Grace Potter and the Nocturnals Interview
During the recent insanity of Voodoo Fest in New Orleans, our very own Noel Nocciolo sat down with Grace Potter and the Nocturnals front woman, uh, Grace Potter, to talk ice cream, musical influences and the best underwear to sport onstage. If you’re not already a fan, you’ve probably heard Potter’s music playing during some of TVs biggest shows (Kyle XY, Grey’s Anatomy, One Tree Hill). Now get to know the singer a little bit better. Photos by Rory O’Neil.
Noel: My first question is….what is the Grace Potter geek-out?
Grace: OK, this is going to be REALLY LAME, but my favorite thing to watch, even when I’m on the tour bus, is the six-part miniseries of Pride and Prejudice, with Colin Firth, and Jennifer Ehle. I was in Spain when I was fifteen, and these girls that I met over there, it was the only English-speaking movie they had, you know how they always overdub everything. So I watched. It’s a total of six hours, I watched it over and over, it was like my little comfort over in Spain. I was just at a record store, and they had the whole six-part miniseries for, like, four bucks. I was like, fuck yeah! So I took it, and I’ve been watching it. Whenever the guys walk by my bunk and see me watching it, they’re always like, laaaaame.
N: Nerd! I love it! Since you’re from Vermont, I have to ask your favorite Ben and Jerry’s flavor?
G: I would have to say definitely coffee heath bar crunch.
N: Rad. That’s top five for me.
G: It’s the crunchiness. I mean, I also like my cookie dough. This is going to sound like the worst thing ever, but I don’t really like ice cream all that much.
N: OK….
G: I’m not really an ice cream person, I’m more of a cheese person. I don’t know if you noticed, but our tour bus has a big block of Cabot cheddar cheese on it. We have a sponsorship from them, because that’s how much we love them.
N: Right, and you’re from Vermont, so are they.
G: Their cheddar cheese is the best. And it actually was voted, in Wisconsin, as the world’s best cheddar.
N: Wow. Have you toured in Holland? Have you tried real Gouda?
G: (clearly affecting an amalgamate of a European accent) No, we haven’t but the next time we goes to Europe we tries it. We were just in Switzerland.
N: Well, there’s Gruyere.
G: Yeah, Gruyere is a really great cheese.
N: Besides cheese, what gets you out of bed in the morning?
G: I always have to pee. Or, my tits are hanging out. Seriously, I sleep naked.
N: Even on the bus?
G: Yes. And this morning, I was baring it all. And my curtain was a little bit open, and there were people walking by. You know, you wake up, you freak out, and I definitely showed my boobs to at least four people this morning. Usually when I get out of bed in the morning, it’s very great. It’s always very late, when I’m home, its because of my dog, she gets up on the bed.
N: What do you have?
G: She’s a little Habanese. She’s not that little, though, she’s like thirty pounds. They’re supposed to be these little twelve pound lap dog, but I think the breeder lied to me, and she’s a little poodle/terrier thing. She’s awesome. But yeah, when I’m on the bus, I get out of bed because of some sort of overexposure of some sort.
N: What is one of your more embarrassing moments?
G: Oh MAN there are so many, and they often involve me showing my private bits. Onstage, I fell over. I fell over a monitor at the Newport Folk Festival in front of, like, eight thousand people. I was backing up to leave the stage, and I had a little skirt on and underwear, but it wasn’t very big underwear. Like, not full-on bloomage.
N: You were wearing a thong?
G: Yeah, it was a thong, and I was, like, splayed out for the world to see, which was fine, but I have taken to wearing bloomers.
N: I can understand.
G: I’m now trying to avoid those moments. I learned my lesson in front of eight thousand people.
N: One serious question: Rory was born and raised in New Orleans, and picked up on this a bit more than I did. Is there anyone that you look up to from New Orleans, musically? We’ve been joking that you sound like a black girl trapped in a white girl’s body.
G: I am! There’s a million, Marva Wright.
N: She’s here. Does she play today or tomorrow? I’ll check.
G: I mean, Dr. John is one of my all-time greatest influences ever. I mean, the way he plays the piano is what I aspire to do, or at least be capable of, which I’m not, by the way. He really blows my mind. Another musician that I’ve loved for awhile is Shannon McNally, she’s a wonderful songwriter, I’ve known her for years, and we’ve played together quite a bit. Jon Cleary, who plays with Bonnie Raitt, he’s the piano player for Bonnie Raitt, he actually has gotten really close to my sister. Whenever I’d get to come and visit, I’d spend time.
N: You’re able to come to New Orleans quite a bit?
G: Yeah, I mean my sister left after Hurricane Katrina, because she lived on the bywater, she got hit pretty hard. She’s a glassblower, and the glassblowing company she was working for, I think the building collapsed, which was terrible. She was unable to come back, which sucks, because she was my best excuse to come down here. Also, Ivan Neville and all the guys from Dumpstaphunk, whom we’ve played with so many times, I absolutely love the way that they have kind of brought New Orleans wherever they go, since most of them don’t live here anymore, which is too bad. But yeah, I know, and have known a lot of great New Orleans musicians. George Porter has given us some really crucial advice in our times of despair. There’s so many musicians from down here; there’s an undeniable influence that you can hear in a lot of bands’ music, whether they admit it or not, New Orleans is a part of most rock and roll bands in some way or another.
N: It’s good to hear you say.
G: It’s true!
