Tag: alt-folk

WATCH: Samantha Crain, “Garden Dove”

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Artist: Samantha Crain
Hometown: Shawnee, Oklahoma
Song: “Garden Dove”
Album: A Small Death
Release Date: July 17, 2020
Label: Ramseur Records/Thirty Tigers and Real Kind Records/Communion

In Their Words: “With the idea in mind of being better for yourself and learning to love yourself, I started thinking about how much easier it was to connect with other people when you’re actually reveling in and enjoying your own company as well. It reminded me of a cult of friendship, sort of building this great web and community around myself. So, of course, I felt like I wanted to make a spooky Oklahoma backroads cult video for the song. I was inspired by Robert Weine and Hitchcock and wanted to make it feel real and high quality but also homemade in a way. I directed the video and did the costumes, my friend Blake Studdard did the camerawork and editing, my friends Nia and Izze (who were also in my ‘An Echo’ video) and Adam acted as my growing cult family. We filmed it on an extremely cold winter night on a dead-end street in Norman, Oklahoma.” — Samantha Crain

Photo credit: Dylan Johnson

Bonny Light Horseman Turn to British Folk Songs for Supergroup Debut

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Bonny Light Horseman, a new American supergroup interpreting old British folk tunes, is one of the few good things to come from Twitter. After spending nearly fifteen years shepherding her ambitious musical Hadestown all the way to Broadway, Anaïs Mitchell was catching up on some of music she’d missed out on, and she took to the social media platform to shout out the Fruit Bats, the long-running indie-pop band led by Eric D. Johnson. It just so happened that he had recently discovered Mitchell’s music and was a new fan.

“It’s an embarrassing way to meet someone,” Johnson says, “but that’s how it happened. She tagged me and said she loved my band. There are so many bad vibes on [Twitter], but I do like the fact that you can write a very short fan letter and you know they’ll get it.”

Mitchell was already working with producer/multi-instrumentalist Josh Kaufman (Craig Finn, Josh Ritter) on a new project for the Eaux Claires Festival, and Johnson admits he steamrolled his way into the gig. At the 37d03d Festival in Berlin, the trio spent a few hours each day creating and recording new arrangements of old folk tunes like “Blackwaterside” and “Lowlands” with a small army of friends and collaborators joining in — including members of the National, Hiss Golden Messenger, the Staves, and Bon Iver. The result is a lush and lovely collection of songs that may be centuries old, but sound very much of their moment.

At least on paper it may seem like an unlikely folk alliance, considering Mitchell is the only artist among them popularly identified with that genre. Kaufman is more associated with artful indie rock, while Johnson is well known for crafting supremely catchy pop hooks.

“I have a fairly strong folk background,” says Johnson. “I used to teach banjo at the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, but somewhere along the way I veered off on a poppier path. But Anaïs has a bona fide folk background beyond her career as a singer/songwriter. She knows all the old stuff and grew up with those records in her house. So she’s been a teacher to Josh and me in a lot of ways.”

This kind of collaboration fits with the 37d03d ethos. Founded by Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and the National’s Aaron Dessner, the organization encourages and supports creative cooperation between artists in different genres and often on different continents. Already the duo have released an album together under the name Big Red Machine, and the recent posthumous Leonard Cohen album features 37d03d artists putting new music to his unrecorded lyrics. (It should be noted that the organization was originally known as PEOPLE, but changed its name to 37d03d in early 2019. It’s still pronounced PEOPLE, though. To see why, just turn your computer upside down.)

“They’re interested in artists expanding and exploring and collaborating,” says Mitchell. “After a while you get a kind of artistic identity, like a calcification of who you are as an artist and what you do. But there are people who are yearning to be free from the trappings of who people think they are. So PEOPLE offers an opportunity to be kind of childlike, to get back to that beginner’s mindset.”

For Mitchell it’s been a nice break, a way to settle gently back into her old life as a singer/songwriter after devoting so much time to Hadestown. Just before they embarked on a long tour supporting their debut, two-thirds of Bonny Light Horseman — Johnson and Mitchell — convened to talk about the durability of folk music, the joys of collaboration, and people who need 37d03d.

BGS: How did 37d03d inform this project?

Anaïs Mitchell: I feel like we were forged in the fires of PEOPLE. They’re interested in people expanding and exploring and collaborating and trying new things, so it was really perfect that we got to be a part of it before we really had any idea who we were or what we were doing.

Eric D. Johnson: I don’t know where this project would be without it. I don’t know if there’s anything modern that can be compared to it. I try to imagine how they pull it off from a financial or logistical standpoint, but they’re doing truly the Lord’s work, which is essentially creating a really easy platform for a bunch of people to get together and do something creative. I don’t know if it’s the most modern construct ever and they’re light years ahead of time, or if they’re completely out of their minds and operating on some sort of beatnik principle that’s completely untenable today. It’s probably both and/or neither. It’s an out-of-time thing in a very beautiful way.

AM: I’d been working with Josh on some of this material. I’ve been an admirer of his for a few years now — his playing and his producing on other people’s records. The thing was kind of a gleam in the eye, you know, when Justin [Vernon from Bon Iver] and Aaron [Dessner from the National] reached out to see if we wanted to do this project. Why don’t you play that at Eaux Claires festival? That was cool of them, because we didn’t even have a band name yet. We were just exploring. Just messing around.

EDJ: Then I steamrolled my way in, and it ended up becoming this band. That’s how it got started, and that parlayed its way into the big Berlin project, where they did this big, unique artist-in-residency festival type thing at the Funkhaus. It was like summer camp. That’s the only way to describe it.

Photo credit: D. James Goodwin

I think of PEOPLE as promoting that kind of collaboration, where you can play on somebody’s record or in somebody’s band without having it be a major statement.

AM: Totally. There was a moment in the middle of the recording where Josh said, “Man, we could really use a drum on this track.” Out in the hall, we heard a cymbal fall to the floor and make a big crash. Josh opened the door and it was Andrew Barr from the Barr Brothers. He was on his way to another session, but he had three minutes so he came in played the one drum that we needed on that tracks. It’s stuff like that. Or there’s a song that has a couple of the Staves on it and Lisa Hannigan. They just happened to be free. There was a lot of serendipity with that stuff.

When we were in Berlin, we didn’t know that we were making a record or that any of that stuff was going to have any value to anyone else outside of us. But then we got back to the States and we listened back and we were like, Wow, this gig is really good! It felt like half of an album. So the question became, how can we finish it? How can we make the other half of the record feel like it’s of a piece with that stuff, even though the setting is going to be different? So we made the rest of the record at Woodstock at this beautiful studio called Dreamland, which is just a big, old, weird church.

EDJ: We recorded in Woodstock for two days. It was more of a traditional recording setup. I remember we did “The Roving” there and “Deep in Love,” which are two of the singles and I think two of the strongest tracks. We did them at 1 in the morning. They’re both completely eleventh-hour songs.

At what point did the idea to cover old folk songs come into play?

AM: Traditional folk music is kind of a passion of both of ours, especially like British Isles stuff. We started to mess around with some things, and the very first song that Josh and I ever worked on together was “Lowlands.” Which is interesting because I hadn’t heard any versions of that song. I guess I had maybe seen some texts, and I learned that there are two strains. One is this British Isles strain, and the other is from the American South. They’re basically ghost stories, in which a dead lover appears to a woman or in some versions a man. They’re also stevedore songs, songs about working up on the shore, loading crates onto ships.

So the song that we put together contains elements of both of those things as well as some stuff that we made up. It felt like a cool puzzle to put together. A lot of them I would say have had less research. We said very early on that we didn’t want it to feel like a research project. We really wanted to be more heart-led and wide open.

EDJ: I would say we were adamant that we didn’t want to do a research project. We just want to enjoy it. But it is incredible when you do a little research on these songs — and this is not news — you don’t have to be an advanced musicologist to know just how interwoven American music and the music of the British Isles are. That music came to western Appalachians and eventually gave us country music and rock ‘n’ roll.

The through lines are so short still. It’s really not that old. When it split off, our grandparents were alive. Those songs are so ancient and so thoroughly modern at the same time in the themes they’re singing about. If you listen to the lyrics of “The Roving,” which are hundreds of years old, it sounds like the plot to a teen summer movie from the ‘80s. It’s just people loving and longing and grieving and having sex and everything else we’ve been doing and singing about for as long as anything.

It doesn’t sound like an album concerned with preservation or historical accuracy. You’re taking a lot of liberties with them without trying to explicitly update them to our current moment.

AM: A lot of the songs have new music but the text is traditional to one degree or another. The text of “The Roving” is based on songs like “Courting Is a Pleasure” and “Handsome Molly,” but the music isn’t connected to any of those songs. But it still feels like a heartfelt way that the voice wants to sing. This is a total aside, but it’s just such a pleasure to sing with Eric. He’s so unfettered in his singing. It makes me want to sing that way, too. I had to sing my heart out in order to get on the same level as him.

EDJ: This is folk music. It doesn’t need to be finely hewn. It can just be a lump of clay that you emotionally hack at until you get something out of it. There might be some deep, deep purists who think we’re very impure in how we approach these songs. But these songs are meant to change over the years. They’re from the oral tradition, from pre-recorded times, so we don’t even know what the original version of “Deep in Love” sounds like. We just know what we came up with. That song was sort of a sketch that I had written for the last Fruit Bats album, but I couldn’t get anywhere with it. I had a melody written, just a do-do-do verse that I sang in the studio, and Josh opened up a book of traditional Welsh folk lyrics. He said, “Sing these lyrics over that melody.” They slotted perfectly, and that’s how you hear it.

Is this a one-off project, or do you think Bonny Light Horseman will continue?

EDJ: I think we’re gonna pick it up again, but we have no clue what we’re gonna do next. We could just be this band that keeps reinterpreting British folk music forever, but maybe not. Making this first one was very natural and easy in a lot of ways, and we’ve enjoyed playing shows together, but I don’t think the way forward has been pointed out to us just yet.

Photo credit: Nolan Knight

WATCH: Nathaniel Rateliff, “And It’s Still Alright”

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Artist: Nathaniel Rateliff
Song: “And It’s Still Alright”
Album: And It’s Still Alright
Release Date: February 14, 2020
Label: Stax Records

In Their Words: “I think I always want to see hope in the darkness, and I like to try to share that. … I always try to write from a perspective of trying to approach everything very honestly, even if it leaves me vulnerable. But overall, it’s almost like I’m a different character when I’m writing for myself. … I think this album is a reminder that we all go through hardship, but regardless of the hardship everything ends up where it’s supposed to. I still continue to live and I still continue to find joy. I think that’s the theme of the record.” — Nathaniel Rateliff

Photo credit: Rett Rogers

BGS WRAPS: Drew Holcomb & the Neighbors, “Let It Snow”

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Artist: Drew Holcomb & the Neighbors
Song: “Let It Snow”
Album: Let It Snow EP

In Their Words: “We are thrilled to release this new Christmas EP. It has our take on the classic ‘Let It Snow’ and two original songs — Ellie singing ‘Christmas Style’ and our first-ever Scrooge song, ‘It’s Christmas.’ ‘Let It Snow ‘ is one of my favorite Christmas songs to sing with the family around the holidays. Was a really fun one to record with Ellie.” — Drew Holcomb

BGS WRAPS: Phöenix Lazare, “Winter White”

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Artist: Phöenix Lazare
Song: “Winter White”
Album: Winter White/Evergreen

In Their Words: “‘Winter White’ is a full-spirited Christmas lullaby that celebrates the magical annual transition into the holidays. Capturing the warm glow of the season, the song is straight from my heart. This is emulated in the vocals, piano and soft drums that lie underneath lyrics reflecting on the small miracles of a simple, yet meaningful holiday. I hope ‘Winter White’ transports listeners to a cozy, familiar kitchen or fireside.” — Phöenix Lazare

BGS WRAPS: Josh Rouse, “Christmas Songs”

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Artist: Josh Rouse
Song: “Christmas Songs”
Album: The Holiday Sounds of Josh Rouse

From the Artist: “[‘Christmas Songs’] was written a few weeks before recording the record. I was on tour in Sweden and I needed one more song to add to the group I had been collecting for years, an end credit if you will. I had Lee Hazlewood and the album Cowboy in Sweden in mind.” — Josh Rouse

BGS WRAPS: Valerie June, “Let It Snow”

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Artist: Valerie June
Song: “Let It Snow” (single)

In Their Words: “Since the holiday season seems to begin sooner and sooner each year, my favorite holiday songs are the ones that make you want to cuddle up with a warm cup of tea and watch through the window as the season shifts from fall to winter.” — Valerie June

BGS WRAPS: Bear’s Den, “Only Son of the Falling Snow”

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Artist: Bear’s Den
Song: “Only Son of the Falling Snow”
Album: Only Son of the Falling Snow (EP)

In Their Words: “I wrote the song a while ago. It’s a very nostalgic and reflective song which imagines someone looking back on their own life and walking into their old house, reliving some pivotal moments of their life and re-engaging with who they are as a person and where they’re at now. I read Winter, the novel by Ali Smith, and it really inspired me to want to write songs specifically about winter. I think it’s an incredibly inspiring time of year and it was a really fun and collaborative process for Kev and I to work on these songs, flesh them out, and bring them to life: embracing piano ideas and more acoustic elements whilst still exploring electronic textures behind the more reflective lyrics and sparse arrangements. We’re very proud to share this song with you.” — Andrew Davie, Bear’s Den

Brittany Howard Shapes ‘Jaime’ as a Solo Artist, Songwriter, and Producer

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Hardly escapable with a presence everywhere from car commercials to the drugstore checkout line, Brittany Howard’s deeply expressive voice permeates our culture. It is a storytelling voice, capable of inimitable gymnastics and invoking multiple emotions simultaneously. Howard’s first solo project, Jaime, shines a floodlight on the fact that she’s the woman responsible for the vision and the creation of this carefully crafted universe.

Named for her late sister, Jaime speaks to Howard’s own family experiences growing up in Alabama and addresses the cultural imprints of the region’s complexity, rife with some of the deepest pockmarks in human history. The album doesn’t so much feel like she’s grappling with that past. More so, it is a comprehension of the impact that it has all had on her own life, like a summit’s view of a past on which she’s built a mountain of a career.

Howard has won four Grammy Awards as a founding member of Alabama Shakes. In January, she’ll compete for two more with “History Repeats,” her latest single from Jaime. Howard spoke to BGS by phone from San Francisco.

BGS: Not only did you write a very personal narrative on this record, but you also controlled it through the production. Were there differences with the recording process from other projects that you’ve done?

BH: I wouldn’t say it is that different from the Shakes just because usually when I was making the music I would just use my laptop to orchestrate everything. Then I’d show the guys and say, “Ok I’ve got this idea. What do y’all like about it? What don’t y’all like about it?” It was the same process except at the end of it, I just didn’t ask anybody what they thought about it.

Was there a difference in the anticipation of the release of this project because of that?

You know, I was really excited to put it out into the world because it was my baby. I didn’t really know what anyone was gonna think. And I honestly didn’t care or pay much mind to it. I was just happy to do something on my own and have that to show for it. It’s just one of those things.

How did the band come together for this? Did you know when you were writing these songs that you wanted some jazz players as collaborators?

I just wanted to play with people I looked up to and had a lot of respect for. Everybody I’m playing with right now, it is just people I’ve always wanted to play with. Nate Smith is my favorite drummer. He’s been my favorite drummer for several years so I reached out to him and asked if he’d play with me. With Robert (Glasper) it was the same thing. It was a level of respect for how they played and why they play and that’s why I got them on the project.

What was the recording process like? Was it experimental or did you have it mapped out?

It was pretty well mapped out. I use Logic to compose a lot of my songs so I just showed up with that. We used a lot of the guitar parts I had pre-recorded and put some new drums on it. Nate came in with drums and Robert came in with keys. It was mostly stuff I had already put down.

What guitars did you play on this record? Similar to what you’ve played in the past?

I just used this old Japanese Teisco guitar that I found at the pawnshop. It looked cool, felt cool. I just stuck to that.

It is widely known that there are astoundingly few female producers. What do you think the biggest barriers are to women in this field in 2019, and did you experience those barriers yourself?

I think probably the biggest barrier is not seeing enough female producers. We know of the most famous female producers. We know of Bjork and we know of Missy Elliot but there are so many other producers out there like Georgia Ann Muldrow that create beautiful music for all of these, especially, R&B artists that we look up to like Erykah Badu. You know there’s always somebody behind the “somebody.”

I think this is the hugest issue. We don’t know about them because they aren’t the ones going up and accepting Best Engineered Album. That’s part of it. And then giving props whenever you can to people like that, because this is our platform, doing interviews like this, to speak the word about people we look up to and are also inspired by. I love being a producer of my own work because when I was growing up I didn’t see enough of it. Still to this day, when I run into female producers and female engineers, I’m just like, “Wow, wow, wow!”

Would you ever produce other acts?

Maybe when I’m older. Right now I don’t really know how to do that. But I never say never.

What do you think it is about that Muscle Shoals, Alabama, area that yields so many artists?

Hmmm. You know, I don’t know. It’s got a colorful history and maybe because it is next to the water. I don’t know.

I’ve asked my dad that question about Mississippi and he says it is because they had so much spare time.

That could literally be it in the south. You finish work and what else you got to do? I think your dad’s got a good point. That’s why I got into music in the first place because I was bored.

Is that how you learned to play guitar?

Yep. I’ve been making up songs since I was itty bitty. Like 5 years old. I first got hold of an instrument when I was 11. I just stayed in my room and learned how to play it. And then when I got bored of that instrument, I’d pick up another instrument and learn how to play that. It was fun. Instant gratification.

Did you start on guitar?

No, drums were my first instrument and then bass guitar. And then keys and then I picked up guitar.

Were your parents supportive of that?

Yeah, they were pretty supportive. They are really supportive now. I think back then they were just like, “Man, what is she doing?” My rehearsal room was right next to my dad’s bedroom. I’d be playing the same thing over and over again for hours. He wouldn’t complain until like 11 p.m. and then he’d be like, “All right, that’s enough. You gotta cut the amps off.” I definitely don’t think they expected all this.

Who were some of your heroes when you were 11 and just starting to play?

When I first started playing, I liked that popular stuff, like anything and everything. I think one of my greatest inspirations was Chuck Berry. He was such a cool guitar player the way he played. And I really liked Bonn Scott from AC/DC. I thought he was a really good frontman, really entertaining and had really good energy. I liked anything I could get a hold of when I was 11. I’d play anything really. I even tried to play metal. Couldn’t do it but I tried. I was just so curious.

When you go from writing back then — when you were a child or when you were still an anonymous citizen — to writing now for an audience that you know is there, does it change the way that you approach writing?

Whenever I start getting bugged out, I just change what I’m doing. Once I think too much about what I’m going to make, that’s when I gotta get out of that headspace. I think the best thing to do is change instead of thinking about, “What am I gonna write about today?” Or “how do I write a song about this?” The best thing for me, in my opinion, is don’t try too hard. Just show up.

Did you approach the process of writing this record differently than you have in the past?

No. Here’s the thing. When you first start a record, well for me anyway…Boys and Girls [Alabama Shakes’ 2012 debut album] was different because we had all the time in the world to make the first record, like they say. But then the second record I was panicked because I was like, “Oh shoot. What if this is a fluke and I can’t do it no more.” There is always this panic.

So then with this record, I was panicking, because I was like, “What am I gonna write about? What’s it gonna sound like?” But I was less worried because I had been there before. So I would just say, I just sat down and quit thinking so much, and then that begat this record.

What would you as a young child growing up in Alabama think of this record?

Oh man, I would have loved it. I would have thought it was so dope when I was younger. But then I’m pretty biased, you know. I would have loved hearing something like that and knowing that a woman made all of it. Just like when I heard those Missy Elliott records and she made all those beats. It was like her child. Timbaland would leave the studio and she would finish the song. Knowing she did all that. Also Bjork. I think it would have been so cool to know.

Do you feel a sense of responsibility with that at all, like you need to be out there talking about that for the next generation?

I think it only helps everybody to talk about it. Like, “Hey, I made this and if you are a young woman that wants to make music how she hears it, don’t let nobody tell you different.” Everybody can have ideas but when it comes to creativity, it’s subjective. It is like everything else, it’s just about how you feel and how you wanna move people. I would say, no searching for perfection. Just search for the best way to talk about your experience and what makes you unique and your individual self. I think that the more you talk about that, the more interested in the music they will be.

Photo credit: Danny Clinch
Illustration: Zachary Johnson

Grace Potter Sets the Scene with Dramatic ‘Daylight’

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Grace Potter possesses one of the most commanding voices in popular music — which is a good thing, because on Daylight she’s got something to say.

Potter co-wrote much of the new solo album with producer Eric Valentine, with whom she fell in love while still married to a member of her band — which is now broken up, too. After their divorces, Potter and Valentine married, started a family, and now live in Topanga Canyon, California.

The overwhelming emotions of these dramatic life changes are channeled into Daylight, with many of the songs written with Valentine, and on occasion, his longtime buddy Mike Busbee, who died in September.

“Love Is Love,” a potent opener to the project, grabbed immediate attention as the first single, but in this interview with BGS, Potter goes deeper into musical pathway that ultimately led her to Daylight.

“Release” is about the aftermath of the breakup. Who was the first person you played that for when you finished it?

Grace Potter: Eric. Busbee actually texted it to Eric but it was only half the song. Our voice recorder cut off before we finished. But he just wanted Eric to hear where we were at with the writing and Eric had to pull over the car because he was bawling listening to it. And Eric doesn’t cry easily. So that was a really important moment and one that I didn’t expect.

That song, I’d started it myself in the bathtub and it had sat in my voice memo bank for like a year and a half before Eric had heard it and was like, “Let’s not sleep on that one. Let’s pursue that and see where it goes.” Obviously it went and went and went and it’s definitely the one that gets under my skin, every time. It’s hard to play live actually.

And you’re setting yourself up as the character that set this all in motion, too.

Yeah. “I know that I caused this pain…” And that really is the full taking ownership and being accountable for your choices and knowing that those choices are not always this self-righteous, “I can do no wrong” thing. Humans are vulnerable. Humans do make mistakes. Humans change their mind. Lives and careers and happiness and financial fortitude – it all shifts and changes over the time that we live. And the more I’ve lived, the more I realize that it’s okay to give yourself permission, to be that vulnerable.

You quoted the opening line to “Release,” and the opening line on “Shout It Out” sets up that song’s storyline, too. I’ve always thought that those opening lines are something you do really well, but I didn’t realize until researching for this interview that you went to film school.

Oh yeah.

So I’m curious, do you think there’s a correlation there? Because when you make a movie, you have those establishing shots in the beginning, and in your songs you have those establishing opening lines.

And sometimes I like to mislead. I like that opening line to take you in, like, a Quentin Tarantino direction. But it’s actually like a Nora Ephron romance. But I really love storytelling. It’s the same thing I do when I’m writing my sets too. Every single song and every musical experience has to take you on an emotional journey. So there’s a launch point and there’s a revelation, which you know, within the first 20 minutes of a movie, you’re always supposed to basically set up the premise of the movie and potentially introduce one twist. For me, my life was full of so many twists while I was writing Daylight that it wasn’t hard.

After the Nocturnals ended, you had to start a band again. What’s an audition process like to be in your band?

I just want to be around people I like first. Then hopefully they’re good at music. For real. Life is too short to be in a band with people that don’t fit into your ethos or feel, or just don’t feel right. You get these feelings, you get a sense when you’re in a room with someone, if they suck the air out of the room and they have that negative energy, it really changes your entire life and your entire demeanor.

You can feel yourself going kind of gray. I call it the Eeyore effect. You know, it’s this “uhhhhh” feeling. So I generally avoid Eeyores. Although an occasional well-balanced, calm person who doesn’t talk all the time is a wonderfully welcomed part of the road because we can’t all be psychotic extroverts. It’s enough with just me and my baby. But I really enjoy finding musicians who specialize in something that’s just one step quirkier than what you would expect.

Busbee, what I loved about him was that not only was he an amazing songwriter, he played the trombone. Just randomly, like, “I studied trombone.” Really? Eliza Hardy Jones, my keyboard player and singer in my band, is a next level, Olympic champion quilter. Quilting is her thing. She’s actually got a huge show in 2020. She’s doing a massive exhibition in Nebraska at the quilt museum.

Our new drummer, Jordan West, was working for Roland demoing the audio equipment, but actually was hiding in plain sight for so many people. I was looking for a female drummer who could sing, or a female bass player who could sing, or a female guitarist who could sing. I just wanted two female voices that could do all the Lucius parts. So it was fitting the puzzle pieces together for me. Instead of auditioning a bunch of people saying, “I know exactly what I’m looking for,” I just waited until I found a flow of people that felt right. And if they happen to play an instrument I needed, then you’re hired.

Kurtis Keber, our bass player, who’s been with us since last year, came into our world through my previous drummer, Matt Musty, who is now out with Train. We miss him all the time, but these happy accidents happen where you find your people. I saw Kurtis the other day. I was like, “Kurtis, what are you doing? Are you in the studio?” He goes, “No, no, I’ve been building. I’m helping do some carpentry.” My longtime guitarist [Benny Yurco] is now becoming obsessed with recording and becoming one of those crazy studio guys — from the humble beginnings of not even using one guitar pedal to this mad scientist lab they have in Burlington, [Vermont] now.

I like jack-of-all-trades people who like doing lots of things. Those are the things that attract me to people. Their strangeness. Their idioms, their specific obsession with just the tiniest little thing. You know, loose leaf tea. You can talk for an hour and a half about loose leaf tea? I’m in, count me in.

I read the lineup of your Grand Point North festival this year and you did an acoustic set on that Sunday night. What is it about that presentation that you enjoy?

Well, Warren Haynes from Gov’t Mule has been a longtime collaborator and it’s been something that we have talked about doing because we share a joy of being musical and not really knowing what’s going to happen. And not having the stakes be so high that there’s an entire band behind you train wrecking. You know what I mean?

Usually you have to rehearse and really gain a mastery over every single song and arrangement, but when you’re doing an acoustic set, there’s so much freedom to explore. Warren’s musicality and my musicality are complementary to one another where we can take it in a lot of different directions and kind of wring out the towel different every night.

We’d done it a lot backstage and not in front of people, but we felt like it would be a cool thing to share because so many musicians, they just get out there and they run the Ferris wheel, they crank the thing up and they do the same show night after night. There’s been nine years of my festival. People have seen me play with my band. They’ve seen Warren play. He’s played three times in my festival. So I really wanted to treat the audience to a different experience.

Is part of that perspective because you went to a lot of festivals growing up?

Yeah. I came from the jam band world. Warren really ushered me into it. I was very much standing in the shadows of some amazingly talented people who paved the way for me. The festival circuit is really the only way that I was able to break out on my own and be noticed and stand out. I think it’s because of those festivals that I have the sense of diversity. I can take it in a lot of different directions and it’s more fun that way.

And if you’d go to a music festival, you’re going to hear seven, eight, ten genres of music in one place and love every single one of them. I think my instincts took me in that direction, to continue on in my career through creating in the moment, more than creating for a forever thing. …

I think none of my records have ever done my musicality justice because it’s like a high school photo album. It’s this one moment — and maybe it was a very manipulated moment that isn’t even the real reflection of what I was feeling in that moment. So Daylight was the opportunity to completely break that down, take away that premise, take away this idea of having to bottle lightning, and package it and sell it to the world. And instead have an experience. Be vulnerable and open to it and see where it takes you.

As you were talking about festivals, I was wondering, did you ever get an ear for bluegrass?

Absolutely. I grew up listening primarily to Appalachian and Celtic music, which have so many deep connections. And from my family’s record collection, I was obsessed with traditional English, Irish, and Scottish songwriting because the storytelling has these archetypes in it. It’s like the Brothers Grimm. There’s these really intense, very dark stories of women that are shape-shifting and there’s these evil goblins, and then they turn into a beautiful woman. This is a combination of fantasy and reality and love and lust and danger and war. There’s all these amazing cinematic storytelling moments in those songs.

So I grew up around that, but then bluegrass came into my world because in the festival scene, there was so much crossover. I got to meet and be in a songwriter circle early on in 2006 with Béla Fleck, Chris Thile, Jim Lauderdale, and Buddy Miller. It was such a cool lineup, pulling all these people together from all these walks of life and just playing. And it was very humbling. It made me realize I got to get my shit together, my instrumentation, because these guys know how to hold it down.

I understand that you’ve moved from Vermont to Topanga Canyon, which must’ve made your inner hippie very happy.

Oh man! My inner hippie became my outer hippie. I walked to the store two days ago in a pirate shirt with a Burberry trench coat, sweatpants, Doc Martens, and a flower crown. And I didn’t even think about it until somebody sent me a photo of it and I was like, “I did what?” That was just my usual day-to-day getup. That’s Topanga. I live and breathe that lifestyle and those people really get me.

It’s a real community too. It’s a small, small group of people. And again, I think the thing I’ve been finding that I want in life is accountability. And in a big city like L.A., you can hit someone with your car, drive away and never see them again and not really ever worry about getting caught. But if I, or anyone in town, sees anything out of the ordinary, we check in on each other. That’s how tight-knit we are, and how much we care about one another. And it’s a really, really wonderful community to be a part of.

What do you hope that fans will take away from the 2020 version of Grace Potter on tour?

You know, everything about my life has been unexpected, even to me, so I certainly can’t tell people what to expect yet because I just — every bit of it has been this ride. And as I’ve gone on as a musician, I realized that my favorite part of being a musician is inviting people into that ride with me. Instead of presenting them with a packaged thing, that is what it is, I don’t know what it is! I don’t know how this is all going to work. I’ve got a baby now and my life has fundamentally changed in so many ways. I can’t wait to see how it manifests onstage. I guarantee you there will still be headbanging, that’s for sure!

Photo credit: Pamela Neal