GRACE POTTER & NOCTURNALS (SCOTT TOURNET INTERVIEW 2013)

Vermont band Grace Potter and the Nocturnals have exploded in recent years with their unique style of pop and rock-infused soul music. Between playing stadiums opening for major acts like Kenny Chesney and selling out large venues on their own, the band is still rising. While most people know the band for their charismatic and beautiful frontwoman Grace Potter, a large part of the band’s sound comes from the riffs of guitarist Scott Tournet. I recently caught up with Tournet as he was getting ready for a massive summer tour.

Free Press Summerfest Preview

Lee Ackerley: The Nocturnals are from Vermont, and it happens to be a source of pride for a lot of Vermonters, at least from those that I have met, do you still reside there?
Scott Tournet: I love Vermont. My parents still live in Vermont. Recently over the last year and a half or so I moved to San Diego, California for my girlfriend. I chose to move across the country, but I was just in Vermont. I recently rehearsed two days in Vermont for the tour, we played our first shows in Vermont, and my old band is from Vermont. I’m totally entrenched in Vermont except for my girlfriend and the sunshine (laughs).

How did the Nocturnals form?
We met at St. Lawrence University, which is ten minutes from the Canadian border way upstate in New York. I was teaching guitar lessons there, and it was a very strange place to end up. I was kind of giving up on my own musical aspirations. I had always wanted to be in a band, and had been in college, and it just wasn’t working out at the time. I ended up teaching guitar in this out of the way place, and by not trying so hard, the next thing you know, I met Matt the drummer and we formed a little friendship. Matt had actually played drums with Grace, and had seen her at an open mic night, and he thought she was amazing. They had like a little trio going; basically Matt played drums, Grace would sit down at the piano, and they had an upright bass player. I told Matt I played guitar, and I would play slide guitar for them sometimes but it was very quiet, tasteful, and understated. It was really quiet and they would play dinner hours, it was very different from what it is now. That’s really how it started, and then we started doing coffee shops and art galleries, but we were never the cool band, we were actually the uncool band. We were always trying to get on the bill, so we would usually play for older people. That was the origins of the band; it was a lot of songwriting and quiet stuff, and then we brought in a piano player and we slowly started to bring more elements in. and then it just snowballed into what it is now. It was a pretty crazy ride.

Snowballed is right. So what was your first ‘holy shit’ moment with the band, when you realized you had something there?
Probably when one of the heads of Universal took us into his office for a meeting, which was our first big meeting. We had had people sniffing around, but Universal brought us in, Avery Lipman in particular, brought us into his office and started throwing CD’s at us like the Allman Brothers back catalogue and stuff like that. He threw out some huge number around four hundred or three hundred thousand dollars, something insane like that. I remember going home after that and calling up my parents and saying, “I made it! We made it! It’s going to happen! All my dreams have come true!” What a fucking idiot I was, because then flash forward six months later, luckily we didn’t sign with him, we found out he wanted us to be Nora Jones part two. He had been getting a lot of people’s opinions as to what he should or shouldn’t do with us, and he was very verbal in letting us know that that’s what we should be (laughs). Even though it didn’t turn out to be the moment, to be in this big wig’s fancy office, with the mahogany, expensive desk and him telling us all of these things, it was the first sip of the drink that we took originally.

Scott Tournet and Grace Potter

What is your ideal venue?
My favorite place to play as a performer is to play a theater somewhere between 1,500 and 3,000 seats. Places like the Beacon Theater in NYC, the Greek in the Bay Area, those places are gorgeous, they just put every little inch of love, attention, and detail into those places. Those theaters are great for the audience. After 3,000, that’s where it starts to diminish for the audience experience. We played stadiums last summer with Kenny Chesney, and that was kind of exciting that there was that many people. But at that level, musically, it becomes a little more about bravado, a little bit less about the song, subtlety, and emotion. I don’t get rock star moments. I personally like it when the music matters, when it’s more about the music than the performance.

What was the direction that you took with your latest album The Lion, the Beast and the Beat?
I think we had an interesting experience with it, because we are very proud of the album and proud of ourselves in the studio. We thought it was our most advanced work yet. We thought we had for the first time stepped outside the obvious influence of our idols. We had always been considered, and we wanted to be very much, a throwback 60’s, old school rock and roll kind of act. That is what inspired me and brought Matt, Grace, and I together. So with the new record, it’s been a lot of years since we came together, and a lot of things have changed, and we’ve changed. We listen to a lot of different music and have evolved. We were trying to put ourselves where we were at in 2013 into our record, instead of making another Stones-y sounding record. This record is advanced, we pushed it a little bit, it sounds a little different. We’ve had a lot of compliments but we’ve also had people against it, because people don’t like change in general so it can be an uncomfortable concert for them.

You guys covered “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane for a soundtrack a little while ago. What other covers are you keen on doing?
We cover so many songs. That’s the thing with us; this last tour, just to keep it interesting and push ourselves, we would cover a new song every night. We’ve done Blondie, Tom Petty, Nico, and so many others. I mean I can’t even begin to count them.

So you have a new solo album coming out called, Ver La Luz, tell me a little about that?
I just put it out a week ago, its quite different from the Nocturnals. It’s a personal and honest record, it’s also an optimistic record. Grace co-wrote the songs with me, which was cool, and I don’t know…it’s hard to promote my own record (laughs). I’m very happy with it, and it’s very honest, from the heart, and there is no schtick about it, you know, I’m not selling any pitfalls.

How did you guys get involved with Free Press Summer Fest?
It worked out as far as the tour route and everything, but I mean we’re down with Houston man. I just finished the ZZ Top biography, so I’ve just been reading a lot about Houston. Southern crowds are just awesome and we’ve always had good experiences with the music we play in the South, so we’re looking forward to a rowdy crowd. It doesn’t get any rowdier than the South, and Texas in particular. We also covered “Tush” by ZZ Top on the ZZ Top’s tribute album last year.

Are there any bands that you are excited about at FPSF?
I actually haven’t had a chance to look at who is playing but I’m sure if you could name a few I could tell you if I like them.

Some of the headliners are The Postal Service, TV On The Radio, Iggy and the Stooges…
Ohh Iggy…. Iggy…You can just stop at Iggy. The first time we played Japan, we played the Fuji Rock Festival, Iggy was onstage jumping in the air, and Grace ran onstage and licked him on his face. I’m not kidding, I saw it, that’s how she rolls, and Iggy was totally into it. Grace worships him as front man, so we will definitely be at that show.