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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (July 6, 2012)
JULY 6, 2012 •s BBS«?;:. V j ■ .?» «OR The Nocturnals’ frontwoman talks about finding her own place in music BY SUE ZALOKAR watching movies and cartoons as a little kid. My parents just had videos and so I watched movies. ast year, a fresh face hit the country music There was a rule in our house that we couldn’t just scene when Grace Potter recorded, and later watch TV, we had to do something. So my sister performed “You and Tequila” with Kenny would paint, my brother would dabble in some kind Chesney at the VH1 Divas Support the Troops of crayon situation and I would sit at the piano and concert. It was a tipping point for Grace Potter and play along to the movies. I realized very early on the Nocturnals, a band that had its own successes, that I had an ear for catching whatever was but nothing like the tsunami of interest that happening in the sonic landscape and recreating it followed the show - fans crashed the band’s in my own way. website in its wake. For a few days last summer, their self-titled album even nudged out The Beatles S.Z.: You grew up in rural Vermont on, as I have as the top selling artists on iTunes. heard you call it, the Shire. Can you tell me a bit Viewers who made it through online quickly about Potterville? learned that Potter is far from a country singer. She and her band are mercurial performers, having G.P.: My parents built it when they were crazy made a name for themselves with raucous’ lively, hippies dropping acid in the early '70s and they were reading “Lord of the Rings.” My dad had this rock ‘n’roll performances. Last week, this dynamic frontwoman, multi vision of building a house that kind of reflected a lot of the storyline of the book. It’s part Shire, part instrumentalist, songwriter and producer celebrated her 30th birthday on stage surrounded Rivendell. It’s a beautiful place and as it grew, as the family grew and my parents businesses grew, by her favorite people, a marching band, and a they just kept building little buildings. They just margarita in hand. This spring, the band released sort of sprouted up like mushrooms. It turned into its fourth album, “The Lion The Beast The Beat.” a little bit of a compound. It also was a place that She took time out from her tour, which includes a the whole band moved back to and we all slept and show July 19 at the Oregon Zoo to talk about her ate and played music together for the first couple music, sex appeal and the power of a good meal. of years as we were coming up as a new rock ‘n’roll Sue Zalokar: How did you and music find one band. another? Grace Potter: I fell in love with music by S.Z.: Tell me the creation story of the Nocturnals. S T A F F W R IT E R L Inside G.P.: I didn’t want to go to college, but my grandmother made me. I took a gap year between high school and college where I dabbled in music a little bit and played some gigs. But it reached a critical mass where my grandma just sort of put her foot down. So I went to the same college that my parents, my uncles, my aunts all went to: St. Lawrence University up in Northern New York. I realised very early ©a H a t 1 Within the first week of had an ear lo r e a tch la f whatever being there, of course, I pulled out my piano and was ha p p e a la f la the sarnie started playing in the landscape and recreating It In local coffee house. There was a place called the f t t y OWB way® Java Barn where all of the music-oriented and arts- oriented kids would hang out. It was really just sort of an idyllic, utopian society. Matt Burr, who played in a bunch of different bands on campus and was a senior in college, saw me play. I was kind of wheeling out cover songs and occasionally sliding in my own original music. I had written this song called “Apologies” and he came up to me and said, you need to be in a band. See POTTER, page 5 , ; City's alcohol Designated The gravity of area goes fla t drivers abuse with OLCC A n evening on the beat with Portland's pick-up crew for overfmbibers The fin a l chapter in our series on one fa m ily’s journey through domestic violence State agency rules against city’s planned ban Page 3 Page 4 Page 8
