Raised in rural Vermont and surrounded by art, music, and nature, Grace Potter developed a deep connection to a soulful sound and real storytelling. In this episode, Sid Evans talks to Grace about her musical influences, her powerful, bluesy sound, and her long-shelved album 'Medicine,' finally being released after 17 years. Plus, they discuss how vision challenges shaped her perspective, how motherhood has influenced her songwriting, and her upcoming performance of the national anthem at the 2025 Kentucky Derby.
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00:00grace potter welcome to biscuits and jam thank you it's good to be here great to see you and um
00:07it's really a thrill to have you on um i've been a fan of yours for a long time and
00:12ah um love seeing everything that you're doing um where am i reaching you right now i'm at my
00:18house in topanga so i'm yeah currently on my west coast run uh we are bi-coastal my hubby's
00:25in vermont uh he's coming back to la today but we yeah we we're a creative enterprise that that
00:33that binds the two coasts together all forces combined
00:36well you know you may be the first person that i've ever had on this show who's from vermont
00:46really oh that's cool yeah usually um that's one of the first things that sort of leads off
00:52a conversation out here in california because people don't even often know where vermont is
00:58let alone that it's a state some people think it's a town in texas some people think it's part of
01:02canada i i love it i think it's a it's sort of a you know it's a it's some kind of a mirage in the
01:10distance for most people but i grew up there but you know i interview a lot of musicians and it's it's
01:15not you know that common that you see you know musicians emerging from vermont i know it's got
01:23its own kind of music culture but when it comes to like nashville um you know you don't you don't
01:29see a ton of folks coming from vermont no uh and and it's weird because there's a lot of creatives but
01:35we tend to hide in the woods a bit you know it's like like vermont is the place that you go to like
01:40come up with the idea and then you go back out into the big wide world to share it um but i'm i'm
01:46working to change that because i think there's there's too many brilliant ideas and and wonderful
01:52entities uh hiding out in the woods so i'm here to help bring them out i love it um well tell me a
02:00little bit about the the house and the neighborhood the town where you grew up so i grew up in a town
02:05called facedon it doesn't have a zip code uh but it is sort of the harbor for an enthusiastic
02:12independent-minded ski culture um and i think you know the boomer sort of influx the back to the land
02:19folks that moved in the in the late 60s and early 70s uh it was a slow development but i think that
02:26vermont fundamentally changed when people who'd gone up to ski in vermont realized like i want to stay in
02:34vermont after this and my parents were both those those types of hobbits and um found their shire
02:40right smack in the middle of um central vermont and so faced in as the town but actually we call it
02:45the mad river valley because it's a it's sort of a conglomerate of seven towns that add up to maybe
02:512,500 people um and it's so it was a real small town vibe and and definitely um a strange place
02:59to to come from uh being that i love being on stage and being presented to the world and there
03:05were literally no stages anywhere except for uh at the town hall right yeah it was super super small
03:12town yeah tell me a little bit about what your mom and dad did for a living so my dad is a sign
03:17maker and my mom is an artist and she was briefly a piano teacher um you know they they were living
03:24the whole hippie boomer dream and came up here uh my dad from connecticut my mom from new jersey and
03:30you know in the face of their parents thinking it was a terrible idea they built their own house from
03:35scratch you know we should build that building that they described in rivendell you know so i mean my
03:41house is a complete it's it is the shire and my parents are very tiny people so we call it hobbitville
03:49um and you know i i think growing up in that artistic setting and and really having there be
03:56very few boundaries between an idea and its actuality uh it was not even ever called into
04:02question it was just you know we want to put on a play here's a big slab of wood from the back of a
04:07sign go ahead and paint it you want to be the you know frog prince or you know the little mermaid or
04:12gumby like we just we would always have an opportunity to create and and we were discouraged from
04:17watching movies uh and if we wanted to watch a movie we had to be doing a project related to the
04:24movie to show how it was linked back to us you know just we can be vegetables basically we had to we had
04:31to do something i mean it's just like the polar opposite of today with uh phones everywhere and you
04:38know kids spending all their time on on screens my kid is already figuring out how to break into my phone
04:44because he's he's obsessed with airplanes and goats that's his two big things it's it kind of makes
04:50sense because you know we travel so much the airplanes it tracks the goats we have 120 acre farm
04:56in my hometown where there's a lot of land you know it needs to be taken care of we gotta get the goats
05:01we need goats we gotta have them so who was the most musical person in your family i mean both my
05:08parents were super musical my mom's a gorgeous piano player i you know she taught lessons like i i mentioned
05:13but i was a terrible music student so i would listen to her and it was in you know i would be
05:20entranced by that she would also sing opera in the morning to wake us up like obnoxious opera to try to
05:26get everybody out of bed um so both my parents have really beautiful singing voices and uh both played
05:32you know in bands when they were kids but the the musician that i emulated the most in my family was my
05:38uncle spiegel he was the only professional musician uh to come from any any part of my ancestry and his
05:44name was spiegel wilcox he played with tommy dorsey back in the day louie armstrong you know he had an
05:50amazing uh experience of being in the swing and big band era and he carried it through all the way
05:57up into his mid 90s um and i was from vermont also he was from upstate new york he lived yeah all i
06:05remember is he lived at a place called the rifle pit and he was married to someone named pigeon who
06:09i never met because he was always on tour i would always go see him out playing with his band it was
06:15it was really touching it was a wonderful thing to experience as a young person wow you really did
06:21have kind of a magical sort of childhood in a lot of ways very much so and very unique and just so
06:29different um yeah from certainly from you know a lot of folks in the south and and uh i know it wasn't
06:36warm up there either no that that's the thing i remember the most was like the ridiculous amount of
06:42gear that i would have to put on to go outside at any given point i mean it was it was like you know
06:47in the movie the martian when matt damon is getting ready to go out onto mars you know there's like
06:52all these processes to it and like to this day the sensation of like gore-tex or that sort of slimy
07:00nylon that's on the inside of jackets like if i feel that against my skin it's it's worse than nails
07:06on a chalkboard for me i i really am that's why i'm in california you know in the winter grace i've i've
07:13read that you are a pretty good cook is that true i love cooking it's it's so easy you know you just
07:20take a bunch of flavors and figure out how they go together and um it started at a young age because
07:26you know we weren't wealthy and my mom was not someone who's like going to go to the store with
07:31a recipe and go buy all the ingredients that was just not a thing so there was a lot of creativity in
07:37the kitchen and just pulling whatever is left out sometimes questionably old stuff i mean we went
07:43through my mom's freezer and found something from 1992 recently still labeled it was a pesto she made
07:49she was like it was a really good year for the basil what there was a lot of that experimentation even in
07:57the kitchen and i think it definitely gave me the bravery to to try all kinds of flavors and you know
08:03lean into that well i yeah i saw that you um there was a video of you i think cooking for your band
08:09from years ago um making polenta or something and you were were you on the chew or one of those shows
08:16i was yeah i was on the chew a couple times um and i have become really close friends with a bunch of
08:21chefs and people within the food world because it was something very much like filmmaking where it was
08:27like this other passion that followed me everywhere i went and as much as i love music and found that
08:35music was the outlet and the best way for me to uh share what i have to say with the world everything
08:42needs to be a bit more multi-dimensional and i this is before like the the brand when now artists
08:49have to sort of brand themselves and package themselves i wasn't trying to do any of that i was much more
08:54interested in taking what i have to offer the world across the board and sharing every aspect of it
09:02because yes maybe it's it feels like a love bomb but yeah food is my love language so it felt really
09:09right for me to be able to cook for the band and and explore recipes tour bus recipes they're different
09:14on the tour bus you know you have to be able to use a hot plate you got to get pretty creative yeah
09:18yeah i mean is there kind of a connection between music and food for you for sure yeah and again i mean
09:25some people play a playlist while they're cooking a certain themed meal you know think about how much
09:31music and food have always belonged together and um and even when i'm in a studio where the kitchen is
09:39somehow connected or you can smell food you can smell the coffee you can you can tell when the culture
09:45is moving from we're just focused on getting this track down today to i think the food just arrived
09:51and then you there's an anticipation and there's a dialogue that goes on there um with everything
09:58about the process of making food because it's so similar to the process of putting together
10:03a band and making music that's why we call it jamming you know yeah that's why we call it biscuits and jam
10:09too totally makes sense yes well grace you you were blind in one eye or legally blind in one eye
10:16yep which i assume is something that you were born with i was born pre not prematurely but late um and
10:23basically they put me in an incubator and it messed up my vision but i think it was actually part of the
10:27development inside the womb as well and it is it's both eyes um so what i have is stigmatism and um
10:36i'm farsighted so i get too much light in and my optic nerve basically can't handle it it maxes out
10:41and i start seeing double uh so everywhere i go i'm seeing i'm seeing double right now it's not not
10:46great did that did that hamper you in school or did it kind of change your development or the things
10:56that you were interested in i mean yeah i'm guessing like reading was not you know easy for you to do it
11:03it was it rewired my brain and i basically i think what it ultimately ended up doing was very much
11:08like what somebody's dyslexic brain will do i had to learn how to visually add things up and make sense
11:15of them in a very different way so i was often in like the learning resource room i didn't have an aid
11:20that was like with me all the time in school but when we had tests with the multiple choice where you
11:25have to fill in those little those little circles you know like just finding the line from the
11:30question to the answer was impossible for me so um there was a lot of moments where i was testing
11:36really poorly and at that time there wasn't quite such a support system uh encouraging people like
11:43me to stick with it don't worry the tests are going to be one thing but your your passion and your
11:48interest in this topic is important and that's i really lost out on on math and science and engineering
11:54uh during my education and was really pushed toward music because i think everybody wants their kid to
12:00succeed and everybody wants students to feel like they're doing well but ultimately i think it limited
12:05my ability to explore the realms that i was so fascinated by you know talk to me about your kind of discovery
12:12process when it comes to music i mean you've you've been described so many times as as soulful
12:20and you know that seems to be such a theme and in your music it's definitely not something that i think
12:26of when i think of like vermont music you know yeah i might have seen locally i mean um you know you
12:34sound you sound southern yes everybody everybody thinks that it's i take it as a big compliment you have
12:41this very profoundly southern sound in so many ways um and i just think about the you know the
12:48influences that might have steered you in that direction but talk to me about you know that kind
12:54of process of discovery for you i think it started with my parents record collection because i was
13:01hearing music coming out of their speakers that i knew wasn't coming from vermont you know there was a lot
13:06of folk music in vermont at that time when i was probably six or seven years old i got really into
13:12my parents vinyl and they had had a production company early early days in vermont early back to
13:18the land vibes um where they would go out and take photos all day and then they would combine it with
13:24these really exciting immersive soundtracks and they would project it at bars and and sort of local
13:30haunts and put on these really fun whimsical you know slideshows that basically were the precursor to
13:37mtv they were basically music videos um and the photos would change and so they'd be updated almost like
13:44social media now where you can or or an instagram reel um and paired with music that really compelled
13:51them and my mom would always do the music editing and and splice the tapes and put you know tracks
13:56together crossfades all that stuff that a dj would do now with a button but that's why there was so
14:02much music gear around my house we had you know a couple of different turntables and a nakamichi tape
14:08deck and you know five cd changer later on but for me learning how to handle vinyl wasn't as interesting
14:15as looking at the artwork on the cover i was so visual and it was the staple singers this one record that
14:22the staple singers had that was a circle and the family was inside it but the the design of it was
14:27so it made you just feel like you wanted to dive through that rabbit hole into their world and the
14:32music just captivated me at the age of seven and i knew it wasn't the kind of it was something about
14:39it felt churchy but i didn't know why it also felt slightly subversive and it was really because of
14:46that guitar you know and then i got into sister rosetta tharp and mahalia jackson and i dove deeper
14:53and you know there was a lot of um exploring that i wanted to find the music that my parents hadn't
15:00presented to me you know i was interested in diving deeper into the b sides of things and um and the soul
15:06music always was what spoke to me the most and um later when i went touring with taj mahal i was probably
15:1219 or 20 opening for taj mahal on tour and he said well i i grew up in massachusetts like you don't
15:19you know this you don't need to sound like where you're from in fact he thought that and i agree
15:26with him that growing up somewhere where we don't have a signature sound and stamp of like this is the
15:33brand of music that comes from this place actually leaves you much more open to exploring all genres
15:39it's kind of freeing it is yeah i wonder if you've met mavis staples yes she's she's she's my son's
15:46godmother you know come on really it's it's not on paper but she goes how you doing god baby how you
15:52doing god baby every time i mean he was born you know i was pregnant with him when i played one show
15:59with her and the next time she saw me he was fresh so it was just that was the christening right there
16:05and she gave me a rose that i still have you know in a book she she's a dear friend and one of my
16:12deepest inspirations and i've opened for her a bunch of times and you know i'm always always thinking of
16:17her i wake i think about her at least twice a day what a beautiful thing she is um she is really
16:23something else i've always wanted to have her on this podcast and we have not been able to make it
16:28work but i'm hoping hoping someday gotta get in there she's also a very big foodie and yeah so
16:35you i think you would i think you guys would have a really good conversation okay we got to make that
16:39happen so grace you have a son now who's seven right about the age that you were talking about
16:46all of this happening to you um you know you are known for this kind of you know just hard rock and
16:57music i mean so much of what you've done um is it's rock and roll in every sense of the word
17:05yeah um and your performances um and i'm just i'm wondering since you um had your son if that's
17:16changed um profoundly changed your songwriting um or your approach to music i just realized i had a dream
17:26last night that just came to me i'm that i'm recalling because of what you just said which is
17:31that it has changed my songwriting i never i would my answer yesterday would have been no but i think
17:38what happened is having a kid makes you see the world with fresh eyes you know you have to put if
17:45you're if you have any level of empathy whatsoever you have to imagine what your non-verbal
17:49baby is thinking or feeling at any time and the filter through which a child sees the world
17:56is a beautiful one and it's reformed my understanding of darkness and light just sort of these
18:04subjective uh the things that we love writing about and the things that you know all movies are based on
18:10and true crime podcasts and all that stuff suddenly instead of feeling hardened to it
18:16um i like to lean into that curiosity and i think that in my lyrics that has definitely turned a
18:22corner where before and i used to just be like but it's all going to be okay you know that was kind of
18:28my conclusion to everything i would always want to wrap it up into a pretty bow and i think that was for
18:33myself but um what i've found in in writing songs since my kid has been born is that it leaves it more
18:40open-ended um there is a to be continued in all of my songs now where doors are getting closed bridges
18:49are getting burned you know all the same thing that were happening before but the growth that can come
18:55from even the greatest misfortune is not about and they live happily ever after it's and i can't wait to see
19:03what happens next and i i my dream last night i was having a conversation with sort of a an amorphous
19:10friend that was maybe represented three different people in my life and they were sitting with me at
19:15the kitchen table and i had my knees up and they were telling me you know your songs have just changed
19:21so much it's just really interesting that you asked that question no one's ever really asked it
19:25before so thank you for throwing me down the space-time continuum portal back into my dream
19:30happy to do that i mean grace you're at this really interesting juncture in your career
19:38and um you know i look back at at your last record which was so great um mother road yeah i mean it's
19:48so much fun and um uh my my daughter actually wanted me to tell you that she saw you last i think
19:56was last summer with chris stapleton and yeah um and she was just raving about that that show there are
20:03so many great songs on that on that record um and i remember she was talking about this one called good
20:11time yeah and played it for me and this is a song that kind of dares you not to dance i mean it's just
20:21yeah it's really fun it's really um upbeat um what kind of reaction do you get when you play that
20:30one at a show it's it is the boogie anthem of the show you know and it's always sad when we don't have
20:37time for the full song sometimes we have to sort of do an abbreviated version but it's like people
20:42keep dancing to the song even after the song is over you know i'll play like a sad song right after
20:47that because with stapleton you know we only have 60 minutes so you have to sometimes do an abbreviated
20:52version but i swear the crowd is still bopping like three songs later and it's a i i've really
21:00because i'm blind i really feel this pulse with an audience and i communicate with the audience in a
21:06very specific way i never am able to pick someone out of the audience because well i can't see them
21:13so instead there's this throng of energy that comes at me and in order to be able to communicate
21:20back um i have to sort of dispel my own contained energy and i think that song is is is actually just
21:27the seed of that feeling inside me that there's an electrification that goes on when i'm performing
21:33live where i just basically am an antenna for the audience and and sometimes even for people that are
21:40floating around up there that aren't at the show um tina turner comes down a lot and says yeah
21:46i can see that she's yeah she's definitely one of my my greatest heroes of all so i think there's that
21:53energy with that song but the whole record was meant to do that i think the record is meant to feel
21:58like the wheels turning and like momentum speeding toward who knows what you know and um and that's
22:05really what all dance songs should be you shouldn't really know how they end you know yeah it's such a
22:10great song and a great record and and so much fun um and now here you are about to bring out this new
22:19album that's called medicine which is not actually that new no it's not yeah because it was recorded
22:2717 years ago when you were 20 something 20 yeah very young young early 20s yeah and so you recorded
22:38this with t-bone burnett and is it's kind of a crazy story um and i'm just wondering you know how did
22:48this happen exactly i mean you you make what you probably thought was going to be a breakout hit record
22:53and you must have been so excited to work with t-bone um and then it gets shelved how did that
23:00happen there was a time in that same year as i was writing for my next record where i've sort of
23:07felt the pull of some fate that was unknown to me uh basically it was fame but it was like there's a few
23:17ways that fame can come upon you or that you can wander into the idea of wanting to be a public
23:23figure for me a t-bone burnett record was exactly the legacy presence that i always admired and
23:33respected and observed as true to form for me and i think as my character came out and especially with
23:42the executives and my management and even my bandmates who knew me well they were like you are
23:48not a legacy act you are a crazy person you know what i mean like and for me i i really do wonder how
23:56my career would have spun in in and what directions it would have spun differently because it was a
24:01tactical decision based on the youth and energy and just the charisma of my songwriting but also my
24:10stage presence which i think no one really knew how great you know i could be um as far as a live
24:17performer until i started finding my stride especially at festivals you know we were playing
24:23lalapalooza we hadn't quite played coachella yet but we'd done bonnaroo like three times and
24:29these very large national platforms were starting to witness this electric and hyper sexual and hyper
24:37like just a profound like i'm an organism that is unstoppable and ah you know and the t-bone record
24:45was meant to channel that energy into something highly artistic highly intentional and with a
24:53purpose that would focus that energy into like a laser beam and it did when you hear the record i think
25:01you'll you'll understand how it did that but for me i was devastated to find out that it was getting
25:09shelved because i truly felt like okay well there goes my chance to be a classy person forever
25:13you know i just was like because what they really what was what was presented to me was that my band
25:22and my live show was just popping off and everybody knew that this was just an unstoppable force and that
25:28we needed a record with energy and charisma that belongs on the radio specifically so this was all back
25:35in the time when radio hits still really mattered and when we could take that public image that was
25:41starting to form and match it to something that could go across many platforms whereas with t-bone i think
25:47there is a very specific listener group most of them are brilliant um you know fans of film and cinematic
25:56universes uh they do a lot of reading they're audio files with very expensive sound gear and that to me was
26:03the crowd i was i was very excited to court but i didn't account for the fact that young fans
26:10and people who listen to the radio or even just um passive listeners who are just kind of like
26:15blah blah blah flipping through the channels might see something really exciting and then the sound needs to
26:22match that um and so yeah the executives decided that the t-bone sound and that that brand and that
26:28package didn't quite match with the trajectory of what they wanted for me and um to this day i don't
26:35know whether that was for for good or for bad but i am happy that i got a chance to play that record
26:42a few times for the people that i really wanted to i wanted them to respect me but i also felt like i
26:51gained more an understanding of how my fan base receives things because everybody who heard that
26:55record was like wow but definitely also was like this is a vibe you know as opposed to this is a smash
27:05hit and so i really think that's when i'm thinking back to it it's like we gave them a beautiful you
27:12know train going through you know south africa with a dining car from the 1920s and they wanted a carnival
27:20on a spaceship right you know i like balls well the irony of all this to me is that
27:30this record feels very much like a record that you know should be coming out right now t-bom said the
27:38same thing when he listened back to it again it was like this might be more contemporary now than it
27:44was then it seems very timely um i want to ask you about uh just a couple songs uh and one is it's
27:52the first song on the album um and it's called before the sky falls talk to me about kind of where
27:59you were in your life personally at that moment when that that song when you wrote that song
28:03that was a co-write with an amazing writer uh who at the time was living in new york city
28:09named david poe and remember this is very close to 9 11 post 9 11 new yorkers were vividly aware of
28:17not only the infrastructure that they existed in but also the claim that they wanted to hold
28:22to their soul and the furniture that can't burn up in a fire the you know the pieces of themselves
28:28that belong in the universe and he had a lot to say we had lovely conversation before we started
28:35writing the song and for me coming from a place where there is literally no infrastructure there
28:40i you know the city is as far from vermont as you could imagine as far as the culture goes and so i
28:47think that the combination of my boundless exuberance and my excitement about this connection
28:54to humans connecting even in the midst of the most catastrophic loss really resonated for both of us
29:02to a point where we were like all right so verses are doom and gloom chorus is hope and even a question
29:09you know it brings up this like but if we could fall in love before this all falls apart is that
29:14salvation maybe it's a great song and and um thank you uh it does not seem um tied to any specific
29:23time it does it has a kind of timeless quality to it so it's interesting that you know the thing that
29:29you wrote um 20 20 years ago still seems very very timely maybe even more so now um grace there's
29:37one more i want to ask you about and and that's the song called losing you um and you know this was
29:45after not long after raising sand came out the allison krauss album and robert plant and um and i feel
29:54like there's some echoes of that for sure in this song yeah i mean it's the same session players you
30:00know and that that was a big piece of this record was that t-bone already had this crack crew that just
30:06he knew they would they have a shorthand and they can just make a song come to life and jim keltner being
30:13the drummer um really set the tone with just this driving very just hyperhuman percussion it was it was
30:24like many many hearts beating all at once the way that he would create these soundscapes with just
30:29drums because i'm hearing pitch and i'm getting ideas just based on just the clamor of like this wood
30:36clacker thing he had on his percussion tree you know just would take me off into into a stratosphere of
30:42creativity and i had the song written but it changed in the studio based on what i was hearing
30:49because when i had that song in my mind it was sort of a it was like an f you breakup song you know it
30:56was just like a forget it i guess i'm losing you it's over and um when i got into the studio there was
31:03just so much more reflection and sort of turning over of a thought the way that you would when you're
31:09laying in bed and the rhythm just rattles you out of bed you can't you can't live in that feeling
31:15it's it's like when you have a restless leg syndrome but all over your body and in your heart
31:20you know i haven't heard that one before that's great well it's a great song and a great record and
31:26there's so many other good ones on there um and uh i know you're excited to get it out in the world
31:32finally it's such a it's such a fun thing to be able to do this this is such a different approach
31:38you know releasing a record that is not of this time it's it feels like time travel i didn't know if
31:46there would ever be the right moment for this you know uh you know we talked about the 20th
31:50anniversary of it or something but nobody else knows that it's the 20th anniversary who cares what
31:54years and time doesn't exist anyways at least in my brain so it didn't matter when it came out
32:00it mattered that it came out and um and so many fans have been waiting so long for this it felt like
32:06a great gift to offer the world at this point well grace you've got some uh big things coming up in the
32:13very near future um you're gonna you're gonna sing the national anthem at the kentucky derby
32:18yeah yes i've got in front of a lot of people yeah it's gonna be wild so i know that you've done this
32:26before um i i think you sang it at a patriots game um i did yeah at least once and yeah the kickoff for
32:35the for the football season um yeah 2015 i think that was i went back and watched that it was it was
32:41so great um thank you but i'm guessing you've been practicing a lot um yes yeah you can hear like
32:48when i'm picking up my kid you can hear me going like and the rockets like in the car as i'm coming
32:55in they're like oh here comes miss potter oh boy yeah so tell me about this song and what is the
33:03hardest part of singing the national anthem the break between like your your head voice and your
33:10chest voice because those big notes and also e the land of the free it's it e is the most closed
33:18off of the open vowels that you can sing and it does not sound good in chest voice but whitney did
33:26it so i'm determined to figure out how but if i can't it's okay but i i think that it really is
33:32those breaks in your voice it's one of the most challenging vocal songs to to sing that's why you
33:38know so many people botch it pretty darn good when i hear it in its finest form it's usually
33:45instrumental you know it's not it's no one's singing it um because it is a gorgeous piece of
33:50music but the vocalization of it is challenging it it's a little bit like playing the bagpipes
33:55um which i which i did do as a young person um there's this break there's just these points in
34:02the dynamics where your voice is being asked to do something that would be better performed by an
34:08instrument um but i love a good challenge and you know this is as far outside of the box for me as a
34:16rock and roll singer as as i could go but that i just i don't know life is too short not to try
34:23everything at least once twice if i like it you know what does it mean to you to sing this song
34:30in particular i mean what is what does the national anthem mean to you it's a difficult thing right now
34:37for me to think about what the context is i think i always land on visuals whenever i don't feel that
34:47the message in the heartbeat or the sort of unifying intention of that song is present in the country
34:53right now it's certainly i i think all sides could agree that um this is an incredibly divided time
34:59and this is a song that is meant to really calcify a a communal heart and the intention behind a group
35:08of people from hundreds of years ago who got an idea that they belonged together and that they could
35:14build something better together um and so when i can't find that piece in my in my deepest realm i go
35:23for the visuals because i'm a cinematic person i'm a filmmaker and i think about things through
35:29the visual landscape and i often will close my eyes and and the movie will sort of come to life
35:34so for me that's happened a lot with the anthem because there are so many beautiful descriptions of
35:41a space and so if if i need to just get to a deeper part of my soul where i'm truly feeling the
35:48emotion of it i'll place the event that is being described in a in a location that is near to my
35:54heart so the burlington waterfront in vermont or the top of camel's hump in vermont or right here out
36:01at the beach in topanga um or right over the palisades park where you know topanga is directly next
36:08to palisades with the fire that just happened there's a deep soul connection to those mountains
36:13and the way that they meet the ocean and the loss and destruction that occurred but also the
36:19unification of so many people in that community um and i just i prod my soul until i can barely take
36:28it any more emotionally and then and then the right performance comes out of me and you can see all that
36:34when you're singing i yeah whenever my eyes are closed you don't have to wonder i'm just picturing
36:39fireworks and and a deep i think a deep cause there's like a purpose to the song and i want i
36:48can make it i can minimize it into the the microcosms of places that i can relate to and then suddenly the
36:55meaning just swells up inside me speaking of visuals um do you have a hat picked out i we're
37:01we're dealing with that right now um i have you know let me show you this is what i'm dealing with
37:06hang on this is i've got a box with feathers with brims with like you know pins and needles and
37:18threads and flowers and feathers and this is what we're dealing with like i somewhere in here i'm
37:25gonna build it myself i'm gonna make this thing you know i've taped a lot of things to things
37:30this guy this is like you know if we wanted to go like blossom 90s vibe but yeah i just decided that
37:39i would buy all the accoutrement and and explore but ultimately that it would just all be kind of
37:44proof of concept and then i would let a real hat maker actually bring it to life you know oh i mean
37:51you have some great options in there the tyranny of choice yeah i just like creative projects so yeah
37:59yeah well i gotta ask you one more thing um there must be some fun kind of behind the scenes moments
38:07in this whole process what's something that you've kind of learned about the derby or gotten to
38:13experience or that you're gonna get to experience that you're excited about i don't remember the name
38:18of the structure that i'm performing on but they just redid it it's sort of like the you know it's like
38:23the queen's little booth you know like in an opera place they have their own little spot to watch
38:28from it's not called the cupola it's not called a gazebo but there's a stand it's a grandstand type
38:34thing um and you know people would always say when i was a kid like oh she's grandstanding again
38:41and now i get to actually do that um and i think that there's just some fun there's some fun just like
38:49poetic justice to that uh but mainly it's been about the placement of the horses and how close i'm
38:57going to be to them there's i mean i'm right there and it's really you know the moments before the the
39:02race ignites um i'll be standing right there and i i really got into just watching videos of of how the
39:11race commences and how much space there is and how much anticipation is involved because that's what
39:17that's what it feels like before a great concert before you're waiting for your favorite artist to
39:21come out on stage but it's like every horse is a rock star you know i just i've been exploring um
39:28just basically how to keep it together and not get overexcited in that moment because i think it's
39:34going to be a lot of energy and a lot of excitement well i'm sure it's going to be great and um i can't
39:39can't can't wait to see it and hear it and um congrats on the album and uh congrats on the new record
39:47congrats on everything you're doing thanks for being a biscuit so much absolutely said this was
39:52so fun it was great talking to you
39:54you