GRACE POTTER & THE NOCTURNALS

Casting aside comparisons and coming

Grace Potter & the Nocturnals had always worn their 1960s and ’70s influences on their sleeves, as their charismatic frontwoman drew comparisons to greats ranging from Bonnie Raitt to Janis Joplin. But with the release of their self-titled third album, Potter and company have truly come into their own. “This time around there’s more of an identity,” says Potter. “We’ve really turned the tables.”

The band earned such comparisons in the first place with its blazing live shows, which appealed particularly to the jam-band crowd. But Potter shakes off categorization. “People come up to us all the time and they ask, ‘What kind of music do you play?’” she says. “I just make things up. I tell them we’re Crash Test Dummies or we play Christian chamber pop. I’m so tired of this indie-versus-jam thing. It’s completely unimportant and completely beside the point. Music is music.”

On Grace Potter & the Nocturnals, new dimensions of maturity in songwriting and musicianship announce that Potter and her band, formed in Vermont, have arrived for real after eight years together. “I think there was a lot of fear over our musicianship in the studio before, so there was a lot of covering things up,” Potter admits. “But this time around it’s much more stripped-down and raw and to the point.” On tracks like “Things I Never Needed,” “Paris” and “Medicine,” the group’s experience as road warriors shows in ways only hinted at on previous studio efforts. “We grew slowly on purpose,” she says, “because we’re from a place where immediate success wasn’t considered success at all.”

Now Potter hopes the comparisons will finally cease. “When I first met Bonnie Raitt, I was about 17,” she recalls. “I went up to her with my CD and said, ‘Bonnie, I hope you listen to this. A lot of people say I sound like you.’ She said, ‘Thanks, but I probably will never listen to it.’ And it was perfect. She wasn’t trying to break my heart, she was just trying to teach me that this is a big world and there’s a lot of people out there trying to make it, and you’re never going to get anywhere telling somebody that you sound like somebody else.”

For Potter, it’s all about looking ahead now. “There’s a new rock ’n’ roll revolution going on,” she says, “and I want to be on that train and take it as far as I can take it.”

–Jeff Tamarkin

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