Grace Potter at The Vogue Theatre - Indianapolis
Tuesday, Feb 4thDoors 7pm / Show 8pm / 21+General Admission Advance : $31General Admission Day Of Show : $35Daylight Experience VIP Package: $119• One (1) general admission ticket with early entry to see Grace Potter live• Access to a private pre-show 3-song performance by Grace Potter• One (1) limited edition screen printed tour poster, signed by Grace Potter• One (1) bottle of Grace Potter's Midnight Gold Maple Syrup, certified Vermont organic• Merchandise shopping opportunity before doors open to public
Grace PotterFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/GracePotter/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gracepotterInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/graciepotter/Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/user/gracepotterofficialDaylightIn the years that followed the release of her widely acclaimed 2015 album Midnight, Grace Potterconsidered never putting out a record again. Having endured the tumult of the breakup of her band andsubsequent divorce— as well as far more joyful events like a new marriage and the birth of her firstchild— Potter continued writing on her own, but had no intention of sharing those songs with the world.“Too many things had happened, and I needed to take a step back,” says the Vermont-born artist.“There were moments where I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll just go back to painting houses.’”But by the end of 2017, Potter began to feel the call of the studio and soon started laying down tracks inthe Topanga Canyon home she’d recently settled into with her husband, Midnight producer EricValentine. Unsigned and entirely free of any pressure to appease, Potter slowly carved out the songsthat now make up Daylight: an album that emerges as her most emotionally revealing, musically daring, and exactingly realized body of work to date.“In the past, I’ve aimed to write songs from a universal perspective; so that anyone who heard my musiccould relate, but that actually made it harder for me to take ownership of my own perspective. This newcollection of songs were all written so that I could process – and be accountable for – my own lifeexperience,” Potter says. “I had just pulled the ripcord on my whole life. It was an incredibly jarring,private experience. When the dust settled a bit, the last thing I wanted to do was tell the whole worldabout it. It was a very gradual process of re-framing music and its purpose in my life. So when I finallystarted writing songs again - I did it for me.”Potter’s seventh full-length and first release for Fantasy Records, Daylight was created in closecollaboration with producer/mixer/engineer Eric Valentine. In constructing the album’s wild collage ofrock-and-roll, blues and soul, Potter tapped into her tightly honed musicianship while harnessing theuntamed energy of her live performance for the very first time. “I had kind of resigned myself to the factthat I was always going to be better live than in the studio - but Eric was determined to tap into that rawenergy that I have onstage.” she says. “He chased down a few different approaches, ultimately creatinga kind of live music venue setup in his studio, so I could feel the sound reflecting off the walls andinteract with the band instead of just singing into a void.”Partly recorded in Potter’s garage and living room, Daylight mostly came to life through a series of liveto-tape sessions at Valentine’s Hollywood studio, Barefoot Recording. Along with capturing theundeniable vocal power Potter’s previously shown in sharing the stage with The Rolling Stones, RobertPlant, and Neil Young, the album unfolds with an irresistibly vital sound birthed with the help of guestslike Benmont Tench and Lucius. “Having all these incredible musicians playing live in the room with megave the recording an urgency—like, this matters right now,” Potter recalls.On the album-opener “Love Is Love,” Potter brings that urgency to a breathtaking slow-burner, hervoice shifting from fragile to soaring with understated elegance. The very first piece written for Daylight,the track finds Potter fully surrendering to unbridled feeling—a process so unsettling, it temporarily puther off from attempting any further self-examination in song form. “‘Love Is Love’ is so confessional, itwas terrifying. I dove deep into the darkest corners of my personal life.” she says. “After we recordedthe demo, I had no desire to keep on writing because the feelings were still too raw. I wasn’t ready todig any deeper.”Just one song later, Potter proves to have wholly conquered that fear, turning out a full-tilt rocker ragingwith pure passion. With her vocals taking on a gravelly intensity, “On My Way” telegraphs unhinged joyas Potter documents a particularly fraught moment from the past few years when she took a solo driveacross the country. “Once you allow certain feelings in, there’s no turning back.” Freewheeling andcathartic, “On My Way” builds its frenetic tension in part from a riff that she and Valentine conjured upon their back porch. “Musically, it’s meant to take you in two directions—there’s a powerful tensionbetween darkness & light. It’s a theme that plays out a lot on this record, and that riff kinda just says itall.” Potter notes.Throughout Daylight, Potter imbues her songs with equal parts aching vulnerability and unapologetic self-possession. A stark piano ballad partly written while Potter was in the process of moving out of herhome, “Release” transmits a quiet sorrow but ultimately finds its resolution in a lyric supplied by cowriterMike Busbee (“I hope that someday/The sun will shine again/And you’ll release me too”). On“Repossession,” meanwhile, Potter sharply contrasts the song’s sleepy rhythm, dreamy guitar tones, andunearthly harmonies with a brilliant lyrical barb (“And you say/That I threw it all away for nothing/Butthe only thing I threw away/Was you”). “We were driving through the Southwest; we stopped at apawnshop and bought this busted old guitar with a missing string, dragged it out to these vast sanddunes and just started playing,” Potter recalls in revealing the song’s origins. “We’d been listening to alot of classic country and AM radio on the road trip. These heart-wrenching songs spoke directly to whatwe were going through - and even though they were recorded over 50 years ago, it felt like they’d beenreading my diary - so when we sat down to write, ‘Repossession’ just happened. Like it had always beenthere, just waiting for someone to show up and claim it.”While much of Daylight mirrors the emotional chaos of her recent past, the album also channels acertain soulful wonder on songs like “Every Heartbeat,” an acoustic-guitar-laced serenade for Valentineand their infant son, Sagan. And on “Desire,” Daylight drifts into an unpredictably playful mood, servingup a sweetly winking celebration of unabashed lust. “I’ve often cloaked my carnal themes in metaphor.”Potter notes. “Ultimately that approach lost a lot value for me. I was tired of burying my desires, mytruth, my pain…in euphemisms. I had to start over & rebuild my sense of self, so I went straight to the source with a song that celebrates the fact that we’re all just animals.”On the title track and finale to Daylight, Potter offers up one of the album’s most galvanizing andglorious moments: a shape shifting epic that endlessly careens from simmering blues lament to brutallythunderous rock-and-roll anthem. “It’s a song about the darkest time.” Potter recalls. “We startedcomposing that song because we wanted to honor the long, difficult process of finding peace. It’s amusical bookmark; and a reminder that darkness doesn’t last forever.”For Potter, the making of Daylight marks a return to the unfettered creativity she felt upon firstdiscovering songwriting. “I really dug back into the roots of my creativity. When I was 12 or 13, I wouldsneak away to write songs because I didn’t want anyone to hear me bearing all,” she says. “It was all sohonest, because I had no awareness of how people might perceive me.” At the same time, she made useof the masterful chops she’s developed over the course of her career, a 15-year run that’s includedplaying nearly every major music festival (in addition to launching her own festival, Burlington’s GrandPoint North. “Throughout my career, I’ve always been a bit of a tinkerer; experimenting & exploring allthese different facets of who I am through music,” says Potter. “But this album isn’t an experiment: it’s astatement.”As she shares that statement with the world, Potter hopes that Daylight’s fearless honesty might inspireeach listener to embrace their own truth, in all its messy complexity. “This album is about being able totake complete ownership of your feelings, without any anger or hate or shame. And that can beabsolutely terrifying— but once you get to the other side, it’s exhilarating. It’s the feeling of knowingthat you’re finally home.”
