Except she’s not, which is precisely why she is. Got that?

Earlier this summer, when Grace Potter released Midnight, or perhaps more to the point, when the word emerged that she would release Midnight—a solo album with some nebulous aspirations to the realm of pop music—certain longtime fans expressed disillusionment and dismay. This apprehension escalated when Potter announced that her forthcoming tour would not feature her longtime band, the Nocturnals.

“Some people wanted to be angry,” Potter reflects, “and then, they heard that first song, ‘Alive Tonight,’ and they were angry, but when many of them started absorbing more and more of the record, they started to feel the need to tell me that they were eating their words.

“I didn’t ask that of them, though. I don’t want people to eat their words or feel like they’ve done wrong by me or right by me, or I’m their guilty pleasure or I’m their fucking granola that’s good for them. I don’t want to be any of those things. I just want to make music that inspires me, so that I can tell the most truth possible when I’m up onstage performing. Because live is my thing. And if I didn’t believe in it, then I wouldn’t have done it.”

This is the spirit that earned her a fanbase, and it is one that will perpetuate her fanbase. Of course, it probably helps that while Midnight wasn’t a Nocturnals record, it wasn’t quite as far afield from the group’s recent sound as many had feared. (Although, it certainly has more of a dance-pop vibe, albeit as realized through the efforts of actual living musicians and not through programmed facsimiles thereof.) Beyond that, the ensuing live shows, once again, showcased Potter’s heralded zest and zing.

Although some people have referred to this as your first solo album, it’s actually your second, after your very first record, [2004’s] Original Soul. Do you see a continuum of songwriting or aesthetic between Original Soul and Midnight?

Absolutely. I’m surprised that more people have not picked up on it because it is, lyrically, the closest thing I have ever done to Original Soul. That record was the direction I would’ve gone in if it weren’t for [Nocturnals co-founder and drummer] Matty Burr. So I really had a direction and a purpose and a cause that I was chasing after—it was this idea of living a spiritual life without necessarily being religious. The questions of religion—and also soul and gospel music—have always been at the forefront. It’s the most comfortable place for me to go, vocally.

As I was making this record, I just started listening back through the Al Green and The Pointer Sisters tapes that my mom and I would listen to going up to Colchester, Vt., for the weekend to hang out at our little cabin. That’s the same shit I loved all along. Soul and gospel music have found their way into the Nocturnals’ sound, just not to the degree that made something feel like a solo record. But the messages and the lyrics and the content of what I’m saying on the new songs are so much closer to the reflection and ideas and concepts I was wrapping my head around during Original Soul.

You’ve said that you didn’t necessarily think this was going to be a solo album going into it. In terms of the musical approach or the lyrical content that informed this collection of songs, was there some precipitating moment that set you down the particular path to Midnight?

It was when I wrote the song “Delirious” because there’s a whole outro devoted to the catharsis—the phoenix coming from the ashes, or at least a shelved Nocturnals record. That was my way of releasing myself and having my “John Lennon scream-therapy moment” to acknowledge that I fucking tried to make this a Nocturnals record. I did everything I could to bring about this positive change that I think pop music can have on the world. There’s nothing wrong with the words “pop music.” I’ve been trying to join that conversation for a long time in a lot of different ways with the Nocturnals, but it’s not what the Nocturnals are put on this earth to do and I know that better than anybody.

I love it: I am a Nocturnal and I spent 13 years of my life building that legacy, so it was a sad, bittersweet, but also very cathartic moment of just releasing the parameters with which I had been writing the entire album. I had been writing out of fear up until that point. I was protective, almost like a nurturing mother bear or lion trying to protect her legacy—her kids, her cub—and then recognizing some things you can’t stop, you can’t control. Eventually, I realized, “There’s no way you can manipulate or think or write your way out of this, just let it fucking be what it is. Let it be.”

Once you embraced that with “Delirious,” where did the journey lead you?

It allowed me to finish the record. The record was dead. I sent the songs to the label, I sent the songs to the band and it was radio silence from everybody. Then Eric Valentine—the producer—and I started the demoing process for this new music, which was really different. Eric and Matty and I spent the first three months in the studio, just the three of us, constructing a new album from top to bottom. I was writing as we were recording and we scrapped almost everything from the first collection of music, which is the stuff that me and the band had written and/or worked on. I had written most of it before we went to Joshua Tree for pre-production on a record that didn’t work. Then, following that, I ended up in California for another fucking year and a half finishing this damn thing.

Ultimately, that needed to happen because a whole lot of life got lived and a whole lot of lessons got learned that I never would’ve learned if the status quo had been accepted. So I was forced to gather my strengths, understand the message and take account of my life, my career, my music and my own path as an artist. And not just with the Nocturnals. By removing those parameters, I started to understand that I have a whole lot of different lives I want to live in this little body I’ve got, so I’ve got to get to work. When you were going through that process, what, if anything, surprised you when it came to the music you were creating? Definitely the pop influence— that was not expected. It’s been there all along and you can hear it in songs like “Tiny Light” [from Grace Potter & The Nocturnals] and “Mr. Columbus” [from This Is Somewhere]. You can hear it in “Never Go Back” on The Lion the Beast the Beat. You can hear it in “Paris (Ooh La La)” and “Stars,” although that was a little bit less of an intentional pop thing. It was more that it was just a big ballad—that’s my “November Rain,” apparently, sans the amazing Slash outro but I’m working on it. I’m going to bring that one back to life.

Pop has always been in my sensibility. It has always been part of my influence and, with my mom’s record collection, it was always in the spectrum of what I listened to. It just didn’t find its way, in a prominent way, to the surface. Although, if you go back to those iTunes sessions that we did a couple years back with the Nocturnals, we covered Madonna’s “Like A Prayer.” So we’ve gone there. I’ve totally immersed myself in the pop scene without immersing myself.

It’s all a little tongue-in-cheek because I feel like I put on the pinny and I jumped in the field to play, but my pinny is homemade. And that is really the energy that I wanted to capture with joining the conversation of pop music with Midnight. Yes, it’s a homemade pinny, and no, I don’t know what the fuck any of these girls are singing about or how to get the kids to jump up and down. But I’m going to fucking try because it will be fun.

I’m curious how pop music has treated you, now that you’re navigating those waters.

It’s an interesting conversation to have. I don’t know when pop music became a bad word, but it is a bad word in the context of Relix magazine or any of the festivals that you would most likely find me playing at. Pop music is a shitty term for “the worst.” That’s what it’s considered to be. I don’t really know when this elitist form of thinking came into the jam scene because when I got into the jam scene, it wasn’t about elitists—it was just about the Grateful Dead and Phish and fucking opening your heart and mind and listening to the Eagles on the way. And fuck it, you know, I love the song “One of These Nights.” It’s goddamn good—I don’t care if they went disco—and so is “Miss You” by The Stones or anything that John Lennon did with Bowie. I love all that crazy shit that never got really swept under the rug and ended up forming the transition from rock-and-roll into disco.

I mean, people had a reason to be angry then, but guess what? It’s not fucking then! It’s now! We live in a completely different time. And I love the fact that all this music has turned into a melting-pot journey for so many musicians. It’s just that I happened to come up in this one particular society or group or club in which pop music is just a bad fucking word. And so, when someone tells me I shouldn’t do something, guess what? I’m going to go do it!

But that wasn’t really the catalyst. I think there was a much more positive catalyst for this, in that I just wanted to do something that made me happy. I wanted to play music that made me want to dance, and I wanted to write songs that I’ve never written before, and I wanted to have a conversation. I wanted to instigate a topical balm that people could rub on themselves and just ask themselves the question again. Kind of like a truth serum that you shoot—like that scene in Kill Bill where he shoots the truth serum. Just listen to the music and let it wash over you and see if it’s possible that it can change the way you feel a little bit, even just slightly left of center. And I think that helps to remove the judgment that has been applied to the word “pop music.” And that’s really all I want to do.

It’s been interesting. I knew it would be mixed. And one thing you should know is that I don’t read reviews and I haven’t read a single message board comment. So I don’t know exactly what the response has been, but overall, people who have the balls to walk up to my face and say stuff— and there are people who do that—have said the same thing universally. And that is, “I heard the news that you went solo and went pop. I was really pissed. I just listened to the record and it’s one of my favorite things you’ve ever done.”

I had one guy who came up to tell me: “I came to curse you out and to tell you that you abandoned your friends and that you should be ashamed of yourself. And I can’t tell you that now because of what I just saw you perform, the songs that I just heard you sing and the way I heard you talk about them. When I look in your eyes and see you in this reflective state, it’s making me wish that I never felt those things and it’s making me realize that those were my problems that I’m piling on to you, and I’m sorry.” He then started sobbing, and we held each other for five minutes and had an incredible fan/artist moment of connection that was cathartic. It was really intense and very powerful.

While Midnight is a departure from some of the earlier Nocturnals albums, I found that much of it was closer to your recent sound than I had imagined it would be, based on early descriptions of the record. 

That’s because nobody knew that it was going to be a solo record until later on. I was still wrapping my head around exactly what I was thinking. When I decided to make the solo record, the band was ready to go on the road and it was going to be a Nocturnals record. They weren’t counting on it though because—as I’ve said before and this is the truth—they knew it was a solo record long before I did. And I can’t speak for them beyond that, but I can tell you categorically that everybody in the band was like, “This is a fucking solo record,” the second they heard the demo.

You had lead time between the point when you completed the album and the moment it was released to the public. To what extent did you contemplate what the reaction might be?

I can definitely tell you that I was in a state of shock myself for the first few months. And then I wasn’t because I had eight months to get used to the idea while I was still finishing a record. So as I wrapped my brain around what was happening and as I started playing the tracks for my friends and family, everybody was fucking flipping out. People were freaking, which is interesting because, when I listen to this record, I hear a complete continuation of my message—it’s all an extension of me, as is the Nocturnals, as is the live show, as is any random cover song that I might play from night to night. It’s all a reflection of parts of my personality. So I don’t see it as that big of a deal, but I did watch a lot of people have very extreme reactions. And some were really positive and some were really negative, but it was a polarizing record before it even hit the presses. So I had that time to adjust.

My thought process was, “Let it be. Let people feel what they’re going to feel.” I stayed quiet on purpose because I don’t feel the responsibility that I put on myself for the past 13 years to really spoon-feed people with an explanation for everything that I do. I’ve done it my whole life: I’ve done it for the cops when I’m pulled over, I’ve done it for the teacher when I don’t have my homework, I’ve done it for the audience when I don’t think the crowd is really quite getting into the show the way I need them to. I hold people’s hands and I walk them through the pearly goddamn gates sometimes. And this time, it’s like, “No! Figure it out for yourself!” I’m not going to make you love me. I’m going to let you figure out for yourself what you want and how you feel about this. Because, when they say, “That’s not my Gracie”— and it’s a very regular thing that I hear—it is simply that I embody something for those people. I am what they need me to be, and I always have been.

I think I’m a chameleon for people and I show up in their life at a different time or place where, energetically or vibrationally, they’re on a certain plane that they want to get out of and I become somewhat of a gatekeeper that can kind of help them. Whether it’s at a concert or through a record, I can be a little bit of a spirit guide, if you will. It’s probably a pretty big assumption to make.

In the midst of all of that, following the release of the first single, you opened for The Rolling Stones and joined them onstage for “Gimme Shelter.” What did you take away from that experience?

That’s really where the powerful career-defining moment of my life comes into play. And the fact that it happened at the beginning of this tour, as opposed to any other time in my life, is an astonishing and reflective piece of history. Because it was the scariest moment—I was solo, the new band was still kind of getting the music together. And that Stones show where I sang “Gimme Shelter” [June 3 at TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis] was the first public appearance that The Magical Midnight Roadshow made, ever. That moment onstage was the very, very, very first public show. We played a private show in Vegas, we played in a rehearsal stage to nobody for two weeks. But nobody had seen us until that day, so it was a big day—an emotional rollercoaster, also a very defining moment in my break from the norm and in my release from the cannon, as it were.

And it was amazing. Mick Jagger is every bit as awesome as you think he is— just incredible. And he really does have amazing energy onstage. He has an intuitive command over the audience and the show that is almost like a magician, or like an orchestra conductor conducting the way that the entire audience is going to behave, feel, dance, sing along— whatever it is. He knows exactly how to push people’s emotional, physical and sexual buttons just at the right moment. It’s the most incredible experience.

I didn’t even need to be up onstage in order to perceive that—I think everybody in the audience can feel that. The fact that I actually got to go up onstage in order to feel that is almost secondary to the fact that we as a people that are living on the planet right now are still able to go see those guys who are still a band doing what they do. It’s astounding; it’s a gift. If you can go see a Stones show, go. It’s a great experience. There’s only one band called The Rolling Stones, and they are definitely alive and kicking it. It was Charlie Watts’ birthday and he is just the best, and it was Matt’s birthday as well—they have the same birthday. It was amazing.