Before she made ‘Mother Road,’ Grace Potter took a soul-searching trip. Then another. And another.
The Vermonter talks about miscarrying twins, a movie in the works, and inner turmoil she had to address
Vermont, Grace Potter is careful to point out, is “a beautiful bucolic” state. She just wasn’t ready to settle there yet.
When she returned to her native Waitsfield with her husband, Eric Valentine, and son during lockdown in 2020 and bought a farm, she had, as her website says, an “emotional crisis … partly triggered by moving back to her hometown.”
“We bought the farm. Isn’t that what they say about people when they die? That’s what it felt like at the beginning,” she says with a laugh in a recent phone interview.
The powerhouse vocalist and songwriter always planned on returning one day to the Green Mountain State — but this was about 10 years too soon.
“It was like we fast-tracked a plan. We pictured raising our kid in California until he becomes one of those [expletive] LA kids and then we’d move to Vermont and teach him how to be a normal person,” the ever-candid Potter, 40, says with a laugh from her Topanga Canyon home.
Between losing live music during lockdown, miscarrying twins, and being treated for clinical depression, the musician found some healing on the road: Route 66 to be exact, “The Mother Road,” as John Steinbeck called it.
One solo cross-country road trip was not enough. Potter took a second. Then a third. Then a fourth with her husband and son, Sagan. The result is her latest album “Mother Road,” which she plans to adapt into a feature film. Ahead of her show Saturday at MGM Music Hall at Fenway, she talked motherhood and the road.
Q. You describe this album as coming out of a crisis triggered by moving home.
A. I don’t necessarily associate Vermont with crisis, but [my] personal crisis and the crossover with the location did trigger and amplify the situation. It just felt that out-to-pasture feeling. The rattle and hum of the road was more [home] than a bucolic countryside. The countryside made me nervous. Honestly, it just made me feel extremely scared of what that might become in my life.
Q. You flew back to California, ostensibly, to drive the family car back — then you drove as slow as possible.
A. I took the slow way home. There was a lot of mom-shame and should-ing. Therapists will say “Don’t ‘should’ over yourself.” I had that shame of: What am I doing out here by myself ? Am I a deadbeat mom? Do I have people I’m worrying right now? Because there was cause for worry based on the hospitalization after the miscarriage. But I gave myself the space.
Q. You had been unknowingly carrying twins?
A. That’s what the doctor said because of the recurrence two months later of an [apparent] second miscarriage and some severe internal bleeding. It likely was a second kid that stopped developing when the [first] mis carriage occurred, but continued living in my body for an additional two months, causing slow internal bleeding that was not handled correctly, and was misdiagnosed by the first doctor.
That was the scariest part: Not knowing what was wrong. You chalk it up to “I guess I’m going crazy.” I couldn’t even parse the difference between the emotions and feelings and thoughts coming up. The more self-care I put in, the worse I felt. Honestly, I think the trip was just a variation on self-help books, but it worked better for me. It was a bigger challenge, but I like grating up against something, even if it’s myself. I trust that impact and collision of emotion.
Q. Last time we talked, you told me: “I wish I didn’t have to blow my life up in order to write great records but … those really intense emotional states of being conjure the most honest, raw, edgy, real version of a human.”
A. It’s completely true. There’s something really important about those big strong feelings. There was so much rage and fear that I’d never felt before. I needed to make friends with them. If I’d written the songs in the moment, this would be a deathmetal record [laughs]. It didn’t happen right away. I didn’t write any songs on the road. I was really writing a movie with the songs, an original motion picture soundtrack — which, by the way, is in development and being shopped around.
Q. Wait — you’re really making a movie?
A. Yeah, I’ve got a meeting with a studio later today. It’s always been a soundtrack. The road trips were perfect because it was like I was location scouting. The whole film takes place on Route 66 and all points in between. It’s like a crime noir thriller about the human heart.
Q. So Route 66 — that’s the “Mother Road” in “Grapes of Wrath.” There’s a “Grapes”-esque scene in “Good Time.” You sing: “I breastfed a stranger once at an In-N-Out Burger.”
A. I can’t believe you just pulled that out! No one has picked up on that. I was like please, somebody, somebody has to know that this is a “Grapes of Wrath” reference.
Q. [Laughs] It’s a great update to that particular scene.
A. That the breastfeeding would occur now in an abundant restaurant made for a specific visual commentary.
Q. Then “Little Hitchhiker” and “Lady Vagabond” were inspired from your times running away as a kid.
A. I remember vividly being 9, 8 and thinking: This isn’t my family. I’m adopted and they haven’t told me. I loved my family, I just felt homesick for a place I’d never been. So I’d run away.
“Lady Vagabond” was my imaginary chaperone. I really didn’t think my parents would worry. I was a middle child — [between a] super overachieving older sister and a brother with epilepsy and nonverbal learning disorder. I didn’t think anybody would notice if I left.
‘There was so much rage and fear that I’d never felt before. I needed to make friends with them . . . . I didn’t write any songs on the road.’
GRACE POTTER
Q. Were there any scary moments out there?
A. I was approached by somebody at a gas station. A very interesting person. They did not have a home. They seemed like a regular at this particular service station. They approached me and said, “Do you have a weapon?” I couldn’t tell if they were threatening me: “You better have a weapon because you’re gonna need it.” Or: “Have you considered your safety, young lady?” [I thought] maybe this was somebody who really cares. They gave me a hammer. And I was not going to not receive it. It was scary, but I chose to look at it as a beautiful gift. But many people who’ve heard that story are like, “This is not safe. You shouldn’t be romanticizing this. Not everybody took kickboxing for seven years.”
Q. You kickbox?
A. Yeah, I box almost every morning. I like kicking the [expletive] out of life early in the day.
Q. [Laughs] So did you find, ultimately, that the road healed you?
A. Not right away. There’s a lot of soul-searching still to be done. But the road gave me a path forward.
Q. There’s a double-meaning to “Mother Road,” coming back to health after the miscarriage.
A. Yes. It was about that journey back to being OK after losing a child, but also accepting my role as a parent. I think so many people who have kids realize how much they’re giving up, how much of their own childhood, and also how much wisdom there is to gain from watching a child grow. But also the fact that my mother was the road. I grew up out there. I was a teenager when me and my band hit the road for the first time. So I really don’t know what it’s like to not be on the road. Vermont is such a wonderful place. [But] coming back home to be a farm owner was a pretty big pivot.
You asked me, “Are you at peace?” And I think my happy ending is when I arrive onstage. My shows always feel like: This is what life is for. It feels like landing.