As many music fans get ready for the 2nd Annual Hangout Festival, Mixtape Atlanta is also preparing to invade the Gulf Coast for three solid days of music and fun. As we countdown the days and stock up on sunscreen, we will highlight some of this year's Hangout acts by revisiting past articles starting with Katie Kranz's "first-fan" account of Grace Potter and The Nocturnals' intimate performance earlier this spring for DaveFM's Circle of Friends.
It's Friday, February 25th and there were lots of smiles on the faces that had received the golden ticket to hear Grace Potter and the Nocturnals, by invitation only, on this beautiful afternoon at W Atlanta- Midtown. The W staff has just passed around chic W water for our parched faces as we all lean closer to the entrance door waiting for the velvet rope to click away. Grace Potter and the Nocturnals are a hot commodity right now, playing to sold out concerts all over the country, including a sold –out show tonight at Variety Playhouse.
Fan and media are gathered on the top floor for the DaveFM Circle of Friends and Mara Davis is hosting our intimate performance. Light chatter fills the room as people are seated on plush couches and encircled on the floor. There is definitely an eagerness in the room and without any more waiting the band enters …as if they have literally stepped out from a 1972 band poster. They launch into “Medicine Woman” as Grace takes a drumstick and beats the bass drum. She hasn’t even started singing and she's already mesmerizing. This band is fun and relaxed and all you want to do is step into that 1972 poster with them. Before you can blink, Grace is stomping her feet, shaking her dirty, long blond hair and all of us are wondering where she got that style.
Grabbing her guitar, the lady of the hour slows it down with “Things I Never Needed” and you can feel the lyrics grab at her. This band has it all. Mara Davis hops back up and allows for few a questions from the audience. Grace tells us that she has been influenced from her early years of watching Disney movies (said she thought she could sing better than them, love that confidence!), to her teen years of Alanis Morissette (like every good angry teenager), Spacehog, Pearl Jam, Flaming Lips. Grace shares what makes her excited to be a musician are bands like The Rolling Stones, The Who, Bob Dylan, and The Beatles. Her dream band to partner with would be Robert Plant and then jokes and says a duet with Michael McDonald and even follows with a great impression and puts the audience in stitches.
An audience member asks, “How do you dance in those heels?” I love this question, because she reminds me of Tina Turner on stage. She says it’s how she hides the fact that she is a bad dancer. She adds that if she were barefoot then you would know she was clumsy...please.
She goes on to talk about how they started out as a festival band and have played Bonnaroo three times and are looking forward to playing again this year. She gushes she had lunch with Billy from ZZ Top the other day. He’s one of her idols, she says and claims that his line “she’s got legs, she knows how to use them” is the reason she started wearing skirts. Thank you, ZZ.
She puts on a big smile and says the radio has been great at playing this one for them and closes the set with “Paris (Ooh La La).” She rocks the last song with her killer energy and leaves us all wishing for an encore.
Katie Kranz
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