Grace Potter & The Nocturnals at The Cotillion

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Grace Potter & The Nocturnals 8pm Wednesday, July 25 with Natalie Prass. Doors open at 7pm. Tickets on sale 6/1. ADVANCE -$25. DAY OF SHOW - $28. Tickets available at The Cotillion, 316-722-4201, thecotillion.com and the employee clubs. No service fees for tickets purchased at The Cotillion open 8a-6p Mon- Sat.

All tickets are general admission. A limited number of table reservations for groups of 4 or more are available at The Cotillion box office and by phone @ 316-722-4201.

Grace Potter & the Nocturnals’ self-made 2005 debut album, Nothing but the Water revealed a musically sophisticated young band inspired by the music of the late ’60s/early ’70s and fronted by a then-21-year-old dynamo whose nuanced singing, organ playing and songwriting belied her age. The follow-up, 2007’s This Is Somewhere, confirmed that the band had no interest in following trends but was instead in pursuit of timeless expression as it forged its identity. On 2010’s self-titled third album, GPN, toughened by a half decade of nonstop roadwork, flexed their rock ’n’ roll muscles and confirmed that they were in it for the long haul.
Now, seven years after hitting the radar, GPN take an exponential leap with the widescreen opus THE LION THE BEAST THE BEAT (Hollywood, June 12, 2012). With this musically combustible and conceptually dazzling work, the Vermont-based band forcefully takes its place alongside the best of its peers while building on the rich legacy of its inspirations. During this a la carte age, Grace Potter & the Nocturnals have boldly pushed against the current, making a bona fide album that demands to be heard in its entirety . . . not that its 11 songs don’t utterly beguile on their own. “This album is really a different animal than our previous records—no pun intended,” says Potter.
“I think what people love about us is the energy we generate playing together and feeding off each other,” says guitarist Scott Tournet. “There’s a lot of drive in our band, and we managed to capture that on this record. We love the music that we cut our teeth on and it’ll always be part of us, but we’ve reached the point where we’re consciously trying to push things forward.”
THE LION THE BEAST THE BEAT was produced by Potter and veteran producer Jim Scott (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Wilco, the Tedeschi Trucks Band). Adding to the firepower of the project is Dan Auerbach who produced and co-wrote the track “Loneliest Soul” and also produced and co-wrote the band’s first single “Never Go Back,” and “Runaway,” both of which were co-produced by Scott. David Campbell (Beck, My Morning Jacket, Jackson Browne) arranged and conducted the strings on the album. The LP was mixed by fellow Vermonter and Grammy award winner Rich Costey (Foo Fighters, TV on the Radio, Bruce Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball). Alongside the band’s original guitarist/songwriter Scott Tournet, drummer/band co-founder Matt Burr, guitarist Benny Yurco (who joined in 2009), Potter commenced recording the album in October, 2011. They later invited multi-instrumentalist Michael Libramento (from Floating Action) to join them on the sessions.
The band tracked the majority of the record live off the floor at PLYRZ, Scott’s studio in Santa Clarita, 30 miles northeast of L.A. “When I first met Jim, I knew I wanted to make this record with him,” says Grace. “He totally gets us. He brought the perfect balance of sonic integrity and laid-back finesse.” The feeling is mutual. “Grace is a rock ’n’ roll superhero,” says Scott. “She can really bring it. She’s full of ideas, she never misses a note and the band is badass.”
Last November, while Potter was in Nashville for the CMA Awards, she and Auerbach got together in his studio. “It was a concentrated environment,” Grace says of the breakneck Nashville sessions. “Dan and I were writing lyrics together, singing melodies and trading off ideas, while Benny, Scott and Matt were working up the tracks with us. I love the way Dan’s mind works, because it’s so out there, but he balanced it really well by stepping back and behaving like a producer/writer.” At the end of the three days, they had the spines of “Never Go Back” (the throbbing first single) and “Runaway,” while nailing the madcap “Loneliest Soul.” “In late November, as the song list continued expanding, I felt the priorities starting to shift,” Grace recalls. “I began to look at the whole project through new eyes. I realized then that making this record wasn’t about just putting a bunch of great songs together; it needed to be a cohesive piece of work with connections between the songs.”
Not long after the band returned to Scott’s studio, Potter surprised everyone by abruptly calling the project to a halt, despite the fact that the band was playing better than ever, Scott was capturing the performances in all their eruptive immediacy and the record company was excited by the quality of the tracks that were being delivered. Potter, for whom everything musical had always come so easily, had hit the wall for the first time in her life as an artist. “I knew within a few weeks of being in the studio that something didn’t feel right. At first I was in total denial, and we just kept chugging along like we always do – but deep down, I just didn’t love the direction the music was going in,” Grace recalls. “It wasn’t the band or Jim, it was me. There was an unsettling voice in my head telling me to pull back and look at the bigger picture. I realized that I had no idea what kind of record we were making until we were already two months deep.”grace potter and the nocturnals