Saturday, July 4, 2020

Grace Potter - Twilight Hour, Volume 1 - Home Concert, Topanga, CA, 4-27-2020

Some musicians have used the coronavirus pandemic lockdown time to take an extended vacation, or otherwise relax. Whereas others have been busy, and actually found new fans through their home concerts. Grace Potter definitely falls into the second category. I'd never heard of her until recently, and she's not super famous. But she's been doing a weekly home concert since early in the lockdown time period, and that came to my attention, since I've been very interested in home concerts in general lately.

She's put out albums since 2004, but they haven't done that well. I think a big problem has been the production. I read some user reviews at rateyourmusic.com, and many had the same complaint, that the music was too slick and overproduced, sucking the life out of it. In my opinion, the home concert format is the ideal cure for that problem. For her weekly shows, she does the occasional song all by herself, but more are done with a band. However, it's a very limited band, often just a drummer and a guitarist, while she alternates between keyboards and guitar. So there's no possible way the music can be slick and/or overproduced.

I must say, I'm really impressed by her talent. Clearly, she has an impressive voice. But she also is a very capable songwriter, and she is talented on the guitar and keyboards as well. She's the real deal.

She also has great taste in music. I plan on posting a whole bunch of her home concerts here. For most of them, a majority of the songs she does are covers. But for this concert, she mostly does originals. The exceptions are: "House of the Rising Sun" (made famous by the Animals), "Black Hole Sun" (by Soundgarden), and "As the World Falls Down" (by David Bowie). Note that the last two songs were recorded on the exact same day, but were done separately, for the rollingstone.com home concert series "In My Room."

If you haven't heard of Grace Potter before, I recommend you check her out.

01 Gumbo Moon (Grace Potter)
02 The House of the Rising Sun (Grace Potter)
03 Black Hole Sun (Grace Potter)
04 Here's to the Meantime (Grace Potter)
05 Falling or Flying (Grace Potter)
06 Apologies (Grace Potter)
07 Medicine (Grace Potter)
08 As the World Falls Down (Grace Potter)
09 Paris [Ooh La La] (Grace Potter)
10 Shout It Out (Grace Potter)
11 Release (Grace Potter)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15835930/GraceP_2020_TwilghtHourVolme1HmeConcrtTopangaCA__4-27-2020_atse.zip.html

For many of her home concerts, she's created her own promotional art, drawing it on a chalkboard in her house. This is one such example. I'm impressed by her drawing talent as well as her musical talent. I didn't know a simple chalkboard drawing could look that good.

5 comments:

  1. Yeah, Grace is pretty special. Thanks for drawing attention to her. Looking forward to more.

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  2. Yeah, Grace is pretty special. Thanks for drawing attention to her. Looking forward to more.

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  3. Hr albums with herr bahe Nocturnnals werere very successsful and she has played with the likes of the Rolling Stones, Warren Hanyes, Kenny Chesney, The Flamming Lips. If you like a rawer sounding Grace there are 3 live albums.

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  4. Love Grace. Discovered her in 2009 when she opened for The Wallflowers. Great talent and great band. She's done a couple Daytrotter sessions that are worth tracking down and there are many shows on the Internet Archive being a taper friendly band. I never felt er albums were too slick. When you have good songs and a great backing band, it's all good.

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