As she took a sip from her latte, the late-summer sun reflecting off the sunglasses that partially obscured her face, Grace Potter cracked a wry smile.
“I made an album that, to me, is very much a sort of ‘Thank you, world,'” the Vermont-born singer-songwriter said as she gazed toward the verdant trees surrounding us at Camp Meade in Middlesex. “But it’s easy to mistake ‘thank you’ for ‘fuck you’ — especially when you shout it from a speeding car.”
The car metaphor is no accident. The Waitsfield native is currently bicoastal, living with her husband, record producer Eric Valentine, and their child in Topanga, Calif., as well as spending time at a farm in Fayston that she recently purchased. Two summers ago, riding a wave of depression and anxiety stemming from a miscarriage and feeling trapped after a winter in Vermont, Potter flew back to Topanga. Then she reversed course and spent weeks driving east on the famed Route 66, writing much of the material that would make up her new album, Mother Road.
“I’m 40 now, which means I’ve spent over half of my life on the road,” Potter said. With a résumé that includes seven albums, multiple Grammy nominations, collaborations with everyone from country star Kenny Chesney to indie rock royalty the Flaming Lips and songs written for Disney, it’s easy to understand why Potter might want to take stock as she moves into a new phase of her career.
“It’s a really convenient age to stop believing in time,” she said, laughing. “But as humans, it’s natural we change as we learn.
“I’ve always had a partition between my politics and my songwriting, and that’s still there to some degree,” she continued. “But the best way I can describe these new songs is ‘unapologetic.’ It’s the first record I’ve made where I use bad language. Because, and I say this with love for all, I don’t give a fuck what people think about it anymore.”
Potter’s newfound rawness, particularly in relation to Mother Road, has, funnily enough, caused her own mother some concern. Peggy Potter has read things the singer has said in the press and expressed to her daughter that she worries she is “not OK.”
“I used to be so scared to talk about politics, cities and infrastructures, arts programming, state funding, lawsuits and divorces … basically, all the things that I’ve now been through or am dealing with in my life,” Grace Potter said. “So I keep telling her that, actually, I’m more than OK because I’m being honest.”
Titling her record after a line in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Potter uses the narrative of Mother Road to make it clear she’s driving to heal herself. When she sings the line “Wherever I’m headed / Mama, don’t let it be down” on the title track, it’s both a plea to the road to deliver her somewhere better and a rallying cry for the rest of the trip.
As she strove to document how her sense of adulthood was changing, Potter said, she ironically found herself connecting to her 9-year-old self, a kid who once ran away from home in the middle of the winter, wearing a bathing suit and sneakers, in search of better snacks.
“When you’re a girl and you’re just 9, you’re so daring,” Potter said. “Society hasn’t imposed fear and boundaries yet. That’s what I’m trying to get back to, a little. But that includes not having a fear of speaking the truth.”
For Potter, that drive has manifested itself in more ways than songwriting. She recently cohosted town meetings with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in White River Junction and South Burlington. The talks dealt with getting resources to Vermont’s artists, a subject near and dear to Potter’s heart.
“It’s a great reality check for me,” Potter said. “I’d get so worked up ahead of time, thinking about our little issue, and then I’d ask Bernie how he’s doing, and he’d reply, ‘I’m doing fine when the world isn’t burning down.’ So it’s important to keep context.”
Potter has firsthand experience of how difficult it is to fund the arts in Vermont. She launched the Grand Point North music festival in 2011 on the Burlington waterfront. The fest featured artists such as the Avett Brothers, Guster, Jackson Browne and Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats over the years, but it hasn’t been staged since 2019.
When asked if Grand Point North will return, Potter couldn’t hide a look of dismay, even behind her wide sunglasses.
“I fucking hope so,” she said. “The truth is, I can’t get the fest off the ground again by myself. And if I bring in outside investors and sponsors … you end up with people trying to figure out what they can take from the community, as opposed to what they can contribute.”
Though she hopes she’ll eventually find the right partners to launch the festival again, Potter doesn’t think she or Grand Point North should be held up as some sort of totem for Vermont musicians.
“I don’t have an interest in planting a flag and saying, ‘I am a Vermonter,'” Potter said. “I am a Vermonter, of course. But using that as some sort of badge of honor or identity just feels reductive to me at this point. And I know that’s what my mom is so afraid of me saying.”
She took a final sip of her latte and lowered her shades, giving me a knowing, almost mischievous look.
“Look, I’m not trying to offend anyone when I say that sometimes I don’t feel like I belong anywhere,” she said. “Vermont taught me that you have to maintain connectivity for art and for life. But it also taught me that sometimes you just have to say, ‘Fuck it. This is how I feel.'”
Mother Road drops on August 18 on all streaming services.
This article appears in Aug 16-22, 2023.
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