Grace Potter Teams Up w/T Bone Burnett For Album
By Team JamBase May 12, 2009 • 10:12 am PDT
LEGENDARY PRODUCER T BONE BURNETT ON BAND’S THIRD ALBUM
 |
“T Bone’s a legend but also a genuinely effervescent personality, which is what I look for in anybody, especially a producer,” says Grace, who explains that Burnett’s name has been at the top of the band’s wish list since it formed in 2002. “We’ve been putting out feelers for a while,” she says. “In the end, it was Bob Cavallo [Chairman of the Disney Music Group] who called him and said, ‘T Bone, you owe me 25 bucks.’ He was referring to a golf match they’d had like 20 years ago. How funny is that?” Soon thereafter, Burnett, Cavallo and Potter got together for breakfast. “They both have such spectacular histories, and for the first 45 minutes they just traded stories. I thought it would just be a ‘getting to know you’ meeting, but at the end, T Bone said, ‘Let’s go make a record.'”
Soon thereafter, the new collaborators started going through the 50 songs Grace and The Nocturnals had written in the last two years, which range from “feel-good to salty Americana to swaggering soul with a backbeat,” as she puts it. “T Bone put the project in cinematic terms,” says Grace. “He told me, ‘You and your voice and your songs are the movie; I’m just gonna score the movie.’ Since then we’ve been riffing back and forth: I’ll shoot a song demo to him on MP3, and he’ll get me notes back within a few hours. He has a really interesting sense of the big picture, but has an acute sense of subtle detail. It’s such a huge relief to find a producer of T Bone’s caliber we can totally put our trust in, not just because of the records he’s made, but because of the person he is. Now it’s happening, and we’re excited and ready!”
Grace Potter and The Nocturnals have generated glowing reviews across the board. David Fricke of Rolling Stone proclaimed, “Potter is poised for bigger things…” USA Today raved, “Nocturnals play the daylights out of rock.” New York Times critic Stephen Holden said of their live show, “The Sound of the ’70s From a Singer in her 20s, …a sense of familiarity, of a time-honored ritual expertly and reverently re-enacted, is one of the attractions of this Vermont quartet.”
In between recording and mixing the new album, Grace Potter and The Nocturnals will be on the road playing a handful of dates previewing songs from their upcoming album.
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals Tour Dates
05/16/09 Sat Doheny Blues Festival Dana Point, CA
05/28/09 Thu The 8X10 Baltimore, MD
05/29/09 Fri Mr. Small’s Theatre Pittsburgh, PA
05/30/09 Sat The Dame Lexington, KY
06/04/09 Thu BamaJam Enterprise, AL
06/05/09 Fri Wanee Festival Live Oak, FL
06/06/09 Sat Live Wire Music Hall Savannah, GA
06/08/09 Mon The Windjammer Isle of Palms, SC
06/09/09 Tue Outer Banks Brewing Station Kill Devil Hills, NC
06/11/09 Thu Sundown In The City Festival Knoxville, TN
06/12/09 Fri Bonnaroo Music Festival Manchester, TN
06/14/09 Sun Bonnaroo Music Festival Manchester, TN
06/20/09 Sat Southern Shore Music Festival Millville, NJ
06/21/09 Sun Croton Point Park Croton On Hudson, NY
06/25/09 Thu Alive At Five Concert Series Albany, NY
06/27/09 Sat Harry E. Kelley Park Fort Smith, AR
06/28/09 Sun Neumeier’s Rib Room Fort Smith, AR
07/03/09 Fri Red, White, and Blues Telluride, CO
07/05/09 Sun Rothbury Music Festival Rothbury, MI
07/12/09 Sun Burlington Waterfront (Perkins Pier) Burlington, VT
07/17/09 Fri Grand Targhee Alta, WY
07/18/09 Sat Mountain Town Stages Park City, UT
07/24/09 Fri Floyd Fest Floyd, VA
07/26/09 Sun Gathering of the Vibes Bridgeport, CT
08/07/09 Fri Prospect Park Bandshell Brooklyn, NY
09/05/09 Sat Project 30-90 New Orleans, LA
