Music: Grace Potter illuminates ‘The Mother Road’ in Missoula
William Muoz
(Missoula Current) On tour supporting her latest album, Mother Road, Grace Potter stopped by Missoula's Wilma Theatre. The weather was intense with high winds, which perfectly matched the frenetic performance of this artist of rock.
At 40, Potter has been active as a musician since 2002. Growing up in Vermont, she is legally blind in one eye, which prevented her from learning how to read music. She was also kicked out of high school bands.
This caused her to learn music by ear and likely led to her full embrace of rock, both in playing and performance on stage. She is rarely still, both body and voice projecting the same high energy performance that is reminiscent of Tina Turner. The only time in the concert that she slowed down was for a couple of solo songs at the organ, which moved into a duet with drummer Jordan West.
Her latest music is an out-growth of personal emotional crisis that included a miscarriage and, finally moving back to Vermont with her husband and young son during the pandemic. Soon after suffering the miscarriage, she sought solace and release from the road.
The road can feel like an excuse to avoid pain but as Potter writes “At first, I thought of what I was doing as escapism, and I felt ashamed of that. But eventually I realized I was giving myself permission to do what needed to be done for me to get better.”
“Mother Road is a reframing of my understanding of my history. It's an important and powerful perspective I'd never had until this record, and the heart of it is my journey to self-reliance and a sense of worthiness.”
The title comes from John Steinbeck's reference to Route 66 as “the mother of all roads...the road of flight” from The Grapes of Wrath. The album is pure rock, hard driving guitars and Potters' bluesy vocals that are a blend of Joplin and Aretha. The lyrics are hard core reflection of the post pandemic world we are living; just waiting for the next shoe to drop.
After 22 years of playing, Grace Potter is finding herself and sharing it with the rest of us through some of the better rock music being produced.