Songfacts®:

• In 2021, Vermont-born singer-songwriter Grace Potter embarked on multiple cross-country road trips that inspired her solo album Mother Road, which takes its name from the iconic Route 66 that she traveled. Along the way, she reunited with some old friends - including imaginary ones. "Lady Vagabond" was a slingshot-toting guardian she made up as a child so she could wander her neighborhood alone without any pesky adults ruining her plans.
  
  She told Songfacts in 2023: "If anyone asked me why I was alone, I was going to tell them it was fine, actually I have a chaperone and her name is Lady Vagabond and she has a cape and a cowboy hat and she uses a slingshot. She doesn't hurt anybody and I'm safe. She's just not here right now but she's my babysitter so don't worry about me. You don't have to call my parents or tell anybody where I am."
• When Potter remembered her adventures with her old protector, she realized that even grownups need a Lady Vagabond.
  
  "We all need a superhero or an emancipated character within ourselves that has absolutely no care for the mundane life stuff and that can really indulge the fantasy of the superhero in all of us," she told Songfacts. "I really feel that within that song she came out pretty strong and was demanding to be seen and demanding to be heard."
• Potter approaches songwriting with a cinematic eye and it's important to her to convey the images she conjures to her listeners.
  
  "I realized I wanted to be a filmmaker, I wanted to write and tell stories, I wanted to find and connect with people through music, but also through visuals," she explained. "I have continually felt like all my songs that I have written since the beginning of my songwriting have always had pictures behind my eyelids. So that when I close my eyes and I'm singing them, there's so much going on in the landscape behind my eyelids."
• Potter is also the lead singer of the blues-rock band Grace Potter & The Nocturnals, who released four studio albums between 2005 and 2012. Potter issued her major-label solo debut, Midnight in 2015, followed by Daylight in 2019, and Mother Road in 2023.