Little Hitchhiker

Album: Mother Road (2023)
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Songfacts®:

  • Vermont native Grace Potter headed on a road trip along Route 66 in 2021 because she felt stifled by the confines of the COVID-19 pandemic and wanted freedom and time to contemplate her life. But sometimes freedom can have disastrous consequences. The song "Little Hitchhiker" was inspired by a real-life event when she ran away from home at 9 years old. Everything turned out okay, but what if it hadn't?

    "The mother in me was like, 'What would I do if my kid ran away?'" she told Songfacts in a 2023 interview. "That's where I formed a new hypothesis and a new understanding of what the songwriting around Mother Road could be. Which are the roads not taken or the ways it could've gone wrong and how different life might look if I hadn't made it when I ran away from home. It's tying in this carefree, 'You can say no, but why not say yes? And just go be free. Go run away,' and escapism, but how that escapism can also come to a terrifying ending."
  • Nine-year-old Potter felt safe on her solo adventure to a friend's house because she had her imaginary guardian, "Lady Vagabond," watching out for her, but this song's story of a doomed runaway highlights just how vulnerable she really was.

    "'Little Hitchhiker' really brings you into that narrative in a really bone chilling way," she continued. "It also addresses the little girl lost in me. The loss of innocence is the same as the free spirit and the energy of, 'Let's go try anything! I've got my superhero protector. What could possibly go wrong?' Well, a lot."
  • Mother Road is Potter's third solo album since her former band, Grace Potter & The Nocturnals issued their fourth and final album, The Lion The Beast The Beat, in 2012. Potter said the solo release is the first album where she could really be herself.

    "The best way I can describe these new songs is 'unapologetic,'" she told the Vermont publication Seven Days. "It's the first record I've made where I use bad language. Because, and I say this with love for all, I don't give a f--k what people think about it anymore."

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