Granny made. I loved the effort and energy that went into that originality. That, plus this very animalistic journey of the horse race gave the sense that we were in it simply to experience wonder and awe. It felt like Burning Man, like this village of cosmic creatives, this beautiful, solid-gold core culture that everybody can agree upon.
