Grace Potter to Light Up The Egg on September 17th

ALBANY – Taking the stage at The Egg on September 17th is enigmatic performer Grace Potter. Blending her soulful voice with genres of blues, rock, and much more, Potter delivers one hell of a captivating show, time and time again. Currently, she is on tour to support her latest record, Mother Road. This show is part of the venue’s Guest Music Presentation Series.

In the summer of 2021, Potter embarked on a solo cross-country journey along Route 66, resulting in a transformative reconnection with her creative essence. Amidst crashing in roadside motels, she transcribed her dream-inspired song ideas onto postcards and motel notepads; a practice that continued through subsequent trips across the U.S. Guided by hand-drawn maps from Route 66 enthusiasts, she eventually ventured to Nashville for recording sessions that birthed her most uninhibited collection of songs yet — an amalgamation of raw memoir and fantastical fable, crafting an immersive original motion picture soundtrack to a pivotal moment in her life. This captivating odyssey within her psyche is inhabited by outlaws, hitchhikers, and wanderers, defying conventional album norms.

Following her GRAMMY-nominated 2019 release Daylight, Mother Road signals a dynamic new chapter in Grace Potter’s career, featuring ten tracks that seamlessly blend soul, blues, country, and rock-and-roll, brought to life by her collaboration with accomplished musicians including keyboardist Benmont Tench, guitarist Nick Bockrath, bassist Tim Deaux, pedal-steel guitarist Dan Kalisher, drummer Matt Musty, and multi-instrumentalist husband Eric Valentine. Produced by Valentine, known for his work with iconic bands like Queens of the Stone Age, Slash, and Weezer, the album was recorded at RCA’s Studio A. It underscores her journey of fearless self-discovery and builds upon her legacy of acclaimed albums (both solo and with The Nocturnals), notable stage appearances, and festival leadership.

“I didn’t have any real intention of making a record; I just thought I’d get into a room with some friends and mess around with these unfinished ideas I’d been gathering,” she says. “But then an entire album fell out of me, including all the lyrics — the blanks had been filled in, like my subconscious had created finished sentences spoken distinctly from the perspective of all these characters that were living inside me.”

As she reveals, that explosion of creative energy followed a period of emotional crisis for Potter, a turn of events partly triggered by moving back to her hometown in rural Vermont with her husband and young son a year into the pandemic.

“There was a big piece of my heart that wasn’t ready to go back to Vermont — it all happened about 10 years earlier than I’d expected,” she says. “California had always felt like a new beginning, a place where I was able to step into a community of like-minded weirdos, and through that first winter I started to feel trapped.”

After suffering a miscarriage (a particularly brutal medical experience compounded by the fact that she’d unknowingly been carrying twins), Potter began treatment for clinical depression and soon decided to seek the solace and release she’d always found on the road.

“I used the rental-car shortage as an excuse to go get our car in Topanga, but the truth is I was going to probably have a full mental breakdown if I didn’t step away from the pressure cooker of judgment I’d placed on myself and my environment,” she says. “At first, I thought of what I was doing as escapism, and I felt ashamed of that. But eventually I realized I was giving myself permission to do what needed to be done for me to get better.”

Within days of that first road trip, Potter was overcome by memories of past adventures and began piecing together stories set in parallel realities and alternate timelines, each rooted in the unvarnished truth of her emotional experience.

Named for a line from The Grapes of Wrath — in which John Steinbeck refers to Route 66 as “the mother of all roads… the road of flight…” — Mother Road opens on the soulful swagger of its sublimely rowdy title track. A world-weary plea for redemption, “Mother Road” also makes for a prime introduction to the album’s ingenious use of background vocals.

“All of those vocals are me, but each voice is a different character I was manifesting in the album,” Potter explains. Mother Road’s motley cast of characters includes the ghost of Waylon Jennings and an enigmatic road warrior named Lady Vagabond.

Mother Road is due out on August 18th, the day after Potter’s visit to The Egg. Those in attendance will be some of the first to hear these songs performed live, as well as undoubtedly a selection of favorites from her illustrious career.

TICKET INFORMATION:
The show will begin at 7:00 pm. Tickets for the show range from $48.00 to $78.00 and can be purchased here.