It's been a busy few years for Grace Potter and The Nocturnals. The former ski racer and her band have been on the road for the past 18 months supporting their latest release, The Lion the Beast the Beat and are currently on tour. Shows with Robert Plant and The Allman Brothers Band and Dave Matthews Band are scheduled for later this summer. Hiding in her tour bus to distract herself from the delightful smell of pulled pork sandwiches, we spoke with the singer from the road in Fort Smith, Ark. ahead of her show in Pomona tonight at the Fox Theater.
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OC Weekly: With the different groups the band has played with, what do you think people's perception is of your music?
Grace Potter: We've never been just one thing and I think it's great because everywhere we go, people have a different perception of what we are. People discovered us from touring with Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw last summer and others through the VH1 Divas show. Some people come up to me and say that their favorite song is the same as their daughter's from the Tangled movie. I think that's really fun because we're like peanut butter: We can be spread across all kinds of different things and there's a lot of different ways to enjoy us.
What does that say to you about the accessibility of your music?
When you say accessible I really don't know. As a listener, if I ever heard us, I don't know if accessible would be the first word that came to mind. I think for me as a songwriter you always try to write that song that feels A) honest and B) sounds like something you want to sing over and over again and it catches your ear. Whatever the emotion is behind it or what the lyric is, it resonates with someone. That's the closest thing I can get to being accessible.
Have you been working on any new material?
I'm always writing and thinking of something and getting out ideas. We haven't been thinking about a new record yet and it's more etching out ideas. Everything we've been doing for the last year and a half was touring leading up to The Lion The Beast The Beat. There's been plenty to ponder and I think we're all inspired.
Being on the road for as long as you all have, what have been some of the crazy things you've encountered?
There's been some really wild shit, man. Recently, it's been on the European tour and meeting some of the crazy fans that have been following us. I've had really strange encounters with Come-to-Jesus people. There's one guy from Ghana who thinks we're a religious group, I'm not really sure why he thinks that, but he has made it his purpose to follow us and pray to us. He'll come up to us and get down on his knees and ask us all kinds of questions that are really strange and I don't understand. He doesn't speak really good English so I'm not really sure what the deal is. But that's a guy we ran into. There was another time a drunk girl came on the bus, we don't know how she got on, but we think she broke in and climbed through the window. She threw up and got off.
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Daniel Kohn is a writer based in Southern California. With bylines in an assortment of outlets, Kohn primarily specializes in music with other interests ranging from sports to food. As a transplant, Kohn loves the beautiful weather and is glad he no longer has to deal with brutal winters. If you see him, say hi and of course, he’s always willing to down a beer or two…if you’re paying.