GPN TO PLAY SXSW MARCH 18 AT ANTONE’S
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, the emerging Vermont-based band’s third album for Hollywood Records, will be released on June 8. Produced by Mark Batson (Dr. Dre, Eminem, Jay-Z, Dave Matthews Band), this captivating new recording showcases the Vermont-based band’s new five-piece configuration, in which singer and Hammond B3 player Potter, lead guitarist Scott Tournet and drummer Matt Burr are joined by bassist Catherine Popper (Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, Hem) and rhythm guitarist Benny Yurco, “This record is the first time it’s really been us — the first time we’ve all found each other and ourselves,” says Potter. Adds Burr, “Every record you make, you always say, ‘This is the one.’ But with this lineup we’ve cracked the code.” The track listing for the 13-track disc is as follows:
Track listing for Grace Potter and the Nocturnals:
1. “Paris”
2. “Oasis”
3. “Medicine”
4. “Goodbye Kiss”
5. “Tiny Light”
6. “Colors”
7. “Only Love”
8. “Money”
9. “One Short Night”
10. “Low Road”
11. “That Phone”
12. “Hot Summer Night”
13. “Things I Never Needed”
The first single off the album is the musically powerful and thematically resonant “Tiny Light,” one of six Potter-Batson co-writes. During its course, the track builds from a simmer to a boil and then somehow hits an even more scorching level of intensity during an extended instrumental outro.
“It’s a song about hope during the hard times we’ve been going through,” Grace explains. “One line is ‘What will come of all our pride / This house of stone has crumbled from the inside.’ It has a dramatic minor-key melody, but it opens up into a chorus that takes you to this really soaring place. As much as I loved it when we wrote it, I resisted recording it at first. But in the end I couldn’t pass it up. The chorus goes, ‘I see a tiny light / Like a flashbulb sparkle in the night / I see a tiny light / Telling everyone to hold on tight.’ It makes you wonder; it makes you look in the mirror — and I love songs like that.”
According to Potter, the producer employed one of his signature radical moves to get the optimum take: “Normally, a band and producer would fuss and poke and prod for days on a song like this, but once we got the arrangement right, Batson just brought in a belly dancer with a 15-foot python snake to perform in the studio. That seemed to light a fire under everyone's asses and we nailed it on the spot.”
The video for “Tiny Light” is being shot in L.A. this month, with Paul Minor (Muse, The Editors, Queens of The Stone Age) directing.
Additionally, GPN’s electrifying take of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" appears on the Buena Vista Records release Almost Alice, a companion release to Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, hitting March 2, three days before the film’s release.
The band will showcase its new lineup and songs at SXSW, where they’ll play Antone’s March 18 as part of the Americana Music Association showcase. Potter will also perform on a string of Lilith Fair dates this summer. More details as they emerge.
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals marks a quantum leap for the band, as Batson vividly captures a group of exceptional young players in the very act of becoming themselves. From the languorous “Oasis” to the deep-grooved, serrated rockers like “Medicine,” “Paris” and “Only Love,” the new model Grace Potter and the Nocturnals positively swagger. Not only that, but the hooks are humongous, from Potter’s voice as she belts, teases and soars to Tournet’s uncoiling guitar riffs, positively lethal in their aggressiveness. Potter and her cohorts are equally captivating at the other end of the dynamic and thematic spectrum, on songs like the zeitgeist-capturing widescreen ballad “Colors.”
Tour Dates for GPN are as follows:
March 11 North Adams, MA Mass MoCa
March 12 Ridgefield, CT Ridgefield Playhouse
March 13 Sugarloaf, ME Sugarloaf Ski Resort
March 18 Austin, TX Antone’s – SXSW
March 21 Aspen, CO Snowmass Mountain
March 27 Jackson Hole, WY Jackson Hole Mountain Resort
April 25 Phoenix, AZ McDowell Mountain Music Festival
May 14 Richmond, VA Browns Island
More dates to be announced.
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Grace Potter and the Nocturnals just debuted their new video for "White Rabbit" (off the Almost Alice Soundtrack) this morning. You can view it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
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