Grace Potter Artistfacts

June 20, 1983
Grace Potter is a Vermont native who found fame as the lead singer and multi-instrumentalist of the blues-rock band Grace Potter And The Nocturnals. The group released four albums between 2005 and 2012 before going their separate ways. Potter released her major-label solo debut, Midnight in 2015, followed by Daylight (2019), and Mother Road (2023).
Potter married her Nocturnals bandmate, drummer Matt Burr, in 2013. The couple met at St. Lawrence University in New York in 2002 when Burr saw Potter performing folk songs at the campus' student-run venue The Java Barn, and they decided to form a band. Burr left the group after he and Potter separated in 2015.
Potter married her Midnight producer, Eric Valentine, after her divorce from Burr was finalized in 2017. She gave birth to their son, Sagan Potter Valentine, the following year.
Potter's solo debut was a stylistic departure from her Nocturnals output, but critics thought she went too far off course with the dance-pop album. On its follow-up, Daylight, she embraced elements of rock, soul, Americana, and power pop, and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Album for her efforts. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic stymied her momentum.

"[The album was] the beginning of an exciting trajectory, and a career reboot I was really excited to roll up my sleeves and dive into," she told Songfacts in 2023. "That derailment was one which I'm still working to recover from."
Potter owns a farm in her native Vermont and also lives with her husband and son in Topanga, California. A series of cross-country road trips traversing Route 66 - the iconic highway that runs from Chicago to Los Angeles - in 2021 inspired her 2023 album, Mother Road, including the title track.
Potter's version of "Stuck In The Middle With You" by Stealers Wheel is theme song to the Netflix series Grace and Frankie, starring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin.
In 2008, Potter guest-starred on the teen drama One Tree Hill in the season 6 episode "Messin' With The Kid" and performed her song "Something That I Want." The same tune, with altered lyrics, was played during the end credits of the Disney movie Tangled in 2010.
Potter started incorporating bangs into her hairstyle in the mid-2000s out of necessity. After getting tipsy at a bourbon tasting in Kentucky, she got too close to a flame and caught her Aquanet-sprayed hairdo on fire, leaving a bald spot on her hairline.
Potter has collaborated with Kenny Chesney ("You and Tequila," "Wild Child") and The Flaming Lips ("My Mechanical Friend").
In 2011, Potter founded the Grand Point North music festival, an annual two-day event held at Waterfront Park in Burlington, Vermont. The event attracted many prominent acts, including The Flaming Lips, Trey Anastasio Band, Old Crow Medicine Show, The Avett Brothers, Kenny Chesney, and others. Because of the pandemic, the festival ended its run after 2019 but Potter hopes to revive it in the future.
In a 2022 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Bob Dylan included Potter in a list of his favorite contemporary artists.

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